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SATURDAY – – – – –
Once again, I woke up earlier than I’d planned. Foolishly, I missed the 9am Cartoons and Cereal block. This takes place in the panel room, with a video projection of four G.I. Joe episodes. Past years have mixed ’80s Sunbow, ’90s DIC, and even 2010’s Renegades. I regret missing this, but between exercise, needing a meal that would sustain me longer, and doing a little prep for my panel, I kinda forgot. Maybe the milk and cereal would be still be out an hour later and I could have second breakfast? I don’t know what episodes played, but with the Iron Grenadiers theme of the convention, I was thinking of Destro-centric animated half-hours. Maybe “Sins of our Fathers,” with Destro’s ancestral home? (I’m going to jump ahead for this next photo, that 90 minutes later, after the first panel, I checked. While the milk was still out, the cereal had all been gobbled up.) Click to enlarge all photos in this report.
Still writing notes, it was 10:20, and I was now in danger of being merely on-time to my own panel. Certainly with saying hello to panelists and running a microphone check, it would be ideal to arrive five or ten minutes early. In fact, the convention opened to the public at 10am and the first panel started at 10:30am, so not only was I cutting it close, I was also missing the beginning of con attendees and shoppers and such. I rushed into the convention room to find both Larry Hama and Ron Wagner casually drawing and signing, with no indication that our panel started in four minutes. In fact, Hama had a little line at his table! Mark Pennington was drawing, too. The guy who designed the Iron Grenadiers, at the Iron Grenadiers-themed G.I. Joe convention was drawing an Iron Grenadier. It was perfect:
And here were the Codename: Iowa folks starting the day, selling merch from past AR cons, and rad t-shirts. Perhaps Alex Bainter’s expression there on the right makes it seem like this was some dire moment of stress, but it wasn’t — it’s just a snapshot at a random moment.
I want to get shots like that of the con room, but they tend to just become jumbles of people and stuff. Con chief Brian Sauer nudged Hama and Wagner to pause and head over to the panel room next door.
PANEL #1: Living Legends with Larry Hama & Ron Wagner
I first interviewed Larry Hama in 2001. He tends to say “yes” to convention appearances, so he shows up at several per year. He’s closely identified with G.I. Joe, so folks tend to ask him a few common questions over and over. He’s even answered these on some movie behind-the-scenes featurettes! I wanted to skip such questions, and went a step further by not asking Hama any G.I. Joe-related questions. (One snuck in, but it was thematic.) And while it’s easy for me to pull out issue #76 of the Marvel comic and ask about some Cobra Civil War detail from these two panelists, there’s a good chance they won’t remember something from 35 years ago. My questions aren’t intended as a quiz, and I don’t wish to disappoint the audience if all the answers are “Gee, I don’t remember.”
Ron Wagner had joked at dinner two nights before that he didn’t recall much from his G.I. Joe run. I understand, as he’s drawn a thousand pages of comics since then, and I couldn’t answer many questions about what I was doing in 1987 either! But Wagner and Hama can talk about process and theory, and interesting artists they’ve known, so this would be my angle. They are both great conversationalists when I’ve had a meal with them, so the trick would be to make the panel like a casual lunch, just two or three friends talking about drawing and publishing, except there’d be an audience. But rather than something overly specific, like “Why did Destro’s forces arrive at the beach on Cobra Island in issue so-and-so?”, I would have prompts for topics or people they were more familiar with. And both gentlemen have great senses of humor, so some of my questions were less questions and more set-ups for jokes. (Cf. my first question to Hama and his reply if you click the link below.)
And the panel went splendidly. I don’t wish to insert myself too much, but I also feel like it’s the moderator’s job to clarify things for the audience, and where reasonable, to add some color if he or she has a connection to the answer.
The day before I had asked Carson Mataxis to photos of Hama, Wagner, and I during and after our panel. Mataxis was in the front row, doing just that. Thanks again, Carson! Here’s our much-larger-than-I-was-expecting audience:
I recorded the panel with both my phone and also my Zoom H-1, and Podcast Mark has now released it as a short episode of Talking Joe. I’ll include links in a separate post after Part Four/Sunday.
