To support this launch, Hasbro is placing ad spots on national television, as they did when Marvel launched a GI JOE comic book in the early `80s. As new readers flooded comics shops, those early issues became extremely desirable. For this new launch, however, Hasbro has also promised to support the comic book on the packaging of its toy line. This could be the most successful toy tie-in that the direct market has ever seen.
The man chosen to guide GI JOE through the Dark Horse imprint is none other than industry veteran Mike W. Barr. Known for everything from Camelot 3000 to The Maze Agency to Mantra, he is clearly the best man for the job. I spoke with Mike just as he was beginning to plot the first issue of the GI JOE miniseries.
Bruce G. Costa: Mike, I understand that the new Joes are completely different characters, working with new weapons, vehicles, and settings.
Mike W. Barr: Yeah, that's true. The series takes place in the year 2010, so it's a whole new class of characters with no carry-overs from the most recent series.
BC: What was the logic behind that?
MWB: I think they just wanted to start clean with the new series so that a whole new generation of kids could have their own GI JOE.
BC: How did you come to take interest in the property?
MWB: One day the phone rang and Robert Conte of Dark Horse said, "We've got GI JOE, and I'd like you to be the guy who does it." Robert said he asked me because he liked the way I handled team books in the past, from my work on The Outsiders and Batman and the Outsiders. I thought [GI JOE] was intriguing enough to take a stab at it.
BC: One of the things you're known for, Mike -- at least in my mind, ever since Camelot 3000 -- is solid research. What preparations are you making for this project?
MWB: Since the series takes place 15 years in the future, it's perhaps more of what you might call "speculative research" than anything. I'm just trying to make sure that what we do is consistent with the [series] bible and the [animation] scripts that have been written so far. I don't know that there's a lot of research you can do about the weaponry and the nature of the world since, in 15 years, I think that'll change a great deal.
BC: Tell me what the future is like in 15 years.
MWB: What [Kenner] has postulated, and one of the reasons I like the series very much, is that the series still has the GI JOE paramilitary aspect to it, but a lot of it takes place in Europe. There's a country that has pretty much been devastated by toxic waste, which serves as a background for a lot of the work of the villain. And there's a very "Prisoner of Zenda" feel to it, which I like a great deal. So at the same time it has a future tinge to it, it also harkens to the past because it has European castles and counts and royalty and things of that nature. I like that contrast.
BC: It sounds like you have the backstory to put some depth into the characters. What's the target audience for the comic book?
MWB: The target audience for the toys, I would think, probably skews pretty young. For the comic book we're hoping that not only will the kids who watch the show and buy the toys read the book, but we're also hoping that fans of action comic books will pick up the book as well. I would think that the audience for the comic book skews a little older. Robert and I have discussed the idea, with the blessings of both Kenner and Dark Horse, of making the comics a little -- I hate to say "darker" because that implies that they're going to be totally grungy and amoral -- but making the violence perhaps slightly more realistic than you can show on a syndicated cartoon.
Even if the comic is only picked up by the kids who watch the TV show and buy the toys, they're by no means a stupid group. I've always thought that it pays to write up to your audience rather than write down. I assume that [my readers are] pretty intelligent, and I generally get rewarded for that.
BC: You're also known, I think, for developing the character in your characters. Tell us why this series will be more than just a lot of high tech-fire fights where nobody gets hurt.
MWB: [Laughter] The guys who wrote the original series bible and developed the characters wrote into each character his own individual personality. I think one of the plans for the first 13 animated episodes is that each one of those episodes will spotlight one of the new characters. So what I'm hoping to do is take what they've established very well on the shows and in the series bible and basically extrapolate from them, having a lot of character interaction. Maybe I can do some things that they don't have time to do on the show because they have 22 minutes, if that, to do an entire story. I'm sure there'll be characterization in the shows, but we hope to put in characterization of our own, too.
BC: A couple more cynical questions: S.K.A.R.'s [Soldiers of Kaos, Anarchy, and Ruin, the insidious terrorist organization dedicated to world domination] tactic is to destroy high-tech manufacturing plants and research centers. Aren't they taking out the most valuable part of what they're trying to take over?
