Students of comic book art would do well to study these breakdowns so they could learn the basics of action comics storytelling. In addition to the original Silent Interlude story, GI Joe: Silent Interlude 30th Anniversary Edition also includes Hama’s original rough pencil breakdowns so you can see how much or how little Steve Leialoha added to the art.
This is a marked contrast to many of today’s comics where characters will take a year and a half to cross town describing every step along the way with five hundred words crammed into a balloon. That he accomplishes all this in twenty-two pages is astonishing. Without using dialogue or captions, Hama draws you into the story, moves the action along, introduces a major new character to the GI Joe pantheon, and establishes that new character’s connection to Snake Eyes. Silent Interlude is a tour de force of pantomime storytelling. Hama, who was primarily the writer for GI Joe, was allowed to show off his artistic chops by providing the layouts for this story that introduced the popular character Storm Shadow and focused on the GI Joe resident Ninja, Snake Eyes, and his rescue of Scarlett from a bizzare mountain fortress belonging to the terrorist organization Cobra. The Silent Interlude story is notable because it is told entirely without the use of dialogue or captions.
Happily, he is now recognized by GI Joe fans at collector’s conventions, and hailed as one of the top triple-threat writer-artist-editors to have ever worked in comics. Yet he never seemed to get the recognition he deserved for being the creative force behind what was then one of Marvel’s top two selling titles, trailing only the X-Men. Hama even wrote the file cards on the back of the packages. Larry Hama had been given the thankless task of developing the GI Joe comic book and creating the personalities and characters who would populate GI Joe’s 1980’s toy universe. While some critics look down their nose at this book because it’s based on a toy, it’s telling that thirty years after its publication, this book has finally been given the respect it deserves with this cool hardcover edition. Some people don’t believe you when you say that one of the most important comic book stories published in the 1980’s was one issue of GI Joe: A Real American Hero, a toy-based comic book published by Marvel.
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