*** BIG NEWS I’VE WAITING TEN YEARS TO ANNOUNCE! ***
I don’t want to bury the lede here, since my con reports are long. My comic book is being published by BOOM! and it’s written and drawn by Larry Hama and Mark Bright!
And yes, that is a big surprise for you, dear reader.
Let’s rewind. That comic book will be a four-issue miniseries. It’s been in the works for a long time, but now it’s finished. You might note that Mark Bright died in March 2024, so he won’t be a part of the promotional process, but Bright did pencil and ink the whole thing. It’s creator-owned — Larry Hama and Mark Bright/now the Estate of Mark D. Bright own it. Hama and I pitched the book in January of this year, and for many months there was an idea we’d announce at NYCC, but that only became clear to me in the last few weeks. I hadn’t planned on attending until I realized how much I wanted to, for some closure on this long development. But Saturday or 4-day NYCC passes have been sold out for awhile. Between StubHub, eBay, a guy on a bus from Newark that was five hours late to the Javitz Center, a borrowed pass from a friend, and a lot of stress, I did get into New York Comic Con. And I had a great time.
INTRO—–
A little context: people might think that NYCC is as old at Comic Con International (the actual name of San Diego Comic-Con). It is not. Whereas San Diego is 50 years old, the late ‘90s and 2000s had only small, regional comic book conventions in New York City. I went to several. One was in a church basement. (Herb Trimpe was there!) One was on a second floor function room. (Christopher Moeller was there!) The first big, actual New York Comic Con was 2006. It took up only part of the Javitz Center, and attendance was so high, the fire marshal froze entry halfway through the day. My friend Nick Nadel and I attended. This was February, it was cold. The other half of the space was a something like a dental convention or a staffing agency convention. Nick and I attended the next three years, and the con got a little bigger. The show moved to the fall, took over the whole convention center, and exploded. Along the way, cosplay culture in America proliferated.
I went in 2012 and 2014, but rehabbing and running my comic book store meant the luster of a big city con was gone. Traveling to brave huge crowds for half-price graphic novels and one-dollar comics didn’t have the same appeal. But in 2017, I went back to NYCC. My wife was in school, living in New York, so I could visit her. Plus I could attend NYCC as a retailer! Diamond Comic Distributors held an annual retailer breakfast with some publisher presentations. Walking the con floor visiting friends in Artist Alley felt new after a few years off. But I didn’t need to return a year later, despite Nadel’s encouragement, and then the pandemic hit, which meant no cons for a year or two. And now I’ve been focusing on G.I. Joe conventions for this G.I. Joe history book I’m writing. NYCC was not urgent. But then it was.
It’s been eight years since I attended New York Comic Con. That’s a long stretch!
FRIDAY—–
I took the train Friday night. There was an argument to just head there early Saturday morning, but what if Amtrak was delayed? No, the guarantee for Saturday was to arrive Friday. Hey, my hotel was nautical-themed! Wait, the lobby is full of books? That’s more interesting! (Click all photos to enlarge.)
My hotel was 13 blocks south of the Javitz Center, and while the Javitz, at last, has a subway stop, walking the High Line is a real treat and something everyone who visits New York City should do. A century ago it was an elevated train track. Now it’s a public park that you can walk or jog, with grasses, flowers, and small trees, and some of the original metal rails still in place, all sitting 40 feet up. At 8am on a Saturday it was remarkably empty and quiet. I did this walk in ’17 when I last attended the con. And the northern terminus of the High Line is at the Javitz Center!
I tapped my borrowed badge. (Would it work? Where was the eBay dealer? Wait, his bus broke down in Newark? Am I an idiot for getting scammed? Con badges were physical items that needed to be “activated” online — no print-at-home tickets, no on-your-phone tickets.) The con wouldn’t open for an hour, but already hundreds of people were in the Queue Hall, a holding pen for attendees. There was no early entry for folks who pay extra (a hallmark of all three annual G.I. Joe cons I attend). No, there were just all of these people ahead of me:
and these people behind me:
And then by the time the line started moving, the whole queue population had doubled.
