In our last exciting episode [PART ONE], Tim surprisingly made it to Des Moines without incident! He saw friends, played games, ate food, and more! [Or skip to PART THREE!]
Click any photo to enlarge.
SATURDAY—–
In my hotel room, re-watched some of the Talking Joe interview with Phil Hester as a refresher. Ate breakfast, this time running into Chris Murray and Dan Musick by accident, and joined them. Outside was another unseasonably warm day.
The show officially opened at 10, but for the hour prior was this event in the panel room.
CARTOONS AND CEREAL—-
I missed this last year, and was happy to both get a bowl of sugar cereal and also take in some ’80s G.I. Joe animation with an appreciative audience. In terms of community, Cartoons and Cereal is right up there with every other element of Assembly Required. And there’s no admission, and the food is free! But in terms of presentation, Cartoons and Cereal is still the weak link at AR. The ceiling lights in the room are on, so the projection is pretty washed out, and the projector itself is the audio source with its tiny onboard speaker. But everyone in the front half of the room was quiet and respectful. They really were watching, and you really could hear. (Fun fact: G.I. Joe was a weekday show and not a Saturday morning one, but I certainly understand the theme of this free breakfast/indoor picnic.) I caught most of “The Viper” and the start of “Jungle Trap” before heading back to the hotel room for final prep.
Thanks to Midwest Vintage Toys for sponsoring Cartoons and Cereal — that’s a lot of milk, cereal, and donuts! Also, during one of the commercial breaks there was a clever live-action ad for their brick and mortar shop, a well-made 60-second video with a Back to the Future Theme. Here’s the room from the screen:
Back at the convention center and with ten minutes to go, 8 or 10 people were milling about waiting for the doors to open. I wondered how many hadn’t made it to the Friday Preview the day before, and if they were here with money to spend on specific toys, to get the best deals before the crowds arrived later. And I hoped there’d be crowds! With little fanfare, Brian Sauer emerged from behind the closed doors and said something like “come in.” I didn’t need to be first — I’d been in the room for hours the day before and would be moderating a panel (not quite a guest, but not just an attendee), yet I happened to be standing closest at that moment. I pumped both fists in the air as I walked through the doors and yelled “First!”
Walked the con floor a bit. The first panel started at 10:30, so I had a little time to look, take photos, and chat with Mike McGhie, who listens to Talking Joe. He showed me his custom-painted Joe action figures, which were incredible! McGhie paints them like models or pewter miniatures, layering up from dark to light. Find him on Instagram as ScaleModelJoes.
Besides being impressed with the actual technique above, a fun aspect of this is the mixing up of versions. That’s a later Spirit figure using his version 1 color scheme. Same for Beach Head there, that’s the version 2 figure with the version 1 colors. Neat!
Here’s what Phil Hester was working on:
PANEL #1 – SILENT INTERVIEWS
This would have been a keen line-up: Larry Hama, known for writing and breakdown-penciling the famous “Silent Interlude” issue ofG.I. Joe (plus writing a half dozen other wordless Joe stories), Ron Wagner, who penciled a wordless story in G.I. Joe Yearbook #3 plus a hard-to-find 6-pager in the Snake Eyes Declassified collection, and Phil Hester, who wrote and penciled the wordless G.I. Joe: Silent Missions – Beach Head out this past April. [Here’s Mark’s and my Talking Joe interview with him, audio-only or video]. Hama had to cancel his appearance at Assembly Required because of travel complications. This was a month into the US Federal government shutdown and a week into the FAA’s forced reduction in airplane flight traffic. A real loss for AR that such an anchor of a guest couldn’t be there to sign autographs and draw sketches, but in terms on our panel, interviewing two people might be easier than three, and I could more than fill 50 minutes with just Wagner and Hester. And I did!
Thanks to Brian Sauer for asking me to moderate! Fun fact: When he wasn’t answering a question during our panel, Phil Hester was drawing a Wild Bill head sketch on a blank cover. If you see photos from this panel and Hester is looking down, he’s drawing! From after the panel, here’s a zoom-in on a photo of that sketch in-process:
There weren’t as many people in the audience as a year ago when I moderated a panel with Hama and Wagner, but I think everyone had a good time. I tried to balance G.I. Joe and general-comics questions, and podcast Mark has turned my audio into an episode of Talking Joe, which you can listen to [here-soon-when the audio is edited]. Mike Irizary of What’s On Joe Mind kindly video recorded the panel, so Mark could post a video version as well, here, in a couple days. Thanks to Brian Sauer for inviting me onto the panel. I very much enjoy moderating panels (or being on them!), and between teaching comics classes, the podcast, my store, and this blog, and my book, it’s pretty established that I like talking about/writing about/interviewing about comic books.
