Catch up on Part One/Thursday and Friday or Part Two/Saturday.
SUNDAY—–
*** Reminder: “Mark” (no last name) is host and producer of Talking Joe, a weekly podcast that I co-host. He, plus family member Peter and fellow fan Simon, flew to JoeFest from England. These are generally the only people to whom I refer by first name only. ***
*** Click all photos to enlarge. ***
Realizing I hadn’t been outside in over 24 hours, and wanting a little variety in my food after so many meals at D’Agostino’s, I walked to New Moon Cafe on the main drag. It was hot and humid and I was immediately sweating, so I embraced it by sitting outside. My breakfast sandwich and fruit smoothie were great, and for some reason I also got a muffin — too much food! I had been hungry enough to set out for breakfast alone, but was texting with pals Peter and Simon (who also ate at Blue Moon, but 20 minutes after) and Mark (who was maybe going to skip, or maybe Peter and Simon would bring him food.)
The 125+ year-old department store Reubens next door wasn’t open on Sundays, so I could neither check on the shop cat nor buy another hat. The book store was open, but it was now past 10am, so I wanted to get back. Vendors could enter at 10am, and early admission was 11am. I like that first hour to say good morning to people and look around before any attendees fill up the space. General admission would start at noon.
Many conventions and festivals start an hour later on the Sunday than they do the Saturday. I imagine a small part of this is church, people going to church, or that historically businesses and restaurants in America were closed on Sundays or opened late because of church, and so conventions might follow suit. But also, convention and festival organizers have probably been up late on Saturday night, or know that dealers and attendees were, so starting later on Sunday offers a small grace period. This was a relief for me, that I could sleep in after my own late night, and not rush through breakfast.
On the way to the convention center, I saw a gent park and get out of a car. He was wearing a G.I. Joe t-shirt — images from Silent Interlude — and walking my same direction. We started talking, and he remembered I am writing a G.I. Joe history book. This would be Kris Bingham, who I think I showed my book to at JoeCon back in 2018. I told him about The Center Holds and he was interested, so perhaps I could follow up by email after the convention.
And what’s a toy convention without toys? Somewhere inside the convention center, here were some toys that were for sale!
Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts, my wife checked our mailbox and sent me a photo. The Heritage Auctions catalog consisting of a chunk of Derryl DePreist’s G.I. Joe collection (as well as some of Brian Wilk’s and Chris Murray’s) had arrived. Good synchronicity for being at the Heritage booth (and DePriest and Wilk there the previous day).
In the upper hallway, I talked to two of the guys behind Brutal Realm. This is a cool action figure line I wasn’t aware of. If Operation: Recall and Callsign: Longbow are G.I. Joe-ish figures made by G.I. Joe fans, I would guess that Brutal Realm is made by Conan and Masters of the Universe fans, as there are some fun almosts and analogues. This fellow isn’t Conan, but you might pretend he is:
Let’s jump back in time for some items that were for sale on Friday (that I didn’t post in Part One):
Back to Sunday — still in the upper hallway, here’s Bullfrog’s Toys of Lakeland, Florida, an eBay store.
I’m fascinated by certain oddball, non-G.I. Joe items for sale:
Say, I didn’t know that Hiya Toys released Flint in a Tiger Force deco!
Made my way downstairs to the main con hall and stopped by the After Action Report table to say good morning to artist/researcher/designer Greg Agustin:
Larry Hama, feeling better, was signing and posing for selfies. Say, that’s a good-looking set of four issues that he wrote, for sale at his table!
Talked with George Vega about his recent variant covers for Skybound, and he pulled out his top secret next one. Then I got a photo of him drawing a con sketch.
