Directly after the Energon Universe panel at New York Comic Con, I had the opportunity to sit down with G.I. Joe writer JoshuaWilliamson, G.I. Joe artist Tom Reilly and Energon Universe editor Ben Abernathyfor a roundtable interview to discuss what we just learned in the panel.
Knowing what a prolific writer Josh is, my first question to him was asking how he avoids burnout. Josh gave a great answer, candidly saying, “Oh dude. That is a complicated question, man. It is a complicated question. What I have found with me is burnout, whenever it starts to creep up, it’s not about writing. It’s usually about life. Whenever I’m starting to feel burnout, it’s when I’m running behind a little. That’s usually it. But I take care of myself, dude. I try to set boundaries for myself. I write certain hours. I don’t do long nights. I don’t work on the weekends. I don’t work at night at all. Actually, I only really write from 7 AM to 2, and then I go to the gym from like 2 for about an hour and a half or two hours. And then I go home and I’m in dad mode, I hang out with my kids. I’m in dad mode. That helps me separate things a lot. I definitely cut it close sometimes. There are times I get nervous about it. But then you get times to reset. But what really helps the most is when I’ll get a good idea, one I’m really in love with, and I’m pumped again. But usually I’ve found that with any kind of burnout, it’s not just the work; it’s usually something else going on. That’s why I create those boundaries, “These are my work hours.” Don’t get me wrong. It’s always going on up here, but basically I make sure I’m going into my office for only that frame of time.”
Tom interjected with, “I’m writing all this down.” Josh continued, “I really set boundaries for myself. It’s tough, because sometimes an editor will reach out and say, “Can you do this tonight?” And I’m like, “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.” I say, “I will start in the morning.” “You’ll get it to me in the morning?” “I’ll start in the morning.” But I’m not going to start on it now. I have parameters.
Wanting to head further down this road, I asked him, “How long was it until you started saying no?” Josh answered, “Probably about 3 years ago. It was definitely after G.I. Joe #1 came out. I said to myself, “Okay, this is getting unhealthy. I need to figure some shit out.” I quit two books at DC. I started restructuring my schedule. I started going to the gym, and recognizing ways I needed to take care of myself. It was much of that. That helped me with the creative side too. I would find myself on a treadmill thinking about a story. Something about that would put me in a zen state to help with some of the stuff I was working on. I would say about 3 years ago, maybe? Two and half years ago?”
We then switched gears to talk about the big news revealed at the Energon Universe panel, the Baroness is finally joining Cobra! Josh explained, “Yeah, I was excited to tell those stories. We try to focus on making sure things are unexpected, and not go the way people think things might go. There are still some twists and turns there. It’s fun to write her with Destro and with Chameleon and with Cobra Commander. It’s going to be pretty crazy for her. The thing is she feels really betrayed, not trusted by G.I. Joe, by Hawk. I can’t give too much in the way of spoilers, but she feels deeply betrayed by all of them. It causes some stuff on the G.I. Joe side. But it’s been really fun working with her in those spaces.
Another interviewer said he was hoping Baroness would stay a Joe and get a happy ending. Josh explained that they didn’t take the decision of her switch to Cobra lightly. “We talked about that a lot. How do we not do that? We don’t rush it. We went back and forth on how long. Do we do it early or do we do it late? But once we introduced her and started working on it, it was like no, this is a really interesting dynamic to keep her this way for awhile. I will say two things. I can’t talk too much about spoilers. But I will also say to you, happy endings in comics? The problem with happy endings is that when there’s an end, sure. And the stuff that we’re doing, these stories are ongoing. I don’t want to say none of these characters are going to have a happy ending, but you know, life is long.” Tom Reilly then interjected, “Unless they die.” Williamson continued, “I believe that these characters are going to be, we have a lot of plans for them. There will be no happy endings, but you’ll see as we go. You’ll see how the story evolves and changes. Again, we really try to focus on making sure these things feel unexpected. I love her as a good guy. I’m getting too close to spoilers, but the dynamic of G.I. Joe, the dynamic of the team changes a lot because of Night Force, because of that arc. Some characters might leave. That changes things around.
