Another Short Tale of Another Geeky Coincidence . . . Last week just before I picked up Johnny to go see G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra I needed to stop and buy something at the local Gap outlet store. As I was browsing around the kids clothing section a a tee shirt caught my eye. It was white and had printed on the front the old Marvel Comics cover of G.I. Joe #4. "Wow, that’s cool," I thought. There was another shirt behind it so I checked to see if it also had G.I. Joe graphics. Yup, it did. The more I stared at it the more I wondered why in the world they chose that particular image for a child’s tee shirt. It was the cover of G.I. Joe issue 22.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that issue and its cover. Here, let me describe it for you: there is a crazy bad guy in a silver mask playing with a model war aircraft. It is evidently mowing down a crowd of U.S. soldiers who seemed to have been attending a funeral (given presence of a flag-draped coffin and cross tombstones). Dramatic comic book cover? Yes! A good choice for a kids tee shirt? Not so much! Which probably explains why there was only one of the G.I. Joe #4 tees left and about 20 of the Destro tees.
I do remember as a kid being intrigued by this cover, however. In issue #21 (previously blogged about) there is a page that depicts Destro analyzing a chess board which had Joe and Cobra members as the pieces. Issue 22′s cover picked up on that visual nicely.
Wow those are at the Gap? I’ll have to hit the mall up. I’d flip for either one of those. Especially the Destro one.
LOL. Yes – but, again, I found these at a Gap outlet store. I did search the online store and could not find them. Keep us posted what you find!
As I was reading your comment I remembered having a Joe shirt when I was about 12. I can’t remember it exactly but it had a few characters including Gung Ho. I loved it. I recall wearing it one cool day in the early Spring and an adult saying to me that it was a bit cold to be just wearing a tee shirt. Like I cared!
It’s likely that the cover to #22 was chosen because Destro is a huge player in the G.I. Joe movie and that cover makes him look menacing enough. But the ironic thing is that Destro isn’t even responsible for the Joes being strafed at the funeral, it’s really Cobra Commander’s idea. Destro was more busy obsessing over the apparent loss of the Baroness in these issues. Maybe the cover to #14 might have been a better choice if they wanted to do a Joes versus Destro shirt as the scene depicted there is much better suited.
Dang, you have a good memory! And, in fact, Destro kind’uv scolds Cobra Commander for using the “Tanksmasher Prototype” before all the “modifications and tests” were completed.
I went to the Gap at the closest mall to me this weekend and they didnt’ have any. The lady told me that only the Gap stores in larger cities (like New York) carried printed character shirts like that.
I did score a Joe shirt at HotTopic, though. They had 5 or 6 designs. None of them were comic covers, but they were still cool.