I believe Mitchell was born in the Pittsburgh.Pa. area.

I had the honor of meeeting the hero back in the early 1990′s at a patriotic event in California.

That said, while I’ll go see this to let my inner child out for a little bit, Sommers really did the fans like myself a huge disservice. Larry Hama’s emphasis that Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, and Stalker were all decorated Vietnam vets was something for a time when the typical stereotypical Vietnam vet was Rambo or some drugged-out nutcase loser (if I’m not repeating myself). Hama treated the Vietnam veteran with a great deal of respect–at one point, one of Stalker’s fellow LRRP veterans, who spent years in a POW camp, is shown being spit on by a hippie when he gets home. Disillusioned with America, he joins Cobra–though he later finds some closure and peace in a rather moving story, for what was essentially a comic aimed at teenaged boys with money on their hands.

Given Sommers’ desire to make GI Joe more “palatable” for foreign audiences, I imagine he won’t mention Hama’s reason for Snake-Eyes’ hideous facial burns and his inability to speak: he was badly injured in a helicopter accident based directly on the Eagle Claw disaster at Desert One in 1978. Must’nt offend the Iranians, doncha know. (I am looking forward to seeing Ray Park in action, though.)

Sommers’ comments about this being an “Obama world” I find rather ironic. In the comics, Cobra Commander started his organization because he hated big business, and was essentially a community organizer who wanted to change America from within by any means possible. That sounds rather familiar.

The infamous quote: “This can’t be about beefy guys on steroids who all met each other in the Vietnam War, but an elite organization that’s made up of the best of the best from around the world.”

Fact: The quote has nothing to do with real world vets. Duh. It’s spoken in context to the IN-FICTION mythos of G.I. Joe; in which many of them were pretty buff (“steroids” used as sarcasm in reference to the huge muscles men have in comic books), and most of the core team were combat vets who served in the Vietnam War and were recruited into the G.I. Joe team in 1982. That’s what Sommers was referring to. He wasn’t insulting our vets, he was talking about the fictional history of the G.I. Joe team members.

Now, if you weren’t a fan of G.I. Joe, then you may not know the intricate mythology or origins. That’s understandable. But before one bashes a director for being un-American, one can at least spend 15 minutes researching the material before posting it. There are plenty of interviews online with Larry Hama; the man who wrote almost all of the G.I. Joe mythology, so there is no excuse for this blatantly misleading and knee-jerk blog except for laziness or a slanted op-ed.

W: Nice try, but you didn’t answer the part where Sommers says that he was looking for an “elite” unit, “the best,” which was clearly juxtaposed against the Vietnam Vets. There’s no getting around that. That’s what he said, and that’s what he meant. You sound like Bill Clinton trying to redefine the words “is” and “sex.” And, oh yeah, I did fact check. Everything I posted was a direct quote, and I linked to the original article. The “misleading” “knee jerk[ing]” here is yours. And BTW, interesting how you don’t have an explanation for the removal of “rah-rah America” stuff from the movie’s foreign ads, b/c you know there isn’t one . . . other than whoring to America haters for money, as I noted in this entry. Again, nice try, no cigar. DS

It’s doubly a pity because ‘Cobra’ and ‘Cobra Commander’ could make such a wonderful villain. He is faceless so there are no color or race issues, and all of his power is in ideology and the foolishness of his followers.