History ComicBook / GIJoeARealAmericanHeroMarvel

** In the UK, the original 12" figures were renamed ''WesternAnimation/ActionMan'', and eventually gained their own, separate {{canon}}.

* CulturalTranslation: In the UK, the good guys were called Action Force, and the theme tune called them International Heroes instead of Real American Heroes. Over time this slowly changed to "GI Joe, The Action Force" (it was as awkward as it sounds) before eventually just using the GI Joe name. This actually dates back from the 60's, when Palitoy licensed the original G.I. Joe figure as ''WesternAnimation/ActionMan''. Two decades later, ''Action Force'' was launched as an independent extension of the Action Man line. This changed with Hasbro's acquisition of the Palitoy assets, after which the Joes were introduced with European birthplaces.

* RedundantRescue: In the silent issue where Snake-Eyes fights his way through Destro's castle to rescue Scarlett, she's already gotten free and acquired transportation out by the time he gets to her.

** In the UK, the original 12" figures were renamed ''ActionMan'', and eventually gained their own, separate {{canon}}.

* CulturalTranslation: In the UK, the good guys were called Action Force, and the theme tune called them International Heroes instead of Real American Heroes. Over time this slowly changed to "GI Joe, The Action Force" (it was as awkward as it sounds) before eventually just using the GI Joe name. This actually dates back from the 60's, when Palitoy licensed the original G.I. Joe figure as ''ActionMan''. Two decades later, ''Action Force'' was launched as an independent extension of the Action Man line. This changed with Hasbro's acquisition of the Palitoy assets, after which the Joes were introduced with European birthplaces.

* CoolOldLady: Doctor Burkhardt whose rescue is the main objective of the very first mission in the comics. Much later, the Joes go to her for help when most of the team is detained by the government and they need to go underground to work on clearing their name. She turns out to be a motorcycling enthusiast and very adept at working the press in her favour.

The primary writer of the comic was LarryHama, who wrote all but a handful of issues over a twelve year run (as well as many of the character bios for the action figures). Prior to the relaunch, Hama had an idea for a Franchise/MarvelUniverse comic called ''Fury Force'', which would have seen the son of ComicBook/NickFury put together a team to fight Hydra, Marvel's resident terrorist group; his ''G.I. Joe'' series was based primarily on this unused pitch. Despite a large amount of restrictions and interference from Hasbro, Hama was able to make the comic more mature than the cartoon. It allowed bloodied fighting, multifaceted characterization, losses for the heroes, and characters that could be killed off, eventually growing into a functional canon that developed into a fleshed-out background for its universe.

* KilledOffForReal: When a character died, nine times out of ten they ''stayed'' dead. A story arc that coincided with the Gulf War in the early 90's had the Joes engaging in a massive campaign against Cobra in the Iraq and Kuwait Expies of Benzheen and Trucial Abysmia. One issue had ''four'' Joes killed by a psychotic Cobra S.A.W. Viper, and later that Viper's armored column kills off all but three of the remaining Joes on the team, not limited to RedShirts and unpopular Joes. This was seen mostly as housecleaning to get rid of a bloated roster of characters who got little to no book time, or were full-on fact unpopular. Some characters ''did'' make reappearances after death, such as [[spoiler:Cobra Commander, who'd been ousted and impersonated; Firefly, who was revealed as a ninja; Dr. Mindbender, who was cloned with cyborg implants; and Zartan, who's a shapeshifter.]] Sometimes this was due to them being KilledOffScreen, or out of extreme annoyance to the writer under pressure due to ExecutiveMeddling. [[spoiler:For example, LarryHama was pressured to kill off Cobra Commander around the time of the 1987 animated movie's release due to Cobra Commander's apparent death in the movie, despite a new Cobra Commander figure being released that year. Hama came up with a story line that had one of his Crimson Guardsmen named Fred VII kill the Commander and take his place leading to an eventual civil war (Fred's incompetence rivaled the real Cobra Commander in the cartoons--shocking since he was a Crimson Guard, the best and brightest[[note]]Though, Fred's specialty was in engineering and technology, and he had crazy bird man Raptor as his accountant[[/note]]). Cobra Commander stayed "dead" for many years having been revived off screen and rebuilding his fortune the same way he did last time--through pyramid and get rich quick schemes, among other means. Upon his reveal as being very much alive in issue 98, he returned to Cobra Island and disposed of his traitorous underlings and became an even bigger madman. Even then, three of those killed off after his return survived being entombed.]]

* {{Badass}}: Lots.

* ArtShift: The comic had several different artists during its run, but the most jarring was the period where Frank Springer and Rod Whigham were alternating the art chores on a string of issues. This was a side-effect of the book going biweekly for a period, which also happened to coincide with the [[EnemyCivilWar Cobra Civil War]] plotline. Noticeable on Issue 60 which was drawn by Todd [=McFarlane=] (yep, Todd [=McFarlane=]). [=McFarlane=] actually drew Issue 61 but his art was rejected and replaced with art by Marshall Rogers. [=When McFarlane=] became famous in the '90s, his version of that issue got released as a G.I. Joe special issue.

* RedHeadedHero: Scarlett, and ''many'' others.
** Lady Jaye was almost consistently ''mis''colored as a redhead in her first few appearances.