Chad and Matt Smelcer, half of Whiskey Jack Toys:
After seeing control art two years ago at JoeFest, and prototypes last year at JoeFest, it was great to see production toys — actual Legends of the Hidden Force figures — for sale at their table. Cleverly, several make reference to some unproduced 1995 G.I. Joe ninja figures:
I finally made it to the convention’s front hallway and met up with Mark, who I hadn’t seen since the night before. In the packed weekend of a con, that seemed like a long time. He’d been at the Talking Joe table, hoping to catch people entering the con. And there was Talking Joe listener Micheal Gene Flemming, who brought his run of The Center Holds for me to sign. I am pleased to sign work that I’ve written/drawn/published (like minicomics I did in the ’90s and 2000s), but feel a little odd getting asked to scrawl on a comic I edited/art directed/executive produced/worried about. Of course editors are important, and The Center Holds would not exist without its editor, but there’s still a small part of me that wants to deflect, like “oh, you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” And since The Center Holds artist and co-creator Mark Bright can’t autograph these comics, I am happy to be some kind of additional, primary person to do that. (These already bore Larry Hama’s signature, probably from that very morning!) But it was lovely to meet not only a Talking Joe fan, but also a The Center Holds fan (you’ve got great taste, Gene!), so we posed for a photo.
One of the fun aspects of a G.I. Joe convention is that 100% of the cosplay is going to be G.I. Joe.
I’d seen Dan Pinegar earlier in the day. He has a big collection, and we’ve crossed paths over the years at conventions and online (and I bought some Impel paperwork from him in the elevator at JoeFest two years prior), but I hadn’t formally asked him to loan anything for my book. In talking over Chapter 4 of my book the night before with designer Brian Sauer, I’d commented that a quartet of images from 1982 really wanted to be bigger. The G.I. Joe animation artist who drew them had sent me scans years ago, but maybe I could get them at a higher-resolution from another source. It occurred to me that Dan Pinegar probably had identical photocopies, so maybe I should reach out. I texted and we met up in the outer hallway, and I showed him the Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 printouts. He thought he did have photocopies of these model sheets, and would look when back home. Pinegar is a litigator in Washington, DC, so we talked a little about that kind of work. This trip to JoeFest was a splurge for him. And despite knowing him for more than 15 years, this is the photo we’ve taken together.
On a similar note, minding a vendor table in the middle of the main con hall was Drew Hagerty. He’s already popped up in this report, and previous convention reports. Hagerty has lent me some important paperwork and art for my book, and while I have photos that he’s in, I didn’t, until now, have a proper photo of just him and me.
I didn’t have a lot of energy to take photos of dealers in their element, but I did get this one of Mark Pingitore, artist of G.I. Jokes trading cards and associated parodies.
I was a big Garbage Pail Kids kid around 1986, and while I’m overly sensitive to G.I. Joe parodies, these ones are so well done and strike a perfect chord that I’ve thought about buying them. (Mark of Talking Joe did buy from Pingitore the original preliminary artwork for a card. I was also tempted, and had the show run another day, I might have bought several.)
I hadn’t realized that Pingitore had expanded from cards (and original art for sale) to pins (and two photos above, skateboard decks).
Brian Hummel and his sons, of Charleston, South Carolina.
JoeFest is a great show. It has a huge space, a big number and variety of guests and vendors, and an overall good feeling. Like some conventions, you can see a pinch point where the number of staff and volunteers or the organizers’ use of tech feels a few years behind. I see this in two places: One, in the JoeFest website, which looks like a giant HTML scroll that is screaming for a WordPress, Wix, or SquareSpace redesign. Tabs! Please, JoeFest organizers, get some tabs on your website! Number two is in the category of vendor re-registration. This is new for me.
The previous night, friend and guidebook publisher Josh Eggebeen had suggested I get a table at the 2027 JoeFest. It’s time to start promoting my book in person, not one on one, but from a central location. Maybe I’ll have a banner behind me (like After Action Report), or a printed table cloth (like Talking Joe). Maybe I’ll have Itoya folders of original art for browsing — this is what you’d find in my book (like Dan Klingensmith in the years before he published his first book), or galleys of my book (like R. Carson Mataxis before he published his big omnibus). I’ll figure out those specifics later, but for now, I needed to register as a dealer. I’d heard a few other dealers saying “at 1pm they’re going to start taking reservations for next year.” That is, dealers would line up in the outer hallway, pay for next year’s table, and say if they’d like to keep their same location or try for a different one. I had to be in that line. I didn’t know if vendor spaces were certain to sell out, but it seemed like I needed to try and lock this down then, and not later by email or some online form. (There is no online form.)
