When backgrounds or props were drawn by Hama, they were used to great effect.

The fact that the introduced character was Snake Eyes made fans high five themselves as they silently read the issue alone in their bedrooms. When a new character was added to the story, the readers were easily situated in the setting, having seen the approach to the castle before. An issue, it should be remembered, that was written and drawn in only three days. Still, the simple, efficient backgrounds easily let readers immerse themselves in the story. His simple fix was to sneak in a quick panel that had a minion hand Storm Shadow his sword.Īnother continuity error was when the dome cover was supposed to be closed when Scarlett was imprisoned. Hama was drawing as he went, entirely without a storyboard, so he didn’t have time to redraw earlier panels. An example is that with a prisoner on Storm Shadow’s back, Hama had nowhere to place the ninja’s sword. Hama admitted that the insane schedule meant a few coloring mistakes snuck through and he had to make some simple retcons for the sake of the story. Hama the first splash page established everything, both the location for the story as well as the main characters with Storm Shadow swooping down toward a castle. Larry Hama on Storytelling: GI Joe #21, the Classic “Silent Issue” So let’s look at the story of GI Joe 21 and how it was told.

So according to Hama, the word-free “Silent Issue” was completed in 3 days, which is looney-bin-banana-pants fast. Besides, not lettering it would save a week as well. Marvel needed the comic in a week, whereas a typical comic pipeline is 3-4 months.īut Hama knew if he was both the writer and artist, he could speed it up. And although toy-based comics were considered career suicide in the early 80s, Larry Hama jumped at the chance to write GI Joe when editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was going office-to-office begging for volunteers to write the Hasbro property.įast-forward to GI Joe 21, where the comic was falling behind schedule and they did’t have any pages in the reserve tank. Larry said he had been an artist for 15 years and had been dying to actually write a book. So here is Larry Hama’s telling of not only the process of GI Joe 21, but also the storytelling techniques behind it. I was fortunate to be able to hear straight from the man himself how the famous GI Joe #21 “Silent Issue” came to be.

G.I. Joe by Larry Hama