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As we look back on the major comic events of the year, one that immediately stands out is the launch of the Energon Universe, with both Void Rivals and Transformers proving to be smash hits for publisher Skybound (both also made our end of year list). This shared continuity expands again at the end of the month with the release of Duke #1, a new comic based on the adventures of the famous G.I. Joe character.
Duke marks the first time the G.I. Joe franchise has played a major part in the Energon Universe, though as readers will learn when the first issue is published on December 27, we've already seen at least one of these characters in the pages of Transformers.
Newsarama sat down with Duke writer Joshua Williamson and artist Tom Reilly to find out more about the new book, how it takes a different path to Larry Hama's long-running G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero title, and to find out about some of the threats that Conrad "Duke" Hauser will be facing in the coming months.
Newsarama: Just to start us off, what does G.I. Joe mean to you both?
Joshua Williamson: G.I. Joe represents a part of my childhood. It's just something that I really, really enjoyed as a kid and I'm still a fan of today. I still buy the toys - I have stacks and stacks of the toys over here [editor's note: midway through this interview another G.I. Joe toy was delivered!] - but also, it has connections with my Dad. I come from a family of military people and this was a thing that we could connect on. It's just something that I've always really enjoyed.
Tom Reilly: My love for G.I. Joe does not run quite as deep as Josh's, but I had the toys and stuff. I saw the live action movies and I've seen the PSA cartoons on YouTube.
How did you both come to work on Duke?
Williamson: Skybound reached out to me maybe five, six years ago. The conversation was, "What properties would you be interested in if we did licensed stuff?" And I was like, "I'll never do licensed stuff again... except for G.I. Joe." And they were like, "Oh, interesting..." So you that's sort of where it started to come together.
Reilly: We originally wanted to work together on a creator owned book and we had a couple of ideas that we were throwing around. Eventually we both got busy with Marvel and DC stuff, and it got put on the back-burner. And then I met up with Josh, I think last year at New York Comic Con, and we kind of decided to do something then. It ended up being Knight Terrors: Superman and while we were doing that I got an email from Sean Mackiewicz at Skybound asking if I wanted to do Duke with Josh. So it just kind of came about like that.
Were there many conversations with Skybound around who exactly to target this new G.I. Joe book at?
Williamson: When I started working on the outline I asked them [Skybound] straight up, "Who is this for? Is it gonna be for the diehards who know all of the continuity, history, and mythology? Or are we trying to get new readers?"
We definitely want to make people who love the property happy, but we also need to make it accessible for new people. For me, it's a balancing act. The trick is making it so that if you've never read a G.I. Joe comic, you can jump in right here. At the same time, you have our respect and love for the last 40 years.
Tell us a little bit about your take on the central character. Who is Conrad Hauser to you?
Williamson: There's a scene in the book where Duke is talking to some of the other characters - I can't say who! - and they ask, "Who is Duke?"
And we know who Duke is, right? He's the best of the best. He's a man of action, an American hero. I hate to call him a product, but he's this asset that was created to do a very specific thing, to be the perfect soldier. But then the question becomes, who are you when you're not being those things? And I honestly don't think Duke really knows.
Duke thinks he knows who he is, thinks he knows what this world is - and then Starscream enters into his world and it is a huge crack. I mean, if you saw a jet turn into a robot that would mess your head up!
Duke's not thinking that they're aliens, he just thinks someone has built some kind of weapon, right? Part of this journey is him trying to find who built this thing and what's really going on. But he's also on a journey looking for answers to questions like, "Well, who am I?"
Duke's investigations bring him to M.A.R.S. Industries. What can you say about that and the threats he'll encounter?
Williamson: Well, it's funny because, you know, the initial threat is not gonna be Cobra. He's going into M.A.R.S. Industries, but even that isn't the first real threat he's going up against.
One of the things that I really wanted to do with this was to make it so that it isn't so one-to-one. When I was a kid, it was always G.I. Joe versus Cobra, you know what I mean? And so one of the things that I really wanted to do was to show how these factions are not all together yet. I want to show how we get there. With this book we see M.A.R.S. Industries, but there's other stuff going on at the same time. You may not expect how we get to some of the things you want to see. We'll get there, but maybe it'll be different than what you think. We're really trying to be unpredictable.
I think people will be surprised to see what Duke has to go up against in this book. It's an emotional journey for him, but there will still be some really cool fights!
Tom, what's it been like for you drawing this comic?
Reilly: It's been a lot of fun. It's been challenging, because there's a lot of real life military tech that I've had to research. I'm trying to keep things pretty grounded. This is also just a different type of story - over the last few years I've been doing more bombastic superhero stuff and this is a more grounded story. So I'm trying to approach it in a little bit of a different way. It's been an interesting challenge and I get to come up with a lot of different character designs.
Aside from real world hardware, has anything inspired the visuals?
Reilly: I'm inspired by all the great designs from the toys and the different G.I. Joe media - there's been a lot of great artwork. I've also been looking at war comics, like Joe Kubert stuff, and trying to trying to capture some of that. It's sort of like a thriller, so I've been watching a lot of James Bond movies while I work, trying to set the tone.
Williamson: Yeah, we knew we wanted the book to feel like an espionage thriller. It's funny, the G.I. Joe comics were more of a military thing with high technology, and the cartoon was a little more on the weird side. And so we were trying to find this balance between those two. The work Tom's doing is really great. It feels very grounded, but then obviously there's this weirdness.
Tom, how's it been working with colorist Jordie Bellaire again?
Reilly: It's always great to work with Jordie - this is, I think, our third book. She makes my art better. She's the reigning Eisner champ for a reason. I think her colors are awesome and everything we've worked on together has looked different. She's doing bold, interesting things that fit the tone of the book and I can't wait to see the pages as they come in.
Duke is part of the Energon Universe. How closely are you working with Robert Kirkman on Void Rivals and Daniel Warren Johnson on Transformers?
Williamson: I just had lunch with Robert the other day. We sat down and were talking about stuff that's coming up and throwing ideas around. I talk to Sean Mackiewicz at least twice a week. We all do a lot of talking and then everyone goes off to their separate corners for a few months.
One thing that has been really good about all this is that we wanted to make sure that the different books can act independently. Obviously there are connections, but it's not overwhelming.
How about what Larry Hama is doing over on A Real American Hero. You're in separate continuities, but does that book impact on what you're doing at all?
Williamson: It doesn't really impact us, other than I feel like Larry is the parent of this property. Larry has a story that he is telling, so we just get out of the way and let Larry do what he's doing. We don't really connect to it, but I love his work.
I think the biggest impact Larry has on the stuff I'm working on is actually the original file cards that he wrote, because whenever I'm introducing a different G.I. Joe character or a Cobra character, the very first thing I do is I go back and I read the file cards. To me, that's who that character is at their core, at their most pure. And so I always go back and look at that, and then I grow it from there.
Finally, what are both your hopes for this book?
Reilly: I'm having a great time on the book and working with Josh. I guess my hope is that people who have liked the property for a long time jump on and they enjoy a fresh take. And then maybe new readers who haven't had as much experience with G.I. Joe can jump on, and also have a good time with it.
Williamson: Yeah, that's it. I hope people see that we're putting a lot of love into this book. I hope that they can see that all of the Energon universe books are really built from a place of love for these properties. So that's really what I hope, that people check it out and go on this journey with us and know that Duke is just the beginning of a really big story that we're telling.
Duke #1 is published by Skybound on December 27.
Go back to the origins of the Energon Universe with our interview with Void Rivals creator Robert Kirkman.