And so I spent a half hour of the last day of JoeFest in line, talking with Hans Chow, who’d traveled for a second year from Trinidad, and who also decided he should have a table next year (to sell his art). On the one hand, it was fun, because I didn’t have any shopping or networking I needed to do inside the main con space. On the other hand, I wish there was a way to do this online without spending valuable time just waiting in person. Then it turned out that we, as potential first-time vendors, needed to come back later, that this line was for actual returning vendors. I felt a little bad for them, spending 45 minutes or more waiting in line and not selling.
Oh well, here are some toys for sale!
Something that I find disappointing is that JoeFest closes at 3pm on Sunday. That’s a contrast to 8pm on the Friday night and 5pm on the Saturday. This is certainly about logistics. Dealers have many hours of take-down, loading back up their trucks and trailers, and in many cases, heading home. If the show went until 5pm or 6pm or 7pm, they wouldn’t get out of the convention center until too late. And Sunday is not the big purchasing day at any con. It might be a day for last-minute deals. Sometimes in the past I’ve been to a convention where dealers call out something in the final hour, like “20% off everything!” If they brought 100 boxes of toys or comics, and have sold some, shaving off a few more means a little less re-packing, and taking home fewer items. And I’ve been on the other side, tabling at comic book conventions small and medium-small — it’s not as crowded on Sunday, people aren’t buying as much, and the energy slows down, so it starts to feel a little like “well, might as well pack up a little early” even though organizers don’t want you to.
Sunday at JoeFest looked and felt slow. I wondered how much of this was normal convention energy, that Friday and Saturday at any three-day show are bigger than Sunday. But I also thought about a show like New York Comic Con, which is so overstuffed that even Sunday is still crowded, if less so. And I thought about “family day” or “kids day,” a Sunday promotion that cons will run with discounted admission to get in another surge of people. One dealer said to me that at JoeFest, all the serious collectors are there Thursday and Friday night, and the main collectors are there Saturday, and that there just aren’t a lot of people there on Sunday. I also thought about the economy in 2026, with grocery and gasoline prices up, and wondered what every comics and toy convention might be seeing in terms of attendance and shopping.
That final-day tapering off of energy is disappointing to me as an attendee. We all converge on this faraway city, hotel, show space, and for a few evenings and days, there is much to talk about, look at, buy, and sell. At a Friday-Saturday-Sunday convention, the anticipation on Friday is palpable — as many people as there are now, it’s going to be bananas tomorrow — and then the feeling for that final morning shifts to I hope we have one last burst of people.
Interestingly, there were no panels at JoeFest on Sunday. This was a change from last year, where there were at least two, and my podcast partner Mark and I had the final one! This shift in schedule may have been because panels would be better attended on the two busier days, or it may have been about having an AV set-up in the panel room for one more day. There may have been fewer panels (I haven’t counted, it didn’t seem that way). Let’s not forget, Larry Hama had been scheduled for a noon panel and a 4pm panel the day before. Certainly those might ahve been spread out? Whatever the reason, it turned out fine, as no panels on Sunday meant I wasn’t tempted or obligated to be in the panel room. I could just be in the dealer spaces, talking to people, taking photos, and buying things. And waiting in line at the registration desk!
If there were fewer people around, that meant fewer people in my way for a few final photos I wanted to take. Here’s artist Peter Smith, who’s drawn ten variant G.I. Joe covers for Skybound:
At last I made my way over to the Boss Fight Studio booth:
I’d seen images of Hellboy control art and a test shot, but not actual Hellboy toys. Wow!
At last I made it to the BigBadWorkShop table to see the Fury Force teaser pack. This followed up from Christopher Irving’s panel the day before, where he announced that Larry Hama’s pre-G.I. Joe pitch to Marvel Comics was being turned into an action figure line. I bought the Starter Kit, which featured trading cards with art by occasional Hama collaborator Dave Wachter, a dog tag, and a pin. On the right, below, is a poster that Wachter inked from (what I’m guessing is a small copy of) Hama’s long-ago pencil art, now in color and with a background.
