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.
While G.I. Joe fans everywhere are getting geared up for the big G.I. Joe relaunch in 2013, not much thought has been paid to how the current storyline is wrapping up. Over at Newsarama, we get a little sneak peek into G.I. Joe #21, which will wrap up the current Target: Snake Eyes story and tie off this latest “season” of G.I. Joe before the exciting new chapter takes over with a new issue #1.
In this preview we see a recently retired Hawk trying to escape his dangerous life in a cabin in Idaho, but Cobra has other plans…
I know the rumors were flying after the delay of G.I. Joe: Retaliation that seemed to focus on star Channing Tatum. Without a doubt the focal point of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Tatum’s popularity has exploded in the years since then, and with rumors circulating around his demise in the sequel film, many inside sources claimed to have knowledge that this delay would also include significantly more Tatum.
I never bought it.
Considering the star actor’s shooting schedule and the requirements it would take to bring actors and crew in to shoot significantly more footage of him, I just couldn’t see how they would manage to do all of that, all while converting the film to 3D over a period of 9 months. It has always been my suspicion that the sequel might feature different footage of Tatum, but would not necessarily feature more. I’ve always said I thought they might recut the film or tweak it, or perhaps add just a short bit of new footage perhaps to show that Tatum was not killed, but it was pretty unrealistic to assume they would squeeze in a lot more footage among the rest of the story.
According to producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura this assumption is right on target. He spoke with Crave Online, and mentioned that while there was a little bit of new shooting involved with the new cut of G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Tatum will not appear in the film much more than he originally did. His exact quote was:
“It’s not much different,” Di Bonaventura says. “Literally, we shot for three extra days. We just added sort of explanation in what we did afterwards.”
Which does make sense. You can’t just bring in a single actor and shoot new scenes to broaden his scope in the film. It would involve the whole cast and crew and significantly more time and resources. The producer also said (speaking about whether the delay was to add more Channing Tatum to the film):
“No, it’s not,” Di Bonaventura says. “That is a complete rumor. I don’t know where that started. Literally, Channing shot for – if I have it wrong, I’m off by an hour – four hours, five hours? So it wasn’t really about that at all.”
I won’t argue that they likely reconfigured the film a bit to make it look as if Duke did not get killed as they originally planned…but as Di Bonaventura says, I believe the final film we see in March is not going to be vastly different from the one we would have seen in June…aside from the 3D.
