Comicon Advent Calendar Day X: Larry Hama Gives Wolverine The Silent (Night) Treatment
by Austin Gorton
Larry Hama and inker Steve Leialoha‘s dialogue and caption-less “silent” story in G.I. Joe #21 is one of the most famous and celebrated issues of Hama’s long run as the chief narrative architect of G.I. Joe. It’s been written about, dissected, celebrated (such as with a special tribute month of silent issues) and imitated — including by Hama himself, in the lead story to the 1992 Marvel Holiday Special (published in 1992 and cover dated 1993), “Zounds O’ Silence.”
“Zounds O’ Silence” teams Hama up with fan favorite artist Michael Golden — who, amongst other things, contributed a handful of covers to Hama’s G.I. Joe run for Marvel — for a story that gives Wolverine the silent treatment. Like Snake-Eyes before him, Wolverine faces an onslaught of foes as he fights his way through a towering structure. While each is uniquely designed, Golden renders all Wolverine’s opponents in dark green against an orange background, both creating the sensation of an unstoppable onslaught while also making Wolverine and his classic blue-and-yellow togs pop on the page, the eye of a storm of mayhem and violence.
Pops of purple punctuate the pages in the form of energy blasts and the massive, looming and distorted face of the chief antagonist, watching his minions do their best to stop Wolverine. Helicopters and even a dragon enter the fray, until Wolverine is captured and blasted with some kind of acid that appears to burn his flesh off — at which point the perspective is flipped, and we realize that what we’ve been reading isn’t just a comic book story featuring Wolverine, but also a depiction of the imagination of a small boy playing with his Wolverine action figure inside a toy store.
Wolverine’s foes were fellow action figures, bearing a loose resemblance to the G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures on the pegs alongside Toy Biz’s then-nascent X-Men figures. The dragon is a large stuffed dinosaur. And the acid spray a blast from a (now-vintage) Super Soaker 50.
It’s not the most Christmas-y of stories — outside of it being in a holiday special issue, there’s nothing which specifically calls it out as a Christmas story. But toys are, obviously, a big part of Christmas, and “Zounds O’ Silence” has a lot of fun showing the power of imagination which toys — especially the IP-fueled action figures many of us grew up with — can inspire.
We’ve all likely been the central kid in this story — I certainly have — using something like a Wolverine action figure as jumping off point to craft adventures of our own which stretch the bounds of the existing stories featuring those characters. Imagination and the toys and stories which fuel it are so central to the spirit of Christmas, and this story celebrates that, even if it’s not dripping in holiday iconography or or concluding with a pat moral. That the whole thing is crafted by G.I. Joe alums Larry Hama and Michael Golden as an homage to another adventure which stretched the bounds of existing stories, one which featured characters who are the inverse of the Wolverine protagonist here (action figures-turned-comic book characters) is just icing on the cake.
