PhoenixRising

Yeah, I agree somewhat, but Arrow really improved on what they did with Smallville. And Oliver Queen played an important role in The Dark Knight Returns.

What do you think of characters that use swords, like Deadpool, Psylocke, and Deathstroke?

sum1

Depends on the character, but generally they're better.

PhoenixRising

I'm also a big fan of Snake Eyes. He uses guns and a sword.

crash landing

I know that reference/character GI Joe

PhoenixRising

Yep. Snake Eyes and Scarlett are my comic book ship to end all ships.

sum1

I liked Snake Eyes when I was a kid. He was cool. And yes, putting him with Scarlett was a great idea. Of course the crap GI Joe movies screwed that up entirely.

crash landing

I liked the movies Cool that GI Joe was a comic

sum1

Larry Hama, the guy that wrote Wolverine in the '90s, wrote Gi Joe and designed it all. Japanese-American, Vietnam vet. He was better at Gi Joe than at Wolverine, though to be fair he started out quite good at Wolverine. The writing just declined later, after Wolverine lost his adamantium.

crash landing

Glad to hear he was alright of a writer

sum1

Before Wolvie lost his adamantium anyway (mid-1993).

PhoenixRising

Of course. Well, I guess it wouldn't surprise you to know that the movie got everything wrong, would it, Sarah? I know you don't read comics and it's sometimes difficult for you to keep up with us when we talk about them, but let me just let you in on how much the film got wrong. The movie really messed up the story by making Snake Eyes some orphaned white kid growing up on the streets of Tokyo(like that makes sense), and whoring out Scarlett to a Wayans brother. That's what you get from the guy who gave us Van Helsing and the Mummy movies.

Larry Hama is a Japanese-American comic book writer. He was born in the USA, but his family is originally from Japan, and as a boy he was fascinated by Japanese culture, learning martial arts like Karate, Judo, and Iaido(sword fighting), and studying Zen Buddhism. When he was 18, Hama enlisted in the USA Army and served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Hama met a man named Sgt. Robert "Bob" Light, a 21 year old helicopter door gunner in the 1st Air Cavalry. Hama described him as a "tall, taciturn guy with slicked-back blonde hair who always wore a pair of Ray Ban aviator sunglasses." This was the man who would later become the inspiration for Snake Eyes.

After Vietnam, Hama left the Army to pursue a career as an artist. He became an actor briefly, appearing in TV shows like M*A*S*H, and later tried to become a painter and sketch artist. This would help him when he eventually began to draw his own comic books. Hama eventually got work at Marvel Comics working on characters like Iron Fist and Ka-Zar: Lord of the Jungle. He also worked at DC on Wonder Woman. When Hasbro came out with their new line of G.I. Joe action figures to compete against Kenner's Star Wars action figure line, Hama got the job of writing it after every other writer at Marvel turned it down. Hama had previously pitched an idea to Marvel about a spin-off of the Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D comic called "Fury Force," about a special-ops team led by Nick Fury's son, Nick Fury Jr., against the forces of Hydra. Marvel turned it down, but after getting the job writing G.I. Joe, Hama took his Fury Force storyline, changed the names of his characters, and made it the G.I. Joe comic. Nick Fury Jr. became Clayton "Hawk" Abernathy, characters like "Spook" and "Shadow" became Snake Eyes and Scarlett, and so on.

Snake Eyes was just an ordinary blonde, blue eyed, all-American kid from a small middle-American town who grew up with his parents and twin sister, Terri, who was like his other half. They each knew what the other was thinking without having to say a word. When Snake Eyes joined the U.S. Army Rangers, his father gave him a word of advice, telling him, "if luck is what it takes for you to stay alive, then I wish you all the luck in the world. But luck runs out. If you gamble with your life too many times, sooner or later you'll roll snake-eyes," which is where he got his nickname. Snake Eyes' sister, Terri, gave him a photograph of her as a good luck charm to keep him safe as long as he always carried it with him. Snake Eyes served in the Rangers in a LLRP(Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) unit, along with future G.I. Joe teammate Lonzo "Stalker" Wilkinson, future Cobra agent Wade Collins, and Tommy Arashikage(Storm Shadow). After Snake Eyes was injured in combat and Tommy saved his life, he was discharged from the Army and sent home. But while waiting at the airport for his family to pick him up, Colonel Clayton "Hawk" Abernathy arrived to inform him that his father, mother, and sister had all been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver.

Devastated by the loss of his family, Snake Eyes accompanied his Army buddy, Tommy, to Japan, where Tommy invited him to join the "family business," which was the Arashikage ninja clan. Snake Eyes quickly became one of the best students there, but there was tension between him and Tommy, and Tommy's uncle, one of the headmasters, could see that Tommy's time in the military had made him apathetic towards killing. Tommy's uncle had decided to offer Snake Eyes the job of being head of the Arashikage school, but Snake Eyes turned it down. When Snake Eyes' master was killed by an assassin(who was later revealed to be Zartan), and Tommy was unfairly blamed, Snake Eyes left Japan after having lost yet another home and family, and moved into a cabin in the Sierra-Nevada mountains with his pet wolf, Timber, and became the source of local werewolf legends by the Native American Indians who lived nearby.

Snake Eyes' old friend, Stalker, arrived with Hawk to offer Snake Eyes a position on a new special-ops team that Hawk was putting together. Having nothing left to go home to, Snake Eyes agreed. It was during his orientation into the G.I. Joe unit that Snake Eyes met counter-intelligence agent Shana "Scareltt" O'Hara, and the two quickly fell in love and began a relationship. Scarlett was impressed by his martial arts skill, but she was also intrigued by the fact that "for a guy who had been through as much as he had, he didn't have a lot of meanness about him." During a mission in the middle east to rescue a US diplomat, Snake Eyes and Scarlett's helicopter malfunctioned and collided with another helicopter. Everyone else bailed out, but Snake Eyes remained behind to help Scarlett, who had become trapped in her harness. Scarlett pleaded with him to leave her while he cut her free with his knife, but at that moment the other helicopter slammed into theirs, and an explosion shot through the window, hitting Snake Eyes in the face. The helicopter crashed to the ground, but Snake Eyes sill managed to carry Scarlett out of the wreckage to safety, even though his head and helmet were on fire.

Snake Eyes also continued the mission to rescue the diplomat because he had learned that the diplomat was his sister's fiancé, who was supposed to marry her before she was killed in the car accident. The injuries to Snake Eyes' face left him scarred and damaged the nerves in his vocal chords, leaving him barely able to speak above a whisper, which is why he never speaks. He eventually had reconstructive surgery to fix the scars on his face, leaving him with a single scar running diagonally from his forehead to his jaw, but Scarlett stayed with him regardless because she didn't care what he looked like. She was all he had left, and he was all she cared about, so they've been together ever since.

sum1

You left out the part about him being the baddest dude on the planet.

PhoenixRising

Sorry, sum1. That he is.

sum1

If I remember rightly, one of the old fact files that came with the toys said that Cobra wanted him banned under the Geneva Convention.

crash landing

I'll read this later