Snake Eyes issue 6

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G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes #6
Cobra Civil War
SnakeEyes-6 cvrA.jpg
You wouldn't believe how quickly describing these covers can get incredibly tiresome.
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published October 19, 2011
Cover date October 2011
Written by Chuck Dixon
Line-art by Casey Maloney
Inks by Juan Castro
Colors by Simon Gough and Romulo Fajardo, Jr.
Letters by Neil Uyetake
Editor John Barber and Tom Waltz
Assistant editor Carlos Guzman

Snake Eyes and Duke capture Cobra Commander wannabe Vargas, but to reach the cure for Duke's virus, they find they'll need help from an outside source.

Synopsis[edit | edit source]

Amidst a refugee column south of Kariba, Zimbabwe, United Nations troops lament having to fire on civilians in order to contain the "Madness Bug" that had driven the city's citizens to homicidal madness. The soldiers express gratitude that the risk of it spreading has been contained, but when one of their comrades complains of a headache, they realise that he has been infected! The other soldiers attempt to quarantine the infectee, but — believing that he will simply be killed by the doctors to avoid spreading the virus — the soldier opens fire on his comrades, sending the UN APC skidding through a crowd of people and over a cliff.

Above Bocca di Magra on the coast of Italy, a motion detector is tripped in the gardens of Doctor Rodrigo Vargas, aspirant to the position of Cobra Commander, and the one responsible for creating the Madness Bug. Vargas's guards investigate, finding it to only be a deer that has got onto the grounds... but one of them realises that he smells deer lure, just as Snake Eyes flips into action, silently slaughtering the guards! With Duke's plan a success, he and Snake Eyes make their way into the mansion, quickly taking out the surveillance team and using the mansion's security cameras to find Vargas in his library. The two confront the doctor and attempt to make him give up the cure to Duke's infection, but his pride in his creation is such that he's unfazed by the two Joes' threats... until Duke removes the mask of his haz-suit and wipes his own spit in Vargas's mouth, infecting him with the virus.

Sedating Vargas and placing him in an environmentally-sealed bag, the two take him to his labs to find a cure, but the doctor reveals that the staff know nothing of the Orphiophagus virus; instead, it's stored in a Ray-Pharm facility in Albania, where Vargas promises to administer the cure to them both. Their escape attempt is stymied when Vargas's security team quarantines the labs, preparing to pump sarin nerve gas into them to kill everyone inside, but Duke has a solution for that: a pair of TOW missiles, fired by their helicopter pilot Lighthorse, that utterly blow out the front of the mansion and give the two Joes their opportunity to escape... with Snake Eyes sedating both Duke and his prisoner as they leave.

Back at G.I. Joe's new headquarters in Fort Baxter, Scarlett speaks over a video call with Doc, who explains the latter-stage psychotic effects of the virus. As Scarlett murmurs a request for Duke to "keep it together", the infected Joe awakens in the back of a Red Cross humvee in Djacovica, Kosovo, where Snake Eyes injects him with intraveneous nutrition. Outside the ambulance, Lighthorse waits impatiently for a guest expected by Snake Eyes, who eventually comes roaring up on a motorcycle. Lighthorse has his doubts about the towering man's ability to get them into Albania, but his input is quickly cut off when their guest — an Inuit man named Kwinnstrongly objects to being called an "Eskimo"...

Featured characters[edit | edit source]

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

G.I. Joe Cobra Others

Quotes[edit | edit source]

"You want me to give you the antidote for the greatest weaponized pandemic ever created by man? And why would that be in my best interest, eh?"
"You're right, doctor. This is personal. And I think you'd be more motivated — if you took it personally, too."

Duke gives Vargas the necessary motivation to help the Joes

"You call me an Eskimo once. Once — I'll carve a kayak outta you."

Kwinn

Notes[edit | edit source]

G.I. Joe references[edit | edit source]

  • Vargas's security team includes "blueshirt" Cobra Troopers and mirror-masked Vipers, based on their classic designs rather than the updated version created for IDW's comics.
  • Kwinn, the Inuit tracker and mercenary, originated in the Marvel G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comics. There, he started out working for the villains, but his sense of honor and being betrayed by Cobra meant that his relationship with the Joes (and Snake-Eyes in particular) evolved into a friendlier, "worthy opponent" deal prior to his death in issue #19. As such, here he's been made into an ally of Snake Eyes.

Errors[edit | edit source]

  • The location caption on page 1 misspells "Kariba" as "Karibe".
  • Not really an error, since it's a contrivance for the sake of the story, but the conversation between Scarlett and Doc shown here doesn't match up with the one shown in G.I. Joe #6.

Other notes[edit | edit source]

  • Kwinn specifically objects to being called an "Eskimo", as he was in the ARAH series, referring to himself as "Inuit". The term "Eskimo" has come to be seen as pejorative in Canada, but isn't in Alaska, where there are multiple non-Inuit native ethnic groups, making "Inuit" an inappropriate way to refer to them. So now you know! (And knowing is, of course, half the battle.)

Covers (3)[edit | edit source]

  • Cover A: Snake Eyes jumps away from an explosion, by Robert Atkins and Simon Gough.
  • Cover B: Snake Eyes shows how good he is at running and shooting, by Agustin Padilla and Simon Gough.
  • Cover RI: Snake Eyes, Iceberg and Alpine defend an unconscious Helix, by Robert Atkins and Mark Roberts; this cover forms a weird sort of half-homage to the iconic cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, with Helix's pose and the position of the Cobra forces in the background matching (though Helix is, for some reason, flipped horizontally), but Snake Eyes not lining up at all with Superman's classic pose and Alpine and Iceberg not corresponding to anyone from the classic cover. ...Long story short, it's part of a month of RI covers homaging the iconic COIE cover, along with G.I. Joe #6 and Cobra #6.