SUNDAY – – – –
[Note: An earlier version of Part Three had Breakfast with the Sarge on Saturday the 22nd. In fact it was Sunday the 23rd, so I’ve moved those four paragraphs and two photos here. Sorry! No, you’re not crazy, you’re just seeing them again.]
In Parts [One], [Two], and [Three], Tim traveled to JoeFest in Augusta, Georgia, saw people, walked around, ate stuff, and attended a panel. And now, our exciting conclusion!
Once again, I was unable to sleep in. The Marriott bed wasn’t the greatest, and in general I was pretty amped up the whole weekend — in a good way — so it was hard to fully relax. That the convention would only be open from 11am to 3pm on this final day were a real mercy — that’s a late start after so much staying up late, and no early hours. But notably, the show would end “early.” I feel like when I was younger, toy and comics conventions went until 5pm on the last day, but maybe everyone noticed attendance tapering off as people departed and dealers anxious to start the trek home started packing up. With these floor hours in mind, every minute counted. (I’ve certainly found the final hour of some cons at which I have tabled these last few years to be quiet, so maybe this is a post-pandemic thing.)
I went for a jog, and then texted podcast partner-Mark that he should join me for food. But he was at Breakfast With the Sarge:
I would like to meet Sgt. Slaughter, and get a photo with him, but I’m also okay to miss that opportunity. I played with my Sgt. Slaughter action figure wholeheartedly in 1986 and ’87, and ceded that character to my brother when he bought the Warthog in ’88, which came packed with an updated Sarge. I was happy that Sgt. Slaughter reprised his animated appearances past the Sunbow years and into the DIC episodes. I’m not a wrestling fan, but I appreciate the fun of a celebrity being a part of G.I. Joe, and that that real-life person/persona can guest at a Joe con. Many years back I paid extra to meet some guests at the Friday night/night-before dinner at BotCon, the Transformers convention — several years in a row — so I have experience with this kind of set-up. You may even recall how tickled I was by Slaughter’s entrance at JoeFest one year ago. All that stated, I don’t quite want to pay extra to meet the Sarge, but I don’t fault anyone — the JoeFest organizers, Mr. Remus and his manager, any attendees, for doing so. (If someone handed me a ticket, I would’ve had a great time.) I was happy that Mark signed up. If he was going to fly all the way from London, he was going to do up the full show in style! And I appreciate that he took notes.
And even more in the spirit of things, Mark told me about attendee Tony Nichols, who’d won a ticket to the Breakfast. Nichols could bring a plus-one, and invited artist/designer/Hasbro alum/convention guest/guy-I-know-a-bit Mark Pennington to join him. Ha! It’s great. What a classy move.
As I’d enjoyed the smoothies at New Moon Cafe, I figured its full breakfast would be great. Plus, I wanted another excuse to walk through a bit of downtown. I thought to text Blaylock Blaylock, “Join me for breakfast? I’m at this great cafe,” but his Air Bnb was ten minutes away and I figured he was on his own schedule. Then Josh Blaylock walked in. I made a menu recommendation, but had to scram. Remember, it’s Sunday and the clock is ticking, and I’d had a leisurely dinner with the man the night before.
Entering the exhibit hall I saw this amazing, life-size B.A.T.! To be clear, this is a 3-D printed blow-up of the 1986 3 3/4-inch Cobra Battle Android Trooper action figure, not a person in costume!
I could’ve easily spent another 10 minutes with it, making faces and silly poses, but I still hadn’t even entered the convention proper for its final day!
Something I left out of Part Three was Skeletron and its cool display. Ben Conway and Mark O’Byrne own Skeletron, another of these small, indie companies that is making G.I. Joe-like action figures. They sure leveled up their convention exhibition with this tall light-up/wall-pavillion-thing:
And here’s some of their product — oh, hey, that guy I know!
Skeletron (with the space it shared with Marauder “Gun-Runners”), Super7, and the Four Horsemen all had dramatic, large vendor set-ups in the center aisle of the con hall, three big anchors for this show. In this way, the whole convention felt grander than the previous year.
Skeletron was also a major backer in Total Toy Books’ Battle Action Force three-volume set of hardcover comics reprints coming later this year, so here’s a good place to run another photo (from Saturday, actually) of Brian Hickey and Paddy Lennon.
