In my day it was different . . .

Wow . . . three and a half months.

When I last checked in the first installment of the Adventure Team Chronicles was about to be published. This morning I handed in the script for the sixth. The first five chapters fleshed out the story from the file cards on the back of the Collector’s Club 3 3/4' Adventure Team figures. I have always enjoyed writing, and I think I have a reasonably good imagination, nevertheless, this first storyline proved surprisingly challenging for me. Early in the process I realized, it's one thing to pull a story from your head and put it down on paper, and an entirely other thing to take someone else's concept or premise and try to breathe life into it. I can pull off the former; I have a ways to go with the latter.

For the next storyline I was free to go in whatever direction I wanted. It did not require a lot of thought. As a kid my two favorite Adventure Team sets were Secret Mission to Spy Island and Secret Agent. My favorite figure was the Man of Action. Next up is “Secret Agent Man” a two part spy tale starring, wait for it . . . the Man of Action.

I have always thought the biggest difference between 12" Joe-era kids and the 3 3/4" generation that followed was not scale, but source material. By the time Joe saw his first revival, the action figure universe had been "Kennerized." Licensed properties with ready-built back-stories influenced both play and purchasing habits. With cartoons and comic books in the pipeline the same time as the toys the Real American Hero G.I.Joes closely followed the path of Kenner's success with Star Wars.

In my day it was different, we made up our own stories.

Yeah . . . that is both true and not so true. In my day we had The Avengers, Gemini Man, Johnny Quest, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, I-Spy, The Invaders, It Takes a Thief, Land of the Giants, Land of the Lost, Man from Atlantis, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible, The Prisoner, The Saint, Time Tunnel, U.F.O., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and my favorite, The Six Million Dollar Man. Our adventures, while not exact reenactments, were fueled and refueled by the flickering T.V. screens in our living rooms.

In my backyard the Man of Action was an accomplished actor. He stood in for James Bond, Napoleon Solo, Race Bannon, and even Steve Austin. He fought bad guys, robots and all manner of monsters. Some of them were even invisible. It’s no wonder he was my first-round draft pick (that’s a sports metaphor for you die hard toy collectors).

My Man of Action was always a spy. Yours might have been a white tiger hunter, an archeologist or the guy who gets stuck handling the radioactive rocks without gloves. In creating the Adventure Team Chronicles our idea was not to establish canon or tell the definitive story of the Adventure Team. What we hoped to do was give form to something that had previously existed mostly in the minds of kids who are now closer to retirement than to the sandbox. The adventures undertaken by our Joes, regardless of our influences, were as unique as we were.

There are no new stories, just different story tellers.

TRiP

The MSV rolls once more.

It's that time again and Dave and I are putting together this month's RJ episode Recruitment Fair. I have been busy with other Club projects so this installment is another collaborative effort with Dave pulling most of the load.

In keeping with at least one of my New Year’s resolutions the RJ site is making progress. We have the first year of Regular Joes up and Dave and I will be posting episodes from the various years periodically over the next several months.

News Flash! . . . Ok, so it was a Facebook post.

“A NEW regular feature of the G.I. Joe Collector's Club magazine will be a running an Adventure Team comic in serial format! Each issue will feature two pages of story and art by Tod Pleasant and Rod Whigham! The first two pager will debut in the February issue of the Club magazine….”

As someone other than me has let the White Tiger out of the bag I can now confirm that the project I referred to a few weeks back will be an Adventure Team comic. The Adventure Team Chronicles will explore the untold history of G.I Joe's 1970's era action heroes. While the 80's era Joes had their various comic and cartoon series our flocked friends adventures have been confined to packaging copy, and the mini comics included with some of the sets. It has been fun having the opportunity to "unbox" the characters, in attempting to add some dimension to these iconic figures.

Working with Comic Artist Rod Whigham has been terrific. I shared a table with Rod at an Atlanta Joe show years back and found we had mutual appreciation for 60's and 70's DC war comics like Enemy Ace and The Unknown Soldier. A prolific commercial and comic book artist, Rod has drawn most everything from the G.I. Joe Real American Hero to the Punisher, and is currently the artist on the Gil Thorp newspaper strip. His artwork on the AT project is a perfect balance between modern style and a 1970's retro that perfectly suits the subject matter.

If you want to get some early insights in to how we are developing AT characters check out the dossiers printed in recent GIJCC magazine issues. So far I have penned the Commander, Land Adventurer and . . . er, was supposed to turn in the Air Adventurer today. This will be another late night.

TRiP

My kingdom for a Tauntan!

It's Monday, drop dead due date for the Regular Joes episode the club wanted last Friday morning. Dave and I collaborated on a two pager we titled "Quotes." Dave did the photography at what I like to refer to as "our New York studios" while I did the layout and dialogue. Because we live 2 1/2 plus hours apart Dave and I don't get to work together as often as we did back in the AESOP era. Even when we only get to do so long distance I am always happy with the results.

I have not counted yet but Quotes may set a record for the most word balloons in a single Regular Joes episode. A task made much easier by a January 1st buying spree at comicbookfonts.com's annual one-day sale. Having limped along with comic sans for years working with a professional lettering font like comiccrazy is truly amazing.

If you like typography, and seriously, who does not, you have to check out Jarrett Heather's video for Jonathon Coulton's song Shop Vac on youtube. Like the song, it is a superb take on suburban angst.

While I am stuck on lettering, one of the questions people often ask about Regular Joes is how do we make word balloons. Yeah . . . not where do you get your brilliant ideas, why is Big Jim naked most of the time, or why doesn't Hasbro make you stop. Just, "How do you make word balloons?" We have used different methods over the years, but currently we use a technique described in this tutorial. We generally use Adobe Photoshop in one version or another, but the same process can be used with Photoshop Elements, which is inexpensive as full function photo editors go. One personal tip I can share, since each balloon is a essentially a 6 step process, as you create new ones build yourself a library of ready made balloons for reuse later.

Quotes will print in the February issue of the G.I. Joe Collector's Club magazine. That issue will also debut a new feature I have been working on with Lanny Lathem and several others for a while. Without giving too much away I can say this is something that, as an Adventure Team era kid, I have waited decades for. More on that later.

Lastly, as the DNS change finally takes hold, someone, at some point, is actually going to see this page. First reader to send an email to regularjoes@comcast.net gets a free copy of Regular Joes Volume 1.

TRiP

New Year's Resolutions

1) Lose 10 . . . make that 15, pounds.

2) List all the stuff on ebay I was going to get rid of last year.

3) Update the Regular Joes website.

As I am sitting here working on my third goal I am aiming for a solid, and reasonably guilt free 33% success ratio. Yes, I could be typing this on the iPad while pedaling the spin bike, but progress comes in small stages.

For more years than I want to think about the old RegularJoes.com website has sat idle and neglected. Last year at about this time I put a link to it on my bookmarks toolbar with the vague idea that seeing it every day would inspire me to update it. Yeah, not so much. I think it might have been netflicks that finally crowded it off the extreme right end of the browser window.

To those of you who have written emails asking when we would be updating the site, and those who have inquired if we were in fact still alive, this is it, the moment you have doubtless stopped waiting for.

Over the next several months Dave and I will be posting pages from our seven years of doing Regular Joes, as well as a few unpublished versions of the same pages, which, for one reason or another, were sent back for "revision." I'm sorry, but I happen to think "Affirmative Action Figure Law" is damned funny regardless of what those uptight corporate folks might believe.

More soon . . . really.

TRiP