JoeFest 2025 – the A Real American Book! Convention Report / Part 3 of 4

SATURDAY——

[Part One/Thursday] [Part Two/Friday]

In our last episode, Tim spent hours at a toy convention looking at, sorting, and buying comic books. Then, he tried to talk to everyone he could.

This is the big day. Whereas Friday is set-up for vendors and just a few hours of shopping, plus two panels, Saturday at JoeFest 2025 was eight floor hours, from 10am to 6pm (with an early entrance for folks who paid extra), plus eight panels and other activities, and that’s all before the evening’s planned and unplanned socializing. But a day like this goes by fast. Blink and you’ve run into a long-lost friend, looked at two dealer tables’ worth of march, and then it’s time for a panel, and three hours have zipped by.

One again I’ll reintroduce Mark, who keeps his last name out of some social media. When I refer to G.I. Joe conventions and the Talking Joe podcast, which Mark hosts, records, edits, and posts and I just co-host, any “Mark” that’s just “Mark” is that Mark.

To break up all these paragraphs I intersperse photos of toys for sale!

Okay, actual Saturday:

I made the mistake of sleeping in an hour, so downstairs the breakfast wait at Augustino’s was quite long. But I need a real meal before starting a con, and don’t do well with just a muffin or energy bar on the go, so this had to be some version of eggs and oatmeal. I skipped the wonderful cafe in town (with sandwiches and smoothies, which I’d been to twice last year) — it would have taken just as long and maybe longer. Plus getting there and back meant being hot and sweaty, as Augusta’s weather was inhospitable during JoeFest. (So was much of the country’s!) While waiting I realized the gent ahead of me was also a party of one, and if we sat together the hostess could get us a table faster. (I think this is a pandemic issue, that the restaurant was understaffed. There were enough tables, but not enough servers and busers to seat and clear tables.)

This is how I met Carlos, who manages a corporate jet. He was staying here at the Marriott while the plane was at the Augusta airport getting serviced. He would check in to nudge along the mechanics, who’d won the bid for the job. (Carlos would get perhaps four bids from various shops.) He’d stay for a bit, then fly home, and come back in a few weeks or months to pick up the jet. He used to manage four different jets, but now just handles one. He’s not the pilot, but the manager. In turn, I told him a little about G.I. Joe and the convention. I think he was legitimately fascinated.

The front con hallway, with crowds, dealers, and podcasters:

The show had already been open for an hour, so I was anxious to get in. At the same time, I had already bought most of what I’d come for (cheap comics) and wasn’t in the market for anything in particular, so my sense of missing out while other people shopped was pretty mild. No, my time at the con would be talking to people, taking it all in, and checking in on panels. At these events, I feel half like a networking author, half like a journalist taking photos and notes for a story, and a tiny bit like a collector with money to spend. I missed the first panel of the day, the Audible Interlude Podcast.

Out in that front hallway I voted in the photo contest, which seemed to have several categories (‘80s figures, modern figures?), but I wasn’t clear on what.

Here’s artist Jason Crosby, artist of some recent Garbage Pail Kids comics for Dynamite. My camera couldn’t handle the backlighting on these “front row” folks, so I’ve inset a separate shot of Mr. Crosby.

I hadn’t much paid attention to the GBK comics, though I was smitted with the cards in 1985. Seeing the original comics art in person, man, this guy can ink!

I hope such an artist has a good time, being identified with one intellectual property and tabling at a specialized con for a different IP. (Similar: a booth at JoeFest had action figures of college football players, and several of the players where there! I bet this would be a hit at a sports con.)

Cosplay! Chuckles and Cold Slither Zartan–

–who is having a renaissance despite only appearing in one episode because of several new action figures and a fun music stunt/appearance at the upcoming Comic-Con International. I hope that duo stopped by writer/director and Zartan voice actor Zack Hoffman’s table!

Sgt. Slaughter!

Sgt. Slaughter cosplay!

This table belonged to The Finest, which is to G.I. Joe fandom what the 501st is to Star Wars fandom.

