2024 Doc (The Black Major)

G.I. Joe having an online eco-system for the last 25 or so years has led to a lot of aspects of Joe being fairly well traversed. There used to be various message boards, and with that certain topics would be discussed probably more often than they needed to be, but that’s the beauty of various tables at the cafeteria. While message boards have died off, and a lot of social media is pretty vacuous, there’s still three or four long form essay websites dealing with G.I. Joe, which all have their own takes on things. I don’t really know what goes on with the various YouTube videos, because frankly I’m not going to watch someone yammer on about a G.I. Joe for 20 goddamn minutes, and the whole “Youtuber” idea comes off as some form of making oneself the centre of attention, as evidenced by the endless array of suggested video title screens featuring a lot of dead eyed, beardos with an open mouth smile that appears more to be that of someone held hostage than any actual form of excitement.

There’s a group of figures that are really hard to go back and look at, because that road has been traveled before, and there is very little that can be said without it being a repeat of what’s already been talked about ad nauseam by 2004. Doc is one of those figures, because while the 1983 figure is very good, it’s not like there’s any new ground to cover with him. He was a prominent and popular character, that had a memorable death in the comic book, that wound up overshadowing pretty much everything else the character was ever involved in, and also kept him a consistent topic on the message board days of old. None of this is the figure’s fault, but it is hard to discuss in any meaningful way, because it feels very old hat.

So while, I’ve attempted to write about the original Doc figure from 1983 on a few occasions, I never could get anything down other than “He’s got a nicely sculpted torso, and the back piece is shared with Duke and Spirit, which is a generally underreported factoid”.

Doc was a figure that was pretty much perfect the first time around, and being a non-combatant led to a lot of the figures surviving the wars of the 1980s. The mold wound up in South America, and never returned, so it didn’t get a repaint during the late 80s or the repaint era, and while the figure is excellent, outside of maybe a green fatigues version, there wasn’t a lot that people really would’ve been clamouring for. Since the character was popular, Doc would pop up in the post-repaint era, usually featuring fairly derivative of the original re-designs. The design is a perfect example of something that worked well enough the first time, there shouldn’t be too focused an attempt at reinventing the wheel.

The Doc head has been popping up in Black Major figures for quite a while, with the initial appearance being during the W.O.R.M.S. run. The head then popped up a lot in the Sparks build era, which for the most part hasn’t had universal appeal, and the numerous head variations leads to a feeling of everything looking alike. While there’s been a few colourways that probably weren’t needed, some interesting stuff has appeared, with the two I’ve enjoyed the most being the Shipwreck and Doc inspired figures. In fact, I actually flipped a coin to see which one I’d look at, and Doc won out.

Being a Short Fuse body with Breaker arms, and a Doc head, this figure is a lot like a lot of other figures, released since Sparks. However, this version, has a lot going for it, that you wouldn’t really think about until you have it in hand. Unsurprisingly, the 82-83 parts work well in the tan base colour, with a little bit of excitement coming about because this is the first time since a couple of obscure South American figures that this torso was cast in tan. The red-orange highlights on the lower body work surprisingly well, giving the figure a true feel of being Doc, and being colours that are new in the Factory Custom sphere.

The shade of tan used on this figure is very eye pleasing, a little darker than the traditional ’83 Tan, but it still gives the figure a vintage line feel, which is more important than often given credit for, as you can see by the lack of use the repaint era wound up receiving in the ensuing decades.

Design wise, the short sleeve arms are a neat and incidental connection to Doc’s Classified figure, and considering the fact that a lot of the colouring on this figure is connected to other Doc figures, it really makes this version seem like an alignment of the various Doc designs. The silver glasses are like those of Argentina’s S.O.S. figure, and the white hair is just like the singular change that Doc received in the long forgotten, but at the time severely overrated “G.I. Joe Resolute”, or whatever that “Gritty and Realistic because there’s death” cartoon from the late 2000s was. Everything had a “Re…” sub title in those days, so much so that I mentally refer to that era as “G.I. Joe: Redundant”.

I will say the 82 parts work quite well for the Doc, since the lack of sculpted on weaponry is good for the “pacifist” aspect of the character, and there’s also a little bit of continuity with the real late Marvel run comic, where in the flashback both Wild Bill and Doc are seen operating with the G.I. Joe team, in a way that pre-dates Issue #11. It’s hokey, and probably only something I give a damn about, but I figured I’d mention it.

As an aside, when I was a kid, and not very sophisticated, I had a custom figure that was some random mis-matched body, with a Doc head that I used as a pseudo Idi Ami and Colonel Gaddafi hybrid stand in. I always kind of think of that when seeing Doc’s head.

Doc is one of those characters that’s important to the Joe team, because he’s the team doctor. I’m sure there’d be enough field medic training amongst the Joes, but having an actual medical doctor on the team, helps them come off as a truly elite unit. Though, the unfortunate aspect is the fact the character got turned into a one-note by getting dome’d by the S.A.W. Viper. Everything he did prior to that got washed away, for better or worse.

The filecard has a throwaway line on it, about him hoping to be appointed to the G.I. Joe team, which always has put a little bit of a twist on Doc for me. There’s a self-interest aspect to the character that could be played upon. Sure, he joined up and worked his way onto the Joe team, the honest way, but that could be looked at a few ways, did he do he learn any form of duty upon doing this, or is he still motivated by selfish means. Was he just hoping to get onto the Joe team, to parlay that into something else in the future?

Doc managed to get featured a lot during the first Sierra Gordo arc in the comic, which is my favourite storyline in all of G.I. Joe, so I’m inclined to include him more than I would be otherwise. The pacifist aspect of the character is important, so in photos he’s not being armed or anything, but when thinking of characters for group photos, Doc is generally high on the list, and this version, being more in line with the 1982 series, will help get him more use

With Factory Customs, there’s lots of renditions of the same basic design, but due to that, a certain figure separates itself from the pack. It’s not always universal amongst collectors, but there’s a figure that becomes a specific run’s “go to”. Of the various uses of this build, I think that Doc is probably going to wind up being the one I use the most. The entirety of the figure works really well for both who it’s supposed to be, and how it interacts with the rest of my collection. TBM also doing a couple of variants on this figure (also as a white guy, and another matching head), gives the ability to form some version of a medical sub-group. The Action Trooper head could work as a stand-in 82 era Stretcher, and the white guy version, harkens back to the days of Duke arms on a Doc body with a Zap or whatever head with a codename like “Triage” or “Pillbox”.

I’m always glad to see Factory Customs, and if they’re a little more of a risk than the safe COBRA Trooper, I’ll give them a fair shake. The economics of the whole thing are going to lead to a lot of figures that might not have a lot of universal appeal, but that’s true with everything. I do know that there’s often claims for figures from later eras of the line to be made into Factory Customs, but the success rate of those haven’t been the hottest, even disregarding the ones that have reasonable critiques like body parts that have been swapped out, you don’t see a lot of EEL, B.A.T., Snow Serpent, Iron Grenadier or WORMS photoshoots out there, do you? Those are very well done and popular molds, that were done using the complete figures, so I think that does torpedo some people’s claims. I don’t even disagree with the notion, I just try to be realistic, and am hoping that the Techno Viper and Jinx figures on the horizon are indeed successes.