In our last episode, Tim bought astronaut napkins, serenaded a crowd of 40, and drank terrible booze.
[Part One/Thursday] [Part Two/Friday] [Part Three/Saturday]
Click all photos to enlarge. “Mark” with no last name is the host of Talking Joe, a podcast I co-host.
HOW MANY FLAGGS AT THE SHOW?—-
Before I start Sunday, let’s zoom in on one particular toy. Want to buy a USS Flagg aircraft carrier? Well, there were FOUR for sale at JoeFest! Maybe you just need the box front. It’s $300:
A few aisles over a different dealer was selling the whole USS Flagg for $2,800.
I asked about this at the end of the show, and the dealer was lowering the price to an even $2k because he didn’t want to take the big toy home with him:
Or, get this CAS (Collector Archive Services)-graded USS Flagg still-in-box for $14,500! CAS had a small booth. I’m not aware of this company, as my only knowledge of “slabbing” comics is pretty limited. Doing the same for toys is even less familiar, but when I walked by, the company rep was recording a video with an attendee about how he, the attendee, had brought a toy to them.
Lastly, this dealer had a Flagg for $24,000. The note read “100% sealed USS Flagg – only opened to verify contents.”
Wotta range!
SUNDAY——
No time to walk over to the main street in town, so I stayed close and ate downstairs at the hotel restaurant. After the buffet eggs of the previous day, which are about as good as every hotel buffet eggs ever, that there was no line for the omelet-maker at Augustino’s made breakfast feel like a splurge.
Had forgotten to photograph this amazing character the day before. It was the first thing you’d see entering the main con hall, whereas I kept entering from the side or rear.
The above life-size Zartan, blown up from the 3 3/4-inch scale, was made by viper6ix:
I wanted to hug the figure, (like that time I hugged the on-screen Optimus Prime vehicle at BotCon) but that was probably too much with its maker right there. But I also needed to reconcile the incredible scale, so I settled for shaking Zartan’s hand.
Let’s look at some toys for sale!
Ran into Chris Murray wearing his movie prop G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra jacket.
Oh, that’s a good reminder. From California, Propstore was running an online auction of costumes and props from the three live-action G.I. Joe movies. Mark and I were scheduled to do a live stream about it a few days later with G.I. Joe collector and Propstore VP Chuck Costas. We had connected him with Joe Declassified, so a few items had been shipped to JoeFest for display in the Joe Declassified booth, along with this poster:
Joe Declassified also had a few items of its own, acquired some years prior in a different auction. (That’s why Chris was casually wearing his jacket and not leaving it in a glass case or on a mannequin.)
Saw Ben Conway. Told him I’d appreciated his work the previous night.
Mark and I retreated to my room to go over questions for our panel. As we’ve done 215 podcast episodes together, we’ve interviewed Larry Hama once before, and I’ve interviewed him solo on other occasions, this wasn’t going to require much prep. Especially since we had no slideshow or extra audio component. But as with my Hama panel at a different show in November, and as with our 2022 interview, we wanted to ask new questions and not seek out familiar material, like “How did you get the job writing G.I. Joe in the first place?” and “tell us about the silent issue.” Those are fun, but are in many interviews and convention panel videos, so this took some planning to come up with other topics or new angles. We each came up with five questions. I figured we’d get through three or four each. Time flies during a convention panel.
Headed back down. Yet another line of 1980s-style, 3 3/4-inch action figures! Game company Solid Raven was previewing its Rise of Nexus toy line:
Some dealer portraits.
In the con room I finally said hello to author/researcher Dan Klingensmith, Jr.:
He brought some rad props, 2-up paint masters form the early 1980s:
Tim and Tammy Pendergrass from Fredericksburg, Virginia. They do a few shows, don’t have a brick and mortar. They’re mainly on eBay, and have sold there and in-person for 20 years.
Let’s look at some toys for sale!