Mikey Kukovich, John Kukovich, and Troy McKie of Grindstone toys with their great Callsign: Longbow line:

And their first Callsign: Longbow figure, no tray! Loose in the bubble, like an ’80s Joe:

Also, at this table, a display of the Kukovichs’ other business, Couple of Kuks (“kooks”), for customizing and painting toys. Here’s one, a 6-inch take on the 1993 G.I. Joe Sci-Fi figure. That’s a custom, not a Hasbro creation.

Here are a third of the Delta-17 guys, makers of a rad looking O-ring line of action figures in the style of 1980s G.I. Joe.

Hasbro designer and comic book artist Mark Pennington (with grandkid Rylan):

Pennington’s tool kit:

Pennington using his business card as a straight edge:

Pennington at work on an Alley Viper sketch:

Sometimes I want to get a full-body shot of a cosplayer. But this time, it was these life-size B.A.T. weapons that grabbed my attention:

Kenny Koepnick at the ROMA Collectibles booth:

**Gasp**, is that Kevin Watts? Kevin, I thought you got out of G.I. Joe and sold your collection years ago! Wait, why are you in disguise? Do you not want people to know you’re here?

But seriously, it was great to see Watts. He was an early booster of my book, and I showed him some sample pages at a con… 12 years ago? He was also a help with some early networking, and more recently when some of his collection was up for sale, I bought a few pieces. I haven’t seen or spoken to Watts in a long time. He was helping The Toy Department’s booth, so he wasn’t just at JoeFest, he was working.

PANEL: JEM 40th ANNIVERSARY WITH SAMANTHA NEWARK—–

I’ve only ever seen half an episode of Jem, plus an excellent bonus feature from an early 2000s Shout! Factory DVD box set. While I’m not a Jem fan per se, I do appreciate it, and since the TV series is a close cousin of the animated G.I. Joe and Transformers (same studios, writers, artists, voice actors), I’m interested in it. If we weren’t in Peak TV these past 15 years with so much prestige television, if I didn’t live near three movie theaters, surely I would have watched every episode of Jem by now!

And I like hearing voice actors talk about their craft. That would be Samantha Newark, who played Jem/Jerrica in her speaking part. (A different set of actors sang for all the characters.) Fun bonus: Hasbro designer Steve Reiss would be at the con. His wife is Carla Reiss, who worked in Hasbro’s soft goods and plush department in the ‘80s, designing and prototyping, among other things, the Jem doll line’s clothes. I believe she was already committed to make the trip with Steve, so the convention smartly plugged her into the Jem panel. I only caught half of the panel — this is a recurring theme of this blog report — there was so much going on, but my minimum was to at least sit in on five minutes of each panel and take a photo for you fine readers.

Hosting was JoeFest second-in-command David T. Allen. He’s a big Jem fan, so he was the right man for the job! Reiss talked about guesting at a Jem convention over Zoom more recently. Newark, asked if the actors changed their delivery to be more or less cartoony, recalled that voice director Wally Burr wanted the characters to feel like the viewers’ older sisters, to perform in their natural voices. This was a really nice balance for a panel: knowledgeable fan not nervous with a microphone asking questions, toy and cartoon people answering. (Fun: no Jem toys have been produced since the late 1980s, but a few days after JoeFest, the Loyal Subjects announced two new Jem dolls exclusively for Comic-Con International in San Diego, a few weeks hence.)

PANEL: DECLASSIFIED WITH STEVE REISS—–

Chris Murray is part of Joe Declassified, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that seeks to collect and showcase rare G.I. Joe items. At two Joe cons each year, Declassified sets up tables and displays for toy prototypes, pre-production artwork, and rare merchandise. The focus is on toys, but this year there were also some animation gems in the Declassified booth. Murray was going to talk with Hasbro senior design director Steve Reiss about one specific item, the Terror Drome, a big 1986 playset. (In fact, Declassified had sponsored Reiss’s appearance.) Many Declassified panels have covered a broader theme, like “Dreadnoks,” so this felt different. The inciting event was collector and JoeFest dealer Justin Talton’s recent acquisition of about 20 Steve Reiss drawings from 1984 that show a one-week development process as Reiss originally ideated the Terror Drome. Talton introduced Reiss and added a few bits along the way. Murray introduced a slide, and Reiss reacted and explained it. I love this kind of panel. A whole hour to talk about one toy, with art we’ve never seen! [This paragraph has been slightly fact-checked, cf. Comments for more.]