I spent the final half hour of the con looking through the dollar bin at Top Cat Comics. (Technically, this was five comics for five dollars.) I pulled out some great finds to re-read and maybe sell for more than a dollar at my own store, and then asked to speak with the owner. That would be Adam. The brick and mortar Top Cat Comics hadn’t carried The Center Holds, but Adam had heard of it. I introduced myself as the guy who’d put it together and gotten it published, and gave him a set, and told him the softcover and hardcover collections would be out in December. It was kind of him to take a few minutes out to listen to my hard sell because it was now after 3pm and his employees were starting to break down the booth. I encouraged them all to read the set and please consider carrying the collection.
I would like to think that a comic book store owner at a G.I. Joe convention where Larry Hama is signing might be inclined to carry a new Larry Hama product at his shop, but I also know that comic shop owners have 500 decisions to make every week and previewing or ordering one specific comic book or graphic novel can fall through the cracks. Between my own email address and my store’s address, we get about 10 press releases, previews, sales announcements, and unsolicited hey-please-carry-my-book messages a day. So I’d also like to think that not just handing Mr. Adam, owner of Top Cat Comics the actual complete The Center Holds might do the trick, but that I could also say “I own a comic book store in Massachusetts” — I’m one of you — would make my sales pitch more viable.
The con was now over, and while no one was going to kick me out of the con hall, I headed back to the hotel. En route, Steve Martin recognized me from Talking Joe. He listens sometimes when he’s on the road for work. He mostly only reads G.I. Joe comics, but I was feeling optimistic after the time I’d spent at Top Dog Comics’ table, so I asked Martin if he’d heard of The Center Holds. He sort of had, and I asked him if he was interested in non-G.I. Joe Larry Hama comics. He smiled and asked if I was trying to sell him The Center Holds. Why, yes I was!
A few feet further down the hallway, but not yet to the upper hotel lobby, I saw Mark looking along the hallway walls for something specific. It turns out that Sam Damon of Joe Declassified had hidden two Sightline figures for people to find, and had announced this fact on social media. A little context: Gary “Goggles” Head was a co-founder of Joe Declassified, a passionate G.I. Joe collector who connected with former Hasbro talent, and who shared his collection and his finds with other collectors. I met him at JoeCon 2014, and he read half my book a few months later, and then in early 2015 he died. Hasbro named a 4-inch figure after him, and then in 2017 Joe Declassifed made a very cool 3 3/4-inch version of that figure and gave them out at that year’s official convention. Gary wore goggles, so his figure had goggles — you can read all about Gary here, and that 2015 show here and the 2017 show here — anyway, Declassified still has some and sometimes hides them at conventions for people to find. I think they go for some money on eBay, but none of Gary’s friends, myself included, want this ongoing memorial to be about buying and selling. That’s why they were given away in the first place. That a fan might find a hidden toy feels like it hits the right note. Mark and immediately bumped into a fellow who found one, and explained where he’d found it. I helped Mark look for ten minutes. No dice.
I went back to the con hall to stand in line for another half-hour and did indeed reserve a table for JoeFest 2027. (To be continued in a year!)
Then I talked with Peter, standing in the middle of the main con hall, and we watched a bit of this city be deconstructed. I find the Sunday dealer take-down to be a little sad, as people have left or are about to leave, and there are no more panels and no more buying and selling. But it’s still fascinating to see all the booth wall structures and scroll posters get unscrewed, put back in their cases, and carted out. Alexander Murrell sat on someone’s dolly and I thought it was a good idea to goof off, photos by Peter Seddon.
Peter and I met up with Mark and Simon — this is the crew of three English friends who all flew over together and drove to Augusta from Atlanta, and we headed out for pizza.
In my four years of attending JoeFest, I’ve never actually made it to Magic Mushroom. It’s the first food place I heard of in conjunction with the con when Mark first told me I should attend — a group outing to get pizza there the first year I did attend, but I missed it. The English crew had already eaten there the day before, but didn’t mind the repeat. The food was great, and they showed me on a map how far each is from each other in and around London. We talked about what we’d bought at the con, and how Talking Joe evolved to having Mark as its host and me as its co-host, and what podcasts we listen to (shocker: I don’t listen to podcasts).
