Mark Bellomo - The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe Volume 2

Mark Bellomo's Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe - 2nd Edition

I bought this book a month or more ago, and have been unforgivably late in posting a review, mostly due to Rise of COBRA hysteria, but in a way, I think it’s appropriate. My site has been getting a ton of traffic post-movie, and a lot of these folks might not know the history of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, and Bellomo’s most recent book, the Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe (2nd Edition) would be a fantastic jumping off point to get instantly familiar with the great history of A Real American Hero and their roots.

Really, that’s what this book is. On the surface, it’s a great reference guide, with pictures of every figure and vehicle release in the vintage Real American Hero line from 1982 – 1994. But once you scratch that surface and start digging down, there is really a lot of information in here and this book is an invaluable resource for folks who are just getting into the G.I. Joe brand, or even for fans like me who have been following the property for nearly three decades.

Now, this book has a lot of the same philosophies as many others out there. Ron Conner’s great reference guide for International figures and domestic figures from 1995 – 2006 is an ultra portable magazine-style reference book to international figures and later issue figures that goes along the lines of the earlier reference guides by James DeSimone. But what Mark Bellomo has done is take that reference guide idea and injected it with mega-steroids, bulking it up, inflating it with insane amounts of detail, yet still making it a book you can carry around and utilize as necessary.

The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe (2nd Edition) is the ultimate coffee table book for any Joe fan. It is chock full of pictures of your favorite toys from cover to cover, yet is bundled and produced professionally enough to blend with the rest of your books and not make you look too nerdy. I think that’s the ultimate compliment.

But I’ve heard a lot of comments from folks who have the original that are wondering if they should buy the second volume…if it’s worth their cash. Without hesitation, I say YES. There is so much more information crammed into Volume Two, the images are worlds better, and it’s almost like a totally different book. While the first volume was a great refresher to the vintage line, and a great reference guide, Volume Two feels much more like a “complete” book with all of the bells and whistles. These aren’t just images, they’re memories and details pulled from the mind of Larry Hama, Hasbro Designers, and Mark Bellomo himself, which in and of itself is worth the cover price.

Details about characters, about figures, and even about the military history surrounding all of the different aspects of the G.I. Joe brand make this book infinitely interesting for Joe fans of all makes, models, ages, or opinions. It is, far and away, the defacto book for the discriminating G.I. Joe fan, no matter which flavor.

I wish I could find some things to complain about, just to make this review seem more “fair and balanced”, but honestly there isn’t much to talk badly about. This book is professionally conceived, produced with care, and is an absolute necessity for any G.I. Joe collector. Even if you’re a devoted Anniversary or Rise of COBRA fan, it’s awesome to peek “behind the curtain” and see where the G.I. Joe line got its birth and how it started off in it’s first twelve years. An amazing amount of blood, sweat, and tears went into this book, and it shows. Buy it, you will NOT regret it.

Amazon.com

GRADE:

Photographs from The Ultimate Guide to G.I Joe, 2nd Ed., by Mark Bellomo, published by Krause Publications.