In Part 1, Tim flew to Augusta, Georgia, chatted with friends and took in some sights.
SATURDAY
What I didn’t mention in Part One of this con report is how big JoeFest was. I try to describe with words and still images here at A Real American Book!, but I was so floored by how much bigger this was than I expected, I grabbed an 18-second pan with my camera.
It was huge! Bigger than the final official JoeCon! I couldn’t get over this view from the second story stairs. If the video doesn’t play, here’s a photo of the straight-on view, followed by the view to the right:
Maybe I just missed the boat for not attending in previous years, or maybe several factors converged for 2023, but this number of dealers and this healthy an attendance felt like a rebirth for Joe fandom. It felt like people were showing up to buy new Classified figures, and looting around for ’80s and ’90s stuff, and with those five dealers selling comics, it felt like, well, people cared about comics. It felt like an alternate reality where the Snake Eyes movie was a hit, and G.I. Joe didn’t feel endangered. And since so many people I knew were there, it felt like a real destination.
I paid extra to get in an hour early, at 9am, but ended up chatting with one Anthony Montanarella by the check-in table. He was selling G.I. Joe-style gliders at his own table. I asked if he read Joe comics, and he had fallen off. But I piqued his interest in those ten-packs of IDW issues I’d brought. (Photo of Montanarella in Part 3.)
Into the con hall, here’s a toy for sale!
I’ve always been amused by how the ’90’s Spider-Man cartoon toned down Morbius, and getting a bit of the talking Venom figure from that era in the same shot is a compositional win.
Here’s something else for sale you might find disarming!
The first few hours offered more time to look around and say hello to people. I made eye contact with one Ed Heilman, who I’ve never met, and who was helping out at the Fresh Monkey Fiction table. For no good reason we struck up a conversation about IDW’s G.I. Joe comics. It was great. I wasn’t trying to sell my shop or my book, just talking G.I. Joe with a G.I. Joe fan:
Oh, hey, there’s Bart Simon! He’s guested on Talking Joe a few times when we’ve had anniversary episodes. I’ve only met him over livestream, so this would be a fun image for Talking Joe host Mark:
In the next aisle, I saw artist Robert Atkins at his table, and looked at his art for sale. I like Atkins’ G.I. Joe work on the volume 1/2007 series, but I don’t really buy art that is pencils-only, or inks-only-on-blue-line, and I don’t really buy art where word balloons are added separately in Photoshop, so flipping through his boards was a kind of window shopping. But some was tempting! Most of what he had was from the Renegade Game Studios G.I. Joe Deck-Building Game, and since those are pin-ups and not story pages, I came a lot closer to buying one.
Better than looking at drawings was actually talking with Atkins. He did a big interview for Talking Joe the episode before I took over as co-host, so there’s a sort of non-connection. I asked him about his non-G.I. Joe work, and got a big and fascinating answer, Atkins explaining how his varied comics and freelance illustration career had prepared him for his full-time teaching job. (Another non-connection: He teaches at SCAD, my friends went there.) And how doing G.I. Joe, for more headache and less money, better prepared him than drawing for the bigger publishers. Here’s Atkins:
Over the loudspeaker, a voice announced that Sgt. Slaughter was about to enter the convention hall. But this wasn’t a normal interruption, like “the 1pm panel starts soon in the Roosevelt Room.” Rather, this was a hype speech, extolling Slaughter’s history as a professional wrestler and drill instructor to the G.I. Joe team, with terms like “champion,” “hall of fame,” and “The first living G.I. Joe.” This was up on a small second floor staircase landing. I realized there was a mic up there, and then Slaughter made his presence known to us all, doing some lines from G.I. Joe: The Movie. That the only way out of his command was in a ditty bag, an itty, bitty ditty bag. And we were all going home or no one was going home.
What was so fun and surprising was that JoeFest looked and felt like a ground-level toy convention. It wasn’t media-heavy. There wasn’t a panel with three voice actors flown in from Los Angeles. There wasn’t a big Hasbro booth with a giant Optimus Prime statue. There wasn’t a Paramount rep in front of a giant screen playing movie clips. There wasn’t even a dealer with a little TV or laptop playing G.I. Joe episodes from Hasbro’s YouTube channel on mute. Rather, this was a room of people buying and selling merch. The AV component of the con panels on that second floor was modest — a laptop, a projector, a screen, a mic or two, and maybe those overhead lights dimmed. But here was a real celebrity! Being introduced like a VIP! And he was yelling at us! (And someone was videotaping it?) I loved the whole thing–
— and as the whole con hall erupted in applause, I started clapping, and looked at Robert Atkins in front of me, and Brian Atkins (who’s inked a lot of G.I. Joe) at his table on my left, and Larry Hama at his table on my right, and they applauded as well! I loved that they, as fellow guests of the con, weren’t too big to clap for the famous guy up on the balcony, but that also, in good faith, we all knew this was a bit of theater. But that we were entertained by it. This wasn’t Bob Remus entering, this was Sgt. Slaughter.
