July 15, 2011 · 11:33 AM

My First Comic Book Ever Was “G.I. Joe Yearbook” #3 – Part One

I should have become a comic book reader two years before I did.

Another World, Georgetown, Washington, DC, c. 1988

Another World's closed-off back alley entrance. I think it's outdoor seating for a cafe now.

I was reading newspaper comics in the Washington Post for years before I picked up my first Marvel or DC.  And in those two years, the only parts of Mad Magazine that mattered were the comics – the movie and TV parodies, Spy Vs. Spy, The Lighter Side, and A Mad Look At.  I even scanned through a few comic books one day probably in 1987 – and a G.I. Joe issue to boot! – but put it down with disinterest:  Whereas the TV cartoon was saturated full color, the comic was limited four-color printing, and it looked dull on beige newsprint.  This was at the house of a friend from school, and I believe my brother read several of his G.I. Joe comic books.  But not me.

Friend Taylor and my brother reading comics.

Soon after, my brother Kevin immersed himself in Dungeons and Dragons, and brought me with him.  While we could potentially play with friends using their materials, and even though this board game without a board mostly took place in our minds, we knew we had to buy a few essentials – dice, a rulebook, perhaps a module.  I think what happened was that our mom looked up “gaming” in the yellow pages, and found a store in Washington, D.C.  It was half-hour drive in the “wrong” direction since we always drove north and west to shop at our local mall, and parking in Georgetown (that particular section of D.C.) was difficult, but Mom and Dad were up for it .  And so we visited Another World, a comic book shop with a large back issue selection (whatever that was – it smelled old), new comics, and some gaming.

Another World, Georgetown, Washington, DC, c. 1988

Imperfect recollection of Another World's first store layout

We procured the red boxed Advanced Dungeons and Dragons starter set.  Georgetown wasn’t going to be a weekly trek like our mall (or downtown Bethesda, two miles from our house) were.  And it wasn’t going to be monthly.  Perhaps Mom and Dad liked to stay out of D.C. on weekends since they were there Monday to Friday for work.  Or perhaps they were willing, but Kevin and I didn’t realize we merely needed to ask.  Whatever the case, my sense was that this was a special trip, not the start of something.  Adding to my disorientation was that Another World had two entrances and a quirky layout.  The store straddled two sides of an acute street corner without having the corner itself, was small and cramped, had two different “rooms,” and was on two different levels, one a few steps higher than the other.  And again, it was filled with comic books, which I didn’t understand or like, even if I had been seeing Griffin Bacal’s wonderful animated television commercials for Marvel’s monthly G.I. Joe series for years.

But we went back months later and Kevin actually bought some G.I. Joe comic books.

What happened at Another World?  Find out next week…

2 Comments

Filed under Back issues, Prehistory

Tagged as , , ,

July 11, 2011 · 1:55 PM

Behind the scenes of G.I. Joe – Rock-Viper

Today’s post reveals some development artwork for the 1990 Cobra Rock-Viper.  First, a not-great photo by me of the production toy to serve as a baseline for all you casual fans.

Interesting to note this Cobra soldier, of which there were many (rather than a specific individual like Destro or Gristle) has a moustache.  So I guess graduates from training school had a facial hair requirement?

First up is Dave Hasle’s sculpt input drawing for the Rock-Viper’s backpack:

A black and white photocopy (probably of a color photocopy and not a chrome) of Dave Dorman’s internal presentation painting:

Note above and below there’s no moustache.  Here’s the pencil sketch of what will become the final package painting.  I’m attributing this to Hector Garrido:

Here’s the almost complete layout of the cart front and back, in b+w photocopy form, with Garrido’s drawing now a finished painting:

I don’t have a color copy of the painting or a full blister card (any readers want to help?) so this cropped close-up from my dossier and the tiny back-of-package thumbnail of Garrido’s final painting will have to do for comparison.

If you didn’t read this above, check it out here.  Dossier writer Larry Hama’s sense of humor on display.

2 Comments

Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art

Tagged as , , , , , ,

July 9, 2011 · 9:50 AM

Interview #1: Larry Hama, June 2001 – Part Three

Regular readers: Sorry for posting a day late!

In our last episode, Tim sat down to interview Larry Hama, either the best person to start with or the worst…

“Best” because Hama never answered a question with “I don’t remember.”  He recalled stuff from the beginning of G.I. Joe as well as the end.  He talked for two hours.  And he dropped several helpful names, good people to track down next.  He was candid, funny, and not severe.

So why was this the worst interview to start with?

One, because I was starstruck.  Could I even ask the questions without stuttering?

