I was eager to back The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Omnibus on Kickstarter. When it arrived last year, I was overwhelmed. At 17.72” x 16.93” x 5.32” and weighing in at 21.4 Ibs, it’s a beefy boy. G.I. Joe archivist R. Carson Mataxis has curated the most comprehensive collection of painted artwork for every carded figure, vehicle, playset and peripheral product from 1982-1994. It’s an entire G.I. Joe collection inside of 712 pages. Better than that, actually, as you get images of the carded figures alongside clean crisp high resolution scans of the artwork free of any cross sell promotion. I can’t recommend it enough.
As part of the Kickstarter campaign I also received a Blu-ray set featuring interviews with many of the creative minds behind the G.I. Joe brand. With over ten hours of content, it’s the perfect companion piece to the Omnibus. It helps breathe new life into the artwork by providing the artists an opportunity to share the G.I. Joe experience from their perspective.
It boggles my mind that these guys were living their dream working as artists in a 9 to 5 job that just so happened to be creating some of the most recognizable artwork of my generation. These images informed the way I played with my Joes. You didn’t need much imagination for how these futuristic vehicles worked, they were right there on the box in glorious action packed paintings. No matter how absurd the concept, looking at you Cobra Pogo, the artists working on G.I. Joe created epic battle scenes that Hollywood blockbusters would envy.
Getting to watch designer Mark Pennington take a blank sheet of paper and over the course of an interview create a fully inked character study is an absolute treat. Listening to him break down his process is something I can appreciate as an artist. It’s truly an honor.
Hearing Ed Morrill talk about doing what might be one of the earliest figure photography shoots to put on the original 12-inch G.I. Joe packaging and advertising was fun to hear about. Kudos to him for speaking about it so glowingly without mentioning how difficult it must have been to shoot figures on film as opposed to digital.
Doug Hart, Hasbro’s go-to in-house artist gets featured pretty heavily on the Blu-Rays. He shares his collection of Polaroids taken for reference for what would later go on to be iconic cardback images. If you worked on the Joe line in the late eighties or early nineties there’s a good chance your face found its way to toy pegs across the world.
The highlight of the set for me has to be the long conversation between R. Carson Mataxis and former G.I. Joe Brand Manager Vinnie D’Alleva. This is a man that did his college thesis on the transforming toy robots market including a full product pitch on a line he developed for that same thesis. He was destined for great things before he even got into the business. I enjoyed his anecdote about Hasbro getting sued for the Battle Corps sub-line by Lanard, the company famous for making a line of G.I. Joe knockoffs called The Corps.
The discs are all edited by R. Carson Mataxis, who should really get a lot of credit for the work he’s done on this project. He tells these creators stories brilliantly by adding art in all the right places. Art that takes your breath away on a big screen, by the way. There’s also classic Joe commercials sprinkled throughout and the score from the cartoon is in heavy rotation. It was a fun watch that brought back a ton of great memories for me. If you have the slightest appreciation for the art of G.I.Joe, these Blu-Rays are worth the investment.
You can still get “The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero” Omnibus Hardcover as well as the Blu-Ray Digipack over at 3DJoes.com.
