Greetings, folks. Ambush Bug here with another interview I conducted at the San Diego Comic Con. Special thanks to AICN’s unsung hero, Muldoon, for transcribing all of these back and forthings. Expect a ton of interviews to be released daily until my interview well is dry (and believe me, it’s going to be a while after this con). One of the coolest thing about these cons is that you get to geek out with folks who grew up with the same shit you grew up with. Long after this interview, Jon Barber and I talked about our love of all things GI JOE, especially his new job as Senior Editor in Chief for IDW Publishing’s Hasbro products. Here’s what Mr. Barber had to say while the recorder was running…
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): I’m here with Jon Barber at the IDW booths. So tell me a little bit about what you have coming up here for IDW. JON BARBER (JB): Okay, well I just joined, so I’m coming up. I’m brand new here. This is kind of my debut here. I just came on as senior editor. I’m handling all of the Hasbro properties, so I will be working on GI JOE, TRANSFORMERS, and Denton Tipton is the editor on the DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and the just announced MAGIC series. Then Carlos Guzman is working with me on all of the GI JOE and TRANSFORMERS stuff, he will be editing some of those books himself.
BUG: Great, so what did you do before coming on board as senior editor?
JB: Well, I was an editor at Marvel for about six years. I worked on the Ultimate books. I worked on like OLD MAN LOGAN…after I left Marvel I did a couple creator owned books, I worked on KICKASS with Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. I edited TURF with Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards. And I was doing some freelance writing as well, so for about two years I was freelance. I was writing a bunch of Transformers stuff here at IDW and I had actually already started working on one of the new ongoing TRANSFORMERS series that we just announced when Andy Schmidt, the former editor, left and they hired me to take his place. So in sort of the odd position where I’m writing a series that I was already writing for, but now I’m overseeing the whole line.
BUG: I just read Andy’s letter at the end of his GI JOE. I think it was the last GI JOE book that came out with just a big send off. It was a cool little report and I thought it was a creative way for him to do the send off. What kind of advice did he pass on to you for GI JOE?
JB: Well you know, he left GI JOE in a really good place, which was probably the best thing he could do. Andy and I worked together for a number of years. We worked together at Marvel, so I’ve known him for a long time, so we have kind of…we come at things from slightly different directions, but we tend to wind up in the same place. We both care about making good comics, so he gave me just general advice like to stay true to the characters, stay true to the concepts of the characters and the situations, and there’s a great crew involved in it and just let them do their thing and make sure they do their best. (laughs)BUG: I’m a big fan of the GI JOE series. You are in the middle of the COBRA CIVIL WAR, so tell me about how the rest of that’s going to go and what’s going on next with them.
JB: Well, the new Cobra Commander is going to be…no. What’s going on in COBRA CIVIL WAR is Cobra Commander has been killed and Cobra is basically having a contest to see who becomes the new Cobra Commander and the rules are “Kill as many Joes as you can,” so whoever winds up killing the most is going to be the new Cobra Commander and we will find out who that is in, we just announced Thursday, the new nine part series written by Chuck Dixon and Mike Acosta running through GI JOE, GI JOE COBRA, and SNAKE EYES. It’s called COBRA COMMAND and we will find out who the new Cobra Commander is.
BUG: I can’t wait. So you’ve kind of pared it down to just those three books, so what are the different personalities going to be with these three books?
JB: I guess it’s fairly simple. I mean, GI JOE is about the GI JOE team, they are the good guys. COBRA is about the Cobras, they’re the bad guys, and then SNAKE EYES I think right now is focusing a lot on Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow and certainly a lot on Snake Eyes.BUG: The first issue seemed to have him with a team; is that going to happen a lot where he is leading a team into battle or is it going to focus mainly on him?
JB: Well let’s see where it goes. I don’t want to give away what the status quo is going to be like by the end of COBRA COMMAND, but going forward things are going to stay this exciting. I think the fans are responding really well to the current series, because it’s great. So we just want to keep doing good exciting comics and we will…I don’t want to reveal what’s going to happen with Snake Eyes, I’m sorry. (Laughs)
BUG: Sure. So how hard is it to do a comic with a main character who doesn’t talk? And no inner monologue either. It’s all a mystery with him.