They had a little stack of bookmarks promoting the Battle Action Force books, and funnily enough customers at my shop sometimes ask for bookmarks, so I took a stack. (A few days after the con I did pre-order the Battle Action Force set for Hub Comics.)
I was considering attending the Declassified panel at 11am and the Rising Sun panel at 2pm. But I could probably skip the former because it was a modified repeat of a similar panel at Des Moines in November. (Which was great!) Instead, I looked at toys. On the far left side of the con hall was a big dealer set-up for The Toy Department, a brick and mortar shop in Ohio that vends at toy shows. Here’s just a bit of it:
I was initially saying hello to Brian Kauffman, who casts and sells cool and weird mash-ups of action figures in bonkers colors. Whereas he’d been vending on his own at that last con in November, here he was mostly selling for Chris Neal, who owns The Toy Department. I saw a few 1995-ish G.I. Joe prototypes that caught my eye, and noted to Brian that I hadn’t actually ever properly met Neal.
At the next dealer table over, I finally saw Kenny Koepnick, who I’d met a year earlier and not seen the previous few days. Koepnick manages The Toy Department, but at this show was helping out with ROMA Collectibles, another brick and mortar shop in Ohio that’s also at toy shows. We caught up a little, and I saw a few of ROMA’s funny exclusive toys, like a Cobra villain scuba diver remade in the style and proportions of an ’80s Mattel He-Man figure. I mentioned that I hadn’t ever properly met Chris Neal, who’s a well-known collector and seller of rare G.I. Joe prototypes and artwork, and Koepnick said he’d introduce me. Then Neal happened to walk over. We’d crossed paths, as I’d bought a few toys from his dealer table ten years back. Vitally, as recently as two weeks before this very JoeFest, he’d taken some photos of some rare Joe toys in his collection to send to Chris Murray to forward to me. Part of my “nice to finally meet you” was also a “thanks for those photos!” I told Neal I was tempted by those prototypes over at his table, and would probably be back at the end of the show for them. Not a great bargaining posture!
Too much verbiage, time for a toy break? Here are some toys that I didn’t buy, but that I loved seeing for sale!
I briefly said hello to artist Brian Shearer, who inked a bunch of G.I. Joe comics before he inked two issues on top of his own pencils. (I really like those, and had hoped for more.) Shearer was sort of the one that got away, the IDW artist from the last four years that Mark and I never quite lined up to have on our podcast. Mark messaged me to say that he had indeed recorded an in-person conversation here a few minutes earlier! I said thanks to Shearer, and asked if issue #2 of his self-published book Gunship Thunderpunch was out. Not yet. Here’s Shearer:
It’s probably worth mentioning that if you’re reading these con reports, you’re getting a limited view. I do make friends and speak with new people, but a lot of my friends and network connections are the same ten people over and over. And I tend to visit many of the same dealers and exhibitors. There was a dealer specializing entirely in apparel, and another with a wall of Funko Pops!, and I didn’t spend time at either. And there was a panel hosted by Toy Collectr Magazine, and another from Mark2Design (on the subject of 3D printing), for example. I missed those, and don’t have any info on them. There was a cosplay contest, as well as a toy custom contest, and both escaped by attention. Everyone will have a different con experience. I spent an hour going through every single dollar comic and 50-cent comic bin at JoeFest! It was fun, but that’s time I didn’t spend on other categories, as much as some other attendees spent no time on comic books. Hey, speaking of comic books, here are all those long boxes seen from above:
In front of Super7’s giant wall banner, featuring Jason Edmiston’s pitch-perfect G.I. Joe ReAction package artwork, I chatted with Pat Stewart and Mike Irizarry about comics reproduction and my hopes for the Skybound presentation of the Marvel Comics G.I. Joe run. Irizarry is longtime co-host of the What’s On Joe Mind? podcast/livestream. (This might be a place to backtrack, that on Friday, when the show had opened to the public, I happened to be standing at the WOJM? table saying hello to the show’s three hosts, Irizarry, his brother Rob Irizarry, and Mark Weber. One of the first attendees in made a beeline for their table and I was witness to a strange sight as he gave them a cake. He had gone to a bakery next door, bought a cake, and brought it over.) WOJM? itself has been running since 2011, which boggles my mind a bit. It’s a mainstay for many fans, but as Mark and I spend a chunk of time every week on our own podcast (and Mark much more for prep, editing, and posting), we rarely interact with Irizarry, Irizarry, Weber, and the other folks who have hosted that fine show. But it’s great to see these important parts of the Joe ecosystem in person at a con and to catch up in person.