To which, Reilly added, “She was very cool as a good guy, but she’s going to be very cool as a bad guy too.”
We then asked Josh about how he decides to introduce new characters. He answered, “I think about this in the math in my head. I’ve joked about this before with Robert [Kirkman]. I make an effort to not introduce characters too fast. Once I got the groove of it, I figured out that I didn’t want to introduce characters too quickly. I think next year, we’re going to introduce two or three. Maybe four. This is the only spoiler I can say to you. One G.I. Joe character will be introduced, but not in G.I. Joe. That’s why I’m like technically three, but it will be four. There will be some stuff coming. It’s funny, at one point, I thought about more and then it just didn’t make sense. I don’t want to just shove stuff in. There’s a couple coming that I’m really excited about. We try to make a real effort to not burn through them too quickly. Because of the stories we’re telling now, we’re paying off on stuff from the past. Since we’re paying some stuff off from the past, I can’t bring in too much more. You know what I mean? I want to make sure we’re actually paying some of this stuff off. And again, earning it, so it might not be as many as you might or think, but I think there’s a few that people will be really happy about.” Tom Reilly added, “He’s sparing me a bit of pain too. He could just fill the panels to the brim with new characters.”
Will we see big name characters appear here or there in the background as a tease to long time fans? Josh shook his head, saying, “That’s the rule, that’s the rule – we can’t do that. It’s a rule that I have. Originally, now here’s the funny thing, man. In Duke #1, there’s a scene where Destro is in his office, right? And originally we had other characters there, in issue #1. Mercer’s in that issue, but then Mercer and Duke are talking, and originally I had Firefly just in the background. That was in the script.” Tom Reilly corrobarated this, saying, “He was just looking at a screen, yeah.”
Joshua Williamson continued, “Yeah. We cut it. We cut it. Listen, I love Firefly. I love him. He’s one of my favorites. I’m not going to do that do him. I’m going to make sure that when we introduce him, it’s a big deal, and it’s cool.” Tom Reilly agreed, “No one wants to see their favorite character looking at a screen in the background, like “Oh there he is! …There he is.” Josh added, “We’re going to take our time with it.”
During the Energon Universe panel at NYCC, it was revealed the Joe team would be getting their own B.A.T (Battle Android Trooper), and that Tom Reilly had affectionately nicknamed it Joebot. But apparently that name is not sticking at the Skybound office. I had to ask Tom, “Why are you getting any pushback on the name Joebot? It’s the best name of the past I don’t know, three years?” Tom hinted, “There might be some other thing named the Joebot. It’s possible. In every email, I call it the Joebot. It’s hasn’t caught on yet. It hasn’t caught on.” Energon Universe editor Ben Abernathy added, “The reason is he’s not really a G.I. Joebot yet. He’s a Night Forcebot.” Tom countered with, “I know. But I feel the squeaky wheel gets the grease though. I’m just going to keep calling it the Joebot. Some day. Someone else will call it that.” I’m calling him Joebot.
I asked Ben if he books the cover artists for all the Energon Universe variants. He answered, “I do.” I think asked how he decides on that. He responded, “I think I handle between 30 and 40 variants a month. It just depends. A lot of thought goes into a variant cover plan. Being very cognizant of people invested in buying these comics, I want to try to give something for everybody. When you see the covers out there, I try to give a flavor for different people. The A cover is always the most popular book. But the variants, I want certain thoughts or a certain appeal. Like, it’s a cover with Baroness on it. We were doing the blueprint covers and the streetwear covers. I try to appeal to the broadest fanbase possible. I was part of, I don’t want to take this all over, but I worked on Rebirth in 2016 at DC. I was part of the Rebirth variant cover group. I’ve been doing variant covers or 10 years now, so I kind of know everybody. I’ve found a lot of people on social media. That’s how I found Ito, who does a lot of covers for us. I’ll reach out and ask “Want to try a cover out and see out it goes?”, and build it from there. We have crossovers between the various titles just to keep flavors that would be cool to see, like what this artist would do on G.I.Joe vs Transformers vs. MASK.
