So with the craze of the movie TV spot, Resolute, and the 25th Anniversary, something flying under the radar is the 2009 Convention set… with the Convention a little more than 6 months away, we should start getting some idea of what the set is going to be any day now. In fact, the Collectors’ Club has given us a few hints already, and I’ve made my opinions pretty publicly known already. I’m pulling for the Red Shadows/Action Force pretty hard core, and the hints so far really do justify that in some ways. I have to give big props to “Admiral Hunter” of the Coil Club for tying a lot of this together, but what he says makes a lot of sense.
EDIT: Shame on me for not mentioning “ggpike” of the Coil Club as well! He gave Admiral Hunter the clues, so screw Hunter, George gets the props from me. 😉
LeonardoTDragon, the admin over at JoeBattleLines has uncovered some neat info buried on Amazon.com.
According to this listing, there is an upcoming G.I. Joe 4-Pack entitled an “Intro Pack” which is slated to include Duke, Agent Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Roadblock. While it’s unknown at this point what new tooling (if any) will be utilized, this could be a great opportunity to get some updated versions of Duke (with fixed arms), Agent Scarlett, and Roadblock. Is this legit? It’s a tough call. There are some inconsistencies and even some spelling errors in the description, so it’s pretty tough to tell, but let’s keep our fingers crossed. It also appears to come with a DVD, and a “light up” G.I. Joe sign. No pictures as of yet, and take this all with a BIG grain of salt with no official confirmation. Hopefully we’ll see something at Toy Fair on the 14th!
Cmdrinchief from the Coil Club has become a very reliable source of information in the past, and he’s reporting that we should expect to see some pictures today of the first wave of G.I. Joe: Rise of COBRA single packs. Included in these packs is:
Abel “Breaker” Ehaz with urban camouflage uniform, spring-loaded weapon, and lots of other gear
Heavy Duty with a very “Roadblock” vibe (tank top w/ open vest) and huge chain gun.
Wallace “Ripcord” Weems in his “Accelerator Suit” and spring-loaded weapon
Shana “Scarlett” O’hara in an urban camouflage dress uniform (looking a lot like the movie version of Cover Girl) with spring-loaded weapon and other gear
Shipwreck in a combination urban camouflage pants, the typical movie upper uniform, and a knit cap with a ton of underwater gear
COBRA Viper Commando, looking straight out of the TV spot with the tall armored collar and vest
Zartan, obviously in some sort of disguise, as he’s in an urban camouflage uniform, the same pattern as the Joes are wearing.
We’re expecting to see these in international circles today, so keep your eyes peeled for pictures! From what I can tell, these sound pretty interesting…happy to hear Hasbro is keeping the spring-loaded stuff on the weapons, and leaving the figures alone. The best part is they’re not all different shades of black and gray, there’s actually some nice camouflage patterns and design aesthetics.
As anyone who visits this site knows, I have two main “loves” in the geek sense…one being G.I. Joe, the other being super heroes. It’s funny, though, I am NOT a comic collector. I was for a long time, in fact at one point I spent $75.00 per week on my comic habit, but I quit cold turkey about 6 or 7 years ago and have never looked back. Even though I don’t follow the day-to-day events, however, I still have a real love for the characters and the ideas of the Super Hero world, especially the Marvel one. I have no desire to see Spider-Man struggle through the latest global catastrophe (or the horrors of “One More Day”… *shudder* ), but I still love the essence of the Spider-Man character, which is why I find myself really loving the cartoons. I can enjoy the characters without needing a 1200 page omnibus telling me every single little event that happened in their life.
This news was broken on TFW2005, as they report that the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen TV spot was the most watched commercial online following it’s debut during the big game on Sunday, but the best news to Joefans is that this same article shows that the G.I. Joe TV Spot ran second. While Revenge of the Fallen still beat out G.I. Joe by nearly 2 million unique views, the fact that G.I. Joe ranked second is great news. According to this article, the TV Spot beat out the Pepsi commercial “forever young” by over 50,000 views, and was uploaded to the internet 279 times compared to the Pepsi one, which was only uploaded 33 times.
This is a great sign that the G.I. Joe film is appealing to a mass audience, and hopefully the momentum continues to build… and just because I’m always looking for an excuse to post it, here’s the trailer again, courtesy of SuperHeroHype.com:
I’ve really liked the new “look” of GeneralsJoes, but there’s always been a limitation to the width of the central column, which was affecting how the pages were coming out. I got a bit sick of dealing with that, so I moved to a more “flexible” width WordPress theme and added some drop-down menus as well through css for easier access. It’ll also give somewhat easier click-access to widgets in the sidebars if wanted.
Anyway…hopefully this will give me a bit more flexibility and help the page not look so screwy. The Brandon Jerwa interview really showed me that this center column was way too narrow.
As IDW takes over the G.I. Joe license and runs with it, it occurs to me that there is some benefit in the historical context of how the G.I. Joe title got to where it is today, and whether many fans like it or not, Devils’ Due was a huge part of the Joe mythos (and was, in fact, the only part of it for a while). One of the central cogs of the Devils’ Due universe was writer Brandon Jerwa, who orchestrated a very successful, and critically acclaimed run on the G.I. Joe title from issue #25 through the end of it’s initial run before morphing into America’s Elite.
The G.I. Joe brand is in a totally different place now than it was those few years ago, so I thought it would be neat to “sit down” and talk with Brandon Jerwa, who managed to successfully parlay his fandom into a full time gig writing comics. While his days behind the wheel of a G.I. Joe title have passed (hopefully only temporarily) he still writes some great books on successful franchises Battlestar Galactica and Highlander, both for Dynamite Entertainment.
