So... I don't believe "G.I. Joe" the "entity" really qualifies as a superhero, any more than the Transformers or the Thundercats are collectively do. What the G.I. Joe team boasted was a colorful, multi-capable means of fighting big bad guys via the clash of big military hardware. Which, I hasten to add, never resulted in fatalities. G.I. Joe took things like the F-15 from "gee that's a neat plane" to "gee that's a neat plane I can see my non-threatening cartoon idols flying and can own the toy for" for hordes of kids.
I think it was how Joe built an apparent bridge to the adult military world, that little kids could cross, that made gave it its stature. But compared to things like Superman, G.I. Joe is ephemeral - Joe does not speak directly or indirectly to larger themes like innate goodness or justice or the monster within.
My admittedly incomplete view of true superhero fandom shows a genre that thrives today on nuanced, if not deconstructionist, tales of what it means to be "heroic" under very unheroic circumstances. G.I. Joe fandom, if it can still be called around that, only has faint memories of machismo and a certain latex-clad bimbo with glasses.
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I think it was how Joe built an apparent bridge to the adult military world, that little kids could cross, that made gave it its stature. But compared to things like Superman, G.I. Joe is ephemeral - Joe does not speak directly or indirectly to larger themes like innate goodness or justice or the monster within.
My admittedly incomplete view of true superhero fandom shows a genre that thrives today on nuanced, if not deconstructionist, tales of what it means to be "heroic" under very unheroic circumstances. G.I. Joe fandom, if it can still be called around that, only has faint memories of machismo and a certain latex-clad bimbo with glasses.