New York Comic Con 2025 – The A Real American Book! Report / Part 2 of 2: COLD SLITHER

In our last exciting episode, Tim sweated not getting into New York Comic Con 2025, talked with artist friends, and announced his ten-years-in-the-making comic book from BOOM! Studios, The Center Holds, written by Larry Hama and drawn by Mark Bright! Then he and writer/producer Nick Nadel got lunch with Janice Chiang off-site, and returned to the Javitz Center for the second half of the day!

Here’s a photo of the Javitz Center I didn’t include in Part One. Note the rain, all the traffic slowly hitting red lights and pulling over to drop people off, and all the people streaming toward the glass castle.

(Click all photos to enlarge.)

What a relief. The whole week had been building to the announcement at the BOOM! panel, to getting into NYCC, to getting to NY more broadly. Finally, it was past. I could relax. Larry Hama wouldn’t make dinner, so I didn’t have to leave the show early. There weren’t any panels that struck my fancy, so Nadel and I could walk around the con, just looking at cool stuff.

Only three dealers were selling back issues, a gradual change from past NYCCs. One dealer had what must have been 50 long boxes, all bagged and boarded comics, all priced at three dollars. I prefer one-dollar comics, but I hadn’t bought anything fun all day! Additionally, the novelty of anyone selling back issues in this ocean of publishers, artists, cosplayers, toys and video game merch was novel. I found some of Larry Hama’s 1990 Avengers issues, which I’ve long wanted to stumble onto.

Then Steve Flack and Mark Beazley walked up. Flack is an editor and longtime pal of Nadel’s who I see at cons or Nadel birthdays. Beazley I’d not met before. He’s a former Marvel reprint/collections editor and is now a brand writer at Hasbro. A particular area of focus is, wait for it, G.I. Joe! Many Classified action figure dossiers and HasLab promo videos are his work. I told both Flack and Beazley about The Center Holds. They’re G.I. Joe fans, so they understood.

Soon after, Frank Todaro walked up. He’s a con buddy from way back, maybe 2004, when two Transformers conventions had script readings with voice actors. I auditioned for one and got to play Atex, the Auto Exterminator, opposite Peter Cullen. Todaro was a nascent VO pro, I think doing some local radio. His “audition” at the next con was much better than everyone else’s and much shorter, but he wasn’t cast. (He was okay with that, as I recall.) But we’d see each other some summers and talk Transformers, and then he started getting anime dub work. More recently he’s nabbed high profile parts like Mugman in the Cuphead video game, Starscream in the Netflix Transformers: War for Cybertron trilogy, and Generation 1 Starscream in last year’s movie theater screening of the premiere 1984 Transformers episodes (the one with a round table of voice actors). We’d last talked at BotCon ’17, though his updates sometimes are in my Facebook feed. Todaro has recently provided a voice for Cobra Commander in Hasbro promo videos, taking on another key Chris Latta role. Since Todaro and I are both ‘80s kids, his career continues to thrill and surprise. I should note it’s not just that he can do the voice, it’s that he’s a great actor, and can emote with his voice. I told Todaro (and his pal, Magnius, who took this photo) about The Center Holds.

Several art dealers were in attendance, some with folders full of pages and covers, others with a glass case or two to promote online auctions. Here’s a bit of a Carl Potts/Jim Lee Punisher War Journal cover:

Nadel wanted to look in the Alex Ross pavilion. (When an exhibitor booth is shaped so that you can walk around in it, rather than just lean against a table, it’s a pavilion.) There were high quality prints of some Marvelocity paintings that had just finished a five-year tour, and original pages from I think that Marvel miniseries. (I mean the actual comic book called Marvel, from 2020. Not to be confused with The Marvels, Marvels Snapshots, Marvels X, or the original 1994 Marvels.) More fascinating than his gorgeous gouache (gouache, right?), was a page of Alex Ross pencil thumbnails. This stuff was all for sale for tens of thousands of dollars, and two well-dressed people spoke to us browsers as if we might seriously buy something. They were educating people, explaining what was what. I appreciated the lack of snobbery.

