Ah, the wonders of the Internet. It used to be these cool vintage toy stores were land-locked to a specific location, and if folks didn’t live within a reasonable distance, we were SOL. No longer!
The Dallas Vintage Toy store is located in Dallas, TX, but for folks like me who don’t exactly live within striking distance, they have a presence online as well at DallasVintageToys.com! With G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, Transformers, and many more, this is a great toy store with an impressive inventory.
JoeDeClassified SpecOps has posted a new episode of their excellent podcast, and this time brought in the services of none other than G. Wayne Miller. For the uninitiated, G. Wayne Miller spent some time with both Hasbro and Mattel in the 90’s and wrote about the events in that time period in the fantastic book Toy Wars. This is a must read book for toy fans in general and for G.I. Joe fans specifically as the book tells the story of Hasbro’s absorption of Kenner, an attempted buy out by Mattel, and the “evolution” of G.I. Joe from military toyline to the super hero-esque G.I. Joe Extreme.
It’s a fantastic read, and hearing Mr. Miller talk about his time in the industry on the podcast was equally entertaining. This is something that every fan should listen to.
HissTank member Raginspoon, who was the first to receive his wave 1 FSS figures, as reported that his SPOILER ALERTsecond series has now arrivedSPOILER ALERT. Granted, you’re not going to want to click that link unless you want to be spoiled as to who the next figures are.
At this point, I’m not going to spoil the news…I’ll talk about them in a week or so after they’ve started distributing more evenly throughout the world.
Although I use the term “new” a bit lightly. There appears to be 0.0 seconds of new footage, but with a sightly different cut and some rocking theme music. Check out the embedded video below courtesy of YouTube:
This time from the back! As usual, Toy News International and Geek Trooper are all over it, so big thanks to them for staying on top of this and keeping me in the loop. Check out the mirrored image below. Loving the trenchcoat, and really loving the detail on those sleeves. What a great looking figure.
Every day brings us closer to the next launch of G.I. Joe titles from IDW Publishing. Appropriately enough, the current iteration ends its run on issue #21, which is a landmark number when it comes to the G.I. Joe universe. Check out the preview for this big issue below.
General Hawk is retired from G.I. JOE, but COBRA isn’t through with him! A team of elite snakeheads targets the former honcho for capture and interrogation. But old soldiers never die, they kick butt and take names. Big one-against-all action as an outnumbered and outgunned Hawk shows us how he earned those stars.
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
*Variant cover:
Robert Atkins variant cover!
Bullet points:
The return of GENERAL HAWK!
FINAL ISSUE OF THE SERIES!!!
Is this the end of G.I. Joe? No! Check this space next month!
Everyone seems pretty vocal about the upcoming G.I. Joe main series revamp in March, but I haven’t heard a whole lot about what people are looking forward to with the Special Missions title. Comic Book Resources spoke with writer Chuck Dixon about the series, which looks to be pretty heavily infused with the realistic, gritty military action that many of us adult Joe fans are into.
With art by Paul Gulacy, and a team featuring stalwarts like Scarlett, Recondo, Beachhead, Mainframe, Ripcord, and Torpedo, Special Missions is a more down and dirty look at the underbelly of G.I. Joe’s military operations across the world.
The article showcases some great preview pages along with the interview, check it out at Comic Book Resources. Thanks to Kord on Twitter for the heads up.
For folks like friend of the site Arune Singh, who longs for a shirtless Lee Byung-Hun, this 12″ representation of the G.I. Joe: Retaliation Storm Shadow looks like he might be just what the doctor ordered. A promotional image circulating features a decent up close look of the upcoming Cobra Ninja, and it looks awesome.
Folks who like the movie appearance of Storm Shadow (and yes, I am one of them) this figure looks very, very cool. You can almost feel the depth and quality of the trenchcoat through the picture on the computer screen. Roadblock is featured in the image as well, though he’s a bit blurry and in the background. Big thanks to geektrooper on Tumblr for the heads up. The image is mirrored below.
Thanks to the numerous folks who sent along messages regarding this, apparently Hot Toys has sent out a promotional image featuring many of their 2013 products, and if you look real close, you can see the start of what appears to be a G.I. Joe: Retaliation Roadblock and Storm Shadow. At least, if you squint realllly hard.
Thanks to IDW Editor in Chief Chris Ryall’s Twitter feed, we’ve got a fantastic look at the upcoming wrap around cover for G.I. Joe #1, coming in March, 2013!
This cover is by Jamal Igle and really looks gorgeous. I’ve been among the folks kind of scratching my head over the lack of military gear on these characters, but I personally have no issues with a more modern, less real world type of uniforms, and this looks like a very cool mash up.
To be honest, I think many of the characters here are giving off just a little bit of a Pursuit of Cobra vibe. I know that PoC figures had a lot more military elements to it, but think about those cool forearm guards we got on Beachhead, and the strategic armor plating from Destro, Firefly, Dusty, and later version of Duke. I see some similarities here.
But let’s all face it, uniforms are just on the surface. I think we can all agree it’s the story that counts, and I’ve got a lot of confidence in Fred Van Lente. I’m really looking forward to this hitting in March. Check out the original stuff over on Chris Ryall’s Tumblr page, I’ve also mirrored the images below.
