Assembly Required 2023 – the A Real American Book! Convention Report / Part 4 of 4

In Part One, Tim flew to Des Moines and saw friends, and in Part Two, Tim talked with people. Then, in Part Three, he talked with more people! Read on for Part Four, and click to enlarge photos!

No longer a three-part con report, now here’s Part Four! Also, Mark LastName, host of the Talking Joe podcast, responded to my Part Three bit about not taking photos of the custom contest with his own!

With the G.I. Joe toy line moving to the six inch scale a few years ago, some makers have made figures out of characters that Hasbro hasn’t yet gotten to.

Or invented characters:

[EDIT: Manny in the comments below explains that this character above with the red mask is Rap Viper, an alias for Wordburglar, a Canadian rapper and musician perhaps already known to Joe fans. Thanks, Manny!]

More startlingly, enterprising customizers have made vehicles at this larger scale!

Without a real person or a smaller, 1980s Joe in there for scale, you may not have a proper sense, but this W.H.A.L.E. is almost twice as big as the original!

But some folks still work at the 3 3/4-inch scale:

This next one requires some explanation:

I can’t recall who was telling me about this. What is customizer/bootlegger/dealer Brian Kauffman? Maybe you all can tell me in the comments. Someone found this years ago and bought it and brings it to cons, and entered it into the AR ’23 Custom Contest as a joke. It’s both good work, but also funny on several levels.

With that Friday/Saturday flashback covered, let’s get to the final day, a day I’ll call…

SUNDAY—–

A note about this final day: The con was over. The final official event had taken place. No more dealer room buying, no more panels, no more official group meal for those that signed up. But as with the Thursday night-before dinner, there were still attendees around, and breakfast to be had. And notably, the night before was the end of daylight savings time, so everyone’s phones gained an hour. That hadn’t persuaded me to stay up later, but rather, was an added bonus. It was also a little weird, as I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been away from home on either spring-forward or fall-back dates.

Someone said a few people had stayed up talking in the lobby until 2:30am. While I don’t wish to miss out on connecting with friends or learning some amazing G.I. Joe fact, I also know that even with no convention left ahead of me, I didn’t want that feeling of fatigue on my way out. Actually, I woke up at 5am because I’d foolishly set the wrong alarm. Got up at 8, did a little exercise and packed, and then people met in the lobby. A plan for breakfast changed when con co-organizers Travis Webber or Brian Sauer noted the ordained restaurant didn’t open until 10am, and so they shifted to Plan B, a mile away, but open a half-hour earlier. Some of this was about hunger, but mostly logistics, as the con heads had to get a few people to the airport. Most of the group headed out on foot, but Mark and I lingered, so we hopped in Sauer’s car with him and Josh Blaylock. I’m always happy to walk a mile if it’s not snowing or raining, and in the spirit of saying “yes” to small changes of plan at this con, yes, I would hitch a ride with three people rather than walking with the rest. In the car, Blaylock commented that he’d enjoyed our Talking Joe interview with Jim Shooter (Marvel’s Editor in Chief 1978-1987) and mused about the differences between Shooter and Larry Hama’s recollections of G.I. Joe circa 1981.

We all ended up waiting for the restaurant to seat us anyway, so I think we lost that made-up half hour. But Joe fans can certainly find something to talk about whether it’s in a con room, a hotel lobby, at a bar, or standing outside a restaurant. Plus, I snagged this photo, which I really like. It’s not all my Assembly Required pals, and I’m not in it, but it does nicely encompass Assembly Required in general, and the 2023 weekend in particular. And it’s hard to get a group photo where everyone is looking properly and no one is blinking or has their mouth open mid-sentence, and this one just about nails that. (Helpful: sunglasses.)