On the other side of the Ross gallery walls was work by Bill Sienkiewicz. That included some prints, and pages and the cover from his Batman: The Last Halloween issue. This was cool to witness, two hyper talented and important comics writer/artists, Jim Steranko and Sienkiewicz, having a moment:

I didn’t take many photos at the show. I was working, and not worrying about how visual and colorful this blog post would be. Cosplayers were everywhere, maybe one in every ten people. Two in particular got my attention:

I wanted to look at the Abrams booth, publisher of many great graphic novels and books about comics. Somewhere around was Rick Parker, who wrote and drew Drafted, and who talked at my store. I didn’t see him at the con, but he’s posted about being there. Next Nadel wanted to check the NECA booth. On display were a few Boss Fight products. My pals own that company, and had shown me some early Hellboy figure sketches. It was fun to see a sample in person. Boss Fight wasn’t in attendance, but had placed a few items on display with NECA:

It was 5pm. The main exhibit hall wouldn’t close until 7. As much as there was to see, we could head down to the lower level. Walking through the exhibitor booths is fun, but it’s also an endurance test. There are so many people, so many people walking too slowly in front of you, so many people walking in the other direction past you, so many people blocking each aisle “intersection” as they walk perpendicularly past you, and so many signs, banners, products, freebies, and displays to look at, that it takes focus to just walk, to just walk around in NYCC. Plus the sounds. Wafts of music, amplified sales people and podcasters, snatches of music or video game sound effect are bursting everywhere. In past years I enjoyed slowly ambulating through, with no target in sight, in a light daze, just taking it all in. But that wasn’t my intent this year.

We took the escalators down to Artist Alley (which was open one additional hour) and said hello to Joe Quinones. I gave him a few The Center Holds mini-prints to give out (reminder: Quinones is drawing three and a half covers for this series!), and asked how his con was going. It’s always interesting to know about the activity at an artist’s table — are prints selling? Do people want signatures or remarks? Are folks shelling out for head sketches or half-body poses? Anyone say anything nice? Any jerks? Is there now a long list of commissions that will get finished later that night back at the hotel? Quinones’ Batman ’89: Echoes miniseries was just released in hardcover, and Batman film producer Michael Uslan was upstairs somewhere, so I think Quinones had or would take a break at some point to walk around and try and meet Uslan. (I had read Uslan’s autobiography and attended his Batman panel at NYCC 2012 — meeting him sounds fun.)

Nadel and I walked over to Andrea Milana’s table to pick up my Cobra Commander sketch. It was amazing!

This photo doesn’t quite capture how great it is, and I’m sorry you can’t teleport to my home and gawk at it in person. Milana had outdone himself, and once again I felt lucky that such a hardworking talent was drawing my favorite comics. His art agent saw this whole exchange, me gasping and laughing aloud in shock at how Milana had drawn the hell out of this. Nadel and I got to tell both of them how smart Skybound was for hiring Milana, and how G.I. Joe is in such amazing artistic hands these days. Milana was humble.

Two aisles over was the artist Dani, who traveled from Greece to attend. She co-wrote and drew that rad wordless Jinx issue of G.I. Joe from April. Talking Joe host Mark and I interviewed her around then. While she answered questions on camera for someone else, I got to look through her three art portfolios. It was great to see pages from Skybound’s Universal Monsters: The Invisible Man, Vault’s Athanasia, and five pages plus the cover from G.I. Joe: Silent Missions – Jinx, all for sale.

Blank and white inks with stark contrasts of black and white, and weird/cool textures like this abounded:

I wanted to introduce myself in person and say thanks. Dani was kind, and appreciative of our interview.

(Elsewhere at NYCC, DC Comics announced a new monthly Batwoman series, from returning writer Greg Rucka and artist Dani! Wow!)

Behind us at another table was artist Cully Hamner. No one was talking to him. In a moment like this I get a funny feeling, half “Great! I can talk to this amazing talent!” mixed with “Idiots! Why aren’t you all crowding around this brilliant artist’s table?” Nadel and I looked at his work, prints and originals, and I diplomatically asked him why he was only doing covers these days. (You never know when someone is slowing down, taking care of a sick relative, isn’t being offered more work, or just wants to draw covers because they pay better.) He explained that he was partly through a miniseries with writer Greg Rucka (him again!) that would release from Image Comics next year. Excellent! I told him how much I liked his work, and used some art terms to sound smart.

Now it was 7pm and time to leave. We had tickets to a real concert with a fake G.I. Joe band. I turned around, having not realized how dramatic the Javitz expansion was. Most of the panels took place in this tower. Seemingly half of it is stairs, escalators, and elevators to get up and down!

The next hour was a dumb adventure, and I guess I needed to relearn the lesson not to try and catch a taxi or Uber in front of the Javitz Center, to instead walk a few blocks away from it. And then — hilarious! — instead of taking us to the pizza place near the Gramercy Theatre, our driver took us to one in Times Square. I don’t ever need to visit Times Square, and I certainly can walk there, so this stupid and funny sidetrack meant dinner would now be a rush. We did get pizza, just three doors up from the concert. And then it was a funny thrill to see this:

Again, this is a fake band, but it’s a real sign. But it’s now a real band, so the feeling was one of excitement, disbelief, and a little disorientation. The bouncer said to the ticket-scanner person “I think it’s a G.I. Joe thing.” I went over and gave them my five-sentence explanation.