JB: (laughs) That’s Chuck Dixon’s problem, I don’t know.
BUG: You can’t even see his face, so you can’t really read what’s going on.
JB: I think right off the bat that was what made Snake Eyes an exciting character for people. You put so much onto him and he’s such a mystery. It isn’t a sort of fake mystery like with a lot of characters where they just don’t tell you things. He just can’t talk and he covers his face. This is just inherently mysterious and there’s something where you can see yourself in that in a way I guess if you’re a cool ninja good guy…
BUG: Everybody wanted to be Snake Eyes when I was younger and we played GI JOE.
JB: Yeah, definitely. I’ve been a fan of GI JOE since the beginning, like I was reading GI JOE when it was coming out in comics originally, before there was even the cartoon, and you know Snake Eyes is just immediately the coolest guy. He dresses in black and doesn’t speak, that’s pretty great. So you know it is a challenge, because you have to get into his head through the story and through his actions. You can’t take short cuts and fortunately we’ve got Chuck Dixon writing it and we’ve got Mike writing the other book. Both of those guys are more than capable of telling stories that way.
BUG: I love the GI JOE stuff, but I don’t want to spend the whole time on that. (laughs) Let’s talk a little bit about TRANSFORMERS with the film coming out and it being a big success this summer, is that going to spill over into the comics or any you guys establishing your own status quo with the comics? JB: What I was doing before I started here, I actually wrote a bunch of movie tie in comics, so we have a bunch of…we have a universe that exists within that movie universe. Whether or not we are going to continue that past the movie we have yet to reveal, but the main TRANSFORMERS line takes place in its own universe, its own IDW continuity that started up when we got the license. Right now the story we are heading towards is a story called CHAOS. Just Wednesday the prelude to CHAOS, CHAOS THEORY, started coming out, which is a really great jumping on point to kind of learn the back story on Optimus Prime and Megatron, which isn’t what you expect, I think. It’s by James Roberts and Alex Milne who are just blowing it away. The fans are going crazy for issue #22. But the CHAOS series runs bi-weekly. Each issue alternates between CHAOS and what we’ve been calling THE LAST STORY ON EARTH and some of the Autobots are on their way to Cybertron for the final battle for Cybertron. This is really the end. Once we are done with this it’s going to be a very different status quo. Calling it THE LAST STORY ON EARTH kind of indicates that they might not be on Earth for very long. (laughs) So how that plays out you will have to wait and see, but both of those are going together into…they are the CHAOS event and at the end of that things are going to be very different; it leads into TRANSFORMERS #125 that I co-wrote with James Roberts and Nick Roche is drawing as we speak and that leads into our two new ongoings that we announced Thursday. There’s a lot of TRANSFORMERS stuff, I’m sorry. TRANSFORMERS: ROBOTS IN DISGUISE and MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. I can’t tell you what those series are about yet without giving away the end of CHAOS and nobody wants that, but there will be two new TRANSFORMERS ongoings continuing on from there. The big news I think for a lot of TRANSFORMERS fans is that also we have announced TRANSFORMERS 81 which is a continuation of the original Marvel series by Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman, who were doing the end of those issues.
BUG: And you did that with the GI JOE series. JB: Exactly. You saw it going on with Larry Hama writing the GI JOE: REAL AMERICAN HERO. It’s the same continuity as the old Marvel stuff.
BUG: Is there a lot of pressure to keep that continuity from that series to this one? Because that was really the series that everyone thinks of when they think of the history of the Transformers, and same thing with the GI JOE stuff. It’s had many incarnations, but those are the ones that everyone seems to always go back to.
JB: Yeah, the fans love that. They love Larry Hama and they love Simon Furman. The fans are huge fans of what Larry Hama and Simon Furman did and with GI JOE we’ve been going for what? A year that this series has already been out? There’s a big petition, thousands of Transformers fans are signing a petition to get TRANSFORMERS 81 going and we listened and we relented. Hopefully it will live up to everybody’s expectations.