PANEL: VOICE-OVER GAMES WITH BRIAN CUMMINGS
It’s the voice of Dr. Mindbender and hundreds of other characters in TV, film, and games! And a vocal coach who offers tutorials and courses. This was a treat. Because I interviewed Cummings for my book some years ago, I didn’t feel the need to hound him and ask G.I. Joe questions, nor was I disappointed that he wasn’t doing a traditional Q&A panel. Instead, he was running an informal workshop. I walked in a few minutes late, and found Cummings holding court with seven — just seven! — people in the audience. He had passed out a page of sample script lines, plus a few bits of paper with one-word cues on them, like “sneaky” or “distracted.” Cummings is a fast-talker who tells jokes and stories, and since he’s worked with everyone, and is very good at his job, anything he says is at least entertaining, if not downright informative. He riffed on Buddy Hackett, Daws Butler, what microphone he uses, working on Beauty and the Beast, getting paid for auditions where his recordings weren’t used, and most of all, character and motivation. Four of the audience members were just watching and didn’t want to participate, so me plus three made four, just four of us who got to try out some lines in various combinations of behavior.
It was fun, and was a reminder why, if you can, you must attend conventions. Reading blogs, listening to podcasts, practicing drawing/singing/playing/writing at home is one thing, but being in a real space with a real person and feeding off their energy is another. Cummings does these workshops at some conventions, and I think it’s safe to say three out of four of us were utter novices who shouldn’t go near an audition. One was pretty good, and — I couldn’t tell — was trying to break in or had already done some local VO campaigns. But for 40 minutes I felt like we were the most important talent that Cummings could work with. It was really fun, and while I know that for some folks the key, rare, mint condition toy or comic book they found at JoeFest was their highlight, this was probably my favorite single hour of the entire convention. Even better than my panel!
I was reminded that acting is a real craft, and there’s a big difference between me casually effecting a funny voice when I’m telling a story to friends versus reading someone else’s dialogue, performing it. Especially if they have suggestions and I’m to perform it a second and third time. That is a muscle I’ve barely flexed since 6th grade. Trying out some Cummings lines, I could either read the words and get them correct, or I could deliver them with the range of feelings he was suggesting, but I could not do both at the same time. Cold reads are hard!
After, when Cummings was back at his table signing autographs, I tried to get a snapshot of him. He was speaking with someone, and paused to pose for me, followed by a close-up where he leaned in to my camera. What a ham!
I set my alarm for 20 minutes before my panel was to start. This would jolt me out of any important conversation or buying spree.
This might be a good place to estimate the breakdown of what vendors were selling. Looking at a con map, I’d guess there were 150 vendors. Perhaps 65% of what was for sale was G.I. Joe toys and merchandise, 20% was Transformers, Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and TMNT, 5% was comics, and the rest was other things like pins, swords, and shirts. So it was fun to see a dealer that was all video games…
VGH Video Games and More, local to Augusta, Georgia. Does shows and fleas:
Joe’s Junkyard, Tampa, Florida:
Here’s the Grindhouse Toys booth, and some of their World War Hell figures.
James Hitchcock, who had hosted karaoke the night before, is from Southern Maryland. He sells toys as Vertigo Vintage Collectibles, and to the right of this, off-camera are many loose Joes and accessories. But Hitchcock’s day job, and his business, is Hitchcock Auto Works, hence a little car-themed decoration.
That machine gun/guitar he’s holding was something that Sgt. Slaughter owned in the 1980s. Hitchcock brought it to Slaughter this weekend, and said the wrestler looked it over for awhile, indeed remembering he had once had it, and then signed it.
Speaking of Sgt. Slaughter’s signature, here it is on a toy from later in the day:
Let’s look at some toys for sale!
And what was Mark Pennington drawing?
At noon was the panel for Bill Nedrov, Action Force author, which I missed. Since I had my own panel, and had already attended one this morning, if I was going to have time to walk the floor, something needed to give.