Say, these people next to me are playing Uno!
Also, three people ahead of me, two people behind me, and two people next to me were reading books! About one in every fifteen people was cosplaying. And many, many people were just talking with their friends and neighbors. It was not a stressful line, it was pleasant and fun.
At 9:50, the line moved, and slowly, several thousand people headed to four escalators to the main con floor. I headed straight for Artist Alley, which was thankfully not crowded. Here’s Andrea Milana, artist of Cobra Commander and G.I. Joe—
Milana flew from Italy, and I mostly just wanted to say hello and thanks in person for him twice guesting on the podcast I co-host, Talking Joe. But I did have cash in my wallet, and thought it would be fun to get a drawing to match my Tom Reilly sketch. There had been an Energon Universe signing the night before at Midtown Comics, a big NYC shop, so I asked about that. Imagine being in Artist Alley all day Friday and then autographing elsewhere from 7pm to 9pm! On the other hand, so many writers and artists from Skybound’s G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Void Rivals comic books are only in the same room once or twice a year, so it must be nice for them. Milana’s English is great, and this (after last year’s NYCC) is only his second time in the States. I hope he can a) extend such a trip next time and see more of the city, if not America, and b) come to Boston and see (or sign at!!!) my store.
Here’s a bit of his sketchbook:
I wanted to say hello to Joshua Williamson (G.I. Joe comics writer, also, the current Superman run that I’m enjoying) and Tom Reilly (G.I. Joe artist), but they weren’t yet at their tables. I wanted to introduce myself to Hayden Sherman (artist of Into the Unbeing, Batman: Dark Patterns, and the top-selling Absolute Wonder Woman), but a table-sitter told me Sherman was on panels all day and wouldn’t be here until much later in the day. I was going to say hello to Lee Weeks (G.I. Joe artist, 1991) but he was drawing for and talking with someone. I bought a cover from him many years ago. There was a good chance he was going to do some official new G.I. Joe work in 2024, but it didn’t pan out. I wanted to give my thumbs up to that anyway, but also didn’t want to interrupt. I said hello to my longtime friend (and neighbor, back in Boston) Joe Quinones. He’s just finished up another killer Batman miniseries for DC, but more importantly for this blog post, is drawing covers for my BOOM! series!
I said hello to Nathan Fox, whose creator-owned The Weatherman you must read. Fox teaches comics at the SVA low residency grad program, has signed twice at my store, and is one of the smartest artists I know. Next I said hello to Jesse Lonergan, whose recent Drome is beautiful. Lonergan used to live in Boston and did a signing at my shop long ago. He moved away but all of his books look great and sell well at my shop. A splash of color here, works by Fox and Lonergan:
This is where a comic convention comes alive for me. Buying things and attending panels is fun, but I have enough comics, and what sticks with me are relationships. That might be a friend I’ve known for 23 years, or a guest on the podcast I met on Zoom last year.
It was also fun telling Lonergan and Fox, who both kinda know that I juggle many projects, that my newest project (as I pointed diagonally upward) was getting announced at a panel in an hour.
INTERLUDE—–
Left the con to meet Nadel outside to give him back his badge. Waited in the rain for the eBay guy who was bringing my badge. Turns out he was neither a scammer nor a flake. In fact, he refunded some of my eBay purchase. And it was cash! But while I stood with my umbrella, watching scalpers call out to passersby and cops direct pedestrians along busy 11th Avenue, Nadel headed in grab two seats for BOOM! It’s funny that after getting to New York 18 hours before the panel, I didn’t step back into the con with my own badge until 15 minutes before it!
CONTEXT ON BOOM! Studios – 20 Years, Here’s To The Future!—–
The plan for some months ago has been that Larry Hama, writer of our book, announce our book at NYCC. Great! Hama lives a short bus ride from the Javitz Center, so this didn’t involve airports or hotels. In truth, I also wanted to be on the panel, but I’m just the editor who put the project together. People in the audience aren’t there to see me. And BOOM! has big names to promote. I would be content with sitting in the front row, soaking it all in, a kind of victory lap after many years of pushing, improving, and fretting over this project. Most of all I wanted to take a photo of Larry making the announcement to send to Mark Bright’s family.