No opening act, just some Stan Bush songs over the PA while we waited.

In the crowd were Frank Todaro and his pal Magnius, Steve Flack and Mark Beazley, and then these three guys I recognized:

Destro here handed me his card. Why, it’s John Cage of The Finest!

We ran downstairs to get merch before the show started. I bought Cold Slither’s debut (return?) album on CD, the self-titled Cold Slither.

Some context: In a single 1985 episode of G.I. Joe, there’s a fake Cobra band, portrayed by the Dreadnoks, lip syncing in dress-up. There’s just the one song, and it, the band, and episode are all called “Cold Slither.” It’s one of my favorites because it pokes fun at consumer and popular culture, and one day I’ll write a giant blog post about all those episodes.

There’s never been any official merchandise until this year, with some unexpected cloisinee pins and action figures. In July, four real people dressed up as the Dreadnoks dressing up as this fake band and played a live show near the big comics convention in San Diego. They played the one song, plus 10 more, having written and recorded an album’s worth of Cobra/Dreadnok-themed hard rock tracks! And now the band was playing its second show near NYCC! If I was going to trek all the way to New York for a single panel, why not do the most G.I. Joe thing possible, and with G.I. Joe fan Nick Nadel to boot?

There’s a fine line here that Hasbro, Reigning Phoenix Music, and the four (real) band members walking. According to the press releases, it’s a partnership and also a passion project — “Many of us have waited 40 years for this to happen but the wait is finally over,” says the label’s General Manager and Co-Founder. Everyone is in on the joke, extending the life of this one episode. At the same time, the Cold Slither section of the RPM website plays it straight, that this band formed in ’85, and “decades later, the band has clawed its way back from obscurity.” Further, “their sound is a brutal blend of heavy metal chaos and swamp-borne rebellion, fusing guttural guitars, venomous vocals, and a rhythm section forged in fire. Cold Slither isn’t here to entertain—they’re here to indoctrinate.”

I am pleased to report that the show and the musicianship was great. I would have been fine with a pretty good band, but these guys could sing, wail on guitar, and play drums. The songs were all tight. This did not feel dashed off. It was amazing that this was only their second time performing these live. The costumes were great. This quartet really did look like Cold Slither. One song was about the Fatal Fluffies, the monsters from the “Pyramid of Darkness” episodes, and then someone came out in a great Fatal Fluffies costume! And it was a really good costume!

The backing videos were also tight. Someone culled every Zartan and Dreadnok shot and sequence from every Sunbow episode of G.I. Joe, as well as the animated movie, and carefully edited them to match the songs. The one about Zartan being a master of disguise was backed by all the shots of Zartan tearing off a mask. Three of the songs featured not classic animation, but new artwork manipulated in After Effects, with slow pans of characters, debris, weapons, and laser blasts to create a kind of music video. (These were animated and edited by Costin Chioreanu, the internet tells me.) I would rate them as “pretty good,” but for what I’m assuming was a modest budget and a tight turnaround, they were amazing. It was really fun to see new artwork of Zartan and his gang!

Additionally, two songs featured live action footage of toys, like the Buzzer Classified figure alone on a beach, or a slow pan over the Terror Drome on a sandy hill, or this guy:

One or two songs made use of the Marvel Comics G.I. Joe issues #25 and #35 television ads and close-ups of Dreadnok-centric Marvel Comics covers and interior panels, and another song or two had pans across Hector Garrido Dreadnok toy packaging figures and vehicle artwork. A few Cobra Television Network show clips from “The Wrong Stuff” added to the idea that Cobra (and the Dreadnoks) had taken over, that this wasn’t just a rock show at a club, but part of something larger. And lastly, the show started and ended with a shot of Cobra Commander from one episode, with new dialogue (provided by the aforementioned Frank Todaro!), addressing Zartan on stage. Or us!

It felt like all four band members were fans. I appreciated their complete commitment. It’s one thing to play a live show, but another thing entirely to do so in costume, in character, singing novelty songs. I’m not sure this comparison will work for all of you, but Nadel said this was like Kaiju Big Battel, the live wrestling show.

