EXTENDED Call for Chapter Proposals (21 January 2025)

G.I. Joe, Theology, and Co-bra! Knowing (and Believing) is Half the Battle

Series: Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture

Editor: Dr Peter Admirand, Dublin City University

G.I. Joe is celebrating its 60th year in 2024 with the success of the 6-inch G.I. Joe Classified Series, the comic license now owned by Robert Kirkland (The Walking Dead) and Skybound/Image Comics, and Larry Hama still writing A Real American Hero with sold-out issues. Paramount also confirmed a G.I. Joe / Transformers movie is in the works. From toy figures (and vehicles) of all shapes and sizes; comic iterations across various publishers and lines; the classic 1980s Sunbow cartoon and television and movie versions; there is no shortage of G.I. Joe material to draw from while pondering theological and ethical themes, geopolitical conflicts, and U.S.S. Flag-size nostalgia.

Drawing upon any aspect of the G.I. Joeuniverse (comics, cartoons, toys, and films), possible topics and chapters could include:

• Theological responses to G.I. Joe’s nationalism and militarism
• On just war and pacificism
• Terrorism, white supremacy, and ethno-nationalism (Cobra)
• G.I. Joe equivalent in another country — Oktober Guard (Russia); Action Force (UK), etc.
• G.I Joe in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, etc.   
• Ethics depicted in the cartoon’s Public Service Announcements (example: “instead of fighting, find a better way”)
• The portrayal (or absence) of God and religion in G.I. Joe
• Cobra as a religion
• Examination of moral catharsis and/or ultimate evil in A Real American Hero or other versions 
• Human Nature, Evil, and Theodicy
• Corporate America, despotic governments, and Extensive Enterprises
• Moments of detente/partnerships between Cobras and G.I. Joes
• Collateral damage and G.I. Joe missions
• Portrayals of characters’ religious identities (Clutch, Lance J. Stenberg, is Jewish, for example, and Mongoose, Naif Nasr, is (likely) Muslim)
• Redemption of characters, from Stalker (whose file card says he was a “warlord of a large urban street gang”); to Mercer (the only Cobra Viper to defect to G.I. Joe); or Falcon in G.I. Joe: The Movie; to those who defected the other way like Major Bludd, trained by the Australian Special Services and a member of the French Foreign Legion but now a terrorist and mercenary
•  Revenge and forgiveness (story of Storm Shadow, Zartan, Snake Eyes, and the Hard Master)
• The ethics of marketing war and violence to children
• The dark ethics within the heralded Cobra Last Laugh series (or the current Energon Universe iteration)
• Theological and ethical “filecards” / character sketches/chapters on specific characters, i.e., Spirit and his Native American beliefs; or Cobra Commander, “a man without scruples”; and so on
• Educated Cobras (providing plenty of examples to link with PhDs involved in various genocides and the Final Solution.) In Cobra, Buzzer was an “extreme leftwing sociologist don” until his research on Australian biker gangs and “years of intellectual displeasure”); while Scrap Iron is the Product Designer for Destro’s Armaments Company; and Zartan is a “master of over 20 languages and dialects”; and we all know Dr Mindbender was once “an excellent orthodontist”. Among the Joes, note also that Flint was a Rhodes Scholar and Lady Jaye was a postgrad at this editor’s PhD alma mater (Trinity College Dublin)
• Depiction of enemies in G.I. Joe and the U.S. War on Terror
• Snake Eyes as a Christ Figure (sacrificing himself…he has recently been resurrected–cloned–but lives again)
• Cloning, rebirth, and permanent deaths in the comics
• Reading the aims and actions of Cobra and G.I. Joe through various theological lenses, including:
  • African-American
  • Biblical
  • Feminist (what would a gendered analysis of the comics or cartoons reveal? What about the sexualization of female characters on covers or in the cartoons?)
  • Indigenous
  • Interreligious
  • Liberation (does G.I. Joe aid the marginal or contribute to structural sin?)
  • Mujerista
  • Postcolonial / Decolonial (Cobra is “determined to rule the world” – and the US military?
  • Queer
• Theological virtues and vices of GI. Joe and/or Cobra
• Does G.I. Joe commit murder and acts of terrorism, too?
• The ethics of our / the fans liking bad guys (Firefly, Cobra Commander, the Dreadnoks, etc.)

Contributors are invited to submit abstracts with CVs to peter.admirand@dcu.ie. Extended due date of 21 January 2025 (!) but all are encouraged to submit as soon as possible as spots may fill-up before then. If proposals are accepted, first drafts of about 6,000 words will be due by 21 April 2025. The complete manuscript will be delivered to the publisher by 21 July 2025.

Why all the 21s? Maybe a certain very famous comic issue is the reason…Yo Joe! And Co-bra!