BACK TO THE EXHIBIT HALL—–
But first, out in the hallway, here was a trio trying to solve the Fans in Command game. I would see this over and over again, individuals and families walking around the con, looking for the game stations, writing on these foldouts, and later, claiming their prizes. (I played later in the day, see below.)
For younger attendees, there was still the “kids'” game, to visit certain tables and collect Flag Point stamps to redeem for a price box. Here’s the as-yet-unfolded kids’ game pamphlet:
Later in the day I saw (but missed getting a photo of) a kid picking up his AR Recruit S.E.T. prize box at the Registration Table! (But I did get a photo of that last year.) I think it had a Classified toy and a comic book inside.
Back in the exhibit hall, The Dealt Hand had three tables. At one, Joel Roth was answering questions from this gent about the G.I. Joe Axis & Allies game.
Nearby, RaginSpoon showed off his Complex base pieces.
Podcast Mark had urged me to say hello to fellow Brit Stefan Brown. I think he attended JoeFest in June, but I managed not to meet him there. I took this photo as proof for Mark, noted the neat Action Force toys he’d brought to sell, and got three Action Force cross sell catalogs.
The Finest, a G.I. Joe costume club, was in rare form. Specifically, the 234th Tigerhawks, the Missouri and Kansas Garrison of The Finest. Each year they’ve attended AR they’ve brought more and more stuff.
Four or five members were in attendance, and not only were they dressed up, but they were making something–
Why, Serpentor, I suppose! Yes, you could step into their DNA scanner prop–
and step into the space behind it–
to examine all the neat details:
Nearby, Matthew Hernandez/Deadly Dioramas had on display his Rise of Nexus figures. I happened to be there when Ben Conway of Skeletron, no stranger to great 3 3/4-inch post-G.I. Joe action figures, was there. The two exchanged compliments.
Unrelated, somewhere at a dealer booth, here’s a toy for sale!
I didn’t take many photos of toys for sale, and you may have noticed in Part 1 of this report none of these fun toy close-up photos. Every con is different. There certainly were great toys to photograph, I just didn’t focus much on that.
I took note of some of the custom contest. There were three categories: Individual Figure (any scale), Vehicle/Diorama (any scale), and Kids Creation (ages 14 and under).
Here’s one by Mikey Kukovich:
Out of focus on the left of that one is the 1994 Joseph Colton “G.I. Joe” figure made up in the 6-inch Classified scale, which I thought was fun but didn’t get a proper photo of.
Here are two that I didn’t check the name:
Here’s one by Jason Kerest, a take on one of the unreleased figures from 1995:
From two dealers I then bought a few small Transformers (mint sealed, from the last ten years) for a local end-of-year toy drive back home, and in running back to the hotel to deposit them I saw a Dr. Mindbender cosplayer and Paul Panfalone from trivia the night before. You know you have G.I. Joe on the brain when the object next to them presents as Airtight rather than a fire hydrant.
ASSAULT ON COBRA ISLAND—–
Back in the con hall I had some time until the next panel, so I started the Fans in Command: Assault on Cobra Island game. Here’s part of the inside of the foldout map/game card, which you could grab at the registration table. Note how carefully Brian Sauer recreated the font and treatment of the 1986 “Live The Adventure” display font:
When you stepped into the exhibit hall, there was this signage greeting you, printed on four levels of foam core, for a slight sense of depth:
Station #1 was at the Tigerhawks’ booth. After solving the puzzle on that white sheet of paper on the right, you’d fill in some info on the foldout. Partly because I was overwhelmed and buzzing and tired, and partly because I’m not great at puzzles, I needed a clue. Chris R., pictured here as a torso, helped.
I solved Objective #1, but would come back to the rest of the game a bit later.
PANEL #2: JOE DECLASSIFIED—–
Patrick Stewart and Chris Murray might be familiar to readers of this blog. They are G.I. Joe toy experts and reading every chapter of my G.I. Joe my history book for clarity and fact-checks. While they aren’t the only members of Joe Declassified (there are another five or ten), they are the most visible, and I always enjoy their panels. Smartly, they try to link each presentation with that convention’s theme, and have run slideshows at both JoeFest and Assembly Required.