Two, would Hama call my bluff?  I wasn’t a writer, and what research project was I researching anyway?  But this was a writer.  Sitting in front of me, humoring me, was a major reason why I was a comics reader, a Wednesday regular wherever my local store was – Bethesda, Providence, Cambridge.  Here was this famous guy whose name was credited first in almost 200 comic books I kept in my closet at home.  The writer of my “desert island” comics.  I worried my questions were too fannish, that I was bothering Hama and wasting his time.

Three, some of his answers were short, not because he was cutting me off, but because that’s just the way he answers some questions.  To the point.  I didn’t know Hama or his conversational cadence, so in the short term I thought my inquiry was lacking if I wasn’t teasing out bigger answers.  I didn’t feel like I had gotten much of the information I had gone looking for.

Two hours in, Hama suggested we break, and offered up some snacks from his pantry.  As I had stupidly skipped lunch, but hadn’t wanted to impose by asking for food, my relief was palpable.  Those cheese slices, crackers, and salami were a relief, and in the times I’ve visited Larry since ’01 I always smile when I see his kitchen.  Years later I would realize in fact it was a great interview, and that much of the work philosophy and analytical introspection was better than nuts and bolts like “favorite character.”

Nth Man issue #16 cover by Ron Wagner and Bob McLeod, 1990.

We talked for a little while longer, bouncing around non-Joe topics like Nth Man, an underappreciated Marvel gem, and the K-Otics, the blues band Hama played in for years.  When we were done, Hama walked me out.  Heading toward the elevator I sort of mumbled that I was writing a book, which codified it for me.  If I hadn’t been writing a book before, I certainly was now, even if I didn’t know what that meant.  Off the cuff Hama mentioned one Susan Faludi, a writer for Esquire Magazine.  I didn’t know who this was.  Larry explained that she had previously interviewed him by phone for 45 minutes, and that she had interviewed “everyone” regarding G.I. Joe.  Everyone.  It ricocheted around in my head like a lightning bolt.  My heart sank.  Already my project had competition!  Someone had tracked down all the people I didn’t even yet know I needed to track down!  I would later learn that Faludi had won a Pulitzer Prize, and that any article or book of hers on society, the male, and/or G.I. Joe would in no way compete with mine.  But that word “everyone,” as frightening as it was because I was now behind in the race, was vital.  As the elevator doors closed I promised myself that I would interview “everyone” and more, that I would find obscure contributors to G.I. Joe comic books, toys, and animation.  That I would track down people until I had an unreasonably large number of interviews.

So I did.

2 Comments

Filed under Book Behind the Scenes, Writing Process

Tagged as , , ,

July 5, 2011 · 1:56 PM

Behind the scenes of G.I. Joe – Heath Snake-Eyes

Today’s art peak brings you several photocopies of Russ Heath’s model sheets for the 1985 season of the animated G.I. Joe.  While the Snake-Eyes action figure was iconically all black, the TV series had previously shown him in dark blue.  (All black doesn’t “read” well in animation.)  For 1985, SE went dark grey, which to my eye reads better than the dark blue and works better as a stand-in for black since dark blue is already associated with Cobra.  Russ Heath’s front view:

Clearly based, as many of his drawings were, on Hasbro’s internal presentation artwork:

This one, a black and white photocopy, doesn’t have a signature, and I’ll admit I don’t know who painted it.  To my eye it’s not Ron Rudat — the proportions and clothing folds don’t match with work that I know is Rudat.  The anatomy is tight, which says George Woodbridge, but his Joe work was colored and black ink, not rendered paintings.  Maybe one of you eagle eyed Joe collectors can correct me in the comments.  There is a slightly better reproduction of this image, still a black and white photocopy of a color photocopy, though, in Vincent Santelmo’s Official 30th Anniversary Salute to G.I. Joe.

Two more views by Heath:

And SE’s undercover disguise, drawn by Bruce Timm, from the beginning of “Battle for the Train of Gold.”  To give you a sense of the timeline, this was drawn in August 1984, and the episode aired 14  months later.

And what appears to be an unused alternate from same.

I’m not sure where in the storyline of “Train” there would have been an opportunity for SE to wear this, but there is a horse farm in act 3, so who knows?