Tom was quick to compliment Ben on this, saying, “I want to say Ben has great taste for artists that he gets for variant covers. He gets the big guns as you’d expect. But he gets some lesser known artists that he spotlights with these covers that are really great. Thank you for having good taste, man.”
Ben was grateful to Tom, saying, “Thanks. I appreciate that. There’s an opportunity on some of the ratio covers. When we were at DC, the thought was the ratio covers is when you can take a chance on a newer artist. The fact that it’s a ratio cover itself creates the value. Some people will order it to a degree anyway. You try to deliver something really cool, unexpected or unique. Like the next arc of G.I. Joe? I don’t think those covers have been released yet. There’s a couple of people, new creators I’ve found.” Tom Reilly interjected, ” I’m excited.” Ben continued, “And then replicate that over 7 other books every month.”
Tom Reilly has been drawing G.I. Joesince the Duke miniseries. In an era where artists rotate off books quickly, that seems like a rarity. Tom explained, “Right now I’m on a three year contract with Skybound, so it does help to be locked down. It also helps that I share the load with AndreaMilana. We kind of switch off arcs. I think I’ve drawn more issues than him by a little bit. It keeps us both fresh, and both have the juice to come back and get into it. Having to draw all of these issues by yourself would be super tough.” Ben added, “It’s a lot of characters. A team book with this large of a cast, it can be hard.” Tom continued, “And none of these guys are running around in their underwear, like JusticeLeague type stuff. Maybe that’s another line of variant covers though, sexy Joe covers.”
Ben extended credit on this to writer Josh Williamson, saying, “Josh does a great job too, tailoring the arcs and the stories to the strengths of Tom and Andrea.” Tom went on, “And when new characters show up and I get to take a crack at them and give them new designs. There’s several in the pipe, in the thank, that potentially may show up.” Ben pointed out, “We saw one today the panel, Baroness.” Tom was excited about her new Cobra design, saying, “I’ll post it on my Instagram later, you’ll get a closer look at that.”
Speaking of Tom Reilly’s designs, I told him, “I really like your design variant covers. Those are a lot of fun. It’s cool seeing your process.” He responded, “Thank you. It’s super fun to design all the characters. It’s our responsibility to make them cool.”
Tom’s design variants tend to repeat the same pose, so I jokingly asked him, “Has anyone every shown up to your table in an Artist Alley and posed like that, dressed like a Joe, with their hand in front of their face?” He answered, “Oh no. I’ve been not drawing them like that either recently. Sort of like that. I’ve been kind of breaking the mold a little bit.”
I shifted the conversation, asking “Back to variant covers for a second. The die cut Halloween mask covers are a lot of fun. Since they’re continuing, you revealed the MASK one in the panel, I assume they are doing well too?” Ben Abernathy answered, “They do well. I think they found an audience. I don’t have the sales numbers off the top of my head, but we’re still doing them, so they’re doing well. I think people are collecting them now too, across the books. Because once you introduce the collector mentality, “I’ve got to get T-Bob, I’ve got to get Zartan, I’ve got to get various characters.” Tom asked Ben, “Do you know if anyone pulls it off the staples and wears it?” Ben answered, “I’m hoping people buy two copies to do that. But I’ve never seen someone wearing one out in the wild.” Tom added, “I always want to rip it off, but I kind of feel bad doing that.” I admitted, “I have a large head. They’re not to my scale.”
Whether or not the die cut mask variants fit your head, you can follow along with G.I. Joe monthly from Image/Skybound.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more news from NYCC ’26
