Transformers and GI Joe. To people of a certain age, those two names sum up more about ’80s culture than anything else. Despite (or possibly even because of) that, both properties have shown themselves successfully adaptable to modern times as well. With movies featuring both of them coming out as summer blockbusters for 2009, a look at their shared history might be in order.
While GI Joe technically has its roots in the Vietnam War, the current version of the Real American Heroes was started in 1982, when Hasbro launched a toy line featuring a team of GI Joes and their arch-nemeses, Cobra. In an unprecedented marketing move, a Saturday-morning cartoon and Marvel comic book were launched alongside the toys; while some cross-promotional marketing of toys, toons, and comics existed before that, it really served to introduce the modern area of toy promotion. Legend has it that comic writer Larry Hama created Cobra, which proved to be an essential part of the success of both the cartoon and the toy line.
After this proved a huge success, Hasbro repeated the formula two years later, remaking and repackaging old Japanese robot toys and again having Marvel comics writers develop a backstory explaining the nature of the toys and their conflict. In an interesting parallel, both series’ comics outlasted both the toy lines and the cartoons, and both helped to show that under the right creators (Larry Hama for Joe and Simon Furman for Transformers), licensed media was capable of producing comics equal to a lot of what the “big two” were producing at the time.
With this parallel history and shared corporate roots, hypothetical discussions about the winner of GI Joe and Transformer battles quickly became a matter of debate for playground sages everywhere; Marvel eventually gave in to demand and produced GI Joe and the Transformers, a four-issue crossover series. After the type of initial misunderstanding typically found in comics stories, the Joes and Autobots teamed up to stop an allied Cobra and the Decepticons from dominating the world.
Page from GI Joe vs Transformers - Image Comics, Sep 2003
Aside from the comic crossover, the only other crossover between the two occurred in the Transformers episode Only Human, where a thinly-disguised Cobra Commander transforms several Autobots into human form. As Cobra Commander was voiced by Chris Latta, the same actor who voiced Starscream, this was an easy crossover to accomplish.
The crossover series was a huge success, and when the rights to both series passed onto later publisher, such as Dreamwave and Devil’s Due, the idea of crossing the two series over went with them. Those crossover series have, as a rule, featured gorgeous artwork, such as the Jae Lee-drawn WWII series, but horrendous storylines, such as the US military building an “organic robot” named SerpentO.R. from biomechanical samples of Megatron. These series have also uniformly been financial successes, and the current license holder for both, IDW Publishing, has expressed interest in revisiting the concept as well.
All of which brings us to today. Both properties seem remarkably prescient: Transformers with is war over control of limited fuel resources, and GI Joe with its fight against international terrorism. Combine that with the often rose-coloured nostalgia of the current generation, and you’ve got a recipe for success as guaranteed as the accuracy of blue lasers.
While not dreaming of being a rock and roll superstar, Ryan Harron is a Canadian geek, writer, and adult educator who prefers to think of it as “keeping a wide range of interests”rather than being a dilettante. 