A friend of mine who is a member here. Ask me to post this here to see what everyone from this forum think of my customs. I really wanted to do something that was not done and wasn't thought of. Thanks for your feed back........
READ THE STORY BEHIND THE FIGURES. THEN LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.
COMIC URBAN LEGEND: The GI Joe series was partially based on a previous Marvel pitch Larry Hama made to Marvel.
STATUS: True
In the early 80s, Hasbro came to Marvel looking to both have a comic book to tie into their new launch of smaller, more detailed GI Joes and also have a back story for the characters.
Luckily, Marvel editor Larry Hama already had developed a series for Marvel that had not been picked up called Fury Force, which was about, oddly enough, a group of specialized soldiers who worked for SHIELD.
The concepts very easily translated to Hasbro’s pitch, and Hama was given the job of not just writing the comic, but designing the backstory for each toy character.
According to Hama (in an interview at QKTheatre.com),
There were a lot of holdovers from the ‘Fury Force’ concept that I had been developing for Marvel at the time. The whole idea of a secret base under a motor pool, for instance. I even had a “Snake-Eyesâ€? type character, who didn’t speak, had his face covered with a cowl and was a mysterious assassin type. He carried a pump shotgun and a commando knife in his boot and was actually inspired by the Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah (Wolf Who Stands in Water) character in the old ‘Yancy Derringer’ TV show.
Luckily for us, Metropolis Comics got ahold of the original Fury Force design sheets, and they have a nice bit about it at this link. Here are some of the original designs:
The whole team
Hawk
Scarlett
Soon, all of these characters would make their way, in one form or another, into 1982’s smash hit, GI Joe #1.
Oddly enough, though, while you might have expected that Cobra was just a substitute for Hydra, that was not the case. Archie Goodwin came up with the concept of Cobra after Hasbro approached Marvel.