BUG: Yeah, I’ve got a GI JOE geek question: will we ever see October Guard or Quinn the Eskimo or any of those other characters that never really got their own…well, I think October Guard got their figures, but Quinn never got his. He was only in a couple of issues, but still I would love to see him in the new stuff. Is there a chance?
JB: Yeah, well I have to wait to see what the future holds. I don’t mean to be evasive. I love that stuff, like I remember tracking down GI JOE #2 and I remember going out and finding that at a comic book store and having that issue and being devastated when he died in #19. (laughs) I’m there with you, like I remember those bits and then October Guard is amazing in Michael Golden’s issues in the GI JOE yearbooks…I think it would be interesting to try to reinvent the October Guard for a modern day take on it, but we will have to wait and see, sorry.
BUG: I’m getting that a lot here, so that’s okay. So what else are you working on? DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, right?
JB: Yeah. Denton Tipton is really the main editor on that, but we just announced DRIZZT, which is a fan favorite character by RA Salvatore who is co-writing the new DRIZZT series and MAGIC: THE GATHERING is one of the big announcements at the con. We are partnering with Wizards of The Coast and each issue is going to come with a Magic trading card as well as a fantastic comic book story.BUG: Sounds great. And what else? Did I forget one of them?
JB: As far as I know that’s everything. I’m just stepping into the shoes as a senior editor here.
BUG: Is that difficult to do? How has it been so far?
JB: Well, you know, I used to live in New York. I’m flying out here in ten days. I’ve got a six week old baby and my dog is in Los Angeles right now with my wife’s parents, so it’s kind of hectic times right now, so I’m kind of learning on my feet at the show and trying to catch up on everything. (laughs) It’s been a lot of fun. I love everybody here at IDW. I think the characters are great and we’ve got some great comics and a lot of enthusiasm. Like they used to say, “The best is yet to come.”
BUG: I can’t wait to see it. Thanks a lot. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me.
JB: Any time.
BUG: Check out G.I.JOE and the rest of Jon’s books monthly from IDW Publishing!
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole / wordslinger / reviewer / co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Mark is also a regular writer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and will be releasing FAMOUS MONSTERS first ever comic book miniseries LUNA in October (co-written by Martin Fisher with art by Tim Rees) Order Code: AUG111067! Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
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Proofs, co-edits & common sense: Sleazy G
Check out Bug’s panel Horror on the Paneled Page in its entirety from the con!!!
Ambush Bug announces his new werewolf comic LUNA on FAMOUS MONSTERS panel!!!
SJimbrowski brings back a ton of webseries news from Comic Con—Felicia Day’s DRAGON AGE REDEMPTION! MORTAL KOMBAT! & Bryan Singer’s H+ THE DIGITAL SERIES!
Bug sits for a lengthy chat with Marvel CCO Joe Quesada!
SJimbrowski reports from Felicia Day’s THE GUILD and Joss Whedon’s panels!
Bug talks with DC top brass Dan Didio & Jim Lee!
Bug talks with Fear.net’s TODD & THE BOOK OF PURE EVIL star Jason Mewes!
Bug talks with Zenescope’s Ralph Tedesco & Raven Gregory!
Bug talks with writer/artist Menton3 about his new IDW series MONOCYTE!
Bug has his annual chat with Radical Publisher Barry Levine!
Bug talks with Writer of Stuff, Peter David!
Bug talks with the only Caped Crusader that matters, Adam West!
Part one of Bug talks turtles with TNMT creator Kevin Eastman!
Part two of Bug talks turtles with TNMT writer Tom Waltz!
SJimbrowski reports from the CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL & NTSF:SD:SVU panels, plus a review of THE MERCURY MEN Webseries!
Bug talks with Johnny Ryan, the twisted mind behind PRISON PIT!
Bug talks DAMAGED with Sam Worthington, John & Michael Schwarz of Full Clip Productions!
Bug talks about everything from THE GOON to GODZILLA with Eric Powell!
Bug talks about the success of WITCH DOCTOR with series creators Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner!
Keep an eye out for more interviews and special reports from SDCC 2011!
