GI Joe

Okay everybody, time to panic: According to GeneralsJoes.com, the Mayor of Springfield, Illinois has given Cobra Commander the Key to the City, effectively handing over control of Abraham Lincoln's hometown to the same organization responsible for attempting to destroy the Aurora Borealis with an Ion Attractor, attack our nation's military with cloned dinosaurs, and steal the state of Alaska from the federal government.

Yesterday we exclusively unveiled the new Marvel series Star Lord And Kitty Pryde by Sam Humphries and Alti Firmansyah. Today it only seems fair that we add this recent super-couple to our list of comics' greatest couples, in what may be the final round of our poll. This is your chance to vote on Superman and Wonder Woman, Snake Eyes and Scarlett, and more --- and next week we'll tell you how all these couples stack up.

In today's polls: Tough love. Whether it's Jessica Jones and Luke Cage breaking through each other's tough shells, or the Baroness finding her way under Destro's skin, sometimes the best love stories happen when someone learns to let their guard down and invite someone else in. Of course, these can be high pressure relationships, especially when that special someone is the only man on the island or the last man on Earth.

I try to keep it pretty quiet, but I love GI Joe. At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I especially love their enemies, the forces of Cobra. I mean, sure, the Joes are America's daring, highly trained special missions force, but Cobra? That bunch of ruthless capitalists has a cadre of evil ninjas, a transforming castle and a dude who can telepathically control crocodiles. What's not to love? Aside from the part where they want to blow up the world, I mean. In any case, my love of Cobra has made me pretty excited about Adam Riches' variant cover for IDW's GI Joe: A Real American Hero #212, drawn for Clearwater, Florida's Emerald City Comics, which features every single member of the evil organization from its thirty-year history. Yes: all of them.

On the one hand, the live-action G.I. Joe movies that we've already gotten are, to put it charitably, not very good. On the other hand, the first one gave us President Zartan and a straight up brutal ten minute fight scene between two nine year-olds, and the second had the RZA from the Wu Tang Clan shouting "STORM SHADOW! JINX! PREPARE FOR BATTLE!" and ended with Cobra Commander hanging out in South Carolina. At the end of the day, as bad as they are, I can't bring myself to not kind of love them, if only because they insist on being as weird as they possibly can. Now, it seems like the third one is slated to get even weirder. HissTank.com, owners of the best possible URL for a G.I. Joe site, are reporting courtesy of FilmDivider that the villains for the third movie will be none other than the psychically linked twin commanders of the Crimson Guard, Tomax and Xamot. And if that's not enough, it's also rumored that the movie will feature Matt Trakker, leader of the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, M.A.S.K., from the beloved (by me) but also pretty terrible '80s cartoon of the same name. In other words, G.I. Jo3 is gonna be bonkers.

Q: What '80s or '90s cartoon do you think has the single best Christmas episode? -- @UncannyJay A: Given the things I tend to write about in this column, it pretty much goes without saying that I absolutely love cartoon Christmas specials. I even wrote about a few of my favorites last year for ComicsAlliance, including the truly bizarre Christmas Comes to Pac-Land, in which a visit from Santa Claus makes it abundantly clear that Pac-Man's living nightmare of eating dots and being menaced by the vengeful spirits of the damned occurs on some kind of demi-plane that exists outside of the sight of God. That one has to be in my top three. But beyond those three, there's definitely one Christmas episode in particular that I absolutely love: G.I. Joe's "Cobra Claws Are Coming To Town!"

If you asked me to pick my favorite comics of the year, there's not even a question about it: Transformers vs. G.I. Joe would be at the top of the list. Even aside from my well-known love of America's daring, highly-trained special missions force, writer/artist Tom Scioli and co-writer John Barber have been doing something amazing with this book, creating an ongoing series combining two toy franchises that has the kind of raw, unstoppable energy that you almost never see from corporate comics. Now, with the first volume of the series hitting shelves this week, I spoke to Scioli and Barber about how they created one of the most transgressive comics of the year, why they think of the Jose as "nasty, destructive creatures," and just how much more they want to push the book until it's as strange as they want it to be.

So last weekend, I almost started crying while I was reading a G.I. Joe comic at the Waffle House. Everyone I've told that to since it happened has reacted with the same complete and utter lack of surprise. I can see why, too, since it's quite possibly the single most cartoonishly on-brand thing that I've ever done, but I certainly wasn't expecting to get choked up over hash browns over the death of an extremely minor character. But when I was reading through G.I. Joe #204 over breakfast and Dr. Adele Burkhart was killed, ending a 32-year career of being rescued by the soldiers of America's most toyetic Special MIssions Force, it broke my heart in a way that hasn't happened through comics in a long, long time.

October is finally upon is, and here at ComicsAlliance, and one of the best parts of the month is gearing up for Halloween with costumes! It’s the one time of year when even people like me who could never cut it in our Best Cosplay Ever feature can drop by the local department store and walk out with the ability to dress up as our favorite characters. But is that really a good thing? I have my dou

Most creators would probably consider a con to be successful if they had one big project announced. This weekend at NYCC, Fred Van Lente, who's already had a big year with G.I. Joe, Brain Boy and Archer & Armstrong, managed to land himself two. Not only will he be part of Dynamite's Gold Key relaunch as the writer of Magnus: Robot Fighter, he'll also be taking over Dark Horse's Conan the Barb