I was also reminded that WOJM? had me on a panel at JoeCon like ten years ago, which put me in touch with Hawk Sanders, who put me in touch with a key interview for my book, and you can see how the ecosystem isn’t just “now” with some folks talking comics and others talking toys and brand news, but from the past and into the future with friends and good networking. And I sure was going to attend Hawk Sanders’ Rising Sun Comics panel at 2pm!
It’s been a few paragraphs since I included a photo. Here’s one of Mark from Friday-I-think, just to break up the text, a reminder that a lot of this was people shopping for toys:
I talked more with actor Tim Dunigan, of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. He pulled out personal set photos from 1987, and I asked questions about production. The show was filmed at a converted former bus storage depot. It featured a fabrication studio, actor changing rooms, management offices, a room to each lunch, and the actual sets for, well, the Future. Dunigan told me an amazing anecdote about shooting an episode, and then being whisked by car to… I forget, an airport, a helicopter, to fly from Canada to the States, another drive, exhausted, to do a, I forget… toy store appearance in character/in costume. What a time! The interviewer in me felt stupid for not recording this, but A) it’s not germane to my G.I. Joe history book, and B) having a natural conversation can have a nice and different feeling — I don’t have to always be working, researching, taping. While Dunigan was pointing out who was who in his 1987 snapshots, my phone was buzzing and buzzing. I didn’t want to be rude, so I ignored it. Was it spam? Someone from my comic shop back home calling with an urgent question? Podcast partner Mark, somewhere nearby with an even more burning question? And wasn’t it almost 2pm, time to head upstairs for Hawk Sanders’ panel on the comics he publishes as Rising Sun?
I thanked Dunigan again and checked my phone. Indeed it had been Mark: “I’m gonna talk with a bench press guy.” This didn’t make sense. Where are you?, I asked.
I ran towards whatever room Mark had just texted a photo of. I ran into Jason Murrell, who Mark had just sent to find me. Mark’s interviewing Benny R. Powell?, I thought. Benny R. Powell is here, randomly walking around JoeFest in Augusta? That was cool, but I did an 80-minute phone interview with Powell some years back, and he’s well represented across a whole page in the final chapter of my book. I mean, the other guy was a guest at a convention in Asia a few years back, that’s the most I could find about him online — little or no social media presence — so I sorta thought he’d moved there. But Powell was definitely in the States. Murrell clarified, or was it Mark via another text, “No, the other one.” Not Benny R. Powell. Chia-Chi Wang is here, randomly walking around JoeFest in Augusta!? I started running. Murrell followed, and pointed to an unused room where Mark and a person who could only be Chi Wang were sitting, Wang already micced up with Mark’s new lav.
“Hi, I’m Tim Finn, we met at BotCon 2002 and spoke for a half-hour, I’ve wanted to speak with you since, so this is great, thanks for speaking with us.” (Talk about wishing I’d been recording a conversation! What a contrast, having a normal conversation with actor Tim Dunigan ten minutes earlier, having a normal conversation with Chi Wang 22 years earlier!)
And this is why you attend conventions, folks, because that interesting G.I.Joe person, who I’d given up trying to find (after not trying too hard), might just show up on his own and start talking to my podcast partner! (Special thanks to Josh Eggebeen, who I guess Wang had first spoken to a few minutes prior, and who then said “You should talk to the Talking Joe guys.”)
Murrell, who has his own podcast, and probably has better things to do at a G.I. Joe convention, hung around for much of our interview, listening to us and taking a few photos. This was a nice touch. Of course there are photos of Mark and I mugging for the camera…
And there is copious video of us engaged in our podcast when we livestream. But we’re several time zones apart and have only met in person three times, so there aren’t actually photos of us recording, interviewing, conducting an episode as it happens. And now there are! Here’s one:
Thanks, Jason!
