G.I. Joe vol. 3 issue 12
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 "G.I. JoJo will never defeat my Stand, 「UNION OF THE SNAKE」!" | |||||||||||||
| "Present Day", "A Coward's Heart", "The Debt", "The Gardener" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | IDW Publishing | ||||||||||||
| First published | December 31, 2013 | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | January 2014 | ||||||||||||
| Written by | Paul Allor | ||||||||||||
| Art by | Alex Cal "Present Day" S.L. Gallant "A Coward's Heart" Atilio Rojo "The Debt" Nicole Virella "The Gardener" | ||||||||||||
| Inks by | Marc Deering "A Coward's Heart" | ||||||||||||
| Colors by | David Garcia Cruz "Present Day", "The Debt" John-Paul Bove "A Coward's Heart", "The Gardener" | ||||||||||||
| Letters by | Shawn Lee | ||||||||||||
| Special Thanks | Max Brooks | ||||||||||||
| Editor | John Barber | ||||||||||||
Cobra Commander brings in a new agent to help tell the story of Cobra's long, long history.
Synopsis[edit | edit source]
Cobra Commander has an offer to make. Mary Craft, a highly skilled and amoral communications and public relations strategist, has had her son kidnapped by slave traders; and Cobra will take them down in exchange for Craft running their public relations for them. Though Craft is entirely willing to form a strategy and tell the world where Cobra is going, she has no interest in working for them long-term; but Cobra Commander is unwilling to discuss the terms until after they have her son back, requiring a larger commitment if he's to expend Cobra resources on it — something to which Craft reluctantly agrees. Satisfied, the Commander has only two conditions: Craft will work with Cobra's people as they take down the slaving ring, to put her skills to the test... and he doesn't want her to tell people where Cobra is going, but where they've been.
Off the coast of Somalia, a member of a band of pirates is suspicious when his crew find a luxury yacht sitting offshore, right next to their town — suspicions that prove well-founded when the Baroness and a band of Vipers reveal themselves! With the pirates quickly subdued, Mary Craft asks for Abdi Zakaria, who used to work on a cargo ship in East Asia; and when nobody will admit to being Zakaria, she tells them about how Cobra has dealt with their kind before...
A Coward's Heart
In the early 18th century, a Cobra ship pulls alongside Captain Shelley's galleon. Shelley is surprised to see Cobra Commander, who is unimpressed with his performance: the pirate captain has been attacking fishing ships and insignificant targets, not trade routes to cause havoc as they had arranged. Despite all that Cobra has given him, including a master gunner from their own organization, Shelley is reluctant to raise their profile by attacking risky targets such as a nearby British Man of War carrying massive wealth; Cobra Commander attempts to persuade him otherwise, but his accusations that the pirate has a "coward's heart" and his implication that Shelley's ship and crew belong to him infuriate the captain. Shelley draws his sword and attacks the Commander, leading to a massed fight between those crew members loyal to Cobra and those loyal to Shelley; but after Shelley forces the Commander to the ground, he yields, promising to continue his partnership with Shelley's crew. As the Commander departs, Shelley claims that after he attacks the Man-O'-War, they will renegotiate Cobra's share of the ritches, and asks if he still thinks him a coward.
Back on Cobra Commander's ship, the Cobra helmsman Flip compliments the Commander on his performance, but wonders how he knew that Shelley would find the courage to attack the British ship. The Commander reveals, however, that he didn't — he merely played on Shelley's pride and anger to lure him into a suicide mission instead of standing up to Cobra. The master gunner, meanwhile, was given orders to ignite the ship's gunpowder, destroying it and the Man-O'-War in an explosion, and killing all the important figures — including the American ambassador and the King's nephew — that it carried.
