A Septic Spiel of Spooky Scares, Super Heroes, and Strange Stories from Miles Beneath the Crud of New Jersey!
Marvel’s G.I Joe comic book line (1982-1994) used New Jersey as a location quite often. In reality, to set a Joe story in Jersey isn’t all that far fetched. New Jersey is home to many Air Force, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard bases and training centers including McGuire, Dix, and Picatinny to name a few. Also in Jersey, the shore town of Sandy Hook is not only home to a famous nude beach, but at one time was used as the nation’s first proving ground. Coincidentally, the Sandy Hook Proving Ground was eventually moved to Aberdeen, Maryland which is where G.I Joe issue #81’s story begins.
GI Joe was right behind Masters of The Universe, Super Powers, Star Wars and WWF in my world when I was growing up. Although I wasn’t as obsessed with G.I Joe as some of my friends were, I watched the cartoon religiously and had a decent load of Joe figures. I remember being so envious of my neighbor who got the U.S.S Flagg aircraft carrier for Christmas the year it came out. I never had any of the playsets but I did have several vehicles. My favorite characters were Zartan and his Dreadnoks. I have yet to watch 2009’s G.I Joe The Rise of Cobra feature film but I think I’ll have to give it a shot since I’ve been on a Joe kick lately. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I did indeed make the G.I Jersey graphic, you dig it?
Recently I’ve been watching my DVDs of the original G.I Joe cartoon. Although the 2 early mini-series were a little slow and a bit disjointed story wise, the series as a whole is legendary. After I recently viewed a few episodes of the original Transformers cartoon, I determined that the original G.I Joe cartoon holds up way better.
In every episode of G.I Joe there were so many cool characters both good and evil who could be brought into your action figure adventures by a mere trip to Toys R Us and some pathetic begging. All the figures had a file card on the back of their package so you were able to find out facts otherwise unknown about the character. I thought it would be interesting to scour YoJoe.com and randomly click on their comprehensive database of G.I Joe file cards to see if any of the characters were from New Jersey.
Could you believe that only 3 or 4 clicks into my research I just happened to pick the Joe K-9 Dog Handler, MUTT, who was born in Iselin, New Jersey! Mutt and his appropriately named dog Junkyard made a cool team. You can read more about him on his file cards:
Perhaps a modernized version of MUTT would be Indian American? Since the 2000 Census, Iselin, NJ has had the 2nd highest percentage of Indian Americans in the United States. In fact, just like New York City has Little Italy and Chinatown, Iselin, NJ has “Little India,” which is a stretch of town filled with authentic Indian shops and restaurants. यो जो – That’s Yo Joe in Hindi.
