2 Rivers Comic Con is This Weekend!

2 Rivers Comic Con happens this Saturday and Sunday at the Steel Shop Event Center in Saint Charles! I'm not 100% sure if I'll be able to attend, but I would encourage everyone else to go. There will be a number of stellar vendors and some really cool guests, including but not limited to Larry Hama, Kimberly Brooks, Andrea Romano, Rick Burchett, and more! It is bound to be a lot of fun, and if I am able to be there, I'll be sure to provide a write-up!

The History of the, "G.I. Joe," Comic is Fascinating

G.I. Joe existed as toys and cartoons, but when the comic launched with Larry Hama at the helm, it became a huge hit. This wasn't expected, as an excerpt from, "A Brief History of G.I. Joe," discusses on Comicsbeat. Albert Fuzailof explains how a tie-in comic to go with the cartoon helped avoid running afoul of rules about advertising toy products. He also discusses the way Larry Hama ended up on the comic--namely, a lot of other creators passed on it before it was offered to Hama--then it became massively popular.

Hama's work on, "G.I. Joe," has spanned decades and multiple publishers; he is still currently working on a, "G.I. Joe," series now over at Skybound (an imprint of Image)! The franchise has gone on to have live-action movies, plenty of other comics, and toys (so many toys). "G.I. Joe," would still have a degree of popularity without its comic, but the work of Larry Hama and his collaborators made all the difference for, "G.I. Joe," to be what we know it today.

"Mounties VS Werewolves," Looks Like It'll Be Good Fun!

Friend of the blog Larry Hama is a creator with a list of accomplishments too long to go into but the fellow has done a ton of amazing work--possibly his most well-known accomplishment is his work on the, "G.I. Joe," series across a number of publishers. That said, he has done tons of other comics and is currently Kickstarting a new one with his collaborator, Guy Dorian Sr. Titled, "Mounties VS Werewolves," it looks absurdly entertaining.

Hama will be writing and doing layouts with Dorian on the pencils, designs, and edits. Sal Buscema is another fantastic talent and he's on inks with Kevin Conrad and Scott Hanna. Candice Han is the colorist and other great creators are contributing covers a well. As for the plot, "In 1922, David Lawrence, a veteran of the Great War in France, and a Deputy Inspector in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is assigned to a remote outpost in northern Alberta. The quiet posting he had been expecting turns out to be anything but. The small rag-tag unit he commands is actually a top secret sub-agency whose mission is to kill werewolves and prevent them from spreading south to prey on larger settlements and population centers." I enjoy any good tales involving werewolves and with the pros involved, this is bound to be quite fun! You can back, "Mounties Vs Werewolves," on Kickstarter. It has 18-ish days to go and is efficently nearing its funding goal!

Skybound to Publish Transformers and G.I. Joe Comics Within a Shared Universe Introduced in the, "Void Rivals," Comic

 6/15/23 Update: It was announced today that Larry Hama will indeed be launching, "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero," at Skybound with the numbering starting at issue #301, in some ways picking up right where he left off. That's really cool!

Okay, bear with me here. Image Comics has it where creators own the rights to their own comics and they don't do licensed stuff per se. That said, there are imprints within Image that have done licensed works (for example, Top Cow, I believe). Skybound is an Image imprint Robert Kirkman owns. Kirkman is known for, "The Walking Dead," and, "Invincible," which he owns with his co-creators. In interesting news, however, a new comic titled, "Void Rivals," which had its first issue come out today has introduced a new Universe--the Energon Universe--which features original characters Kirkman and artist Lorenzo De Felici have made along with licensed properties from Hasbro. Namely, Transformers and G.I. Joe. 

IDW lost the license to both of those properties and I'd heard of Skybound as being a possible home as well as Marvel, and so forth. It seems Skybound, "Secured the bag," however, as the end of the first issue of, 'Void Rivals," reveals that, "Void Rivals," will continue as a series and there will be G.I. Joe and Transformers-centric comics. This will all take place within the new, "Energon Universe." Image kinda sorta now has some big-name licensed properties thanks to Skybound. We live in interesting times.