Here’s a photo of a long line for Slaughter photos and selfies from a little later. Note that the Sarge is signing a G.I. Joe Classified figure of himself. More on that below.
I walked by Mark Pennington’s table and he called me over. I interviewed him long ago for my book, and he did a little art for me a few years back, so we chatted. He told me about painting for galleries and commissioned comics-type work, and a new slim artbook he might crowdfund. (I have his last one, it’s great!) I showed him a chapter of my book. Here’s Mark Pennington:
Next to Pennington was Adam Riches, who I might have assumed was having the best time of anyone at this convention. Riches recently illustrated the package art for the aforementioned Sgt. Slaughter Classified 6-inch figure. This was an incredible convergence for Riches, because his two favorite things are G.I. Joe and wrestling, and he got to, pardon the pun, flex some artistic muscles creating the Slaughter art. I owed Riches a few G.I. Joe comics from my shop back in MA, and rather then ship them, I brought the batch to Georgia. He said he’d seen my for-sale-ten-packs notice on social media and wanted to do an Eco-Warriors drawing for me even though he didn’t need to buy those issues.
Please note in the photo above that Riches is wearing a black shirt under long-sleeved camo. Look familiar? A little while later, Sgt. Slaughter came over, and so did the cameraperson and I think boom operator. Riches and Slaughter stood right next to each other, photographed and videotaped in front of Riches’ table, him explaining what a cool gig it was to draw the Slaughter toy package art, and — I forget, did Riches have a drill sergeant’s hat and sunglasses? — it became clear Riches was wearing Slaughter’s signature outfit. And Riches is tall, so I did a little double take. Seeing them next to each other, holding the new Hasbro Sgt. Slaughter toy, and I think Riches did a line of Slaughter dialogue for the camera, was an authentically fun and funny moment.
Across them Pennington and Riches was John Earl, who I’d only met online. A few years back I created a version of the social media art challenge called Inktober, but instead of one black and white drawing each day in the 10th month of the year, I drew a G.I. Joe villain each day. In November. In color. It was called Cobrember, and Earl accepted the unstated challenge, drawing 31 Cobras as well. It had been a good art exercise, so he wanted to say hello, and I’m happy to say he has drawn several months’ worth of Joe characters since then.
At one dealer table I bought some dollar comics to resell in the dollar bin at my shop. I bought enough that the guy nicely gave me a discount, but yes, in a pinch, if I see a few good dollar comics that would add variety to the dollar section at Hub Comics, I’ll pay that much. And I didn’t realize it, but I’d always been curious about the Avengers Spotlight issues of Acts of Vengeance, so I had some reading for the flight back. And at this point in Dwayne Turner’s comics career, he was much closer to that one fill-in issue of Transformers than he was Cage, Sovereign Seven or Spawn, so, yes, a 1980s Marvel book felt like the thing to buy at a Joe con.
I headed upstairs at 1:15pm for the Operation: Recall panel. I’ve already backed the Kickstarter and know the back story, but I wanted to see what Mark Pennington would say, and it’s always a pleasure to see Carson Mataxis run a slideshow or pitch a deck. This isn’t a great photo, but it shows you what the panels looked like. On the left is Mark Gerwig of Mark2Toys, who’s digitally sculpting the O:R accessories.
Because Mataxis can’t help but over-deliver and over achieve, in addition to presenting some art and a paint master for the first Operation: Recall figure–
–he also trotted out sealed trading card packs for sale, a surprise bit of debut merch. The most interesting part of the panel was Mataxis explaining that the G.I. Joe alums working on this project get a cut of the profits. Man, it’s one thing to hire your heroes for a one-off, and another thing to do it again, but it’s something else entirely to cut them in a share!
Back in the con hall, I realized Chad Bowers was a guest. (I hadn’t looked at the guest list too carefully.) He wrote the text back-ups in the G.I. Joe: Sierra Muerte miniseries, and does some heavy lifting writing dialogue for Rob Liefeld comics. That would include the Snake-Eyes: Dead Game miniseries, which I have given much thought to. I introduced myself, we talked about that, and I showed him some of my book. In a giant room mostly full of people who wanted to talk toys, here was a comics guy ready to talk comics! Also I appreciated this sign:
And Bowers was, in fact, drawing a bad sketch for someone. I want to say it was… a big Decepticon smashing a city… in Sharpie on white paper.
Larry Hama was busy at his table, and we’d already caught up, so I didn’t want to take any of his chatting and sketching time. It looked like he was having an entertaining and productive con. But I did see an old bit of paperwork at Justin Talton’s table that had never had credits, that I had long thought was drawn by Neal Adams. And I thought Hama, who used to work with Adams, could confirm or deny. “Can I borrow this a sec?”, I asked Talton, pointing in Hama’s direction. I showed it to Larry. “These are Neal’s heads and faces, but not the arms,” was the reply. That confirmation might make it to a caption in my book.