I drew this in my sketchbook during the panel.

As I’d be skipping the 1pm panel with Seth Green, Matt Harvatine, and the work of Matt LeCroy and their new toy short film, “Cleanup Crue,” I headed out to the upper hallway, that expanded space for more dealer tables. Mark was covering many panels that I missed, so here’s a photo from him:

In the upper hallway, here’s dealer Pokemon Trainer Justin:

And here’s Star Wars Store:

Back down in the main hall, a gent named Tim (Facebook group: gijoe3dprnting) walked by with this scaled-down version of the Defiant Shuttle Launch Complex that he’d made, and had Steve Reiss autograph. I didn’t witness the interaction, but I imagine Reiss was tickled.

Passed Hans Chow again, this time with his pal, Gazz.

At some point, Seth Green got on the PA and his partner threw out some glider toys. Perhaps someone else who was following this can clarify in the comments.

At 2pm was Carson Mataxis’ Operation: Recall panel with (left to right) Mark Pennington, Doug Hart, Mark Gerwig (of Mark 2 Toys), Carson himself, and Ron Rudat. I get all of O:R’s updates, and I attended the O:R panel last year, so I was okay with missing this. Mataxis always has a great slideshow, shares credit with his collaborators, and gets people talking, so I knew it would be great. This was to be a big update on the last few months of Operation: Recall action figures, another of these remarkable indie lines of G.I. Joe-like toys, in this case, made mostly by G.I. Joe alums based on ideas submitted by fans.

Also remarkable is that Mataxis brought Pennington, Hart, Rudat, and Larry Hama to the convention on his company’s dime. This is an under-reported aspect of conventions. Yes, many cons have a guest list and are paying for those guests’ flights and accommodations. Yet sometimes a con’s website or flyer will have an additional tag by a guest’s photo, like “Sponsored/Presented by” and then the name of a company. The trade-off is that the guest, or in this case, guests, sit not at a regular table or booth, but at that company’s booth. To meet Mark Pennington, Doug Hart, Ron Rudat, and Larry Hama at this year’s JoeFest, you had to go to Mataxis’s Operation: Recall booth. (Just like how Steve and Carla Reiss’s appearances were sponsored by Joe Declassified.)

Here’s the line for Hama autographs. I tend to only post photos and not video, but this 17-second snippet works:

Here are some new O:R paint masters:

Carson Mataxis holds court at the Operation: Recall booth:

Moving on to other dealers, here’s Keith Davis, one of three proprietors of Free Range Collectibles of Raleigh, North Carolina. They don’t have a physical store, they just do cons:

Here’s a spread of heads for sale at Big Head Studios’ booth:

Here’s the Marauder booth and a few figures for sale:

Next to it is the Skeletron booth, no shot of the overall booth, but here are two close-ups:

That bearded guy above is Gyre Wolf, aka Gary “Goggles” Head, who I mentioned in Part One. Here are the Skeletron bad guys:

While I was walking around, I was missing the 3pm panel on Operation Monster Force. But here’s a photo of their booth:

The 4pm Super7 with Brian Flynn panel was a bit subdued as the company recently laid off some employees. Here’s a shot from the panel:

And two shots from the much scaled-back-from-last-year Super7 booth:

I missed the 5pm panel, Patriot Force USA, but did pop in long enough to get one photo:

Here’s a shot from the Patriot Force booth back in the con hall:

Three artists/designers seated in a row!

Toy package artist and figure color designer Adam Riches:

Toy designer Erik Arana:

(Later in the day, we passed in the hallway and talked about Kenner’s 1980s M.A.S.K. and the Loyal Subjects’ 2025 M.A.S.K. I haven’t seen Erik in years. He often has a thoughtful take on what makes a toy or toy line noteworthy.)

And comic book artist Jamie Sullivan:

A bit from the table of Savage Crucible:

Here’s what Mark Pennington had been working on for a bit, the Iron Grenadier with its original, unproduced helmet. I asked Mark to show me his phone, from where he was getting his reference. It was the post I did on the Iron Grenadier here at A Real American Book! some years back. Ha!

