FRIDAY——
In our last episode, Tim flew to Augusta, ate food, and saw people!
(Three reminders, “Mark” sans last name produces a weekly podcast that I co-host. The “toys for sale!” photos are out of order and a way to break up all this text. Click any photo to enlarge.)
Once again, I’d brought some 2022 issues of G.I. Joe to sell. These had a low print run, and we still have some at my shop, so a G.I. Joe convention is an opportunity to a) get some missing stories into the hands of readers and b) make money. Before heading out for breakfast, I set up at one of the big tables in the upper lobby. Hopefully people would stream past, on their way to coffee, breakfast, or the convention loading area. I could say hello, have my comics out for sale, and draw. I’d seen someone do this last year with toys.
I hadn’t actually sent Aaron Detrick’s cousin and wife a note after he died this January, figuring I might offer condolences here in person. Detrick liked comics and art, his cousin Kenny Koepnick does too, so I took this time, a little quiet stretch in the morning before Day 1 was in full swing, to draw cards for Koepnick and Detrick’s wife, Sara. One card appeared at the start of the Thursday/Part One post. I’ll include the other at the end of the Saturday post.
Here are some toys (or non-toy merch) for sale!
Someone came over and asked me a question about next year’s JoeFest. I thought perhaps I should know who this was. Was this a convention pal from years ago, whose name and face I’d forgotten? Was it a Talking Joe listener who sees my face every week, but whose online profile doesn’t have a photo? I vaguely offered advice for this next-year concern, and only slowly realized this was in fact JoeFest organizer Ed Schumacher. Ha! We’d emailed a few times last year and last month about Talking Joe panels at the con. How did I not know what he looked like? From afar someone pointed him out to me at last year’s show, and I’m not on social media as you might think. In my defense, I hadn’t actively sought out the con organizer at the ’23 or ’24 show, and it’s possible to not run into one particular person in a sea of 12,000 others. There’s the con organizer who’s out front, making all announcements and introducing panels, and there’s the kind that’s more behind the scenes, picking up guests at the airport, interfacing with the convention center and hotel people.
I texted Mark to see about breakfast. He was rising slowly, so I’d head out solo. Before I did, John Kukovich walked over. He’s one-third of Grindstone Toys, which is rolling out its full first line of 1980s-style action figures, Callsign: Longbow. I don’t know him well, but we say hello at each of these conventions, and I see CS’s updates, and look forward to my Kickstarter reward! Kukovich and his team would be at the Dallas-Ft. Worth show in a few days, and he wanted to know if I was aware of a killer workshop taking place at that next show. It sounded great, so I made a mental note to check my flight and hotel for the following weekend, and to make sure I could attend that workshop. (More on that in my inevitable DFW 2025 con report!) Several people were selling at both of these back-to-back shows, so there were a few fun moments of “I’ll see you in a week,” or “You’ll be there too?” throughout JoeFest. I thanked Kukovich, and headed out. Here are Kukovich, Ben Conway, who walked up, and Schumacher.
Say, is that a cat? Why yes, yes it is! Can I lure it over so I can pet it?
I am a sucker for tuxedo cats.
The air was hot and humid. The walk to The Brunch Place, a tiny, family-owned diner that I wrote about extensively in my ’23 and ’24 con reports, was 12 minutes. This offered some of my only exploration of downtown Augusta in the whole weekend. That’s a difference between this year’s trip and the previous ones — I spent more time in the hotel and convention center this time. It’s a little sad I didn’t get to experience Augusta, but this did mean more time connecting and reconnecting with con-friends. Eggs and pancakes, then back to the con. By now it was 11am, and vendors had been loading in for several hours. There’s a tough bottleneck here, as the exhibit hall has only one vehicle garage door. Dealers can either wait their turn to pull up their vans, or cart in smaller amounts at a time from the parking lot. Here’s Mark’s photo of the empty con hall from the previous night, before any set-up had happened:
To give you a sense of how involved load-in is, here’s David T. Allen with a lot of boxes:
Kenny Koepnick had messaged me a week earlier: we’re selling Aaron’s collection at JoeFest. We found four long boxes of comics, can you help sort them, give us rough prices? I’m not a trained grader, and to properly price a stack of comics, I need a laptop with a few different tabs open, but I can, on the fly, in broad strokes, look at a mess of G.I. Joe comics and tell you what they might sell for. Koepnick thought this would be a slog, but I find sorting comics to be fun. Can you spot the difference between this first print and a second print?