The primary writer of the comic was LarryHama, who wrote all but a handful of issues over a twelve year run (as well as many of the character bios for the action figures). Prior to the relaunch, Hama had an idea for a MarvelUniverse comic called ''Fury Force'', which would have seen the son of ComicBook/NickFury put together a team to fight Hydra, Marvel's resident terrorist group; his ''G.I. Joe'' series was based primarily on this unused pitch. Despite a large amount of restrictions and interference from Hasbro, Hama was able to make the comic more mature than the cartoon. It allowed bloodied fighting, multifaceted characterization, losses for the heroes, and characters that could be killed off, eventually growing into a functional canon that developed into a fleshed-out background for its universe.

* BecauseImJonesy: In one issue of the series, Zartan infiltrates the Pit, and moves about shifting his appearance from one Joe to another as he goes. However, he shifts into looking like Gung Ho just as the real Gung Ho enters the room; alerting the Joes to the fact that one of them is an impostor.

* UsefulNotes/ColdWar: Since the series began in TheEighties, it was very much on and the Joes had several run-ins with the Soviets and other communist forces. The most frequent of these was the Oktober Guard. In the final run of the series, political reality caught up and they were more or less allies, though the Oktober Guard hadn't fared so well as the Joes in terms of survivability or funding.

* LongRunner: At 155 issues, the original ''G.I. Joe'' is easily the longest-lasting toy tie-in comic. For comparison, for the runners-up, the original ''Transformers'' comic only made it to #80 and ''RomSpaceKnight'' made it to #75. That's without counting the ''Special Missions'' series, Yearbooks, Orders of Battle... oh, and Larry Hama wrote almost every word of it.

* KilledOffForReal: When a character died, nine times out of ten they ''stayed'' dead. A story arc that coincided with the Gulf War in the early 90's had the Joes engaging in a massive campaign against Cobra in the Iraq and Kuwait Expies of Benzheen and Trucial Abysmia. One issue had ''four'' Joes killed by a psychotic Cobra S.A.W. Viper, and later that Viper's armored column kills off all but three of the remaining Joes on the team, not limited to RedShirts and unpopular Joes. This was seen mostly as housecleaning to get rid of a bloated roster of characters who got little to no book time, or were full-on fact unpopular. Some characters ''did'' make reappearances after death, such as [[spoiler:Cobra Commander, who'd been ousted and impersonated; Firefly, who was revealed as a ninja; Dr. Mindbender, who was cloned with cyborg implants; and Zartan, who's a shapeshifter.]] Sometimes this was due to them being KilledOffScreen, or out of extreme annoyance to the writer under pressure due to ExecutiveMeddling. [[spoiler:For example, LarryHama was pressured to kill off Cobra Commander around the time of the 1987 animated movie's release due to Cobra Commander's apparent death in the movie, despite a new Cobra Commander figure being released that year. Hama came up with a story line that had one of his Crimson Guardsmen named Fred VII kill the Commander and take his place leading to an eventual civil war (Fred's incompetence rivaled the real Cobra Commander in the cartoons--shocking since he was a Crimson Guard, the best and brightest). Cobra Commander stayed "dead" for many years having been revived off screen and rebuilding his fortune the same way he did last time--through pyramid and get rich quick schemes, among other means. Upon his reveal as being very much alive in issue 98, he returned to Cobra Island and disposed of his traitorous underlings and became an even bigger madman. Even then, three of those killed off after his return survived being entombed.]]

** Two of the Joe team's ninjas had the code names Slice and Dice.

* EnemyCivilWar: Destro's Iron Grenadiers vs Cobra Commander's side of Cobra vs Serpentor's side of Cobra (which the Joes reluctantly supported for the return of stolen technology). Although, the Grenadiers never fired a shot at either side; once they established their position on Cobra Island, they literally kicked back and [[SpotOfTea drank tea]] while the two Cobra factions slugged it out until it was over, and Destro simply retrieved the Baroness and left.

The primary writer of the comic was LarryHama, who wrote all but a handful of issues over a twelve year run (as well as many of the character bios for the action figures). Prior to the relaunch, Hama had an idea for a MarvelUniverse comic called ''Fury Force'', which would have seen the son of NickFury put together a team to fight Hydra, Marvel's resident terrorist group; his ''G.I. Joe'' series was based primarily on this unused pitch. Despite a large amount of restrictions and interference from Hasbro, Hama was able to make the comic more mature than the cartoon. It allowed bloodied fighting, multifaceted characterization, losses for the heroes, and characters that could be killed off, eventually growing into a functional canon that developed into a fleshed-out background for its universe.

* PunnyName: Cutter's real name is Skip A. Stone. You might think he's a navy man, but actually he's from the Coast Guard.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: Back in 1984, Ace's brag about the Skystriker having 92K of memory was impressive. Today, even the cheapest "kiddie" MP3 player made has at least 256MB; meanwhile, a modern F-22 has 300,000 times more computer capacity.
* ThirtyXanatosPileup: Who's doing what and who's betraying whom during the Destro Saga gets so complex that you need to go back over it at least twice, especially towards the end when [[spoiler:Scar-Face]] starts betraying and counter-betraying everyone.