This is the kind of interaction that is of course possible via email or Zoom, but more interesting in person.
I’ve seen Hama talk with fans, take selfies with them, sketch, and sell prints at many conventions, and this is pretty much how I see it in my head:
Hey, over there, toys for sale! Some mint sealed 1994-ish Joe figures. But wait, they’ve got a telltale imperfection–
–ha ha! Whoever first bought these removed the UPC barcodes on the back in 1994 in order to redeem them for a mail-away Joseph Colton 30th anniversary G.I. Joe action figure. I laugh because I did this, I bought extra Joe figures in order to get both the 3 3/4-inch Colton and the 12-inch one. I feel this dealer’s pain!
Here are some toys for sale!
The Callsign: Longbow team, like Operation: Recall, is making new 3 3/4-inch action figures in a 1980s G.I. Joe-style. Whereas O:R is going for the 1989 aesthetic, C:L is more 1987. Here’s a modest accessory that looks much sexier for its incredible Doug Hart package artwork:
And here are two Callsign: Longbow figure samples. The two gents most in charge of this endeavor, Troy McKie and John Kukovich, sure had made some nice progress since their appearance at Assembly Required in November.
Roger Taft was quiet on the internet in 2023, and he wasn’t at Assembly Required in November, so it was great to see him in person. Here’s a slightly blurry photo:
At 4:15 I went to Chris Murray and Patrick Stewart’s Joe Declassified panel on 1994 and ’95 Real American Hero. This was a repeat of their panel from Assembly Required, which I had attended, but I wanted some fact checks. Unsurprisingly, they could have taken up double the time, as there were so many facts and slides to get through.
Sometimes when my wife or I are out and about, we’ll text each other photos of weird and wonderful things we come across, with no comment. It might be a Photoshop disaster on a billboard, or some poorly written copy, or an amusing image or some item for sale related to child development or nostalgia. Here’s one, a framed print in the hallway connecting the convention center with the Marriott.
My big breakfast had done a good job keeping afternoon hunger at bay, but I wasn’t going to make it all the way to dinner. But I didn’t want to leave the con for the time it would take to get a proper lunch. The compromise was the hotel front desk snack closet, and gobbling sugary-salty-protein in the elevator on the way to my hotel room, in the form of Peanut M&Ms, a Clif Bar, and a Kind Bar. Dinner was going to require some proper attention.
In fact, one of the challenges of a convention weekend is eating. (And drinking water!) You might bring snack food, or forget. You might plan on eating at the hotel restaurant, but there may be a wait as dozens of con-goers get out of the dealer room and head there. You might make plans to eat with friends, but twenty or thirty minutes can quickly pass as you wait for the whole group to form up, or more people join, or there’s no plan for where to eat, or walking there just takes time. It was 5pm, and the con hall was now closed. It was time to make a decision. I had been inside all day, was desperately hungry, and couldn’t wait around to find friends to get a meal. I also, having eaten two dinners and two breakfasts so far at the hotel bar/restaurant, wanted something else, and didn’t mind something local to downtown Augusta. In fact, a change of pace, away from the con, and requiring a few minutes outside would be welcome. Doing something like this solo, without friends when long-distance friend time at a convention is so precious, felt like I was breaking some unwritten rule. But I was having a food emergency and planned to be back fast.
I walked across Broad Street, looking for… something, anything. And there was that taco place from my Friday afternoon walkabout. No longer did I feel like this might be a gentrifying invader. Now I was grateful for a close, healthy option!
There was no wait and the food was great. I was texting updates to my wife at home. One reads: “No bar or restaurant has ever played the Chili Peppers’ Californication so loudly.” I’ve never been one to post photos of food, but I do try to be thorough in these con reports. These are the tacos I inhaled:
No more than 30 minutes after leaving the hotel and I was heading back to it. On the walk there I came upon Adam Riches; his lady, Zoe; Chad Bowers; and his pal, William. In the interest of saying “yes” and letting the weekend take me where it would, when they said they were getting dinner and invited me along, I joined them. But when we got to a restaurant and seating would be tight, I politely disengaged. Why talk with con friends in a loud, crowded restaurant when I could talk to other con friends in a loud, crowded lobby, right? Still enjoying the sun and the outside air, I walked to the music store, but it didn’t have new CDs, just new vinyl and old vinyl and old CDs. Close! Headed back to the hotel.