3 Comments

Filed under Animation, G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 30, 2011 · 2:36 PM

Interview #1: Larry Hama, June 2001 – Part Two

In our last episode, Tim secured an interview with Larry Hama and took a train to New York…

Canon GL-1 and a GE microcassette recorder

In my backpack were a marble journal for taking notes, a video camera for recording audio (I’d keep the lens cap on), and a back-up microcassette recorder.  Even though we hadn’t agreed on an exact time, I worried that I had no time for lunch, so I called from a payphone at Penn Station and immediately hopped a subway.  When I got to Hama’s place, I was struck by how open it was, a two floor studio apartment with lots of light and a high ceiling.  My experiences with New York living spaces were all dark and narrow — whatever college dorms and apartments friend (and future book editor) Nick Nadel had been squeezed into.  Years later Larry would tell me about how his building used to have a view all the way to New Jersey, but by the time I got there in 2001, the whole street was built up with shops and tall apartment buildings.

I was also struck by the decorations.  On the left wall was a Gary Hallgren post-modern painting of Dick Tracy.  Across from it was another Halgren of Blondie, Dagwood, and Krazy Kat.  Next to the kitchen was a 1976 ink drawing of Bilbo Baggins and 12 dwarves by a young Michael Golden.  Up the steps to a narrow passageway filled with books and packaged G.I. Joe toys (and Golden’s original cover artwork to The ‘Nam #12) was a tiny room – Hama’s office.  Art, photos, memos, and an old paycheck covered the right wall.  Straight ahead was a computer, to the left were windows and an A/C unit.  A second PC, papers and books, and a flight simulator joystick covered the spare table, smaller than a chess board.  The whole space must have been six feet by fifteen feet, a sliver of a room you’d give to your drunk friend who’s crashing after the party ends.  A glorified closet, and yet so out of the way and with such an interesting view of the street it made perfect sense as a writer’s room.  And this is where scripts and cover layouts for my favorite comic books had been typed and drawn.

I drew this after another visit years later. The space hadn’t changed.

Leaning against the left wall and below the windows was Hama’s guitar.  (Years later on a subsequent visit there was a guitar and a metal 1:1 scale working model of a machine gun, which made me think of the Warren Ellis quote “Larry Hama, perhaps unsurprisingly, knows a lot of people with guns, and so has marvelous stories to tell about stone lunatics with too much artillery who also happen to be comic artists.”)  (And it’s telling that the one time Larry appeared on the cover to a Marvel comic book, he’s holding a machine gun.)

Art by Paul Ryan and Tom Palmer, 1990.

There was just enough space for the two of us to sit down, me in the spare seat.  I turned on my gear, and started asking questions.  Mel, Larry’s pug, joined us halfway through.  I will never stop smiling at the seeming incongruity of it:  The famous Larry Hama, who had written a light “war” comic for 12 years, and who guided Wolverine’s solo adventures through a swath of Yakuza and evil mutants for another seven, who bridged the ninja craze at Marvel Comics after Frank Miller left Daredevil for DC, thoughtfully and quietly reminiscing with a pug in his lap.  What did I expect?  A chat at a shooting range?  With no plan besides “get the interview,” I didn’t know what to expect, but it turns out that the man I met was the real Larry Hama: a reserved and modest guy, a thoughtful and learned reader and writer.

In some ways, this was the best interview to start with, and the worst.

Why?  Find out next week…

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Behind the Scenes, Writing Process

Tagged as , ,

June 28, 2011 · 12:42 PM

Behind the scenes of G.I. Joe – Groen X-Soldier

It’s Monday or Tuesday, which means another preview of rare, lost, and never-seen art from the making of G.I. Joe 1980-2000 to whet your appetites for my book.  Today’s image is a 1994 Kurt Groen pencil and marker drawing of a proposed X-Soldier.

Very little is publicly known about X-Soldiers.  It’s telling that they are neither mentioned nor pictured at the encyclopedic yojoe.com.  I don’t say that as a swipe against the site as I love it and have referred to it weekly for the past six years of writing my book.  Just that the line, unlike many other unproduced Joes, hasn’t been widely seen or discussed.  Google searches yield almost nothing.

But print offers a succinct explanation: According to G. Wayne Miller’s Toy Wars, “[Kirk] Bozigian’s biggest setback had been X-Soldiers.  Shown prototypes, boys in focus groups had been disinterested.  The concept needed work, and the line was unlikely to reach market before the summer of 1996, if then.” (pg 185)

A line of traditional super-heroes that would battle for and with G.I. Joe, and each figure would have had an action feature.  Seven X-Soldier characters are known to exist as color marker illustrations.