The interview lasted 75 minutes! I lost track of time, but Mark did not. “Perhaps we should call it,” he said, “since there’s only a half hour left in the convention.” We thanked Wang again, and headed back into the exhibit hall.
I’m going to interrupt the final 30 minutes of the show with a few out of order observations:
-Vendor James Hitchcock, who cosplayed as Ninja Force Zartan (sorry, no photo!), sponsored guest Michael Charles Hill’s appearance. Hill wrote the “Cold Slither” episode of G.I. Joe, and Hitchcock’s table featured this killer custom of Zartan and the Dreadnoks in Cold Slither gear in a Cold Slither-modified Moray. I believe all this toy work is by Joshua Joe:
On the topics of Morays, yes, The Finest (cosplayers) were present. Here’s a Cobra Lamprey:
And here’s a pair of Chuckles:
I’m told there were five total!
Looking ahead to the fall, one modest dealer table had Brian Sauer and Travis Webber. They were selling t-shirts, stickers, and action figure accessories from Assembly Required. This is a small G.I. Joe convention held in Des Moines, Iowa each November. I was glad for Sauer and Webber to be able to enjoy a con without ferrying guests, maintaining AV, running a staff of volunteers, and keeping vendors happy. But they still had a job to do here, to promote the upcoming Assembly Required. Sauer is a fiercely talented graphic designer, and was handing out postcards. The 2024 edition of AR, as it’s abbreviated, already has a theme:
Back to 2:30pm: ran to my room for some money, headed to Chris Neal to pay for those three prototypes. We chatted a little about his art collection, and my book, which I offered to show him later.
At Justin Talton’s table I reached for some cash to put down a payment on those F.H.E. G.I. Joe posters. Talton would ship to me, he’d said Friday, so I wouldn’t have to get these home in my suitcase. With some regret he explained that they’d all sold! I told him it was okay, that it was meant to be, and I was glad for those other folks who bought those cool things. I could live without them, and felt no disappointment.
At 3pm, the booming voice of David T. Allen announced that the con was over. I walked around ’til 4 as dealers were still selling to each other and taking down their displays. Bumped into Chi Wang again and recorded him for another 17 minutes, ha! At some point, the room was disassembled enough, with so many dealers carted out through the garage door, that the room was making me a little sad.
I headed to the bar, where I at last got to show Brian Hickey my book. Paddy Lennon would arrive a bit later, but time ran out and I wasn’t able to show him that same sample chapter. Next time, Paddy!
I’d skipped lunch, so I inhaled a bar pizza. By the time I finished, people were congregating there. (Certainly many dealers were still packing up in the exhibit hall and loading up in the parking lot. Some would leave immediately while others would depart Monday morning.) Across the bar, Mark (Talking Joe host) chatted with Mark Pennington, Doug Hart, Jason Murrell, and some of the UKers for some time. I thought to join them, but instead headed upstairs to drop off something in my hotel room. But, as always happens at cons, I came across interesting conversation and never made it. On the upper mezzanine, I approached a table-full of people, and we — mostly Mike Irizarry and I — ended up chatting for an hour. Left to right: Mike, Bryan Stephen (aka Hooded Cobra Commander 877 of YouTube) and his friend MaryAnn, Rob Irizarry, longtime Chicago/Texas collector and WOJM fan Julian Wolfe, WOJM Camera Jockey Jamie Johnson, and ROMA Collectibles’ top dog Aaron Detrick.
Mike Irizarry explained to me the details of that inside joke with the cake, and the journey that it had over the next day or so. I mentioned that I’d chosen not to order any after dinner at The Boll Weevil the night before, but that now I hankered for such a dessert. But I didn’t want to eat cake alone next door. MaryAnn suggested bringing back takeout, although that restaurant/bakery might be closed Sundays. Stephens suggested we walk over and find out. After all, it would only take five minutes.
It was closed. And by just 45 minutes! As we walked back, we passed Mark Pennington in the hotel garage, who looked like he was packing his car for the drive back to Florida. But in fact, he was heading up to his room to finish drawing some con commissions.