MWB: [Laughter] Any act of wartime bombing will almost certainly destroy some technology. You know, it depends on whether the military deems it "good" technology or "bad" technology -- whether it's our technology or their technology. [Laughter] Ours being good, of course, and theirs being bad.
BC: Of course! There's something else I've never understood. "GI" Joe seems to indicate the most general of the general infantry. These guys are anything but!
MWB: Yeah, I think that's true. If you remember the Marvel series, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., he wasn't really an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., at least when the series first came out...
BC: [Laughter] Good point!
MWB:...so I just figured, what the heck? They had the original GI JOE name that they wanted to keep alive, so that became the name for all succeeding generations.
BC: Oh, I think it's just a real employee-relations move to make everybody in the military at that time feel like, hey, they're a member of this elite squad too.
MWB: Well that might be! What the heck. [Laughter]
BC: Who designs the characters and settings, and how does working on this licensed property compare with others you've done?
MWB: To the best of my knowledge, all the settings, characters, and props were designed by either Sunbow Productions (the people who are doing the cartoon show) or the guys at Hasbro.
So far it's worked out pretty well. Since I've worked on a number of other licensed properties -- I've done Star Wars and Star Trek and Doc Savage and a bunch of others -- I realized going in that I'm not going to have total freedom to do anything I want to. You are, of necessity, saying to a licensor, "Okay, tell us what we can do and can't do." If you don't like that structure then you shouldn't do the project. But you can have a lot of fun within those parameters if you just keep in mind that the licensor is not looking to be told how to have his property fixed, he's looking for you to take it and do a good job with it.
BC: Give us the skinny on your favorite characters.
MWB: There's a character called Mayday whom I like a great deal, because she's basically the only woman on the team. So she's gonna be in for a lot of flak from the guys. They'll either be protective of her, or they'll say, "Stand back, this is no job for a woman." But she's a test pilot and paratrooper. I've always liked strong female characters, and so I kind of like the idea of this one character being the only woman on this all-male team. Automatically, it puts this "boy's club" on its edge.
There's a guy called Dragon who's a martial-arts expert. I like martial arts characters anyway, but the thing I like about Dragon is that they're playing him against type. He's not the very taciturn loner who speaks in these Charlie Chan epigrams. He's a wise guy and tends to run off at the mouth of a great deal. So he's got all the physical qualifications to get the job done and get the respect of the others, but he plays against that type. I think he'll be a lot of fun.
BC: Do any other characters catch your eye? Metalhead looks pretty wiggy...
MWB: Yeah, Metalhead is going to be a lot of fun because he's a rock-and-roller. He's one of the more anti-establishment members of the team, so he comes into conflict sometimes with Stone, the Commander.
BC: Wreckage is obviously a bad guy...
MWB: Wreckage is the counterpart in the villains to a guy named Freight on the Joes team. Both of these characters are too big to travel inside of any of the authorized equipment, so the have to hang onto the outside. [Laughter]
The villains are a pretty good mix in GI JOE. Sometimes they'll work together, and sometimes they'll work at cross-purposes.
BC: What are you working on now?
MWB: The history of the Joes. The issues will be 24 pages. They'll have a 16-page lead and an 8-page backup. The 8-page backup will be about the history of this GI JOE team beginning in 1975 and leading up to the present of the series which, of course, is the year 2010. It's about how the whole GI JOE franchise came to be set up by the U.S. government. Mike Richardson did a plot which was then given to me, which I'm converting into 8-page back-ups.
BC: So is it the case that the old GI Joes didn't exist, or will they be a part of that continuity?
MWB: I don't know quite how they're playing that at Hasbro. I know that they do have a sense of humor about the thing, but apparently a lot of people have been asking them, "Are we gonna see Duke in this new GI JOE series? Where is he?" I guess they're just saying, "The old GI Joes are not a part of this new series -- at least, not yet."
By the way...when I saw the prototypes of the new toys, I asked them which one has a "Kung-Fu Grip." [Laughter] They kind of smiled and gave me the line of this having nothing to do with the old GI Joe toys. I smiled and said, "Yeah, I know; I was just being a wiseass."