CLASS OF 1983 Code Name: AIRBORNE

1983 not only saw new additions to the G.I. Joe Team and Cobra Legion, but also a minor (but highly significant) upgrade to action figure articulation - the swivel arm battle grip. Marvel Comics Issue 11, "The Pipeline Ploy" did a great job of introducing most of the new characters (and a few vehicles) into the comics.

AIRBORNE's MOS and bio presented him as more of an Airborne Ranger (hence his Codename), who likes to jump out of planes. However, his character never really was portrayed in such a way in the comics. Instead, Airborne was sort of regulated to being the co-pilot of the Dragonfly. So, for my custom, I gave Airborne a flight vest and painted it to look more like the color scheme of the 1983 ARAH action figure. Also, given the fact that Airborne is more like a helicopter co-pilot/gunner, I bumped his rank up to that of Warrant Officer.

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.