After their panels, Steve and Carla Reiss were at the Joe Declassified table. (I visited them at their home some years ago, where I interviewed Steve for my book. I borrowed a few of his paintings, my photographer shot them, and then I returned them.) It was nice to see these two here, and I grabbed my laptop to show both a chapter of my book, the one that starts with the Defiant and Steve’s artwork, of course! Later in the chapter is a photo circa 1985 of Steve and four other Hasbro folks in front of a helicopter that someone else contributed. Carla had never seen this. That’s a nice moment, to show someone a bit of history that they (or their husband) lived, but from a different angle.

Carla and I then spoke about her time in plush, and Hasbro’s office in New Jersey, where it kept the Knickerbocker team after acquiring that company. I don’t know anything about dolls or plush toys, but appreciated Carla Reiss saying that all plush toys start out as two-dimensional cuts. I didn’t fully remember what she said next, but it was fascinating, so via follow-up email I asked for a refresher. She responded:

Plush toy development is part geometry & basic math, familiarity with various fabrics, intuition, experimentation, experience, and plenty of patience! In a sense, a soft toy designer is his/her own engineer, providing not only a prototype, but a finished sewing pattern for production. With fabrics and notions, each type has its own “personality” with regards to stability, direction & amount of stretch, tactile feel, durability, etc. The pattern developed works best with the fabric specified by the designer. If the sourced fabric is changed, then the pattern must be altered to suit the new selection.

Also, they have cats and I have a cat, so we talked a little about pets.

The con hall would close at 6pm, and the scheduled Lobby Swap wouldn’t start until two hours later. But in fact, people started setting up in the upper hallway ten minutes before the con closed!

That’s Bobby (and, unpictured, Cherri) of Barnyard Flea Market, from Dallas, North Carolina. They wanted to claim this prime spot just off the swap hallway. It had a little breathing room and a counter. They brought at least six big storage bins of toys and a little sign with a QR code for their Venmo, so they were quite organized! I do not believe they were set up as dealers down in the convention proper, but were attendees by day and sellers by night!

Here are some toys for sale!

This might be a good place to mention that I only spent $5 today. A pack of 1994 Star Brigade paper napkins! Friday was about $50 in comic books. (How much would I spend Sunday?) Compared to a lot of folks, I must be doing JoeFest wrong! (I did buy three unproduced G.I. Joe figures at last year’s con, so I do know how to spend money.)

With the exhibit hall closed at 6pm, I stopped by the O:R booth and met up with Larry Hama. A bit earlier we’d made plans to get dinner right after the con closed for the day. While it’s fun to hang around a convention after closing time and slowly mlll around as people trudge back to the hotel lobby and their rooms, slowly figuring out plans, I definitively wanted dinner. And didn’t want to run into any big lines for getting to a restaurant 45 minutes later, which can happen if a few hundred people spill out of a convention center and all disperse towards food.

The Boll Weevil Cafe and Sweetery has a supreme advantage in that it’s right next door to the convention center. Also, the slices of cake are gigantic. Hama’s family just got a little bigger, so we talked about that, and politics, and a small thing he’s drawing for me which I’ll tell you about sooner or later. Hama got the pot roast, which he told me had been sold out the night before. I got the salmon. Hama’s a bit of a foodie. Half of his social media posts are what he’s eating or what he or his family have prepared for dinner. We were pretty full on our big portions of food and drink when our waitress knelt next to me and nodded her head to the right. The gentlemen at that other table wanted to buy me a drink.

This was funny. I’m sure they actually wanted to buy a drink for the actually famous editor/writer/artist/actor/raconteur, and not the guy with a podcast and a book no one’s read. I pointed to Larry and said “Oh, they probably meant him. He’s actually famous.” (And the funny thing is, I don’t think Larry think’s he’s famous.) She went to double check, and came back and said it was for both of us. That’s lovely, and maybe the first time a stranger has ever bought me a drink from afar. I’m going to break this up with a drawing:

Larry was only halfway through a stout, and I was saving room for giant cake, so this presented a dilemma. We wanted to be gracious, but we also weren’t sure what to order. I thought ahead: milk! Which would go great with my giant “Perfect Chocolate Cake.” They were out of milk. “How can you be a bakery that serves cake and not have milk?” asked Larry. The waitress explained that with all the recent heat, one of their refrigerators had broken. I could relate, my fridge at home had been broken for two weeks. (And would be fixed by the time I got back to Boston?) I’m not much of a drinker, and didn’t want to offend our generous benefactors, but what could I get that was fun and wouldn’t be too filling? Ginger ale? Root beer? Larry asked for a glass of wine. No wine. He started to puzzle this out, like I need something small in volume because I’m already full. The waitress suggested a carbonated spirit that tasted like… what was it? Cherry and lime? I’ve seen Hama order sake, and coffee, but fizzy fruit booze was not on my list of things I’d guess for him. But he also likes to try things.