One of the comics dealers discounted his dollar books to two-for-one-dollar. I really like dollar bins, especially when the books are in great shape, or bagged and boarded. Fifty-cent bins are absolutely undeniable. I didn’t think I had room in my luggage to bring anything else home, so I flipped through a few boxes and limited myself to three comics books. But I needed to get to an even number, so I found one more. And this is how I spent two dollars and two dollars only on merch on the last day at JoeFest 2025.
My alarm went off. I ran back to my room to put down some stuff and pick up my audio recorder and notes, and headed back to the con room to fetch Larry Hama. We passed one particular dealer table and he stopped and sort of gawked in wonder. An entire vendor booth with nothing but little swords!, he remarked. Only at a G.I. Joe con. Like, at a general con, there’d at least be some guns or blasters!
I wanted to get a photo, but in leading our guest through the stimulating con hall, just about out of time, trying to message Mark that we were on our way but not knowing if he’d get the message, I did not. But separately, he did, and reminds me that the program listed this as Booth 154, belonging to Mary Claibourne:
Hama then noted how cool the Marauder action figures were, and their selling model — buy a base figure, then outfit it with gear and customize it to your liking. Maybe I’ll stop by their table later, he said. (He did.)
In the con room, the previous panel was wrapping up. One of the panelists apologized to me. They had run 15 minutes late, and into our time slot, as the panel before theirs had run late. No big deal, this is a pretty relaxed con. Also, as we had the final panel of the whole weekend, with attendance a little thinned out from the Saturday peak, and that Mark and I’ve interviewed Larry Hama before, I wasn’t feeling pressure to perform. If we went 45 minutes and not 59, so be it. Or we’d go 15 minutes late and no one would be bothered. We’d have another nice talk with Larry Hama and except for the half hour of prep and Mark bringing his audio gear, we wouldn’t sweat it. Mark pinned a lav to Hama and himself. I realized my backup audio had a dead battery and the spare was back in my room, and so set my phone to record. Mark got audio and video, and Pat Stewart was also recording with his phone, so we’d be good. (Turns out my phone stopped recording three minutes later, ha!)
PANEL: TALKING JOE WITH LARRY HAMA
Mark and I got a good hour out of the our less familiar material. Mark has turned this into an episode of Talking Joe, which I’ll link to at the end of this. I’ve had many meals with Hama, interviewed him solo, and now interviewed him twice with Mark. A few people have made kind comments about my/our interviews. I think lots of people have attended only-okay or not-great panel discussions at conventions, and a lot of that is down to the moderator. Maybe one day I’ll post a few paragraphs about my own approach to interviews.
We forgot to get a photo of the three of us in front of the JoeFest banner in the panel room, so a few minutes later we cut the line back at the Operation: Recall table and grabbed Hama for this:
With our panel over, there were only two hours left before the convention closed. It was now or never, take a few more photos, check out a few more panels, show my book to a few more people.
Here are some toys for sale!
I saw the hostess at Augustino’s walking through the convention with two co-workers. Later I saw two more. I like the idea that these five folks had something fun and overwhelming to look at, that they could get a glimpse of our vector on pop culture. Maybe the restaurant folks don’t pop over to the exhibit hall when it’s a dentist’s convention or a boat show. But one of the dealers in the front row by the entrance had an action figure his company had made that wasn’t Deadpool, but certainly looked like Deadpool. The hostess was thinking about buying it for someone she knew.
Here’s Page Wagner, manning the Joe Declassified booth. The reason that I don’t ever have photos in these con reports when I describe Joe Declassified (“like a traveling museum/rare toy prototypes, pre-production art, and obscure merchandise”) is that because many collectors loan items from personal collections — every Declassified con set-up is different — and some collectors don’t want their items photographed. There’s always a blanket “no photography [or video]” rule. Wagner and I stood in front of the Declassified banner, made from an original drawing by Rod Whigham of some not-G.I. Joe solders, which felt okay to depict. Wagner has an item or two that I might wish to photograph or scan for my book, so I made a note to follow up. He encouraged me, however many hard drive or cloud back-ups of my book I have, to have more.