Howabout these?
I also appreciated the opportunity to do something for Detrick’s family, and in a general sense, to have something to do on the con floor while all these interesting merchants were building up their temporary stores — tables, shelving, racks, arranging stacks and bins, hanging signage. I table at three conventions a year as my comic book store, so I know the agony and the ecstasy of loading a vehicle, driving somewhere, carting in stuff, and setting up. Con friend Chris Murray was assembling the Joe Declassified booth. Con friends Brian Kauffman and Chris Neal were dumping piles of toys onto tables at Neal’s The Toy Department booth. Con friends Josh Eggebeen, Roger Taft, and Greg Agustin were organizing stacks of various After Action Report guidebooks at their table. If I wasn’t helping Koepnick, I’d be walking around, distracting all those other folks, buying things. And here’s a secret of Joe cons: the best deals have already happened before the show opens to the public. That’s dealers buying from other dealers during this set-up time.
Dealer/con-pal Justin Talton walked over to invite me to join him for lunch at that pizza place where I’d bumped into him at a previous JoeFest. I should have said yes, as I’d get hungry and weary before long, but I was only half-done sorting. This happens at my shop — moving things around, talking to customers, then I should have eaten three hours ago.
Back to working with Kenny Koepnick: part of what makes a smart convention dealer is how prepared they are. I have a con kit, a small Tupperware container with a calculator, a Sharpie, and related bits. Koepnick had not only one price gun, but two, so I took one and got to work. Three hours later, I’d organized and priced 90% of the comics (some where already priced, and those prices were reasonable, saving some time) and called the job done. Koepnick thanked me with a Classified Alley Viper, a modern toy I’ve hemmed and hawed over buying. Toys are great, but I don’t really buy them anymore.
A new feature this year at JoeFest was tables for podcasters. Several were given tables, including ours, in the front hallway where you cue up to buy your tickets or pick up your pass. The other two had come with nice signage and table cloths or front wraps. Here’s Gary Viola and Casey Wheeler of the Chaplain’s Assistants Motor Pool podcast:
Here’s Matt Harden and Hillbilly Harper of Podcast From The Pit:
Here’s Talking Joe:
Mark and I left ours bare, minus Talking Joe business cards in two varieties: last year’s with a Kickily illustration of us, and this year’s new one with an Ian Kennedy painting that recreates and fixes the cover to 1982’s G.I. Joe issue #2. I brought a sign I’d made, with a photo of Mark and myself and text that said we were somewhere in the convention, come find us! Two years ago this annex was effectively devoid of dealers, just the hallway before you went into the exhibit hall, and this year it had at least six dealers. (Another sign that JoeFest is growing: the upper hallway that connected the con hall with the old panel “room” was now an additional selling area with perhaps 15 additional dealers, and the panels had at last moved to a proper room in the convention center.) I assume this is a budgeting and scheduling challenge for Ed Schumacher. If attendance grows by 20% in one year, how much additional exhibition space do you rent for the following year? If there’s a wedding also happening at the con, is another room even available?
In that now-taken-over front hallway, here is Bobby of Crimson Toys (not pictured, his son, Levi) setting up his bases and playlets for sale, which Bobby designs and produces.
Fun!
On the last day, Bobby and I would speak at length about G.I. Joe comics. He’d just bought Skybound’s 1,000-page G.I. Joe Compendium One, and was thinking of getting into reading comics, so I gave him a breakdown of what’s current and handed him a Hub Comics business card.
Still in the front hallway, here are Taylor and Ethan of tmanstimelesstreasures:
Scott Bake of my2dheroes.com:
and some of his stickers:
Heading into the main hall, here’s one of the four big comics dealers at the con, Charles Bond of 007comix:
And some of his comics:
He’s been selling comics for, I think it was 35 years.
Michael of Cherry Pickers:
I had hoped Cherry Pickers would be back! I’d gotten my favorite deals at their booth the previous year.