But just before the panel, as I was heading out of the rain and back into convention center, my phone told me that Larry Hama was sick and unfortunately skipping the con. No BOOM! panel, no signing at the Koch Comics table, no sketches for fans. (Also, no dinner with Larry that night.) This was bad news — our project’s headliner, absent! And symbolically, a disappointment — it’s a creator-owned book. This is half Larry’s baby. Mark wasn’t around, and I wanted someone who’d lived with the entire project to make the announcement. It had to be me. I walked faster. Suddenly, ahead of the escalators, I saw someone wearing a kilt. Michael Kelly! He’s Publisher at BOOM!, and a big part of why we pitched to BOOM! and only BOOM! Kelly was a VP at Hasbro for many years, where both Larry and I knew him from his work on IDW and Skybound comic books. I’d talked to him, both as a G.I. Joe fan and researcher, and also as a comic book store owner, at many conventions, including NYCC 2012 after My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic launched and sold like crazy. Michael Kelly is the person who said many years ago and many times after that as long as Larry Hama wanted to write G.I. Joe, he could. Here in the Javitz Center, I called out to Kelly and asked if I could sit in for Larry. He said yes. What a nice turn for this stressful week. I texted Larry.
Part of the novelty of all of this was that we were standing in the giant, four-story expansion of the Javitz Center. This empty photo doesn’t capture the hundreds of people in line for the four different panels that were all starting right then, at the same time, all next to each other, but the NYCC experience sure had leveled up.
Michael introduced me to BOOM’s Deputy Publisher Bryce Carlson, who’s been with the company for 18 years. I also met Director of Sales Josh Hayes, who said how excited he was when our project came in, to have something by Mark Bright at BOOM!. Kelly showed me the questions he had intended to ask Hama. My friend Nick Nadel texted that he’d secured two front row seats, did I get my badge, was I inside, where was I?
Panel: BOOM! Studios – 20 Years, Here’s To The Future!—–
There were about 70 people in the audience. Next door I think was George Lucas Talk Show podcast, in a room twice as big. A few times that crowd cheered and we could hear it through the wall, a fun reminder of just how many people were there overall, and how many great things where happening at once. (The Energon Universe panel would start just before our panel ended, and in a different world I would have rushed over there to get a scoop for the Quintesson War story and a cool freebie comic.) I said hello to Marjorie Liu, writer of Monstress and The Night Eaters, both top-selling books at my store. We both tried to place when we’d spoken before — she lives near my store and I’ve always wanted to get her in for a signing.
The rest of the panelists took their seats. Nick Nadel was in the front row, camera ready. Michael Kelly introduced himself and each panelist, and started with James Tynion. This was an opportunity for Tynion to talk about the beginnings of Something is Killing the Children, and Erica Slaughter’s bandana. Artist Werther Dell’Edera chimed in. G.I. Joe fans may recall he drew some Cobra for IDW, and I’ve loved his work since. (Also, the Batman Dylan Dog crossover.) Kelly then played an animated slide with the DC Black Label logo, which didn’t make sense — this was not the DC panel — and part of the SIKTC logo, but obscured by green vines, which revealed the Swamp Thing logo! I laughed aloud and the audience clapped. BOOM! and DC will collaborate on Swamp Thing is Killing the Children. Tynion said he’d been pitching this to DC EIC Marie Javins over and over, and at last the time was right.