I've read some G.I. Joe comics in the past and dabbled in Transformers ones as well. I'm intrigued by this shared Universe and hearing that Daniel Warren Johnson will be writing and drawing a new, "Transformers," series definitely gets my attention as he's a talented fellow. I am bummed that longtime G.I. Joe talent Larry Hama (he did a bunch of work on the series at Marvel and IDW) appears to not be involved to any degree, but one can hope that will change! In the meantime, it will be interesting to witness if this new Energon Universe works out with its mix of new and old. Kirkman seems confident about it, and the man has engineered some massive hits, so we shall see!

Tales From the Dollar Bin: Legends of the Dark Claw #1

There are comics which are worth incredible sums of money, but so many of the most interesting, tragic, or just downright weird can be found for a simple dollar or less in a  store's "dollar bin". There, comics that never gained much popularity can be found alongside those that sold so much as for a copy to be worthless. "Tales From the Dollar Bin" aims to explore these comics, be they a single issue or an entire run of a series. From the great to the miserable, some of the best treasures and worst nightmares can be found in those infamous boxes. Let's have a "tale" now...

That Time Marvel and DC Melded Into Something Weird

Marvel Comics and DC Comics have occasionally crossed-over. It hasn't occurred for awhile now (the most recent time that springs to mind is "JLA/Avengers" in the early 'Oughts) and nothing much since then. However, back in the 1990s all sorts of cross-overs seemed to happen and one such event resulted in this strange mish-mash of comics known as the Amalgam Universe/Imprint.

Springing out of "DC Versus Marvel/Marvel Versus DC", one product of the event was something half-owned by Marvel and half-owned by DC, Amalgam. Amalgam was a surreal sort of alternate-universe of comics where for (fictional) decades there had been strange characters that were a combination of various Marvel and DC heroes. Some of the comics had letter pages from (again, fictional) fans, there were references to "past" events, basically everything was a strange printed piece of make-believe except for the writer and artists on the comics still using their real names (and the tiny legal print admitting that yes, this was a comic by DC or Marvel).

The initial cause of this Amalgam Universe was rooted in a story of Marvel and DC's Universes colliding in the form of two cosmic "brothers" or something which resulted in heroes needing to fight things out, followed by the merging and eventual re-separation of each imprints respective Universes. When the aforementioned "merge" happened there was a week where instead of Marvel or DC releasing their own comics 12 "Amalgam" comics came out. Later on in time there were other Amalgam comics apparently, but those were done more for fun than any story reason. One of the such initial Amalgam comics that I came upon when I was rooting through the dollar bin one day was this interesting curio of two extremely popular characters meshed-together, with the end result of Dark Claw.

Batman+Wolverine=Dark Claw
Dark Claw is basically a combination of Wolverine and Batman to result in a weird mixture of the two. His name is Logan Wayne, he saw his parents gunned down at the age 5, he works out of New Gotham City (New York City plus Gotham City, get it?), and his arch-enemy is still Creed, but instead of being Sabertooth he is the Hyena and clearly a close analogue of the Joker. It is mentioned he is a mutant and has a healing factor, and his side-kick is clearly longtime ally Jubilee, but here is known as "Sparrow". I could go on about all the interesting links (Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel is basically Catwoman but called "Huntress", another DC hero), but instead I'll talk about the comic itself.

"Legends of the Dark Claw" is well-written by the very able Larry Hama, and well-drawn by Jim Balent who while now being known for his (extremely) sexually charged "Tarot" comic-series made some good comics back in the day while keeping cheesecake to a relative minimum.

Note: I said "relative" minimum.

Anyways, the plot of this issue consists of Dark Claw fighting Hyena, as well as teaming up with the Huntress and Sparrow to figure out the Hyena's latest plot, which consists of assassinating the President of the United States, who is in visiting New Gotham City. Logan of course succeeds in saving the President but Creed/Hyena starts to escape and the issue ends with...

This would never be continued of course, because Amalgam was a temporary thing and before long DC and Marvel were made separate worlds once more.

Seeing any of the Amalgam characters again seems all but impossible at this current moment in time with relations between Marvel and DC appearing to be slightly chilly at best. Still, seeing this glimpse into what almost feels like some other dimension's comics is fun, and it helps that "Legends of the Dark Claw #1" was a well-written and nicely-illustrated read.

While it may be highly unlikely we'll be visiting the Amalgam Universe again anytime soon, at least there are some interesting comics left behind from this crazy experiment, and they definitely make for a great...tale from the dollar bin!