So the recent news about IDW streamlining their G.I. Joe releases caused me to check these solicitations with a little trepidation, but turns out if they are scaling things back at all, it’s not happening until after July. The solicitations at least still show our normal compliment of G.I. Joe related titles.
To see the full lowdown click the Read The Rest of this Entry link below.
Every Joe fan’s favorite package artist Mike Thompson had a stretch where he was posting several awesome pieces of his Joe art on an almost weekly basis. Working as a package artist through the Rise of Cobra and into the Pursuit of Cobra era, Mike’s excellent blog, Mike T Artworks showcased his excellent renditions of characters like Spirit, City Strike Scarlett, and Whiteout.
He’s taken a break from posting G.I. Joe related art, most likely because he’s either shown most of it already, or is still waiting for them to be cleared by Hasbro to post…but today that changed! During our interview of Mike Thompson on the What’s on Joe Mind podcast we were lucky enough to see some of his other pieces, and now he has posted them via his Twitter page.
These head shots were to be used on some canceled Wal-Mart 2-Packs featuring Nano-B.A.T., Zap, Budo, and Dr. Mindbender. Check out these excellent images below. Also make sure you keep your eyes on MikeTArtworks.com which is his main site featuring some fantastic work that he’s done over the years. He has some amazing talent, even if you’re checking out some non-G.I. Joe work, I think you’ll appreciate what he does. He’s obviously a geek at heart!
no images were found
To hear straight from the source about the process for producing this incredible artwork, hit up the embedded player below to listen to our interview with Mr. Thompson. It’s enlightening to say the least!
Now, it’s all focused on a single retail outlet, Meijer’s, and all sightings seem to be in the Indiana and Kentucky areas, but we’ve got some more evidence of figures being found in the wild.
First and foremost, long time friend of GeneralsJoes and one of the admins of JoeBattleLines, Scott “MadMac” found a Wave 1 Roadblock and was kind enough to take some pictures. He also took some initiative and swapped out Roadblock’s hands with the 7-Pack Red Dog. The results are quite nice! Check out the images below.
no images were found
Also, fellow co-host of the What’s on Joe Mind podcast Gary discovered them at his local Meijer’s as well…so guess we’ll have some good stuff to talk about next week! Check out the image for proof below.
Those of you with local Meijer’s stores, gas up those cars and get driving! I’ll just sit back with my bears and wait for those pesky e-tailers.
Since yesterday the G.I. Joe fandom has been buzzing about the rumor that IDW is “streamlining” their G.I. Joe comic releases, and one Twitter use ComixAce even mentioned the fact that they would be trimming down to a single title.
Obviously lots of concern was immediately voiced, specifically about G.I. Joe: Cobra, which many fans consider the best of the current running comics, to say nothing about its ties to G.I. Joe. Cobra writer Mike Costa has evidently heard the concern, and voiced some reassurances via his Twitter page:
“Everyone’s concern has really been a huge compliment to me, but I want to assuage your fears: I am not leaving the Joe franchise”
What does this mean in the grand scheme of things? Seems pretty unlikely that the Cobra title would remain the only G.I. Joe themed comic that IDW does, so my first guess is that this issue has been somewhat overblown.
While there is no doubt that some streamlining is likely taking place, my guess is that it’s not as serious as some folks are making it out to be. Time will tell, and hopefully we’ll get some sort of formal announcement at C2E2.
UPDATE – Thanks to Troynos from the ComixVerse who reached out to John Barber and got even better clarification about IDW’s statements. Check them out here, and also quoted below.
“I think Dirk (Wood, IDW’s VP Of Marketing) was actually talking in vaguer terms than any concrete plan; the basic gist is that we’re aware that (in general terms) there are a lot of groups of titles from a lot of publishers where there are a LOT of titles (like Avengers or X-Men or whatever). We’re aware of overburdening the market with a lot of anything–Joe, Turtles, X-Men, anything, no matter how popular–can have an overall negative effect on sales. Plus, I’ve got to admit that the GI JOE trade paperback numbering and the several-times renumbering of series like Cobra over the years is pretty confusing… and we’re trying to not be confusing going forward. What exactly that means, we’re not sure (other than I don’t want to have a GI JOE: COBRA: COBRA CIVIL WAR: VOL 2 and a GI JOE: COBRA CIVIL WAR: VOL 2 book and have them be different books…). But it’s not really any paring back on anything. It was more about assuring retailers we’re not going to flood the market with confusing material. We had a month or two with the movie-tie-in series plus some specials where there was a TON of Joe comics out the same month; we’ll try to spread the wealth more over a longer period of time.
So there’s still going to be plenty of GI Joe; D&D has never had more than one ongoing and a limited series; Magic’s never been more than one series at a time.”
Big props to Troy for reaching out and getting clarification. Glad to hear this was misinterpreted.
Starting today I’m going to be doing a little feature documenting the construction of my new toy room that’s happening along with the construction of my new house, scheduled to be complete this June.
Some posts will be more about my own history, some posts will just be a look at some images.
I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with this, but I figured I’d take this opportunity to try and do something interesting and document the process of my toy room coming together. Take it or leave it. Check out Part 1 after the jump.
This latest image from G.I. Joe: Retaliation comes courtesy of StarkIndustries.ru, which is apparently a Russian film site, but I’ll be damned if I know where they got it from. I know with the last series of Retaliation press images, a Russian site was ahead of the American press by a day or two for whatever reason.
The awesome looking image features G.I. Joe member Flint (D.J. Cotrona) facing off against the infamous Cobra Ninja Storm Shadow (Byung Hun Lee). It’s a pretty neat image and shows us that from all appearances, Storm Shadow will look very similar to his Rise of Cobra appearance in his leather trenchcoat. Check out the mirrored image below.
Big thanks to NFC JD for the heads up!