Our party of 14 was led to a small room in the back. I had a good feeling about the food based on the decor and the available selections. I had liked the Sunday-final-day breakfast at AR the year before, but I also didn’t mind something a little fancier. Mark TalkingJoe got this photo of me and his menu. Note the item at the bottom:

Josh Blaylock went for the buttermilk fried chicken, and while this next photo doesn’t quite capture the scale, we were all impressed by the generous portion size:

The food was spectacular. I don’t know if my not-amazing phone camera makes this look properly delicious, but here’s my breakfast burrito and pancakes:

We were seated at two long tables, so conversation somewhat broke up into three or four groups. Josh Blaylock talked a little about Zoe Thorogood, who’s writing and drawing the new Hack/Slash for Image Comics. (Hack/Slash was originally published by Devil’s Due, and its co-creator Tim Seeley is good friends with Blaylock.) Speaking of stacked breakfast foods, Thorogood’s It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth has been (and two months later as I write this, continues) to sell like hot cakes at my shop, so I was intriguied to hear all of this. I asked Blaylock about taking meetings when one of his properties has been optioned, and flying to Los Angeles and such. We G.I. Joe fans think of Mr. Blaylock as the guy who wrote the comic for two years, who created the characters Kamakura and Zanya, who published Joe comics and helped kick off the nostalgia boom of the 2000s. But he’s had and has other irons in the fire.

Before I wrap up this wrap up with notes about departing, I wanted to post a few photos of the dealers. If you read my JoeLanta report, you may recall I’ve become interested in taking informal portraits of dealers at their booths. My camera phone ain’t great, but having been on both sides of a con — attending/shopping and exhibiting/selling — and as there are fewer items I want to purchase, I’ve become more interested in who is actually there. Do they have a brick and mortar shop? What’s their selling focus? There’s a documentary and magazine article in this somewhere I’ll never get to, but as a record of these shows that might otherwise blend together, here are a few of the folks who set up at Assembly Required 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Scott Bacon and Aaron Ringer of Midwest Vintage Toys:

Mary Roth and Joe Roth of The Dealt Hand don’t sell games. Rather, they teach gaming and host game parties, but they partnered with a shop they know to bring a few Renegade Game Studio G.I. Joe items for sale to AR. Besides them standing in front of that merch, I also think of them as sitting at two or three tables, each set up with a Joe game, playing with and explaining to attendees.

Azerr’s Toy Box.

Aaron Buck, pictured, Dream Land Collectibles (not pictured: Tom Kelly).

Not a great pic — sorry, Mark and Ben! Here are Mark O’Byrne and Ben Conway of Skeletron.

Their company has crowdfunded an updated version of a toy vehicle originally released in the UK as a part of Action Force, that territory’s version of G.I. Joe. To support it, they’re also creating new figures in all three G.I. Joe scales — 6-inch, 4-inch, and just for this one guy, the “retro” 3 3/4-inch scale:

Mikey Kukovich, Troy McKie, and John Kukovich of Grindstone Toys, with their brand Callsign: Longbow:

Josh Eggebeen and Greg Agustin of After Action Report (not pictured: Roger Taft).

Oh, here’s Roger Taft. My thumb is definitely on some photographer’s scale if I’m in the portrait.

Kris and Devon Kolander:

In addition to neglecting to show any Custom Contest toy photos in early parts of this con report, I also took two cosplay photos, but didn’t include them in Friday or Saturday, which would’ve made sense. So while I’m posting pics of people, here’s one:

And here are the 234th Tigerhawks of Missouri and Kansas, well fitting into this year’s AR theme:

Something else notable about the show was the sense of community it built upon and enhanced. I mean, every convention does that to some extent, that’s practically the root of the word. But here’s a small detail I appreciated. Con co-organizer Brian Sauer, who’s also a great graphic designer, included this in the modest printed program. The top is guests and vendors. But inspect the bottom:

It’s a little like a State of the Union, or maybe a State of the Community address. Here are these people and places and things, here’s this information, here are your people talking about and presenting so many aspects of this story, this brand, that means so much to you. I mean, web rings aren’t really a thing anymore, and maybe attendees skipped the paper program because they have their phones and the con is so small and easily navigable. I was of course tickled that Mark’s and my podcast made the list. Totally fair, we were both in attendance and hosting a panel. But again, something about the breadth of this list, that Sauer didn’t need to collate these, but did, means something to me.

Transitioning back to Bubba and the end of breakfast, it was time for everyone to part ways. A few people needed to head to the airport. Some had a toy shopping expedition planned near Des Moines for later that day. And still others would be staying another night and flying or driving home on Monday. Sauer kindly drove Mark and I back to the hotel, where we quickly checked out, hopped the shuttle to the airport, and then realized we were on the same flight to Charlotte. Waiting at the gate, we talked some more about After Action Report, and Mark’s Dreadnok Mayhem, and Usagi Yojimbo (I have two issues sort of stuck in my suitcase at all times).