5 Comments

Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art

Tagged as , , ,

June 24, 2011 · 1:24 PM

Interview #1: Larry Hama, June 2001 – Part One

The idea of me writing a book had not coalesced, despite the revelation that John Michlig and Paul Dini would likely never write my ideal G.I. Joe history.  It was still a vague notion.  But one day while wasting time on the internet at work, I stumbled across Larry Hama’s e-mail address.  I frequented toy and comic book news sites, and someone was announcing Hama’s birthday, or the completion of an interview.  Hama wasn’t doing much in comics in the spring of 2001.  His brief term as writer of the flagship Batman book the previous year was over, his seven-year Wolverine run had ended in ’97, and G.I. Joe’s 1994 finale was a distant memory.  Finding this address was dumb luck, and felt like I was breaking some unspoken rule.  This was a famous person, and I was not.  Whatever kind of opportunity this was, I had to take it, and I had to ask for an interview, even if I didn’t know what for.  I recall mentioning a “research project,” as if I was still somewhere in the limbo between my G.I. Joe Mixed Media issue and this as yet non-existent book.  Surely the fan or webmaster who had included this address had done so by accident!  I couldn’t just copy and paste it into a new e-mail message and bother the man, could I?

For years Larry Hama had been just this to me, a name — a credit — in hundreds of comics I owned.

I could and did.  Hama responded, which was a surprise.  I had only corresponded with two famous people at the time, and the instantaneity of e-mail was still shocking.   Moreso how it broke down barriers between fans and pros.  A celebrity would not call back by telephone, and paper mail was iffy, but e-mail was somehow different.  Hama provided a phone number and asked if I would need his fax, or if this would be an e-mail interview.  I suggested in-person.  New York wasn’t far and I knew that any interview would come out better if conducted face to face.  To my surprise, Hama said yes.  It was generous and trusting of him.  What if I turned out to be an axe murderer?  Or the worst kind of fanboy, digging for dirt and begging for autographs?

For years, all I knew about Hama came from this bio that had run in all Marvel Comics cover dated October 1987.

Hama had a few trips in the near future, and we settled on a tentative date in June.  I sent him links to various toy photos and catalog scans at yojoe.com, thinking that he might need a memory jog.  (He didn’t.)  And then I asked my friend and future editor Nick Nadel if he could help me come up with questions.

I didn’t want to ask noodley fan questions.  The problem was that I wasn’t a writer and didn’t know what made for good questions and what made for bad.  All I knew was that the interviews I read in Wizard Magazine were fluffy, while those in The Comics Journal were smart and long, and I needed to somehow keep Hama talking.  If he ended up terse or forgetful, the trip would be wasted, and whatever this “research project” was would now lack a necessary lynchpin.  Nick looked over my list and suggested fewer specifics like “Favorite issue?” and more process ones, like “Who do you write for?”  The day came and I hopped an Amtrak bound for Manhattan.

More next time…

1 Comment

Filed under Book Behind the Scenes, Writing Process

Tagged as , ,

June 20, 2011 · 12:20 PM

Behind the scenes of G.I. Joe – Dorman Ice Viper

My book can’t contain all the sketches, drawings, paintings, designs, photos, and layouts that went into making even a single G.I. Joe toy product.  But what it aims to do is present a juicy slice of that material, much of it never seen publicly, and to put it in context.  Today’s image has been seen publicly, posted at HissTank two years back, but as a slightly fuzzy, cropped photo rather than a crisp scan.  So today I present to you Dave Dorman’s stunning 1986 presentation painting for the 1987 Cobra Ice Viper figure.

Dorman is best known for his Star Wars book and comic book cover art, but was freelancing for Hasbro in the mid-1980s.  In addition to these internal presentation paintings — a different category than the painted art seen on the final G.I. Joe toy packaging — Dorman also did covers for the Lorimar-published G.I. Joe Magazine that ran from ’87 to ’88.  A recent coffee table book published by Desperado through IDW, Rolling Thunder: The Art of Dave Dorman, features a few pages of G.I. Joe art.

2 Comments

Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art

Tagged as , ,

June 17, 2011 · 9:59 AM

That First Time I Wrote a G.I. Joe Book – Part Three

In our last episode, Tim wrote an entire issue of the RISD student newspaper!

All that’s left of the original print run

When the print run was delivered the following Monday – The kickoff day of G.I. Joe Week! – I was giddy.  3000 copies were waiting at the mailroom, and I spent my lunch hour placing them in student mailboxes.  (RISD had 2000 students, so naturally I figured I would take the remainder.)  Regular editor Andy Dill helped, which I wasn’t expecting, but greatly appreciated.