During the panel, I spent what felt like 10 minutes having Hama and Wagner talk about lettering, which might seem boring or too far afield for a G.I. Joe-specific toy convention. But I think we kept it lively, and I’m happy to state that several people came up after the panel and even the next day to say they had enjoyed it. Jokingly I said to each “Ten minutes talking about lettering, amiright?” And each said no, they found it interesting, and three of them even said they had made their own comics, studied typography in college, or were graphic designers such that no, ten minutes wasn’t too much.
I’ve moderated or been on a few panels at comics conventions. It feels comfortable, like running a critique in art school, or a discussion in class. It’s always nice to be asked, so thanks again to Talking Joe podcast host Mark for suggesting it, and for AR chief Brian Sauer for reaching out.
I mostly neglected to get cosplay photos at Assembly Required, but right after my panel, this attendee came up! Always happy to see the Sarge! (There are better photos elsewhere on the internet.)
Back in the showroom, I spoke with Sam Damon at the Declassified booth about house work, contractors, and renovations, as well as the phenomenon of cosplay. Over at Josh Blaylock’s table, we talked about Blaylock’s upcoming comic The Disavowed, a love-letter to and commentary on a 1980s military team set in the present day. Blaylock is writing the series, with many G.I. Joe analogues populating it. He’s slyly appropriating the term that IDW coined when it reprinted Blaylock’s no-longer-in-continuity G.I. Joe stories, in a series of graphic novel collections called G.I. Joe: Disavowed. Artist Pop Mhan, whose comics I’ve liked for a long time, is drawing this new work, which will be packaged by Blaylock’s own Devil’s Due and released by Massive Publishing.
PANEL #2: Designing Destro’s Forces | Joe Declassified & Mark Pennington
Pat Stewart and Chris Murray had planned another illuminating Joe Declassified panel, this one focusing on — you guessed it — Destro and the Iron Grenadiers. Then someone suggested that con guest Mark Pennington, who did much of that design work at Hasbro, but who was not on a panel, join this one. That meant Stewart and Murray would pivot from a slideshow and lecture to a slideshow and interview, not the easiest of last-minute changes. But Pennington has a good memory, and this is what some people want out of Hasbro guests — show them a picture of everything they designed and ask them to talk about each. Why does this earlier drawing have a sword, but then this later one doesn’t? This helmet looks like [something non-G.I. Joe from pop culture], where’d you get the idea for it? How many drawings did you do per character? That kind of thing.
It was great.
I ducked out for a few minutes to get photos of people and things in the exhibit hall. Here’s The Finest:
While one briefcase had those “gold” bars, another had these four Rise of Cobra nanite-delivering warheads, and with the push of a button, they lit up!
Here’s Josh Eggebeen selling various After Action Report books. Oh, hey, I wrote the introduction to that one!
Next to him was producer/writer Michael Charles Hill, signing and selling copies of a script that was going to be performed in an hour.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this report, I try to say “yes” and go with the flow at conventions, especially since I’m no longer trying to tape record every panel (cf. me at BotCon ’94-’99) and there isn’t much I have to buy. In the hallway outside the showroom and the panel room, I saw Sam Damon again, and Drew Hagerty, who I somehow missed at JoeFest in August. Damon started Joe Declassified, that non-profit/roaming “museum,” and he is recently retired from his interesting and stressful government job. He also has a big Joe toy collection and reads comics, so we always have more to talk about. Hagerty has an impressive collection as well, and scanned some D.E.F. paperwork for me to use in my book several years back, in addition to lending me some early fan club newsletters to scan. It was great seeing him for the first time in at least five years.
Damon announced he was hungry, Hagerty suggested lunch, and Damon invited me along. I said yes, which meant I was going to miss–
PANEL #3: “King for a Day” Live Reading | Michael Charles Hill
Hill was a producer for the ’80s G.I. Joe cartoon, and wrote a few episodes. He’s been enjoying some appearances at G.I. Joe and Transformers conventions (he also wrote for that series) these past two years. And for Assembly Required 2024, Hill expanded a short story he’d originated in 1986, turning it into a full teleplay script. The fun wrinkle was that it was now more Destro and Iron Grendiers-themed. I got to take part in a live script reading at a Transformers convention in 2004 with some big deal voice actors, so I was happy that A) the nice folks pictured below got to do something similar, and B) with the “casting” process more in line with the relaxed atmosphere at Assembly Required, this would be less stressful. While I missed the panel, I did come back from lunch in time to take this photo just as Hill, reading all stage direction, concluded the final page.