The pirates are unimpressed with Craft's story, thinking that they plan to blow up the pirates' speedboat... but Cobra has advanced since the 18th century, as is demonstrated when the pirates' entire village is consumed in fire! The Baroness reminds the pirates that they have other villages, and asks again for Abdi Zakaria. The pirates turn the man over, but he refuses to say anything, even if he did know something; his loyalty to the captain, who has saved his life before, is too strong. Craft's only response is to sit him down, give him a journal, and tell him to read...
The Debt
Thom Laurel has always been isolated from other men, but now, in Ruhleben Civilian Prisoner of War Camp in April 1915, he is surprised to have made a friend: an eerie, detached man who hides his face and accepts nothing for free. Though the man initially only asks Thom to accompany him as he walks the grounds and charts the movements of the guards, their relationship soon develops into a genuine friendship, keeping each other company in both the light hours and the dark. On the day that the man informs Thom of his intention to leave, Thom asks him to take a letter back to his son in Cambridge and to keep him from going down the same path he did, but his friend refuses — the two owe each other nothing, as he prefers. Thom puts his letter in the man's pocket anyway, despite his claim that he will throw it away, before reflecting on the beauty of the sunset... beauty that his friend is unable to see, though he wishes he could.
The journal ends there, leaving Craft to fill Zakaria in on what happened next.
Though the Commander had charted the guards' paths accurately, he didn't know about the night groundskeeper, whose dog starts barking as he tries to escape... but Thom was following behind him to keep him safe, and distracts the groundskeeper and the guards, being fatally shot in the process. The Commander escapes and returns to England, where he — now wearing a shiny metal mask instead of the crude cloth one he wore in the camp — visits Laurel's son Thomas in Cambridge to fulfil his debt. Thomas thanks him for delivering the letter, but that was only half the job; the Commander was asked to ensure that he does not continue on the path that he's on... and so kills Thomas with a fireplace poker. Returning to his car, he reflects to his aide that one should never let themself fall into someone's debt, for that gives them power over you.
By pointing out that Zakaria's loyalty to his captain puts the other man in his debt, Craft persuades to comply with them; though the pirate does not know where his captain is, he offers the name of their Yakuza contact, who would be able to find him. As soon as he writes the name down, though, the Baroness shoots him — he gave them what they needed, and they were in his debt. On their flight to Japan, Craft protests to the Baroness that their "word-of-mouth marketing" strategy won't work if they kill those that they tell, but the Baroness doesn't understand at all; she thinks the storytelling is ridiculous and a waste of time. Cobra Commander, however, wants the world to know the truth; specifically, the criminal underworld, who need to be taught through stories and seeds of evidence, not press releases. To illustrate her point, she tells a story, much to the Baroness's disgust...
The Gardener
In the 1960s, Charles Pyke is a rising star in the ranks of Cobra, and is brought to meet with its Commander on Cobra Island. Expecting brilliance, passion, and violence from the world's most dangerous man, Pyke is dismayed to find a genial, subdued man who likes to spend his time gardening and insists on calling him "Charlie". Weeks before, Pyke had been approached by Cobra's enemies, who wanted him to steal from Cobra, but he planned on exposing them and turning them over to Cobra... until he met the Commander. Unimpressed with the common, boring man he had met, Pyke murders a guard and steals a tape reel from Cobra's archives, intending on taking it back to their enemies; but as he creeps across the island, he is encountered by the Commander, who stabs him in the chest with a pair of gardening shears. The Commander beats him to death, furious at Pyke for underestimating him, for not wanting to get his hands dirty, and for correcting the Commander when he called him "Charlie"'; and in his last moments, with the Commander's hands wrapped around his neck, Pyke is deliriously happy to have found the man he was looking for.
The Baroness is unimpressed with the story, and its message that "people will treat you the way they perceive you"; people perceive her, and the Commander that Pyke met, exactly as they want them to. Still, she thinks he could have handled the situation better; if she had been holding the shears, she would have stabbed Pyke in the back. With that, she leaves Craft to stew on her words before they land in Tokyo.