I got great feedback from friends and acquaintances.  Some specifically loved the issue.  Others were just impressed by the commitment to take on the project.  And others still had different reactions.  Giant trash cans and round metal recycling bins lined the mailroom, overflowing each night with the day’s junk mail from 1800 undergraduates and 200 grads – catalogs, opened envelopes, memos from school.  After I disseminated Mixed Media, I hovered to see a few random reactions from people opening their mailboxes.  What was this green thing inside, anyway?  I also rescued about 30 copies from the trash.  I had plans to mail the issue to family and friends far and wide, and a vague notion to take a few hundred up the road to Hasbro, in Pawtucket.  (That never came to be.)

I was standing next to a trash can while two young women sorted through their mail.  They were in a hurry since lunch time was short.  “Bill, bill, junk, junk,” complained one, “What the fuck is this?!” she demanded of no one, looking at my masterpiece.  She threw it in the trash can and walked off in a huff.  Her friend finished her own sorting, tossed a few papers and her Mixed Media, and then noticed me standing right there, looking back at her and the trashcan.  In my arms were 40 copies.  She paused, looked in the direction of her friend, looked back at me, looked in the trash can, slowly pulled out her copy, and darted after her friend.

The issue turned out better than I expected, and I floated through the rest of my boring Wintersession short term class.  Designer Sean Deyoe had smartly separated the main article and the episode guide through margins and differing font sizes.  He had cropped and zoomed in wherever he wanted, and with me sitting quietly next to him, had slaved away on that killer back cover.  Two small production errors appear in the final edition – on the front cover and back cover, no less! — but I’m still so giddy with the end product that they don’t bother me.  Either because he was ready to move on or because my issue had broken him, Deyoe quit one issue later.  Andy Dill hung on as editor for a bit until some movement at the Office of Student Life installed two friends, Cory Mitchell and Mark Hoffmann, as new editors before the year was out.  They stayed on through our senior year and nicely revitalized the newspaper.  I would go on to write another article and submit a comic or two, but they were school related.  My ‘80s pop culture intrusions on Mixed Media were over.

Leave a comment

Filed under Prehistory

Tagged as , , ,

June 15, 2011 · 9:50 AM

That First Time I Wrote a G.I. Joe Book – Part Two

In our last episode, Tim decided to write an entire issue of the RISD student newspaper.

Mixed Media had its own office next to the Tap Room, which served alcohol before my time (hence the name), and is famous for being the site of an early, if not the first, Talking Heads performance.  When I was at RISD, this was a seldom-used space for music and drama, and tucked away next to it was a claustrophobic closet with a scanner, a Mac, and two desks.  The Mixed Media office.  Weekly meetings took place there, but no one attended besides editor Andy Dill, designer Sean Deyoe, and calendar organizer James Holland.  I had joked to Andy that he could take off for the issue, that me writing the whole thing was tantamount to guest editing it, and he was fine with that.  I sat down with Deyoe and explained that I wanted to have a lot of images.  Deyoe was a talented graphic designer, and had used MM as a place to experiment and play.  Because no one cared about it, the stakes weren’t high, but since it was a “real” publication, printed by a press on newsprint, it was a worthwhile project.

Deyoe was impressed (and later, probably bothered) at how many images I had ready.  This meant extra work for him.  Again, MM was dying of attrition.  The issue prior to mine had 16 pages (one of them blank) and 7 images, and the issue before that ran a paltry 8 pages (one of them blank) and featured three images.  Three!

Mine was a return to form:  32 pages with 64 images.

The contrast was clear.  I knew that even if people didn’t care for my content, they would notice this hefty issue, four times as big as the issue before the issue before.  Even better, Dill reasoned that since we had left over printing money from the previous few issues, we could splurge on mine, and offered a single color ink, something to go with the black.   The choice could only be a military green.  I solicited articles and art, and got three comics from friends, and polished my giant history and episode guide.  Holland brought in the calendar and I beefed it up with several fake G.I. Joe-themed events on and around campus, including a five-day Cobra invasion of Providence.   Deyoe scanned all my photos and comics, picked fonts, redrew the Cobra logo in Illustrator (for someone’s t-shirt design, not MM), and didn’t mind when I pitched him a back cover concept that would take longer to lay out than entire issues – a MM version of the 1980s Real American Hero toy card backs.  I also drew the cover, badly, which my roommate Peter Demarest, posed for.

"Tim Finn" "Sean Deyoe" RISD

Front cover/back cover, art by Tim Finn, design by Sean Deyoe

What happened when the print run arrived the following Monday?

Check back Friday to find out.  Next week kicks off my new posting schedule:  Mondays for small bits of art or commentary, Thursdays for these articles on the making of the book.

2 Comments

Filed under Prehistory

Tagged as , , ,