Whereas JoeFest ’24 had five comics dealers, this year that number was down by one, but it didn’t really matter. The selection was great! Two were mostly one-dollar bins, another was two-for-one-dollar (!) comics, and the aforementioned 007comix was a spread of back issues from all sorts of series going back to at least the ‘70s. A dozen toy dealers also had a short box or two of mostly G.I. Joe comics, and then of course the ROMA booth had those four long boxes I’d sorted, but you’d describe it as a toy seller primarily. Overall, lots of comic books for sale at this G.I. Joe convention!
Over two shopping spans that first day, I raided two vendors’ dollar bins, trying to control myself.
One of the things I’m looking for at any toy or comic convention, but particularly a G.I. Joe one, are A Real American Hero! issues from about 2012 to 2022. Not because I need them or because my store needs them, but because I’m curious if they’re in the buying and selling consciousness. And the answer seems to be “no.” At seven G.I. Joe conventions over three years, I have now effectively seen no one selling G.I. Joe issues #180 to #300. On the one hand, it makes sense. Print runs were small, between 15,000 and 6,000 copies. Compare that to a 1980s G.I. Joe issue at over 250,000 copies. What I’ve come to realize is that there is not much demand. When someone wants them (look at eBay, come to my store), they sell for a good amount. But to a toy collector who wants a certain range of G.I. Joe toys, I guess that person does not expect to find them at a con and that con’s dealers don’t think to bring them, even they even have them. (We do at my store! Email my store.) Again, this is puzzling. Don’t all the readers who read the Marvel run (#1 – #155) and then skipped some of the IDW run (#156 – #300) but have returned for the new Skybound run (which is issue #301 and up) want to fill in that gap? Especially since issues #286-300 have never been reprinted in graphic novel form.
If your response is “Well, I saw a few IDW issues for sale,” yes, a few. But every single dealer had Marvel issues from 1985 and 1986. Maybe those didn’t sell either. But in broad strokes I am puzzled by the seeming lack of interest in a large span of G.I. Joe publishing.
Have I mentioned yet that attendance was over 12,000? JoeFest is gigantic. The con room/dealer hall, looking to the left, turning my head straight, and then to the right:
But let’s zoom into that sea of humanity and see what one, lone person is up to. Here’s Mark Pennington’s hand:
Here’s Brian Sauer, co-organizer of an annual G.I. Joe convention called Assembly Required, held in Des Moines, Iowa. He was selling shirts and prints related to his con, and promoting it. I asked if it was worthwhile to trek all the way to Georgia for this and he said for the second year in a row that yes it was, and if he was going to attend anyway to see friends and celebrate G.I. Joe, why not raise awareness for AR, and have a place to put his stuff to boot? (I know the feeling! After I spent all my money in the first hour at BotCon ’95, I decided I should be a dealer for the following year’s Transformers convention.) Sauer’s day job is graphic designer, so all his con’s badging and signage look sharp. This year’s Assembly Required theme is “Fans in Command,” a take on the 1980s “Live the Adventure” contests wherein kids picked certain characters on a cross sell map and mailed in their choices. Here’s Sauer with his version of that map, which references but revises the 1987 Cobra Island map:
We talked about some video clips that Sauer and his AR partner had made for an AR-related con they run. Since I made some “skits” for my comic book shop, we had something in common.
Mark and I had a technical challenge to overcome, as his phone wasn’t getting a signal in the convention hall. This meant that coordinating and meeting up was a dicey proposition. He did get a signal in the upper hallway, which starts to connect with the hotel. I don’t know if that was a phone glitch or an international phone issue, but everyone shared one specific challenge: while hotel wifi was free, convention hall wifi was not. So when I stopped by Larry Hama’s spot to say hello, and he pulled out his phone to start looking for reference for a character that someone had asked him to draw, I had to deliver the news that “oh, there’s no wifi unless you pay for it.” I’m sure for dealers selling hundreds of $10 figures and accessories, or dealers who sold a few dozen $100 items, a $20 (or whatever it was) fee was no big deal. But for the rest of us used to free wifi on subways and in stores, this was a surprise. (I remember from tabling at BotCon around 20 years ago that dealers needing a phone line to run their credit card swipes, or electricity to run that swipe also had a fee, so in some ways, this wasn’t surprising. Of course the convention center wants to make money.)
