A regular feature on Comic Book Resources is “Comics Should be Good” where they take input from readers and create an article out of it. This week, we got “The Line it is Drawn #193 – G.I. Joe Mash Ups“!
These great G.I. Joe homages feature familiar Joe and Cobra characters going toe-to-toe with other comic heroes and villains with some great results.
Check out the article right here, I’ve mirrored one of the images below.
With a sale date list of August 13th, items from the G.I. Joe 50th Anniversary line have started showing up on ToysRUs.com. Whether people jumped on them early or if they just haven’t listed everything yet, I’m not sure, but as of this moment, the HEAT Viper/Blowtorch 2 Pack, Low Light/Night Viper 2 Pack, the Cobra Trooper 3 Pack, and the Cobra Wolf are listed for pre-order.
Scroll all the way to the bottom of this page to check it out and get your orders in!
Ever since the Night Force set was revealed a few years ago, fans had been clamoring online for regular versions of the Night Force characters (which is why it seems so strange that many folks are complaining about that very thing happening with the FSS this time around).
One of those characters was Psyche Out.
Well, the Club has revealed the FSS 3.0 Psyche Out today, and he’s a bit different accessory-wise from the Night Force version. He still has the wrist radars and the hand-held, but he no longer has the PoC Recondo backpack (which frankly was a fantastic touch by the Club for the Con version) and he comes with a Zartan backpack instead.
Keep watching GIJoeClub.com for the latest updates and check out the image below.
If you’re in or around the Kokomo, Indiana area, you may want to make a bee line for Kokomo Toys this weekend as there will be a special two day event showing some rare and prototype toys from your favorite toylines of the past several years.
Details can be seen on the Kokomo Toys Facebook page or below:
Kokomo Toys will be hosting a special 2 day event at our new location, Friday June 6th and Saturday June 7th, where on display will be some of the rarest action figures and prototypes from across several toy lines (Toy Biz, Marvel Legends, GI Joe, Battle Beasts, Dungeons & Dragons, Sun-Man, Thundercats, He-Man, and more) including a Mad Bubbler prototype (Thundercats) and the FIRST 3 3/4 inch GI Joe prototype. Come see these amazing toy collecting artifacts in person!!In attendance will be Gyre-Viper (GI JOE historian and co-host of the Joe Declassified Podcast) and Josh Carlson (multi-toy line expert and author of Roshan’s Guide to Marvel Legends). They will be on-hand to talk about toy collecting and toy history, including everything from the pre-production process of action figures to obscure knock-off toy lines and unproduced, unreleased toys.
Everyone who attends will be entered into a raffle for a chance to win Kokomo Toys gift certificates. Come hang out Friday June 6th and Saturday June 7th, and celebrate the joys of toy collecting with us!!
There are only fringes of these videos that deal directly with G.I. Joe, but any kind of “behind the scenes” perspective when it comes to toy making is pretty interesting. These are no different.
The folks at Sideshow Collectibles were interviewed by Tested.com and a pair of very revealing videos were released showing those interviews. A great look at pre-production design, and preparing something for production. These two videos focus on the Premium Format figures specifically, so expect to see some Crimson Baroness cameos. Check out the videos on SideshowToy.com or embedded below.
To celebrate reaching $55,000 on their Kickstarter Campaign, the folks from Boss Fight Studio revealed some concept art for an upcoming Wave 2 item, a fantasy based Half Orc!
These kinds of peeks into the future are really awesome, and hopefully drives some folks to give support, knowing what’s on the horizon.
Check it out below, and hit up the Boss Fight Kickstarter it is getting CLOSE!
Joining Alpine and Spearhead, we now have our third look at the upcoming FSS 3.0 roster, and this time it’s Night Creeper Leader! I love that they went with the purple and yellow color scheme, and I did hypothosize that they might elect to use the removable bandana (though I wasn’t sure why it wasn’t on the accessory list posted yesterday).
Figure design is great, I love the choice of web gear… a really great update to a fun later year character. Check it out below and keep watching GIJoeClub.com for the latest info!
So last night the G.I. Joe Collectors Club launched the Figure Subscription Service, and while we didn’t see images of all the figures, they did release a short description of each figure as part of the check out process. Last night I was in the midst of recording a podcast episode, so I wasn’t able to dive too fully into it, but now that I’ve checked out the list and digested it, there are some interesting elements. A lot of this stuff has been shown before, but still.
After “the jump” I’ll run down the full list of figures with descriptions and break down what some of this means.
Thanks as always to Twitziller who manages to find the coolest concept art out there. Recently Josh Nizzi, who not only did concept work for Captain America 2, but also Rise of Cobra and Retaliation, has posted some of his work for the Marvel Studios sequel.
Fans of G.I. Joe: The Pursuit of Cobra will likely smile at some of these and identify pretty strongly with them. I’m not sure if there was some influence somewhere along the way, or it’s just a happy coincidence, but pretty cool seeing some of Falcon’s concept art looking pretty close to Skydive/Ripcord’s flight suit.
Check out those two images below, and be sure to comb through Josh Nizzi’s site for some actual G.I. Joe goodness while you’re at it.
Things are certainly started in a whirlwind for the Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. Kickstarter campaign! Here we are, less than 36 hours into this thing, and it’s already brushing up against $50,000 worth of funding. Of course, with this flurry of activity comes some questions and comments about pledge levels, etc…
Boss Fight Studio has stayed right on top of things, and posted some updates to their Kickstarter Campaign.
Also, Andrew from BFS spoke up about some questions and concerns that had emerged in other areas of the fandom, and wanted to reassure folks:
Hi guys,
I’m Andrew from Boss Fight Studio, and I’m seeing A LOT of confusion about us and the Kickstarter setup, so I thought I’d pop on and try to answer some questions.
First, Boss Fight Studio has been around for just over a year – we were founded in last March. While all of us have worked for different combinations of freelance and in-house with Hasbro, we are a START-UP BUSINESS, and as such, do not have a great deal of operating capital. This is our FIRST original product line, and when you aim to produce a very premium product at a not particularly high volume, there are a lot of expenses associated with that – tooling, labor, shipping, packaging, etc. We’re not going to get rich off of this Kickstarter, in fact, even if this thing is fully funded to all of the stretch goals, that’s about what it will cost to run the entire production of our first series of figures. We can’t even pay our salaries out of that.
So yeah, we’re the little guys. We’re fans just like you who grew up with Joe and all the associated toy lines, who are trying to inject some of the creativity and originality that we loved as kids, and that inspired us to follow this career path back into the marketplace. It’s unlikely you will ever see our product at major retailers. This is BY COLLECTORS, FOR COLLECTORS. By helping fund this Kickstarter, you’re helping our creative dreams come true and help a new company get off the ground that wants to be there to serve YOU, the collector community.
In terms of questions about specific combinations of items in the Kickstarter, we tried to keep our offerings relatively streamlined to reduce confusion. We didn’t want to offer hundreds of different combinations of items, and we’re working to clarify what’s in every reward in both the body of the KS and in the FAQ attached to it.
Now as many folks are probably aware, I know the Boss Fight Crew and have known them for many years, and please trust me when I say they truly are fans and collectors just like the rest of us. They don’t have some huge, lucrative contract with other manufacturers that allows them to spend “fun money” on making their own toys. They want this to be their career. This is their dream, and they’ve worked long and hard to get to this point. The fact that they have already grown so close to achieving this dream makes me very proud and I’m very excited for their success, so please forgive me in advance if you see a bunch of these Kickstarter updates going forward. The design and execution of these toys is simply phenomenal and I’m confident that everyone will be pleased with the end result.