A bit later we turned around to lift our drinks to that trio and nod our head in thanks. I asked our waitress if there was some way to get a really small piece of cake. She brought two halves. I ate one, while the other would make a fine snack two hours later.

Just outside, we passed a man holding a saxophone, getting ready to busk. I liked the look, here in front of this small, old building of a restaurant, on a not-at-all-busy street. I abstractly admired the man’s optimism. Larry asked “you play alto?” The guy replied “yeah, I play everything.” Larry: “I used to play.” The guy, miming his hands up and down, fingers twiddling: “You still think about playing?” Larry: “Yeah, my sax got stolen so I switched to guitar.” This was funny to me, that this recollection tracks back to the 1970s. I’d heard Larry say he could play alto sax before when he was auditioning for “Pacific Overtures,” but it always struck me as sarcasm, or I was hearing wrong. But no, it was real. How had I not asked about that before?

We headed back to the hotel, where Larry was going to turn in to retire early, having not slept much the night before. At other conventions he might have long gaps in his autograph-and-selfie line, when he can draw the sketches people have signed up for. But, Larry explained, at a dedicated G.I. Joe convention, or at least at this crowded one, the line never lets up, so there’s no time to draw. Usually that means drawing back in the hotel room after the con closes, maybe even staying up late. I don’t think Hama is as interested in doing that as he used to be, and Mark Pennington remarked to me something like “I don’t bring any work with me back to the hotel room!” Hama might even, this weekend, not get through any sketches at all, and do them all in the weeks after the con, and mail them out from New York. This also seemed novel, as I thought he’d previously not wanted the responsibility — hand someone a sketch at the end of the convention, get paid, simple. But days later, can you read the handwriting for their address/will the post office lose the mail/is it a drag to do a con sketch long after a con?

Lobby Swap was underway in the hallway where the hotel becomes the convention center. Actually, the JoeFest Lobby Swap was formally named the Aaron Detrick Memorial Swap on the convention schedule, henceforth…

I headed past it to the official panel room for a celebration of life.

ROMAFEST: A CELEBRATION OF LIFE—–
From left to right, Skeletron’s Mark O’Byrne, Grindhouse Toys’ Chris Scott, ROMA Collectibles and The Toy Department’s Kenny Koepnick, Skeletron’s Ben Conway, RaginSpoon’s Spoon, and Callsign: Longbow’s Troy McKie.

Skeletron’s Ben Conway MCed, with five other toy makers/toy collectors/friends of the departed sitting up front and taking turns on the mic. Detrick’s wife Sara stood to the side. They showed photos from Aaron Detrick’s life, and told the story of making him into an action figure. It was only one year ago that he told many of these same people of his advanced cancer diagnosis, at this very convention. It was only seven months ago that he and Sara renewed their vows in front of all of these same people. It was only five months ago that he died. And I think this was the first time many of these people had been in the same room together, or the second, as there was a gathering in Ohio in January, I think.

This all makes you think about your own mortality. After Gary “Goggles” Head died, there was a wake at a bar at the next G.I. Joe convention. And now, another key part of the collector community was gone. Ten years ago Gary was in his 30s, here, Detrick was in his 40s. I’m in my 40s. A lot of us are.

I only made it to the second half of the memorial service, but what I saw was moving and beautiful. One year ago, Detrick’s friends started planning: pick a code name and design a costume that would match his personality, scan his face (or the part without a beard), sculpt that head, select a color scheme, commission a package painting by artist Doug Hart, and make an action figure out of Detrick for the Skeletron line. And somehow keep it a secret! Ben Conway said something like we were going to put this figure in his hand before he died, we had to hurry, and also this was something we could do to keep him afloat during this difficult year as we started revealing the project to him.