Dealer Justin Talton, who sold me some art 10 years back at a Joe con, and who helped fill out some detail for Chapter 16, had never actually seen my book. Or the proper way of saying this is that after knowing Talton for all these years, I’ve never shown him a chapter. I forget who I’ve shown and who I haven’t, attending one or two cons a year for almost 15 years, minus two for the pandemic. Sometimes I see someone at a con but my laptop is back in my hotel room and we miss our opportunity, that kind of thing. But in the final hour of the convention, with Talton’s pal ready to watch his booth (Talton specializes in paperwork, catalogs, promotional posters and signage), we found an empty table and I showed him a chapter.
At 3:30pm some dealers were starting to pack up, and the exhibit hall had thinned out, but certainly people were still shopping in that final half hour. I find the end of conventions a little sad, the visual of this little city of commerce everyone has built, this giant picnic of money and merch and gawking and hugging, getting disassembled, is a bummer. Last year I stayed in the con hall for an hour conducting an interview while the whole place broke down around me, carts filled with boxes and storage bins rolling by. I didn’t even notice it! This year I resolved to not be there. Also, if I stayed, I’d get roped into helping someone, or at least I would talk their ear off and slow them down. Plus, I’d skipped lunch, so at 4pm I was faltering. So too had Mark, so we planned to head to Augustino’s after dropping a few things off at our rooms.
But first, I ran over to Francois Chau’s table. Earlier, I’d considered getting an autographed photo from him. Joe fans will know him as the voice of Quick-Kick, but he pops up all over the place. He plays a crime boss in the 2020 Birds of Prey/Harley Quinn movie, and I remember realizing that in the theater,hey, it’s Quick-Kick! Mr. Chau was already packing up, but was kind enough to make one more transaction and mug for Mark’s camera. I want to be respectful of actors and not presume that they want to perform a line of dialogue for me, or pose in-character with me. It was a small surprise that Chau put up his fists like the Shredder, or the Super Shredder, technically, and frowned at the camera. Here’s me trying to play along.
Augustino’s full dinner menu didn’t click in until 5, so I suggested a quick walk outside, away from the hotel, over to the main street to check out that barcade we’d skipped Friday. But first, Mark introduced me to a gent who walked past us in the hotel lobby. That was Rauli (roll the R), from Finland. He’d flown here, his first G.I. Joe convention, his first trip to the United States! He was more a comics guy than a toy guy, and showed us a photo of the Finnish comic that included “Silent Interlude” and a Special Missions issue (Finnish comics are longer than the American standard of 20 or 22 pages), which he’d had Larry Hama sign. He was to stay in the States for a full day after the con, to fly home Tuesday. I hope he saw more of Augusta, or some neat parks/museums/cafes beyond!
Mark and I headed out, and Simon Goodall joined us. It was hot, sunny, and humid. The con hall was over-air conditioned and inside we’d all been a little cold all weekend, but this swung in the opposite direction. The barcade was closed Sundays, so we could only look through the window and sort of make out skeeball and a something with lights, a screen, and a joystick. I couldn’t tell how many games, what kind, or what vintage. My preferred coin ops are all 1982-1992. Mark also noted a music festival happening in the city square, so we walked past that, and then I realized I hadn’t made time to stop in the 127-year old department store where I’d bought a hat the year before. It was closed Sundays and Mondays. I wonder if that nice shop cat was still around.
We passed a recently renovated restaurant, not yet open. I think this property was boarded up last year, so I took this photo to mark the change, that for all the vacant spaces, there was some rejuvenation (gentrification?) going on.
We got back to the hotel and Augustino’s at 5, and ordered food. Mark had chicken, Goodall ordered lasagna, and I tried the shrimp and grits. It was a nice bookend, to have talked to these two on Thursday over dinner just after I arrived, before the show started, and now at the end of the weekend, show over, my final meal. We were calmer, and looked back over a packed few days, what did you buy/what interesting tidbit did you learn/what’s your travel path home?
