IDW Transformers vs. G.I. Joe #6 Full Preview

ComicsAlliance: The first thing I want to talk about is pacing. Jumping into Transformers vs. GI Joe #5, which is the start of the second paperback if people are reading it that way, they’re getting a comic that moves so fast that it is often hard for me to keep up.

Tom Scioli: Well, issue #5 would be the one, because issue #5 is where it really accelerates. I just find that so many comics have a lot of redundancy, a lot of over-explaining, a lot of images of basically the same thing, so part of the approach is to just eliminate redundancy and just give you the things you need to move the narrative forward. I sort of crossed a point of no return with it, I think, and where that came from is that I wrote a script for a Transformers vs. GI Joe movie adaptation.

You know, the movie doesn’t exist yet, but I made a comic as though I was adapting a movie, and how movie adaptations are. There are chunks missing, and jumps because of the time it takes to take an hour and a half movie and put it into a comic, you’re going to have to cut some things out. I wrote something with that sort of style in mind, and after I did that, I realized that’s a tool I could use any time. It doesn’t have to be restricted to this particular conceit, it’s just a tool in my arsenal now. It was really effective in that script, which hasn’t come out yet, but it was just a really intense reading experience.

[...]

CA: The interesting thing about that to me is that, like you said, there have been Transformers and GI Joe team-up books before, and now you’re doing it as an ongoing series and using the entire cast of both books, as they have existed for thirty years. There’s not a whole lot left on the table.

TS: That’s one thing I noticed. I was sort of going through all these characters and throwing them in, and now I’ve sort of reached the point where it’s like, “Oh, what Decepticon villain can show up?” and most of them are there already, pretty much. There’s an endless number of jets that I can go to, but most of the really resonant ones have shown up, so now it’s just getting weird, which is actually interesting. Now we’re getting into the Pretenders and the Predacons, all the weirder corners of the mythology.

CA: That’s something I wanted to bring up, because you’re at the point now where you’re creating new stuff.

TS: I want to go more in that direction. I thought doing a comic like this, that’s an established thing, would be easier — having a universe that’s already established that I’m just building up. But I’m seeing the limitations of it. I really do want to just create more and add more to it. It’s not so complete a cosmology that there’s a character for every season. I thought there would be a character for every occasion, and in a lot of cases there are. I needed a character who was a chef, and, okay, Roadblock is a chef, I can use him. But there are a lot of holes in the mythology that I’m trying to fill in.

That last Transformers movie… they went nuts. It almost wasn’t even Transformers anymore, it was this infinite universe of every kind of creature you can imagine, and that freed me up too, realizing that I could make this universe whatever I wanted it to be. It doesn’t have to just be giant robots that turn into cars or dinosaurs, it can be a universe.

To say that Tom Scioli and John Barber‘s Transformers vs. GI Joe is an unusual comic is underselling things quite a bit. On paper, it’s a natural fit, an ongoing series that follows in the footsteps of earlier books that have combined the two toy lines into one massive interplanetary battle. In practice, though, it’s something a lot bigger, a comic that almost assaults the reader by cramming in as much big, wild stuff as it possibly can — a toy comic so weird, and so great, that it almost feels like it shouldn’t exist.

With the book’s second storyline well under way, throwing in everything from Vikings to old gods to Dinobots (and a new printing of his amazing American Barbarian on the way this summer), I talked to cowriter, artist and occasional ComicsAlliance guest contributor Tom Scioli about the series. Today, he talks about building a history for a universe that’s even more important than our own, the two-page Free Comic Book Day story, and why his book isn’t a paean to Snake Eyes. You can read the first part of this interview here.

[...]

CA: The next specific scene that I wanted to talk about was the first page of #6. Every time I think this comic can’t get any wilder, it gets bigger and weirder in a way that I find really enjoyable. This comic opens with Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden by floating Transformers with laser swords.

TS: Yeah.

TS: It’s a universe. It’s a whole universe. My thought is that the Transformers vs. GI Joe universe is the most important universe there is, and while you’re reading it, it’s even more important than our universe. There’s an Alpha to that universe and there’s an Omega to that universe, and what you were witnessing was Roadblock’s reading of the Cobra Bible, the Decepticobranomicon, so what you’re reading may well be an actual accounting of what happened. It might be mythology. It might be disinformation. It could be any number of things. There’s a deep history to this world.

CA: I’ve said this before, and I mean it in the best way possible, but I’m always surprised this book exists.

TS: Right. [Laughs]

Transformers vs G.I. JOE #7
Tom Scioli & John Barber (w) • Scioli (a & c)
THE WORLD AS THEY MAKE IT! Alliance are forged! Enemies are enraged! The war burns on Earth and Cybertron! And now… now the real battle begins.
FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Bullet points:
If you’ve ever liked anything, you’ll love this!
If you’ve never liked anything—this will be the first thing you love!
Variant Cover by Kody Chamerlain!

MegaDump wrote:Good God, these are hideous. Honestly, the worst thing about old comics, in my opinion at least, was the crummy artwork and the cheap paper they were printed on. Trying to emulate that look in this day and age makes no sense to me, other than appealing to a sense of nostalgia in older fans. I can't imagine any kids flipping through this on a comic book store shelf and being impressed. It's like using a broom to clean your floor when you have a vacuum cleaner handy... The vacuum does the job faster, more efficiently and you get a better result, so why stick to "old technology?" But hey, whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Two points

- You clearly don't do much housework or have pets. A broom gets things out of wool rugs that a vacuum cleaner simply can't. Different tools. Different jobs. In the case of art - pencils and pens for sketches and inks can be a much more efficient tool. Depends on the style and the artist.

- Its not just nostalgia notes the art hits - it has quirky details and is dynamic in a way that the current pseudo-anime style used in the mainline can't accommodate. It is art and its quality is purely subjective. Whats in vogue now could suddenly look very tired and 'bad' in a few short years and Tom Scioli might look like a progressive genius. Besides which I'd hardly dare call old comic artists like Ditko or Kirby 'crummy' simply because of age or an art-fashion change.

Still gutted I can't easily get my hands on these. I'll have to trawl eBay next month and catch up, if money allows.

In the interplanetary war between the TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE, anything can happen... and does.

o.supreme wrote:Yes I got it at my local shop yesterday.