IDW Publishing is winding up its G.I. Joe license with an extra-long 300th issue by longtime G.I. Joe writer Larry Hama and artist SL Gallant, with inks by Maria Keane, colors by J. Brown, and letters by Neil Uyetake. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #300 will have six variant covers, including a wraparound by Jamie Sullivan that brings together 313 distinct characters in a single image, breaking the record for the most characters on a comic book cover.
Covers A and B for issue #300 will by Sullivan, cover C by Netho Diaz, and cover D by Kieran McKeown. In addition, there will be two retailer incentive covers, by John Royle and Ron Joseph, and a special retailer incentive version of Sullivan’s wraparound cover without trade dress.
IDW announced in January that its licenses for G.I. Joe and Transformers comics would end at the end of 2022 (see “IDW’s G.I. Joe and Transformers Licenses to Conclude at End of Year”).
Hama wrote most of Marvel’s 155 issues of G.I. Joe, starting in 1982. Marvel dropped the series in 1994 and when IDW picked it up, in 2009, they brought Hama back to write one of their series (see “IDW Reveals First Three G.I. Joe Titles”).
“I remember finishing the very first G.I. Joe story, and thinking to myself that that was it, those were all the ideas I had. I had no clue what to do for the next issue,” Hama said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “So I did what I’ve been doing now for forty years: I jumped into the deep end of the pool and wrote page one without any idea about what would happen on page two. Then I slogged ahead, page by page, until I got to the end.”
“I’ve never been concerned about ‘plot’ or ‘continuity.’ Most of G.I. Joe is a long, continuous ret-con. My main concern has always been the characters, getting them to stand up and walk around inside their own universe. My second concern is visual storytelling—making sure the story is carried along in an impactful way by the succession of images. The words always come dead last, and that’s why I don’t identify as a ‘writer,’ but as more of a ‘penciler with a word processor.’”
Hama was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame in July (see “Eisner Awards 2022“).
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Source: ICv2