This was a nice way to ease out of the convention weekend. Leaving cons can be a little sad: Good-bye, friends; good-bye, concentrated weekend. My priorities for attending cons have always been some combination of learning some scoops, whether from Hasbro or from fellow fans; buying things I wanted or needed; spending time with friends, even if faraway kinda-pen pal friends; and networking for my book. The buying of toys and art and merch has receded to the background. That bit above about learning scoops — emphasis on learning. Fellow fans are often experts, and whatever they’re talking about — G.I. Joe-related, convention-related, or neither — it tends to be fascinating. It sounds odd to call a G.I. Joe convention “educational.” Maybe that overlaps with the general thrill of soaking it all in, and having a concentrated weekend of Joe friends and Joe-everything, but I know I leave such a weekend charged up and ready to go. And making new friends and reconnecting with established ones is at the center of that.

So here’s this Brit, Mark, my friend-from-work. We spend two hours a week talking, just talking about G.I. Joe. And then he goes off and spends more than twice that formatting and posting and promoting our work, and I spend a little bit of time doing that as well. But I spend much of the week thinking about Talking Joe, our podcast. I plan Saturdays around it. We’ve occasionally planned trips around it, like I was in California visiting my wife’s family, and I was going to have to disappear for two hours to record the new episode (which I did under a blanket for the acoustics).

Rather than saying goodbye at breakfast (my departure at AR ’22 was a rushed affair), or in the hotel lobby, or outside in the airport Departures drop-off lane, we sat for an hour at our gate, talking. (And reading.) Our seats on the plane weren’t near each other, and Mark had a tiny window of time to make his connecting flight, so we in fact switched seats so he’d be closer to the front of the plane, saving a minute or two to deplane. He was going to rush off to his Heathrow flight, so perhaps our goodbye would be a wave from across ten seats. I had two hours to kill, so once I deplaned, I walked not to my concourse, but Mark’s, where his flight was just starting to board. We had a few minutes to chat. How had he successfully packed all the toys he’d bought? What would he do on the trans-Atlantic flight home? Would he drive home or take the train from the airport? Was he taking the next day off, since he was losing so many hours in crossing so many time zones? And of course, we’d be recording a podcast again seven days hence, with a guest. And then another five days after that!

I find funny and lovely the phenomenon of meeting someone online, becoming friends, and then meeting in the real world a long time later. A slight, tiny worry leading up to this trip was What if Mark is actually not fun or interesting in person? Because we had shared activities (the Ron Wagner interview, the Josh Blaylock panel) and it’s a tiny convention, at minimum we’d cross paths over and over, and at maximum, we were doing everything together. Fortunately, the smart, funny, invested Mark who I chat with before we hit “Record” and after we finish, and who is gracious and a good host between, and who rustles up guests for our show and records silly pop song jingles for Talking Joe, and who had bound his entire library of G.I. Joe printed comic books into custom hardcovers, he’s also smart and funny and invested in person.

We hugged, said goodbye, he boarded.

Then I laughed out loud because I had rushed to make personal business cards for A Real American Book! a month earlier, and had brought them to Boston TOYCON, and had completely forgotten to bring them to Assembly Required. And hadn’t even thought of them once on this trip. Here, or a minute earlier, would have been a time to give one to Mark (especially since he’d given me some Talking Joe cards earlier in the weekend). Standing there at Mark’s gate, I could picture the little box of them on my dining room table at home. Oh well.

Whereas at the beginning of this report, way back in Part One, I depicted knowing Mark as a small video window on my computer screen, or actually, more often a disembodied voice in my headphones since we record most episodes as audio-only, this is how I now know Mark:

I’ll leave you with one final image. Again, Dreadnoks were the theme of Assembly Required this year, but Cold Slither the band and song were the sub-theme, even down to the badges. The lower one here got me into the show, while the top one was for the Friday dinner. A year ago when I wrote about AR ’22, Mark and I abstractly thought “maybe we’ll meet there next year.” Well, dear reader, maybe I’ll meet you there next year.

Relive the adventure in Part One! Or Part Two! Or Part Three! Here’s a random post on the Toxo-Viper 2!