A slideshow showed some test heads, the final color scheme and a prototype of the figure. In the audience was Doug Hart, so it was particularly lovely when Hart’s art for this action figure, codenamed “Yeti,” was revealed. Conway explained the fun and tortured logic that led all these long-distance collaborators to that, which turned out to be a great coincidence, as “Yeti” was an old nickname of Detrick’s, and he’d in fact made a cartoon yeti into the ROMA mascot. With the long lead time for action figure production, the Yeti figure won’t arrive at retail for awhile, but it’s a remarkable tribute that this beloved man who put so much effort into toys — he opened his own store! He was a mega collector! — will be a canonical part of the Skeletron toy line, made by his closest loved ones. The icing on the cake was Koepnick revealing a leg tattoo of that Doug Hart painting!

Here’s the other card I drew of Aaron. He’d been a Hellboy fan, so I was thinking a little about how Mike Mignola composes his covers.

Off to the right were giant bags of popcorn and a dozen pizzas. The celebration of life was well attended. After it ended, James Hitchcock, easily identifiable by his orange mohawk (a la Ninja Force Zartan) took over the AV set-up and encouraged karaoke participants to stay. It was time for…

COLD SLITHER KARAOKE——

Brian Cummings, voice of Dr. Mindbender, did a song. Tough act to follow! Then some other folks:

Wait, is that long-lost G.I. Joe fan and former convention-mainstay James Kavanaugh, Jr.? Why yes, yes it is! Singing L.A. Guns, I think.

I did a song that went over pretty well, a little ‘80s gem no one would think to perform at karaoke. In fact, maybe no one has, as there are no instrumental-with-lyrics versions on YouTube, so I planned ahead — I pointed Hitchcock to the highest quality music-only version I knew of, and had already printed out the lyrics for myself. Mark shot the whole thing, here’s a screen cap composite:

Even with the lyrics I was only so-so on them, so imagine my surprise when an enthusiastic gent on the left side of the room was singing along and clearly knew all the lyrics. Ordinarily I don’t ask for backup, but perhaps in the spirit of the convention and its Latin root or I’m just mellowing with age, I waved him over to sing with me for the second verse.

A few songs later this same man, Jimmy Johnson, got up to do “Don’t Stop Believin’” , and hit every note.

A glance at the JoeFest website tells me Mr. Johnson is in the JoeFest Hall of Fame, so here’s another reminder that as many people as I know in the Joe community, there are still many I don’t!

For the Talking Joe podcast, host Mark records funny jingles. One, for example, pairs the music of Adele’s “Skyfall” with lyrics about Skybound and its G.I. Joe comics. Another rewrites “The Rainbow Connection” as a comment on the deluge of Baroness variant comic book covers. I had encouraged Mark to perform the latter, so he did. His YouTube version has some images, but also audio of his singing, so this wouldn’t technically be karaoke to an instrumental track. Rather, it was “sing along,” but in fact that just meant Mark had great back-up vocals. I don’t know if the crowd knew what was happening, despite my introduction! Here’s a small screencap:

Maybe if you watch a certain Talking Joe episode, you’ll catch the whole thing.

Then it was out to the main upper lobby of the Marriott for another two hours of socializing. Mark O’Byrne and Troy McKie and I talked about parenting and their kids. In a different combination, Mark (of Talking Joe, just-Mark), Roger Taft, Troy McKie and I talked about G.I. Joe trading cards, vacation trips we took as kids, and a Joe collector who charges too much when he sells.

Brian Kauffman, another friend of Aaron Derrick, brought around a bag of mystery nips. Apparently an Aaron Detrick drinking game was to each grab one, not look at it, and everyone drinks theirs at the same time. I was never one for drinking games, but it’s also fun to be in the spirit of things. And besides, I had two giant half-slices of cake in my gut! That could absorb any terrible “candy” booze. And terrible it was! Actually, the worst alcohol I have ever had in my life. Cheers, Aaron!

Just before midnight, several of us retired for the evening. Many more people stayed.

—-TO BE CONTINUED
In our next episode, Tim spends only four dollars at the convention, moderates a panel, and drinks more than a nip!