I wanted to see JE Russell’s Dime Novel Legends panel on his Western/cowboy action figure line, but there was also an unofficial Hall of Fame “induction” supposedly taking place somewhere. I walked back and forth, back and forth in the upper hallways and small panel rooms, but couldn’t find it. Two different people gently commented to me that JoeFest was run informally, that a schedule change not updated on the con’s website wasn’t unheard of. I wondered if there was a more up-to-date con schedule app that I should look for, but I also tend to avoid downloading apps to my phone. I was also looking for Anthony Montanarella, as we’d chatted that morning near the check-in desk about meeting up to play the G.I. Joe Deck-Building Game (which you may recall from my Assembly Required convention write-up I’m all about playing at cons!!!!) There didn’t seem to be any Hall of Fame event, but there was a trivia show being set up in the main panel room. Someone was connecting a computer to the projector, and two gents were cosplaying as Torch and Buzzer. During all of this back and forth, a room placard caught my eye. Joe fans, do you see what I see?
In this open-ended time of looking for people or something specific to do, I realized how tired I was from going to sleep late and waking up early, so I found a chair in an out of the way hallway and half-dozed for 20 minutes while people walked by. This was around 7pm! Montanarella didn’t text — that’s fine, conventions are fluid and you never know who you’ll bump into or what you’ll see that swallows up 40 minutes. I went back to the hotel upper lobby and bumped into Ritz Murphy, who I met in Des Moines at Assembly Required, where he gave me his R&B album on compact disc. He was also interested in karaoke. He also did a back and forth search of the upper hallways and small panel rooms and couldn’t figure out where or when karaoke was, until we did.
One of the things that happens at this kind of con is a swap where people informally set up in a hall or lobby or room, toys and such on the floor, to engage in more selling after hours. I think many of these folks weren’t dealers, but actual attendees that have a big box or Tupperware bin, and pull out toys and put price stickers or Post-it notes on them and try to sell. What was different here was this was on the con schedule, like “8:00 PM – 10:00 PM Lobby Swap – Olmstead Hall 2nd Level.” This overwhelmed a key artery between one hallway and what I’ve been calling the panel room. It got crowded and hot, but I kept walking through it to see what was happening in that panel room.
And from this lobby swap I bought all the sets of Shout! Factory Sunbow/DIC G.I. Joe animation DVDs. I have them all at home, but a lone disc got scratched, and it wasn’t going to be easy to replace just that one. I’d thought to spend $20 replacing that 4-disc set, but since a gent was selling five sets plus The Movie for $25, here was a cheap and easy way to get the replacement. Maybe give the redundant discs to my nephew for Christmas/birthdays?
A few friends were around, but chatting or leaving for dinner, so it was a little quiet in the upper lobby, so I decided to grab my laptop and type up notes (for this very blog post!), and maybe someone would walk by. As soon as I sat down, Josh Eggebeen sat down next to me and we started chatting. Eggebeen wrote many of the comic book summaries for yojoe.com many years ago, and with Roger Taft, has Kickstartered three nice guide books on G.I. Joe comics. It turns out that Eggebeen has an interesting work history – production management in film after a Poli-Sci degree, and he had all sorts of things to say about his and Taft’s adventures in publishing, and Fair Use. He nudged me to hurry up with my own book:
Chris Murray, sporting his Destro necklace, and Ritz Murphy reported back that Karaoke — excuse me, KOBRA-OKE, would start at 9pm in that panel room, where the game show had been. Murphy and I headed over to find a decent crowd of perhaps 25 people. The space offered little ambiance — bright lights and too much open space, you want it to be dark and a little intimate — but the music was loud and the mics were turned up, so no complaints here! Song books are slowly becoming a thing of the past. (Who wants to lug three-ring binders and print out page updates every month. What is this, 2005?) Rather, the KJ (that’s like “DJ” but for karaoke) (also, a gent in partial Zartan cosplay, see below in background) typing our requests on YouTube. Fortunately, I take part in a monthly Zoom karaoke that revolves around YouTube. The queue was only five people. Murphy and I signed up. He’s an actual singer.
If you know where to look on the internet, there’s a pretty good recording of my song. And it’s fun to belt out something loud. A young girl sang Pour Some Sugar on Me, which surprised me. Is this a positive outcome of kids growing up with TikTok, that they’re confident enough to perform earlier and earlier? I’d never seen someone so young and also so good sing karaoke. And a gent did Stan Bush’s Dare, so ’80s feel-good rock was well represented.
Back in the upper lobby, I saw Night Force Chuckles, and we completed that deal from Friday. The space was filling up with people back from dinner, sort of the main attraction of the weekend. I chatted with Kenny Koepnick, Chris Murray, and Patrick Stewart about previous JoeFests. Present were about three times as many people as this:
It was getting late, and I was getting tired, so I headed to the elevator bank for not-a-long wait (recall one of the three elevators was out of service). On my floor I bumped into Dan Pinegar, and bought some paperwork from him on the spot.
An entertaining and productive day!
[Back to Part 1!] [To Be Continued in Part 3!]
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