As AR’s main theme and the Fans in Command game was ostensibly about sending Joes to Cobra Island (again, like the Live The Adventure game/contest in 1986), this presentation focused on one specific product: Guy Cassaday’s Cobra Island playset pitch, an unproduced toy from around 1986. I cover this in my book, so I didn’t think I’d learn anything vitally new, but every Declass panel proves that wrong with Stewart and Murray’s careful examination, context, and follow-ups. This was actually a redo of a panel from many years earlier — they try not to repeat — but with newly added info after they queried Cassaday, as recently as a few weeks ago!
Heading up the hallway, I spoke with CommanderCodyArt, who listens to Talking Joe. We compared notes on how good the Skybound G.I. Joe comic books are right now. I didn’t get a photo, but stopped by Cody’s table later for one:
BACK TO THE EXHIBIT HALL—–
In the main room, Ron Wagner was drawing in someone’s small notebook:
The Dealt Hand was going over the G.I. Joe: Mission Critical miniatures game with someone, who I realized was Becky Clemens, who’d joined the card game the previous night:
And I tried out the next Assault on Cobra Island mission. At the #2 station (near The Dealt Hand’s three tables) I saw Justin Talton was already working on it, so we teamed up and solved the puzzle faster, an actual jigsaw puzzle. It revealed a certain letter code, which we wrote on our map/game foldouts. Another station was next to the Declassified booth. Each one had a piece of art matching it to the map. For example, on the map was the “Warehouse,” guarded by Scrap-Iron:
And so here’s the warehouse–
And then in the story, I’m in the warehouse, solving this puzzle to get a few more code letters to write out on the back of my map/the puzzle card:
I’m not getting too much detail with the five Objectives because I don’t want to spoil anything in case CNI uses some of this next year, but in broad strokes, one was a word jumble, another was an actual jigsaw puzzle, two involved QR codes and solving something on your smartphone, and this one above involved moving physical pieces around to find a code.
I always forget about the coloring contest. Near the Skeletron booth (and Skeletron’s Ben Conway would pick the winners in the final hour of the show) was this scene, kids of all ages coloring a Skeletron character and making an informal art gallery on the wall. This is another small way in which Assembly Required opens up for little kids who might be getting dragged around by their collector parents.
At 2:30, Travis Webber pulled tickets for the second raffle drawing. This photo doesn’t quite capture how many people quieted down and huddled around:
Here’s Codename Iowa’s Chad Baker, convention copywriter. Behind him on that table are a bunch of raffle prizes.
After solving all five Assault on Cobra Island mission/puzzles, I returned to the Registration Desk to prove I had completed them, and received a white envelope. Inside was a letter from Hawk, which teased out one more Objective. I’ve only ever taken part in two or three scavenger hunts in my life, and they’re always fun. After solving this sixth Objective — a more complicated word jumble — I headed to the final station, a locked safe (yes, a locked safe!) to claim my prize.
Before I show you what’s in the safe, let’s look at what else was on that same table: a red cloth covering something to be revealed at the end of the show (yes, I will reveal it), a box for a raffle ticket (separate from the “regular” raffles that you could buy tickets for), and this custom boxed set:
This took some figuring out. The box looked like the 1986 Toys R Us exclusive “Mission: Brazil” set, but it was larger, it had different figures, and these figures were production ones. That is, they were “regular/common” G.I. Joe figures sold in stores in the ’80s, not prototypes (“pre-production”) or fan-made customs. These were used/old, but looked to be in great shape. And the box was all-new. Again, this was a custom box, and I noted that these were the Joes who were on the mission, who fans picked in the summer and fall to be part of the “Fans in Command: Assault on Cobra Island” story. Let’s flash back to JoeFest ’25 in Augusta, six months prior:
There’s Brian Sauer at a different convention, selling AR shirts, generally promoting AR, and specifically starting the “storyline” that we were “playing” at AR ’25 — we were engaging on this Assault on Cobra Island. And this map was now the back of the Assault on Cobra Island game foldout. (Although Sauer, ever the tinkerer, had slightly changed the Cobra character art since the summer, because why makes things easy?) And these Joes in the custom box set were the same Joes on those pins from dinner the previous night. And jumping to the hallway outside the convention room, these were the poster-size headshot portraits (that I’ve used as the opening title image of each of these blog posts). So the story of Assault of Cobra Island is that these specific Joes were on this mission to stop those specific Cobra agents.
With the final puzzle solved, I opened the safe…
—–To Be Continued!
In our next exciting episode, Tim pulls his prize from the safe, eats pizza, and then later on plays video games! Or jump back to [Part One]!
A Real American Book! 