I did ask Michael Nie (fourth from left, wearing a baseball cap) to type up a brief recap. Take it away, Michael!
One of the most enjoyable experiences from my first appearance at Assembly Required was the live reading of Michael Charles Hill’s “King For a Day (Redux)” script. As a cinematographer, it is always a pleasure to read an unproduced script for the first time. The fact that I was able to lend my voice to a couple of characters only added to the fun, and to read alongside my brother Matt was the icing on the cake. Matt read the part of the honorable Destro, while I chose to read for characters that were both created by Michael Charles Hill — Claymore from the ’80s and an all-new Iron Grenadier by the name of Tommy Gun!
While my professional work experience is behind the camera, I often am asked if I do voice work, so it was particularly fun to give it a go!
Matt and I simply walked up to Michael Charles Hill’s booth on the convention floor to make an introduction. That is when he asked if we would be interested in taking part in the live reading. He handed us a piece of paper with a list of roles and, with a little banter back-and-forth, we made our selections. Michael seemed particularly excited to tell us about his original character, [I’m] happy I chose those two!
I would happily repeat the experience!
Thanks for that, Michael!
I’ll add that in his producer duties, Hill was present for many voice recording sessions for those ’80s cartoons, so he would have been right at home sitting next to people performing his words.
LUNCH – – – – –
As for my lunch with Damon and Hagerty, we walked next door to Jethro’s BBQ. I got shrimp, rice, and apple sauce. For beverages, all three of us got water and only water. Gotta keep hydrated at a con! We talked about how 1987 might be the weakest year for ARAH figures and how Damon isn’t too interested in the 6-inch scale and Hagery has skipped it altogether. We also talked about the small circle of fans who would bid on the most expensive one-of-a-kind pre-production artwork, prototypes, and sculpts — we three have some such items in our collections. Damon mused about a person who recently contacted him to sell some rare G.I. Joe toy items from around 2006, and had a thoughtful breakdown of how much they could go for compared to how desirable they are. This had disappointed the seller, who wanted a higher price. We also talked a little about comics, as Damon reads the X-titles and has mixed feelings about G.I. Joe comics, while Hagerty is not a comics guy. Damon had thoughts about the future of comic book shops, and I added my two cents from a retailer’s perspective. I also learned that Damon is big into RPGs, and has strong opinions on those. If you read Part Two/Saturday, you know I’m pretty lapsed, but I’m happy to hear people reflect on rule systems and throwing dice.
Meanwhile, back in the showroom – – – – –
Mark Pennington was drawing:
Ron Wagner was drawing:
Larry Hama was drawing:
It was now about 4pm, which meant the showfloor closed in one hour. I still hadn’t taken many photos of toys for sale or dealers at their tables, and I certainly hadn’t played the G.I. Joe Deck-Building Game at The Dealt Hand’s tables. Now was my chance.
Mary Roth of The Dealt Hand remembered me from the past two years. I seem to be only playing Renegade’s G.I. Joe DBG once a year, and I seem to only be able to pull that off when I fly to Iowa, even though I own it (and several expansion sets) back home. I’m still not fully concrete on the rules, so Roth was both teammate and coach. Here we are:
Then, casual G.I. Joe fan/serious gamer Paul, who I’d met one year prior, sat down to watch us play. He noted that there are a few places where the printed instructions are unclear, and wanted to see in what order Roth would perform certain actions. Then he asked if he could join, and apologized for taking over or imposing his own interpretations on us, but we were both thrilled. The game is more fun with three players, and Roth was happy to have someone else familiar with the rules.
Raffle/Contest/Announcements – – – – –
I could hear from the other room that con chief Travis Webber was starting to call out raffle winners over a microphone, and part of me wanted to walk away from the Deck-Building Game to see what the large crowd was seeing. This was now the center of the convention (I left our game for a moment to get a not-great photo), and even though there was another 30 minutes of shopping, no one was walking around with money in hand, as the con had paused. I played the card game right up until 5pm, and it turns out, I missed the auction for the one-of-a-kind Josh Blaylock art and paperwork!
In addition, Webber announced the winners of the coloring contest. I believe there was one for kids and another for adults, but everyone was coloring the same drawing, this Skeletron character.
Note that the one on the bottom left was colored by a 2-year old! (More on kids at the con in Part Four.)