After shopping and talking separately, Mark and I met up. (Half of the time, “meeting up” in the con hall meant walking around for five minutes and getting lucky, oh, there you are.) We headed to the hotel restaurant, Augustino’s, and got salads for a late lunch. It’s worth a moment to explain the novelty of Mark being here at all. Travel can be expensive! We’ve done this podcast for four years, so we talk all the time. But he lives five time zones ahead, and we’ve only met in person on three other occasions. By know we’d know if we didn’t get along, but it’s a pleasure and a relief that my podcast partner, my weekly work friend, is someone with whom I enjoy dining and ambling through a con.
Oh, to finish up a thread from an unrelated blog post, the cover sketch that artist Tom Reilly did for Mark at the November signing at my shop — I brought that to Augusta and handed it to Mark.
We went back to the con hall, which opened to the public at 6pm (5pm for folks who’d paid extra). This is a favorite time at a con, before the weekend crowds arrive. Here’s the line to get in:
Here’s dealer Stephen Kelly, from Ireland [sorry, an earlier version of this post incorrectly said “England” there), selling a bunch of mint and loose Action Force. (That’s the British G.I. Joe.)
My camera is terrible, let’s switch over to Markvision:
A funny aspect of attending this toy convention is that I’m a comics guy. I don’t really buy toys anymore, my mint/sealed G.I. Joe and Transformers collection frozen around 2008 and not that big anyway. I’m not looking for toys. I’m looking for comics. But I don’t need any, and neither does my store. Yet a fun activity is to look for deals. These may be comics I used to have that would be fun to reread, or $1 issues that my store can sell for $3 or $5. This is not about funding the trip or making a huge profit, it’s more a game. But with space limited in my suitcase, my sense was that I couldn’t buy more than 30 or 40 comics.
The other thing I’m looking to buy is the oddball bit of G.I. Joe or Transformers merchandise. (Mission accomplished, see the “Saturday” part of this report.) As I’ve written here before, I’m mostly looking for peoples’ stories and to reconnect with the book-writing process. If I interviewed a Hasbro alum 15 years ago, and haven’t had reason to email a follow-up question, but that Hasbro alum is at this con, it’d be great to reintroduce myself. And as writing is a solitary pursuit, connecting with con-friends who’ve contributed images or facts can be a little boost, like I’m not alone in this 25-year endeavor. (If you’re new to this blog, I’m almost finished writing a G.I. Joe history book based on more than 290 interviews that I started in 2001.)
The exhibit hall closed at 8pm, with con organizer second-in-command David T. Allen encouraging, via room-wide sound system, everyone to actually move on out so they could close and lock the space. But on our way out, there were still toys to look at, toys for sale…!
Mark and I met up again and headed to the parachute drop. This was an annual event at JoeCon (long name: The Official G.I. Joe Collectors Convention) for many years. Up on a rooftop or over an atrium, folks would throw G.I. Joe figures out to a gathered crowd. The figures tended to be special, like you could only get them if you shoved someone out of your way, er, happened to catch a toy floating down towards you. This parachute drop wasn’t printed on the con schedule that was hanging around my neck (on the back of my badge), so presumably people knew about it and where to go based on some social media post. (This may sound weird, but I don’t check social media when I’m at a con.) Mark and I walked to the front corner of the convention building, still inside, where an overhang provided space for the Marauders folks to toss out some toys over a crowd for maybe 40. Gents from the Marauder toy line explained that if you caught a figure, you could bring it to their booth and pick up additional accessories. They started to toss out parachutes, and someone reached up with a lacrosse stick, gaining perhaps an unfair advantage. A few people booed. I said to Mark, “well, if he’s in Thrasher cosplay, then it’s okay,” and bowed to no one in particular for a pretty amazing G.I. Joe joke.
We passed through the upper lobby and said some hellos. Having eaten two meals already at Augustino’s, I was ready for a change. Mark and I headed across the street to Taco Cat, which was much sparser and quieter than a year prior — no live music. We each got a salad (hey, my second of the day! Would I be eating healthily on this trip after all?) and a taco. Mark thought we should bring out some people, so he texted artist and con guest Adam Riches, and After Action Report author/publishers Josh Eggebeen and Greg Agustin. (We would have asked the third AAR maker Roger Taft, but we’d passed him in the hotel on our way out, where he was finishing a sandwich.) Riches sent us the hilarious and confusing response that he was in fact finishing up dinner at Taco Cat. I ran out to look in the rest of the restaurant and didn’t see him, a mystery I will never solve, but looked up to see Eggebeen and Agustin at the host/hostess stand, asking about us. We foolishly did not get a photo from our dinner, so let’s pretend.
