Hawk

G.I. General?

The first Hawk figure came with a missile launcher notable for warheads sized to pulverize a small two-man jeep and the 30 miles of densely populated municipalities around it. Hawk and his nuclear arsenal were part of the 1982 series 1 figures in the G.I. Joe line. This is notable because the sum total of the enemy Cobra forces consisted of Cobra Officer and Cobra Soldier. Cobra didn't even HAVE a two-man jeep. Sounds like typical military porkbelly spending to me.

Hasbro cheaped out on a lot of the series 1 sculpts, so Hawk's head was identical to Short Fuze and Flash. Hawk was blond, Short-Fuze had black hair and Flash was a brunette making them the Charlie's Angels of the G.I. Joe squad. (Whoa, bad memory time...I could have sworn on my next dozen breakfasts that Short-Fuze had black hair. While searching for photos--I no longer have a Short-Fuze figure, poor me--I learned he had blond hair like Hawk. They were twins apparently.) Hawk's file card mentions that he comes from a wealthy family, so I disliked him immediately. Blond hair was strike two. It is statistically proven that men with blond hair suffer from 23 percent more assholery than non-blonds. Hawk's position on the team was listed as Missile Commander. This is interesting because by 1986 his new file card names him G.I. Joe Commander and promotes him to general. It even says he was G.I. Joe's original field commander. Had you read the comics, you'd have already known this. I, however, was not permitted to read them (thanks mom and dad) so I got all my info from the action figures and their file cards. That's okay. The comics were only intended to support the action figures, not the other way around.

When I'm cruisin the bars for chicks, the name's Randy. Randy Debonair. (These pictures were taken with two separate cameras. Because of my complete disregard for lighting, the one taken with the good camera looks worse. Smooth work by me, eh?)

Lo! What's this! A clue I missed on the original 1982 file card? Yes, indeedy. When my brother got the 1986 Hawk (against my recommendations), we began an extensive investigation (without the aid of comic books) into how this Clayton M. Abernathy got the nod to general over Duke (who, the cartoon series told us, was the true leader of G.I. Joe). Hawk was a glorified button-pusher. His Mobile Missile System skills were woefully overrated. After all, how accurate does one have to be when one's munitions payload can wipe out half of Nebraska? We turned to a little noticed entry field on every file card: grade. This is the rank each figure held in the United States Armed Forces. Most Joes were E-4, which means the mess cook can order them around. The 1982 Hawk was O-6. My brother and I did some nifty encyclopedia research (encyclopedias...remember those? A set of encyclopedias covered a broad range of topics, the sum of which provided a comprehensive foundation of general knowledge. Unlike Wikipedia, encyclopedias were (a) written by experts rather than purplebutterflydancerxoxoxo (b) edited in a concise manner so as to provide a basic overview rather than listing minutiae and (c) not cluttered with detailed descriptions of every Pokemon character ever created. Encyclopedias. Good stuff, and not in any way overshadowed by bloated, self-important Internet losers). According to the encyclopedia's listing of military ranking grades, O-6 was a full bird colonel. What a kick in the teeth. All this time we were treating Hawk like a ditch digging latrine washer. At this point, my story continuity began to differ greatly from my brother's. He accepted General Hawk as the rightful leader of G.I. Joe. I, on the other hand, refused to use the figure and stuck with Duke and my own personal organizational chart of the Joe team. The earlier figures were ranked higher than the newer ones. Plain and simple. You don't just join the team and take over. Sgt. Slaughter doesn't get to lead a platoon because he made up a fake military nickname in the World Wrestling Federation. With such tomfoolery and lack of traditional structure, how are we to defeat the forces of Cobra? With Battleforce 2000? Nay, sir. Nay.

Hawk was a dork. The 1986 figure had a stupid, fat helmet. His hairstyle was bizarre. The expression on his face looked as if he'd just been pawing through the last 10 years of Hustler Magazine. And his hair was now brown. The 1982 figure? Blond. The comics? Blond. What's with the dye job? What if it's Zartan? G.I. Joe is a top secret military organization tasked with stopping the single largest terrorist organization in the world that has fomented revolutions across the globe, infiltrated every layer of American society and has its own frickin island. We don't have time for dye jobs! Don't tell me the V.A.M.P. jeep doesn't need its fluids topped off. How 'bout the Skystriker? When's the last time it got a good once-over? Huh, Hawk? Don't you run out for a pedicure until every last barnacle has been scraped off the U.S.S. Flagg. I swear, it's like dealing with a 12-year-old.