Dealers started to dismantle their shelving and pack up their toys, but I wanted to continue playing. We probably would’ve been left alone for another 20 minutes, but I figured Larry Hama and Ron Wagner would be packing up and leaving, and wanted to say goodbye. Hama had put out some artwork for people to pick up. I love seeing his sketches. He also had something funny to say about Shipwreck’s parrot, Polly, and noted that this (below, right) was the first time he’d ever been asked to draw Wade Collins on patrol in Vietnam:
Hama said invited me along for dinner, so a) I’d be stepping away from the Deck-Building Game in progress and b) not attending the Wordburglar show. This was a small disappointment, and requires some explanation. Wordburglar is the performing name for Sean J. Burg, a hip hop recording artist known for his pop culture songs and lyrics, and the cool visuals of his music releases. G.I. Joe fans may best know him for his album Welcome to Cobra Island. He was an official guest at AR, and was selling merch at his table. I neglected to get a shot of him there, but here are Chris McLeod, Wordburglar himself, toy photographer Paul “Plastic Battles” Pants, and Operation: Recall contributor Joe Goldston in front of Wordburglar’s table:
Burg has also appeared on Talking Joe, and earlier that day had stopped me in the hallway between the exhibit hall and the panel room to show me some non-G.I. Joe comics written by Larry Hama that Hama had just signed for him. Wordburglar is Canadian, so it’s probably more work to plan a tour or even a single show in the States. But someone smart, either Wordburglar himself or the AR organizers, or both/all, figured on having him appear at the convention and then booked a live performance nearby an hour and a half after the convention ended. Brilliant!
I was getting Vince DiCola-and-Stan Bush-at-BotCon ’97 vibes, and wanted to attend. The performance wasn’t officially part of the con, as tickets were available elsewhere and not on the AR website, but it did make the AR printed schedule–
–and a bunch of AR attendees were going, so it felt like the thing to do. The show was 2 miles away at a venue called Lefty’s (a 5-minute drive, and surely no one did the 40-minute walk!), so this felt like a bigger swing than the dinner joint across the street, or the barcade that was 20 minutes by foot across the river. Another reason to attend the music show was that pal Chris McLeod (a former Talking Joe host and now maestro of the popular news stream The Full Force), aka Diagnotstik80, who has provided beats for Wordburglar recordings, would be behind him as DJ at the show.
Later, while writing this blog post, I was trying to picture the venue. Is it big? Small? New? A dive? Google helped with this:
Later that night, I asked a few people to describe Lefty’s, and they explained it was a small music club, and that maybe 50 people were there. The internet’s advance listing was “Wordburglar live in Iowa for the first time playing at the famous Lefty’s Saturday night (early all ages show starts 7pm!) with local support from Iowa’s own Coolzey! ALL AGES!” Now I had a sense of it, as I’ve seen shows at places like this around Boston, where I live. An all-ages show meant there’d be 19- and 20-year olds there, and maybe younger folks. (I just saw The Cybertronic Spree — hey, another Canadian act! — at a similar venue and some cool parents had brought 10-year olds and mega kid ear protection). Either way, probably not a rowdy crowd, and probably no one dressed up for a club dance night.
Kenny Koepnick and Jason Murrell kindly shared photos:
Getting back to what I did do on Saturday night as the convention showroom closed, dinner with Hama and Wagner was now a certainly, even if that meant missing a rad music show with two cool dudes. But Hama and I go back more than 20 years now, and I only see him every six months or so, when we’re both at a con or when I’m in Manhattan. And now the same with Wagner, we sort of go back eight years. Mark Pennington was joining, and this was a good reminder that they were in school together at the same time, and friends. I ran back to The Dealt Hand’s table area, watched Mary Roth and Paul play one more turn each, and said I needed to leave. And it really was the end of the show, with a few dealers starting to break down, so while we could have played for another half hour, this was a good stopping point. I continued my unbroken streak of never finishing a game of the G.I. Joe Deck-Building Game. Someday!
On my way out, Blaylock showed me more pages from The Disavowed pages on his phone, and then thought to email the rest.
I wanted to say some goodbyes, and over at the Joe Declassified table, talked with Sam Damon, Chris Murray, and Pat Stewart. They were boxing up display cases and rare toys and art and folding table clothes. Damon had a box that needed lugging to his room and my hands were free, so we walked back to his room at the Hilton. There we sat and talked about comics for 20 minutes, DC continuity and reboots, the Images of Tomorrow stunt and Michel Fiffe’s fun Bloodstrike revival, and coloring styles and paper stocks.