Over dinner Agustin asked about the history of Talking Joe. As the podcast’s sixth co-host, I find it as interesting as he does! (But since Mark and I have now co-hosted more than 215 episodes, we can safely say the show belongs to us, and not the fine fellows who started it and carried it on until 2022. Also, Mark was there in the background at the very beginning, making suggestions.) And I asked Agustin about him hooking up with Eggebeen and Taft, and putting together his own AAR volume. Agustin’s a great designer and artist, and his skills have snuck up on me, like “where’d this guy come from?” Here’s a photo that Larry Hama posted to his Facebook page a day later of a drawing Agustin did of Hama’s Bucky O’Hare characters in a familiar G.I. Joe set-up:
And here’s a poster than Agustin researched and designed, one of my favorite anythings I saw at the con:
Our waitress was a redhead named Scarlet, so we attempted to provide the shortest possible context for that coincidence, three out of four of us wearing G.I. Joe t-shirts, this giant thing happening two blocks away.
To my fellow diners I described this incredible ice cream sandwich that I’d gotten out of Taco Cat’s freezer case one year prior, and how I dropped it in the crosswalk. On our way back to the Marriott, everyone agreed how great these treats were, and Eggebeen dropped his in the crosswalk.
Part of the story of downtown Augusta is that it’s limping. Many businesses are closed and spaces are for lease, though a few new businesses have moved in. We noted a barcade had opened in the intervening year. I wanted to check it out, but was outvoted. Maybe Saturday.
Also, from 8pm to 10pm, back at the convention were two panels I didn’t attend, Marauder Mayhem, presumably about the Marauder action figure lines, and Mythic Legions Cabal, another small, indie toy line. Both were well represented in their respective booths.
We headed back to the hotel. Here are three pics from the Lobby Swap (not in a lobby, but in a hallway, but the name “hallway swap” would be confusing). Crowded! Some sellers had a variety of lines:
Some had more recent, mint toys:
Others had loose, vintage toys:
Met Hans Chow from Trinidad and Tobago. My camera shrank this photo, so this is the one in the whole blog post that you can’t click to enlarge:
Then for some time on Friday night we socialized in the upper lobby of the Marriott, dozens of people standing around, talking, drinking, and it spilling down to the lower lobby. This is catch-up time, “When did you get in?”, “How’s your year been?”, “Buy anything cool so far?” and some talk of Aaron Detrick. This is probably a lot of folks’ favorite time at the con. Not the day pass holders, who’ve driven home and were mostly there to shop and take in the spectacle. And maybe not some of the vendors who are just here to sell, sell, sell. But that strata of regulars, who know each other from their online selling and customizations of toys, from sharing info on rare discoveries and quiet, top-dollar sales, who stayed up late drinking and talking last year, and the year before, who maybe were at the official JoeCon in the 2000s and 2010s, which may only be 40 or 80 people — for them, this is the best part. The family reunion part. Particularly, since one of our own, one of their own, died so recently.
If this photo looks to you like some people in a big room, yes, that’s correct. But I want to present the upper lobby as a comfortable and open space where all the after-hours socializing was concentrated. That it’s carpeted and spread out is key. It fits a lot of people, much of the sound gets absorbed, and we’re a hundred feet over and away from the front desk. Counterintuitively, it feels private.
And after the Lobby Swap, people were still selling, were still looting through bins, here, now in the upper lobby!
Mark and I talked with Sam Damon about the most recent X-Men comics relaunch and his thoughts on vintage Larry Hama scripts versus modern ones.
Around 12 I called it a night. Some folks stayed up ’til 2!
—–TO BE CONTINUED!
In our next episode, Tim avoids the comic book dealers entirely, looks for fun close-ups of toys to photograph, plans his dinner around dessert, and loudly pays tribute to the animated M.A.S.K. theme song!
Jump back to [Thursday/Part One] Jump ahead to [Saturday/Part Three]
A Real American Book! 