Kelly moved onto Tini Howard. (I didn’t get to tell her that I liked her Krakoan Excalibur, but it was cool to share the stage.) Howard spoke about her new series, Marion Heretic. Issue #1 hit shelves three days prior, and if I hadn’t taken a train to New York, I would have read it at my shop by now! Her enthusiasm was infectious. Next up Kelly revealed that artist Jenny Frison had signed a deal with BOOM! to draw 100 covers for the publisher, and she talked about her approach. What a cool announcement. Tini Howard and Jenny Frison had to leave the panel early to be somewhere else. Bryce Carlson revealed that BOOM! had acquired the license to Jem and the Holograms, and would reprint the Kelly Thompson/Sophie Campbell run. Then he said that BOOM! also got My Little Pony. (I couldn’t help but wonder how IDW will do this coming year. It’s certainly strong with Godzilla, Star Trek, and Turtles, but losing two more Hasbro licenses might hurt.) Marjorie Liu talked about writing an upcoming BRZRKR series with vampires, and how it was a fun no-brainer to the take on the project, and how having two different kinds of immortals gave it a hook. Also, Garry Brown’s precise line work.
I took a photo of the crowd to send to Mark’s family.
Michael Kelly explained that Larry Hama had called in sick, and what a fascinating person he was, and that they had worked together previously. In Hama’s stead was me, and Kelly clicked over to a slide of our book:
I’ve been waiting years for this moment.
I’ve teased it a few times in my Year in Review, that I’m working on a secret project, but I’ve only told a handful of people about The Center Holds, primarily my wife, my therapist, and a few close friends who work in comic books. For all of you fine folks who listen to the Talking Joe podcast, read my posts here at A Real American Book!, have attended a panel of mine at Assembly Required or JoeFest of even the Boston Book Festival or the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, for all of my students who know I do something with G.I. Joe — one of the reasons my G.I. Joe history book has taken so long is The Center Holds, a 105-page comic book story.
I provided a little background, that I’m a fan of Hama and Bright’s work, particularly their G.I. Joe collaboration, and wanted to get them back together. And they could do whatever they wanted, and they came up with a superhero ensemble story. Hama can sell the concept better than me — it’s a real world take where the heroes do this as a job. Coloring the book, I am very pleased to announce, is Josh Burcham, who colored a hundred-plus incredible Transformers comics at IDW, and then, just before the end of that, drew (and colored) the Beast Wars series. And then I noticed Janice Chiang in the third to last row. Chiang is one of the first letterers whose handwriting I could identify — her lettering on the 1990 Ghost Rider series looked like nothing else. Let’s also not forget that she lettered the earliest issues of Transformers and invented the Aubobot and Decepticons’ particular word balloons — rectangles with triangular points, to set off their robotic voices. And Chiang lettered Mark Bright’s Iron Man run, so this is a bit of a reunion there, too. (Chiang still letters, for Archie Comics, Scholastic, and the Dubai-based Sandstorm Comics, which by the way had a big booth at the con and sponsored Artist Alley.)
It was great to see Chiang for several reasons. One, letterers don’t often attend conventions. She was here to meet up with Sandstorm. Two, we’ve been talking for years, but had never met in person. Just the week before the con was 20 emails, a dozen texts, and two phone calls as we fine-tuned the lettering in The Center Holds issue #1. I called her out from the stage and the audience applauded. (She and Larry go way back, so had he been in attendance, this would have been a fun hangout for them.)
Then I talked about why BOOM! is such a great partner for this project. Besides the Michael Kelly/Hasbro/G.I. Joe connection, BOOM! publishes great books, and as a store owner, I sell a lot of BOOM! books, referring to the people on stage. Plus, BOOM!’s deal is pretty good!
It felt great to finally talk about this project, and to represent both Larry Hama and Mark Bright, and Mark’s family. I mean, there’s a reason why my memorial post for Bright here at A Real American Book! was subtitled “Part One.” Because I had this in my back pocket!
(Hama and I traveled to New Jersey to attend Bright’s memorial service in April ’24, so this was a kind of bookend. Bright lived to see the end of his major contribution — penciling and inking the whole book — but I’ll always be aware that he’s not around to see the final cover, the title logo, to hold a printed copies, to maybe sign at a store.)