I grabbed my coat and hat and headed to the lobby.
DINNER – – – – –
Wagner arrived in his car, and took Hama, Pennington, and I to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. It was next to Hoyt Sherman Place, a performing arts theater, so dozens of cars were trying to park, but we were able to get in for food without any hassle. The menu was big, all the food was great — shrimp, duck, pork, veggies, rice, noodles, and the conversation was even better. Wagner talked about sneaking a glimpse at a Russ Heath original two-page spread while he was at the Kubert School, and Hama recalled seeing Heath drawing a Tamiya 1:35 scale model Tiger tank he’d built for reference. Hama described all the lengths that Heath went to for accuracy, that he built a “wooden frame with a wire grid and an aperture guide that he peered through to draw” so her proportions and perspective were spot on, balancing the tank model at an angle on the top of his drawing table, facing him. Pennington was enthusiastic about the Korean artist Kim Jung Gi. He also noted that at age 84, Alex Nino was still alive and painting, and pointed out some gorgeous Nino works on his phone. Hama had a story about Milt Caniff giving Wally Wood a hard time, described how Hal Foster inked and colored chain mail, and lamented that at Marvel, the standard coloring style didn’t capture the same look. Hama also told a story about a book thief he knew. Wagner talked about his week at CrossGen around 2003, deciding if he wanted to move to Florida, and Pennington chimed in as well, having some experience with the company. Hama also mentioned he had a darkroom at Continuity in the ’70s, so he could develop his own photos, and after he talked about capturing a particular shot in Paris with his SLR.
I asked each what their next con appearances were. Wagner is allergic, so nothing scheduled — perhaps Assembly Required 2025. For Pennington it’s Augusta and then DFW next year. Hama would be in Minneapolis seven days later. (Fun fact I had forgotten until writing this blog, that Pennington inked Wagner at least once — a Punisher War Journal story from ’91 came up in my Google searches.)
Hama said he was catching a ride to the airport at 10:30 the next morning, which was about when I would need to leave, so I asked him, and chauffeur Brian Sauer, if I could get in on that.
I got back to the Hilton lobby bar at a civilized time, and noted that many people were still out at the Wordburglar show, dinner, or something else fun. I texted a few people to see where they were. I really wanted to go the barcade Up-Down, to play the 1992 Konami G.I. Joe game, and the 10-player Killer Queen, and standbys like Galaga, but I also didn’t want to travel a mile if people were only there for another half-hour. Kenny Koepnick and the ROMA crew walked in with pizzas, and I realized that the post-con activities were perhaps more split than in previous years. Some people went to Lefty’s and then Zombie Burger, others went to Zombie Burger and then Up-Down, and various other combinations. If I waited a little while, everyone would come back to the hotel, and there were already a few people I knew right in front of me.
Sitting to my right were Troy McKie, John Kukovich, and Mikey Kukovich of Grindstone Toys. I’d barely said hello, so now felt like a good time to catch up. I asked what it was like splitting the team between two conventions held at the same time back in August. Also, I had received the Kickstarter edition of their Callsign: Longbow comic in the mail just before my trip out to AR, and brought it with me to read on the plane. It was good, and I wanted to tell them in person, and ask about issue #2. (McKie had previously told me that as much as the team wanted to push ahead with storytelling in comic books, if the comics got too far ahead and toys still hadn’t shipped from China, backers would feel like the company wasn’t prioritizing properly.) I also asked them about current challenges for their toy line, but without hitting the “Where are my Kickstarter rewards???? It’s taking too long!!!!” note that they (and other small toy companies who crowdfund) likely get all the time. Here’s McKie, from inside the con at the Grindstone table from earlier that day, holding one of their first figures, the 1980s-G.I. Joe-ish Steel Web Shock Trooper action figure:
I texted Kickily to see if I might show him a chapter of my book, but he had retired for the evening. Several con pals like David T. Allen, Josh Eggebeen, Chris Murray arrived from their evenings out, and I stayed up a bit talking. Certainly they stayed up later! This was an amazing and packed day, and I was ready for one more sliver of Assembly Required — Sunday morning.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
In Part 4 of our exciting adventure, Tim hits all the notes he missed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, including photos of toys, customs, and people! [Jump back to Part One] [Jump back to Part Two]
A Real American Book! 