Peter described seeing an Australian attendee who just this weekend had completed the Holy Trinity of G.I. Joe toys, having bought the Terror Drome, the Defiant, and the USS Flagg — and now he just had to get tham back to Australia! I found this funny. As an American, I’ve taken these for granted, even if I didn’t own any as a child (or now as an adult, for that matter — but my friend one town over has the Terror Drome). I saw a Flagg or two for sale at my childhood Toys ‘R’ Us and once visited a friend who had one. And now I see them every year at toy conventions. But the Flagg was not sold in England (in terms of me talking to three Brits about it), and I think none of these three biggest Joe playsets of the 1980s were available in Australia. From afar, I felt good for the anonymous toy collector, and once again pictured Mark’s two full suitcases, bringing UK toys to sell here, taking that money and buying other toys, and having the room to bring them back to England. Would this Australian gent stay an extra day and drive to a UPS Store or FedEx office? How much would all this cost? Perhaps more than his purchase price! I tried to just enjoy the feeling and not worry about logistics.
Also, we four split two desserts.
Mark broke off to pack. Peter and Simon and I walked on the River Walk behind the hotel. The view was great, with houses on the other side, and trees and flowers and greenery. It was very hot, so this was more of a mental reset than a physical one, but sometimes you just want to go for walk after stuffing your face with pizza, salad, and ice cream-with-brownie. The sunlight, a summer day at 7pm, was warm, too.
People were milling about in the upper lobby, talking and drinking and not-quite-partying. Much quieter than the two previous nights. Mark Pennington was sitting with a few people, drawing.
Even though the con was over, the con wasn’t over, with still more Lobby Sales, although not as much as Thursday, Friday, or Saturday nights:
I skipped part of that to do some packing in my hotel room, and then joined the socializing. Talked with Josh Eggebeen, and then packed some more. Patrick Stewart had some unreleased ’90s G.I. Joe toys that he was either going to lend to me to photograph, or photograph himself. It turns out he’d brought them, so we went to his hotel room to look at them. On the way, we passed some signage for whatever next group event was taking place here. I’m not sure what the Christian Education Leadership Conference has to do with race cars, but I sure appreciated the play possibilities of their signage. Where intention meets impact, indeed!
In Stewart’s room, looking at his toys, I realized I had them as well, but it turns out mine were incomplete, so we decided he’d photograph his (saving me some time), and we talked about poses, composition, and background colors. (To be continued in Chapter 17 of my book!)
While we were upstairs, I’d left my two Chapter printouts with Sam Damon down in the party area. When we got back, he had some comments, and had even found a typo. Talked to Alexander Murrell about school plays. Talked with Brian Sauer, Josh Eggebeen, Mark and Peter about ideas for guests of Sauer’s Assembly Required convention in November.
It was getting late. I said some goodbyes and headed to my room.
MONDAY—
A funny thing about JoeFest, or many weekend conventions, is how even after the show ends and the weekend is over, the fan connections can continue. Monday morning I woke up and headed down to catch the Marriott shuttle to the airport. Maybe there’d be a few people I knew or obviously-G.I. Joe fans in the lobby, also checking out. Or maybe the lobby would be empty. Maybe they’d all left the day before or were sleeping in, to leave just after I did. One or two people not with the G.I. Joe crowd — maybe the big family reunion? — got on the shuttle. And then so did someone generally my age. It was Russell Frost of Baltimore, Maryland. He showed me some videos of his incredible basement collection room. It turned out we were on the same flight from Augusta to Atlanta, so he invited me to the American Express lounge at ATL but with us deboarding the plane and having different layovers, it didn’t pan out, but I appreciate the easing out of a concentrated weekend celebration — talking G.I. Joe on the way to the hotel, trading answers to the question “You have a good con?”
Next on the convention calendar, probably: G.I. Joe/Assembly Required in November and Hub Comics at MICE in December.
– – – Jump back to Part One – – – Jump back to Part Two – – – Jump to a random post about an unproduced G.I. Joe vehicle – – –
A Real American Book! 