Kelly wrapped up by reminding everyone that this was Banned Book Week and that banning and challenging books goes against the First Amendment to the Constitution. His t-shirt was a clever take on this idea, too. He took four questions from the audience, including one from Nick Nadel, who teed me up to list more previous work by Larry Hama and Mark Bright. Someone dressed as a Lumberjane and who identified as a librarian asked about library access on digital devices to BOOM! titles. Apparently after Penguin Random House acquired BOOM! all those comics titles disappeared. Kelly replied that they were working on this. And someone else in the audience asked about knowing when a collaboration works, and Tynion talked about an early drawing by Werther Dell’Edera of Erica Slaughter near a gas pump and how he realized what great range Dell’Edera had, which opened up his sense of what he could write in the book. The panel ended, and Kelly encouraged attendees to visit the BOOM! booth (part of the PRH booth) for freebies. In front of the stage I said hello to our editor Tea Fougner, who I’d only spoken to via email and Zoom. She had had a The Center Holds mini poster printed up for the show which they’d be giving away down at the booth. I gave a big hug to Janice Chiang.
I introduced her to Nick Nadel, and then I noted the green roof and solar panels on top of the rest of the Javitz Center:
Chiang, Nadel, and I headed out into the rain to get lunch.
This was a good idea. I thought I should go to the BOOM! booth first and pick up some mini posters, I was also hungry and dazed, and Nick and Chiang insisted on food. I also didn’t want to leave the Javitz center — plenty of food options there, even if it was fast food or food trucks. I have a light anxiety about leaving a convention, that I’ll miss meeting someone important. (That’s part of why stepping out in the morning to get my proper pass felt so odd.) But Nick explained if we walked to Hudson Yards (an amazing monstrosity of development), we’d have more food options. It was raining. Oh, I forgot to mention, part of the stress of the weekend was the nor’easter about to hit the east coast. The weather had predicted almost no rain for Saturday, but a lot for Sunday. But the rain started early. I felt bad for everyone, particularly every cosplayer. That we found food one block from the Javitz, that Nadel knew we would, was novel — when we were attending NYCC in prior years, this part of Manhattan’s West Side had no places to eat. The scalpers who’d tantalized me earlier in the day were still right in front of the convention center. People were still streaming in and out of the underground entrance around the side, the front entrance, the VIP/ADA/guest entrance, the exit that was absolutely not also an entrance. Chiang had no umbrella and was getting rained on. But as we passed a city trash can, overflowing with drink cups and food packages, Chiang saw a tall, grey umbrella sticking up out of the pile. She wondered aloud “is that broken?”, grabbed it, and now all three of us had umbrellas.
Lunch was great, in a brightly lit, not-crowded sit-down fancy cafe. Chiang told us about meeting Larry Hama in the ’70s, all of the painting and photography techniques she’s mastered (lettering is just a day job), and a bit of her exercise routine. A few tables over was Chris Ryall, formerly wearer of many hats at IDW, and now co-founder and publisher at Syzygy Publishing, an Image Comics imprint. Way back at BotCon 2005 or so, I told him that besides Mark Bright’s four excellent Marvel Transformers covers (including the beloved painted one of Shockwave, “ALL ARE DEAD”) Bright hadn’t actually ever drawn any interior pages, and IDW should get him to. And so in 2006, Bright drew the Transformers Spotlight: Shockwave special. Here in 2025, I told Ryall about our announcement for The Center Holds, news that was now just an hour old.
We three headed back to the Javitz Center. Chiang split off to find the Sandstorm booth. Nadel and I went to BOOM!’s booth to pick up some mini-prints for The Center Holds, and ended up talking to Michael Kelly. We told him about our YouTube channel, Atomic Abe, asked about his convention schedule, and I thanked him again for hosting and letting me join the panel.
Nadel and I headed off to hit the exhibitor floor. It was only 3pm, still plenty of con left for Saturday!
—–To be continued!
In our next exciting episode, Tim talks to a Hasbro copywriter, a G.I. Joe voice actor, somehow ends up in Times Square, and sees a real fake G.I. Joe rock band!
A Real American Book! 