CLASS OF 1983 Code Name: DUKE

DUKE's introduction to the G.I. Joe team, as a kid, sort of reminded me of how Boba Fett was introduced to Star Wars. Around September 1983, Sunbow releases the first G.I. Joe mini-series, "The MASS Device" where this character named Duke is portrayed as being the leader of the G.I. Joe team. At this point in time, there was no Duke action figure or any mention of him in the comics. I'm not sure that the Mail-away offer for Duke was even packaged with vehicles by the time the cartoon was released. If it was, no one in my school knew anything about it! Then it wasn't until around April/May 1984 (Marvel G.I. Joe Issue #22) that Duke was introduced in the comics.

So, given this mysterious-type introduction, Duke was a very popular character when the action figure was first released. I've always been a big fan of Duke. He's definitely in my top five or six favorite characters. Although I'm not a Channing Tatum fan at all, I do like the fact that the G.I. Joe movies portrayed Duke at a higher rank. The ranking of characters is a continuity error that kind of plagued both the cartoon and comic. I've tried to remedy this in my Joeverse by following the movies and making Duke a Captain as the active Field Commander of the G.I. Joe Team.

Due to a SNAFU with the blog, some of the original pictures were lost and had to be copied from another site, which explains the smaller sizes. I've tried to enlarge and brighten the pictures from some of my original blog posts.