He continued, that this wasn’t just music, it was a produced show, with actors, with performances. It was timed. It was part stand-up comedy, part play, and part live music show. I appreciated that the Dreadnok quartet never broke character, and the embedded “story” was that Cobra is mighty, the Dreadnoks are dangerous, and G.I. Joe is bad. (Is this how people feel at professional sporting events, rooting for their team and the ongoing history of its players and coaches?) I did wish that somehow the voice actor Zach Hoffman could have been involved. He’s appeared at a few conventions recently, so he still identifies with the role of the 1980s Zartan. Although he’s retired from acting, and I don’t know what budget constraints Hasbro and RPM had. But if Frank Todaro could do a few new bits of Cobra Commander, I couldn’t but help imagine new Zartan dialogue emanating from the screen. But that might have ruined the illusion, since “Zartan” was there on stage in the flesh. While I’m fan-casting, I’ll add that I wish the G.I. Joe animation producer Michael Charles Hill could have been present. He wrote the original episode, including the original “Cold Slither” song lyrics. I was pleased to see him and musician Robert J. Walsh were credited on-screen at show’s end (and in the album liner notes).

More than Kaiju Big Battel, the closest comparison is The Cybertonic Spree, a Canadian band of real musicians from other bands who cosplay in excellent Transformers costumes. They play songs from Transformers: The Movie, plus covers like the Power Rangers theme and “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” plus their own original songs that sound like ’80s power rock. I’ve seen them twice and I recommend it.

But the Cybertronic Spree are made up of Autobots, Decepticons, Quinitessions, and the Chaos Bringer himself, Unicron, so their “reality” is less real — Unicron isn’t about to devour Hot Rod on stage, and there isn’t a story that brings this rag tag bunch together. You are seeing a cosplay band, and it’s enough to know that. But Zartan was giving Torch, Buzzer, and Ripper a hard time on stage because that’s what Zartan does.

Of note, the original “Cold Slither” song is as much ’80s pop as it is ’80s rock. It is not hard rock, and it’s certainly not metal. This took a little getting used to as the band played it twice, for both the finale and the encore (and I listened again in my car the next day, on CD). I’ll add that at the San Diego show, real musician/singing voice of “Jem” Britta Phillips came out for that encore, I think the Jem theme? No such surprise here at the NYC show, but that’s okay because everything was amazing and the whole team outdid themselves. Even this sound guy and/or AV guy:

There’s one more layer here, and that is that Nadel took me to see Toto and Men at Work this summer. These are real bands with excellent musicians, but they are also known for a handful of radio hits and some might consider the bands cheesy. I certainly went into that show thinking “yeah, I’ll sing along to ‘Africa’ and ‘Down Under,'” but that evening transformed into a powerful experience. Those songs took on a greater significance for being recreated right in front of us by hard-working pros on tour, with 5,000 people around us singing and cheering along. (And this is why you should go see live music.)

But this blog post is about my big BOOM! Studios news — a new Larry Hama and Mark Bright comic I put together! And a Dreadnok band playing G.I. Joe music! Let’s get back to that with a few wrap-up photos. On the way out I spied the Gramercy Theatre’s fall schedule. One more reminder that this fake band was real, and it hadn’t been a trick.

One more glimpse of this cool, excellent band:

It was only 10:20pm! We’d had a long day, and both noted what a tight show it had been — 75 minutes, no opener, no slow interlude, no long wait for an encore, no technical mistakes. And what a relief it was we didn’t have one more thing to attend, like a late party. Nick Nadel caught a ride back to Brooklyn and I headed west by foot to decompress from the day, back to my hotel. And because I can’t go anywhere without my favorite brands reminding me of their existence, as I walked back to the hotel, I passed the grand Home Depot on West 23rd Street, which from 1986 to about 2004 was Hasbro’s giant NYC showroom/meeting space.

POSTSCRIPT/SUNDAY—–

Nick Nadel attended NYCC the next day as well, and sent me photos from Hasbro’s booth. Here’s one:

By coincidence, BOOM! Studios Publisher Michael Kelly and I were on the same train back to Massachusetts. Heading north, still buzzing from Saturday, I pulled out my laptop and noted that the BOOM! panel was covered by Comics Beat, a major comic book news websites. The article mentioned all the announcements, including my name and The Center Holds. Neat. It also got the title wrong, ha! I offered a correction in the comments, and the Beat fixed the article. Also, a pal on Facebook got the title wrong. I also offered a correction there, and it got fixed. (These were funny because finalizing the title of our book has been its own kind of adventure.)

In all, this was a successful New York Comic Con and a worthy return to this event I hadn’t attended in eight years. I know this is a G.I. Joe blog about my G.I. Joe book, but I’ll have another update or two as we get closer to soliciting and then publishing The Center Holds, a comic by a G.I. Joe writer and G.I. Joe artist.

For my 2024 remembrance of Mark “M.D.” “Doc” Bright, go here.