I had brought some 2021 and 2022 issues of the monthly G.I. Joe comic book to sell at the show. I’d even mentioned them at the start of our Larry Hama panel. Surely that was a prime audience — comics written by Hama, a crowd of people here for his responses. But in fact it was Simon Goodall, who’d flown on the same plane as Mark from Heathrow, who bought the comic books I had brought. Ha!
A bit later, Mark and I found the green room, which I guess we had been allowed to partake in since we were technically guests of the convention. It looked like it had been set up for the next event after JoeFest. From back home my wife had been texting me photos of our cat during the weekend. One was him sitting, looking over all his toys, which she captioned “You’re probably all wondering why I called you here today…” This was sort of in my head, so I took on a gruff voice, and for Mark’s camera, said to no one, “I’ve called you all here for a reason…”
And that’s as much as we got to use the green room.
After dinner we three headed up to Mark’s room to take a long break. I think we were there for 90 minutes. We sipped beverages. Mark showed us everything he’d bought, a suitcase and a half of toys old and new, toys sealed in the box and loose, to keep and to re-sell, plus comics and magazines. Plus two sketches in his sketchbook from artists in attendance. Then Mark got a text from Shane Simek, who was attending HeroesCon in Charlotte at the very same moment, with a picture of the G.I. Joe drawing Mark had asked Simek to get for him there. That other show had a great range of guests who have drawn and are drawing the G.I. Joe comic, including Chris Mooneyham. Mark was quite pleased to see a first glimpse of an inked Serpentor Khan on a blank cover version of G.I. Joe issue #301.
I headed to my room to do a little packing, and at 10pm headed down to the second floor lobby where major socializing amongst several groups of JoeFest vendors and attendees-still-here was well under way. And even though the convention was over, someone still pulled out a bin of toys, dumped it onto a table, and made money.
Since the vendors drive to the Marriott, they tend to bring snacks for the weekend, and drinks for these after-hours gatherings. Or they can easily drive down the street to buy more. A visual that cements this for me is a small cooler that someone has wheeled into the upper lobby area. It’s filled with ice and drinks.
Brian Sauer and I had plans to meet up at this time. He’s a great graphic designer, as noted particularly in my coverage of the convention he runs, which is called Assembly Required. My longtime book designer, Liz Sousa, has some other projects going on, so I asked Sauer to design a chapter of my book. We three had coordinated in the last few months, me getting assets for Chapter 4 to Sauer and them talking layout schemes. Liz designed an early version of that chapter some years back, but I’ve extended it, yanked images and added others. Sauer wanted to talk through the old one, and I showed him two other chapters for comparison. The design ethos of my G.I. Joe history book is a bit more conservative than Sauer’s signage for his convention, although that may be apples and oranges. Sousa has long said that the artwork and photos in my book are the stars, so the layout can take a back seat. Mark sat with Sauer and I, looking at some rare images from Chapters 15 and 16.
Carson Mataxis was talking with people and also holding his dog, who’d made the trip with him to the con.
I was going to say some goodbyes, finish packing, and call it a night, when Chris Murray encouraged me to not only stay, but have a drink. I’m not much of a drinker, and at cons I’m willing to socialize a little less in favor of a good night’s sleep, but with the con now over, all that would be required of me in the morning would be to wake up and catch a plane. In the air was a feeling that this time was precious. With the passing of Aaron Detrick, particularly with his family and friends sitting right here on these couches and chairs, staying a little longer was the thing to do. I could be a little tired the next day, I could sleep on the plane. But meeting one more new person, seated to my left, or seeing photos of Chris Neal’s toy and art collection, which I only vaguely knew about, was important.
Also, Kenny Koepnick pointed out that the apple juice-booze mixture in front of us was Detrick’s mother’s (grandmother’s?) recipe. This was a reasonable kind of peer pressure — stay later with your con-pals a little later and drink to the dead guy. And then Koepnick pulled out some pudding shots made with vodka.