Featured characters[edit | edit source]
Characters in italics appear only in Mary Craft's stories. (Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Cobra | Others |
|---|---|
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Quotes[edit | edit source]
"The truly brave thing would have been to truly stand up to me. Slaughter us. Slaughter all our loyalists. And do what he knew was best for his ship... instead of letting anger lead him into a suicide mission."
- —The 18th century Cobra Commander
"My God, what a sunset today. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?"
I've never understood that. Viewing the world in terms of beauty and horror. It's all the same lines, the same shapes and colors. How is a sunset any more beautiful or ugly than a woman? Or a bridge? Or a dog fight? But I wish I could see what you see."
"And that... that was the greatest compliment a man like him could ever grant me."
- —Thom Laurel and the 1915 Cobra Commander
"I'm a gardener. So, what? You mistake me for the help? Think I don't have our seas monitored? Think I don't know there's a boat thirty miles out? Then you show up. Slimy li'l stinkbug. Don't want to get dirty. Correct me — correct me — when I call you Charlie."
"Yes. Yes. That's who I was looking for!"
- —The 1960s Cobra Commander murders Charles Pyke
Notes[edit | edit source]
Continuity notes[edit | edit source]
- Cobra having a long, long history was first established during the "Cobra Command" storyline; in particular, Cobra vol. 2 #1 described it as an "old organisation", which is reinforced several times throughout the arc, while Cobra vol. 2 #13 establishes that there have been many previous Cobra Commanders.
G.I. Joe references[edit | edit source]
- Cobra Island was Cobra's main base of operations in the Marvel Comics and Sunbow cartoon A Real American Hero series; it's never appeared in IDW before, with Cobra instead operating out of various individual "Section" bases.
Real world references[edit | edit source]
- Captain Shelley and the Cobra Commander of the 18th century have their own Jolly Roger, depicting a cobra coiling around crossed bones. It also appears on the Commander's hat; maybe it's the overall Cobra symbol of that era?
- Ruhleben internment camp was a real detention camp used by Germany during World War I.
Errors[edit | edit source]
- The pirates' home is always referred to as a "village", but Alex Cal draws it as, at the least, a large town, if not a city.
Other notes[edit | edit source]
- This issue and the next were originally intended as a single 48-issue one-shot; as such, this issue is 28 pages, rather than the usual 20. Only five of the twelve Cobra Commander vignettes created ended up in the book; others included one set during the Black Death, one set during the French Revolution with Marie Antoinette, and one set in Peru involving the conquistador Commander seen on the cover.[1]
- In addition to the current Cobra Commander, the pirate, mobster and 1960s Commanders from this issue, and the ninja and Renaissance Commanders from the next issue, there are several other past Commanders on the cover of this issue, some of which are partially or mostly hidden by the cover dress. They include:
- A Samurai Cobra Commander with a face covered with a men-yoroi
- A bare-handed Commander wearing a Destro-esque mask
- A dapper Victorian Commander in a top hat with a hunting rifle
- A Roman Commander wearing a lorica squamata
- A Prussian Commander in greatcoat and pickelhaube, with more than a passing resemblance to Star-Lord
- A conquistador Commander, intended for an unwritten story set in the Viceroyalty of Peru
- The original IDW Cobra Commander
- A few more cut off by the cover edges, whose historical eras are unclear
- Mary Craft goes unnamed throughout this issue; though she is named as "Siren" by solicitations and publicity material for this issue, she won't recieve the name until the next one, and her real name would not be revealed until the issue after that.
Covers (3)[edit | edit source]
- Cover A: Cobra Commander surrounded by all his predecessors, by Steve Kurth, Allen Martinez and Joana Lafuente.
- Cover RI: Cobra Commander and the Baroness, by Freddie E. Williams II and Priscilla Tramontano.
- ↑ Paul Allor Reveals The Secret History of Cobra In 'G.I. Joe' on ComicsAlliance
