gi joe now works for the blue helmets

from sydney morning herald: America's battered international image has claimed a new casualty - the tough-talking comic book patriot GI Joe.

The muscular character was created as a comic strip for US military publications during World War II and has been fighting America's foes ever since.

But in a new film version, due to go into production next year, the all-American will no longer work for a covert US special forces unit.

Paramount Pictures and Hasbro, which makes GI Joe toys, have reportedly discussed the challenges of marketing a film about the US military at a time when the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have sunk America's standing in foreign opinion polls. In a move that has horrified an unlikely alliance of comic book fans and conservative commentators, GI Joe is now to become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity", with its star representing a multinational force...

Critics have been following the film's development with growing dismay. Some have suggested the producers may as well have put a blue United Nations peacekeeper's helmet on its star's crew cut head...

Hasbro toned down the figure's army credentials after the Vietnam War but sales soared again amid the patriotic fervour of the first Gulf War.