This was not a frat house rager. This is guys in their 40s drinking White Claw and Miller Lite, plus some nips and shots, talking toys and what interesting things/people/sales crossed their paths that day. If we’d been at a loud bar, I would have fled. But an open, carpeted hotel area that’s all ours, where everyone’s nerding out and still comparing notes, was warm and relaxed. It felt like everyone knew everyone else, and since I’m a relative late-comer to Joe cons and the socializing part, I was surprised when the gent next to me, talking with me and Chris Neal about his own collection and how he stores it in his basement, introduced himself to us. Hadn’t these two known each other for years? No. Plenty of combinations of people here had, but plenty more didn’t. This was Joe Bailitz’s first JoeFest.
I told Neal and Bailitz about bidding for page 1 of issue #1 of G.I. Joe some years back and bailing — too rich for my blood — and my take on how online auctions feel different now. In seeing images of Neal’s collection I was reminded that he has an item I might wish to show in my book, so maybe I’ll ask for a photo later. At midnight I said my goodbyes, arranged for a morning shuttle to the airport, and went up to pack.
MONDAY—–
The teacher in me likes to explain things. The Marriott security guard waiting outside the hotel said he hadn’t gotten to walk through the con hall, so I gave him the three-minute explanation of JoeFest and G.I. Joe conventions in general. My main aim is to tell people that while it’s mostly toys, it’s not all toys, plus a variety of guests. Just then, Zartan voice actor Zack Hoffmann walked out to wait for his ride to the airport, making for a good exemplar. My other two main points in such a rundown are that G.I. Joe has changed over time, and that there are other conventions big and small throughout the year, throughout the country. I walked over to Hoffman and said a quick hello — we’d spoken briefly at JoeCon… 2015? No reason for him to remember. He said he’d be visiting family in Dallas next. As JoeFest was over and Hoffman was off the clock, I didn’t want to linger.
The shuttle took us both to AGS, where for the second year in a row, the little cafe’s refrigerator case offered slightly spoiled milk. I saw only one other con person near my gate, attendee Hans Chow, bound for Trinidad and Tobago, and then I boarded my plane. Funny that for the connecting flight to Delta’s hub in Atlanta I didn’t see any other people I recognized. But then on the plane, seated one row ahead of me, already boarded, was Larry Hama! He had taken the earlier airport shuttle from the Marriott and somehow I had missed him completely at the Augusta airport. I chuckled and we said hello.
An hour later, heading to our respective gates in ATL, I asked Hama about his convention sketch list. With so many comics to sign and selfies to pose for, he hadn’t gotten to draw any during the con itself. This is a contrast to other cons, where I’ve seen Larry chatting and signing half the time, and sketching the rest. But at a dedicated Joe con, he had remarked the day earlier, there’s little time to draw. So he’d be knocking out 20 sketches in the days ahead. We checked the departures screen, his layover was two hours. I said “You should start drawing right now,” to which he replied “Maybe I will!” (Later that night, with us both at our respective homes, me in Boston and him in New York, Hama sent me a jpeg of a thing he’d been planning to draw for me. I will tell you about that before the year is up.)
JoeFest 2025 was an incredible show. It was packed with dealers selling everything you’d want (plenty that I did not photograph!), a strong guest list and line-up of panels, wonderful food options and socializing, all in a two-hotels-in-one-plus-convention-hall complex next to a charming, walkable downtown. My buzz over this fun and fruitful weekend couldn’t last long, though, as I had to play catch-up at my store, start posting these blog articles, and mentally shift gears for another trip just four days later!
POST SCRIPTS—–
-Here’s our Larry Hama panel! [YouTube video] [YouTube audio] [Apple podcasts][Podbean][Spotify]
-My tiny interaction with Zartan voice actor Zack Hoffman would continue in a surprising way five days and one time zone later!
-To be continued in my next con report — onward to Dallas-Ft. Worth!
A Real American Book! 