OK, I had Breaker back, what was I going to do with him? That was only a part of the things I wanted to explore with the next arc of my dio-story. I wanted to explore what role Cobra had in the world - for I was certain that this was an older, wiser Cobra. They may be bent on world domination, but they know if they push too openly, the world will unite against them. I also wanted to explore the rank and file of Cobra some (more on that for a later issue), and I had a new figure for an already-established character. I'm not from the soap opera school of "The role of X will now be played by..." I needed a reason to alter one's appearance.
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| Luckily, in a war comic, there's plenty of precedent for that. |
Speaking of altered appearances, I used the same character head for Breaker's basic fatigues and scraped the beard off with an X-acto knife. Airtight talks about a new 'suit', which gives me an out if I do create one for him, and even Beachhead gets a head that has his iconic ski mask rolled up. Note one other thing - the Navy guys are all in their 'dry' clothes. That's one thing that bothered me - because of the toy tie-ins, Snow Job and Torpedo were walking around malls in snow- and scuba gear. Really?
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| Frostbite, Countdown, and Deep Six demonstrate. |
It made more sense to me that the environmental specialists (that is, arctic, space, and underwater) needed to have a 'dry / temperate' uniform as well as their specialized outfit. It's about this time that the dossier was born, to help identify my ever-expanding cast of customs.
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| I had a bit of meta fun with this episode too that made it into deleted scenes: |
On to the comic! "Catching Up" was originally posted on 3/10/2006 (scenes 1 & 2) and 4/3/2006 (Scene 3).
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
