G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Aliens! Plus BotCon and the IDW VIP tour

Listen up, true believers! I'm super-stoked to be heading down to San Diego in a couple of days for BotCon and the IDW VIP Tour. It promises to be a Transformers-full weekend for me. I hope I get the chance to meet and catch up with a bunch of you. Bring your Field Manuals, Arks, Almanacs and whatever else you'd like me to sign.

Meanwhile, I figured I'd finish off G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece with the alien artifacts from the episode. One bit that is probably new to most of you is that the smaller alien ship, the expeditionary ship that drops the golden coil, underwent a complete redesign. The original concept looked more like a flying screw. The redesign looks a little more conventional and matches up stylistically with the large mothership seen at the end of the episode.

Speaking of the golden coil, there was also a storyboard excerpt that was included in the design pack as a way to show the scale of the coil. I had to choose between including this image or including the unused expeditionary ship. I chose the expeditionary ship, it seemed more interesting, but in the interest of completeness I include this image as well. 

Hey, Joe-fans, what sort of extras would you like to see next? Any specific episode you'd like me to focus on? I don't have every episode, nor do I have every model from the episodes I do have, but I have a good amount. I'd love to hear from you to prioritize the Field Manual Addendums.

G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Ancient Greece (pt 2)

Hola, amigos! It's nice to have a regular feature for the blog again. Last Tuesday I kicked off the inaugural G.I. Joe Field Manual Appendix, featuring some ancient Greeks from G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece. This week I'll finish out these bygone Grecians. They're no sick kids, but they're fun. I still have a few more models from this episode, mostly focusing around the mysterious aliens whose tech sent our heroes (and villains) back in time.

G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Ancient Greece

First off, mea culpa. It's been a dog's age since I updated this blog. Fortunately, Monzo's been stepping in with some cool Transformers gems from his vault, and I much appreciate that.

The truth is I've been very busy, both professionally and personally. I've got a son on the way this fall, and that's been chewing up time and mental energy, and I've got several books I'm working on.

Still,I feel remiss. I know that animation models are a big focus of this blog, and here I am sitting on a metric ass-ton of them for G.I. Joe and not sharing them. Well, that's all going to change. While I've more-or-less exhausted my horde of G1 TF models (took a few years but I did) for Joe I'm just getting started.

Which brings me to my point. The G.I. Joe Field Manual V2 is hitting stores now. It covers animation models for the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon season 2, the Sunbow commercials from 1987-1989, and the DiC cartoon. 208 pages chocked full of goodness, including the S2 bigwigs like Serpentor (four pages!), Hawk, Sgt. Slaughter, Lifeline, Leatherneck and Wetsuit, Dial-Tone, Doctor Mindbender, Zarana and more. Plus I sneak in some earlier characters with new outfits, including virtually the whole Cobra command staff in formal wear (Cobra Commander, Zartan, and Destro in tuxedos. The Baroness in a stunning evening gown!) and the DiC take on Duke and Snake-Eyes. Throw in tons of minor characters and you've got a pretty neat offering, I think. With all that just coming out, what better time could there be to start spelunking into my archives of Joe models?

The question becomes, what to start with? Last night I did another episode of the What's On Joe Mind podcast and Mike Irizzarry reminded me about how much fun some of the guys had at JoeCon looking at material cut from the Field Manual V2. In particular, on a two-page spread of ancient Greece, the guys thought it was HILARIOUS that I had a set of models labeled 'Sick Kids.' So, I share them with you now in the inaugural G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum.

For those wondering, there are models for these ancient warriors, sheperds, and, yes, sick kids because an alien artifact sent some of the Joes and Cobras back in time in the episode G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece. I've got another couple of pages of models to share from this episode too, plus tons more covering the entirety of the Joe Sunbow tv show. So, what say you, Joe fans. Should I next week continue with G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece, or visit another episode? Any particular requests for what I should do next? Let me know, I aim to please. And pick yourself up a copy of the second G.I. Joe Field Manual if you haven't already.