Back at the upper lobby mezzanine, the extended-WOJM crew were still sitting around as Stephens and I returned from the unsuccessful Mission: Dessert. Someone produced Oreo cookies from the first floor lobby snack closet and I realized that that hotel bar/restaurant would have dessert. And so I headed back downstairs, parked myself at the bar, and ordered a chocolate torte with vanilla ice cream. Mark (again, this is my podcast partner) approached, and then Josh Blaylock materialized. (Funny aside: Blaylock had an hour earlier ordered dessert at the bar first, and then headed out for dinner second.) Josh Eggebeen sat down, as did Mark’s British pal Simon Goodall, plus Hawk Sanders, and so the six of us talked about NFTs and digital comics assets, and some of the fascinating jobs that Blaylock has had in the last ten years. I think sometimes people abstractly think that in the post-2007 era, without the G.I. Joe license at his company, Josh Blaylock has not had a lot going on. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. And as impressive it is that he made a deal at a young age back in 2001 for the right to publish G.I. Joe comics (and then he wrote 40 of them), it might be more impressive all the ways Blaylock has used his business savvy, marketing sense, art skills, pop culture knowledge, and creative juices to create stories, objects, and opportunities for various other artists, investors, and friends. Here are Blaylock, Sanders, and Sanders’ fancy drink:
Then Mark Pennington walked up and handed Mark and Goodall their commissions. Gosh, is Pennington’s work a sight!
I headed upstairs and talked over Chapter 17 of my book with Chris Murray. He’d seen an early version in November ’22 and I wanted to properly jot down his comments. I welcomed all of his comments and will certainly put into effect 35 out of 40 of them.
Chris Neal wandered over and I showed him a chapter of my book. This felt like a nice closing of a loop, that here’s a Joe collector and seller who I’ve known about for years, and we’d finally, in 2024, had a full conversation. And now this second one.
It was getting late, although plenty of people were still hanging out in the first floor lobby and the second floor mezzanine, so I started saying my good-byes. The crowd was smaller than the previous nights’, as people had already departed, but it still felt lively and social. I had to pack. I finally retired at midnight.
EPILOGUE ONE – – – – –
The next morning Chris Murray and I shared a hotel shuttle to the airport, so we got more time to talk about the con, G.I. Joe, and life. Emphasis on that last one. Chris is an important friend, always ready to answer a question. These two-or-so times a year I see him now, particularly as a few Joe fans here or there have health issues, and in the post-pandemic we’re all aware of our mortality, are special. See you in November, Chris!
EPILOGUE TWO – – – – –
I actually wouldn’t be flying home on the East Coast straight from JoeFest, but rather, to California to visit family. While I was there, Mark and I recorded a Talking Joe episode and he said “you should see Diana.” That would be Diana Davis, friend of the show, and Research Consultant on IDW’s and now Skybound’s G.I. Joe comic books. Diana and I met at JoeCon a decade back, talk online now and then, and are both passionate about G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. But I haven’t seen Diana in person since 2017, a casualty of the pandemic and real-world job-stuff. But I’d be in Los Angeles, and Diana and her husband, Cullen, who I have also met, live there! And I would have a rental car for a day or two!
I got to meet Diana and Cullen’s dogs and one of their cats. I got to see Diana’s Duke toy collection firsthand, as well as some of her Duke art collection, although we were a little pressed for time as we also hit a bookstore (with a shop cat!) and a comic book store. For those of you who pay attention, you may know that when I travel, I like to check out comic book shops in other cities and towns. But it was particularly nice to connect with a con friend after and separate from the con, someone who wasn’t at the con, but might have been, like the con had a satellite extension 3,000 miles away and a week after!
—END REPORT—
Thanks again to Talking Joe podcast maestro Mark-no-last-name-just-Mark, who graciously lent some great photos from his much-better-than-mine camera, which added both variety and pictorial quality to this con report. One final hat tip to Ed Schumacher and David T. Allen for running a great show. Here are me and David, who asked me to guest on his podcast a few days later, and the cycle continues!
Relive the thrill of Part One, Two, and Three. Or: random link to a post on Leatherneck in Twizzler red!
A Real American Book! 