Interview: Joshua Williamson & Tom Reilly Chat Duke, Cobra Commander, & All Things G.I. Joe
Two of the biggest action figure franchises are having a new moment with the launch of the shared Energon Universe in Robert Kirkman’s Void Rivals, which brings together the worlds of G.I. Joe and Transformers. While Larry Hama returned to pen the titular G.I. Joe ongoing, Joshua Williamson was tapped to write two new series: Duke and Cobra Commander. To help celebrate this week’s release of Duke #1, I’m excited to share an interview with Williamson and Duke series artist Tom Reilly which I was able to conduct in early December thanks to the team at Skybound Entertainment.
Read on to hear about how this creative duo came to the world of G.I. Joe, their plans for Duke (the character and the series), which Joe character they’d spend a day in Disneyland with, and more! And don’t forget to pick up Duke #1 at your local comic book shop or online when it hits shelves Wednesday, December 27th!
Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and typos.
Derby Comics: Thank you both for joining…and congrats on Duke #1 hitting, from what I've seen 70,000 units, making it the biggest G.I. Joe related comic launch since Devil's Due! I've heard that a huge influence on you specifically, Josh, but how does that feel and what does it mean to both of you?
Joshua Williamson: I mean, it's really great and really a testament to what Skybound has been building. You know, right now we have a really good energy and a really good hype around what we've been building. It's been awesome to see because…we're putting a lot of our heart into this and we really like this property. We love them! And you know, we're trying to be really respectful of what's come before and of the [G.I. Joe] fandom, but we also want to make sure people who have never read these properties before, are still able to come into it and it's successful for them. You put a lot of work into something and you're just like, ‘I hope people at least read it’. You know? You're just like, ‘I hope it gets out there.’
Derby Comics: I think a few people will read it. <laughs>
Williamson: <laughs> Yeah. Well, I think the rollout of Skybound has had, you know, I'm always a big believer in like secrets and comics. Sometimes it can be really challenging and I think a lot of times you have to be willing to take those kinds of risks to be able to keep a secret. [Note: the Energon Universe reveal was kept a secret until the release of Void Rivals #1]
To not only keep a secret, but then to execute after that, Skybound has done such a great job of that. So it's cool to be able to continue to ride that wave. Even being at San Diego or New York Comic Con and seeing how excited people were and knowing that it's not just lip service. People actually are buying these books! You get these things that are hyped like crazy and then no one buys it, and so that's been a hard lesson to learn over the years. But here [with Duke] it's been really great to to see that [the excitement] and you know, again, I've been a big fan of this property since it was a kid, so it's it's just awesome being involved at this stage.
Tom Reilly: Yeah, it's probably more books than I've ever sold, maybe combined, in my three years of being aprofessional comic artist. It is very cool. It's cool to be a part of it. I think I'd done maybe two interviews before the past two weeks in my whole career and and I've now been in about twelve over the past two weeks, so they [Skybound] are definitely pushing it. It's super cool to have the team and everyone behind us kind of hyping up the book. It's very awesome.
Derby Comics: That’s really cool. Josh, you touched on something that I really I wanted to ask.I was born in 1987 and missed out on the original GI Joe and Transformers hype, but how would you pitch Duke to a total G.I. Joe noob?
Williamson: I would try really hard not to scare them and be like this is the 40 years worth of mythology! I would try to approach it as this is a person-on-the-run story. This is an espionage thriller about a person who finds out that there are robots [Transformers[ in this world. They try to investigate what that is like, how these [robots] came about.
I always start from a character place. This story is about someone who thought they knew what their world was, and then something is introduced to that world and it breaks their worldview. And in a lot of ways breaks them and it forces them to ask questions about their world and about themselves.
And then there's a lot of action and explosions. <laughs>
Reilly: <laughs> Lot of explosions, yeah.
Derby Comics: Having read the the first issue already, I can say not only is there a lot of action and explosions, but they’re also very beautifully drawn. Tom, how do you how do you go about visualizing those types of sequences on the page?
Reilly: I mean the scripts are all really well written by Josh. He's got a pretty solid idea of what he wants a lot of the time to be on the page, and then I just have to translate that into visuals. So the scripts are super fun, and it's easy to draw when you’ve got a fun script.
Williamson: You know, whenever you're working with an artist, the beautiful moment in a collaboration is when they take what you wrote and they elevate it. It's always awesome when you see they took it and they leveled it up because then it makes you be like, “Ok, well, I have to level up too. I’ve got to meet this challenge as a writer too.”
Very quickly with Tom, we hit that moment and it's like the two page spread at the beginning [of Duke #1] where it's with Duke and he’s shooting his way out of a field and saving a kid, and there's explosions. I mean, I think when I saw Tom’s art I was like, “oh, it's on now!” I was like, “alright, ok, now what else can I put in here?”
I think once you get to that relationship with your tag team partner, you start leveling each other up. And so with each issue I've been able to be like, alright, what other crazy thing can I throw in here and see how Tom takes it and levels it up.
Derby Comics: Building on that, there's a sequence in the first issue where, for lack of spoilers, Duke is infiltrating a building with minimal text. And I just sat there, with bated breath, wondering what is going to happen? The pacing was just insane from a visual perspective to immediately convey a sense of intensity.
Williamson: When I wrote issue one originally I think it was only 24 pages. But I knew when I was turning it in there were certain scenes in the issue that needed more room to breathe. But now it's 30 pages and I was able to take that scene and make it so there's no dialogue. It's just all visual. Then I put it all on a Tom's shoulders to execute it in a way that does have that cool storytelling to it. He was able to make it a very tense moment.
Reilly: I can't say I'd hate it if it was 24 pages. <laughs>
Derby Comics: I know you’ve both spoken about this previously already, but can you speak to how you both came to the Energon Universe and the Duke series?
Reilly: I was working with Josh at DC Comics on Knight Terrors: Superman and I got the call from Skybound about joining the Energon Universe with Josh, which I didn’t know he was working on.
Williamson: I started talking to Skybound about G.I. Joe maybe like six years ago. He [Williamson’s son] did not exist. <laughs> We had been talking about it, it was an ongoing conversation. Skybound asked if it's something I'd be interested in and we just kept talking about it. Then all of a sudden I was working on it one day. It was something I had always wanted to work on.
Derby Comics: Josh, how did you weigh launching Duke and Cobra Commander as individual series knowing that they’re part of the same shared universe. Do you see them as companions?
Williamson: Yeah, I see them as parallel books with each other. I really liked what Hickman did with HoX/PoX [House of X and Powers of X]. I always thought it was a really fascinating way to look at it.
Originally, there was only going to be the Duke book. We started having all these conversations about Cobra Commander and how important he was to the plans to the [Energon] Universe. How much of a crucial piece would he be? So we started talking about the timeline and what was our big picture plans for all of how Cobra Commander played a role in it.
All this felt like it was taking on a life of its own, so it very organically came about. He's his own character and kind of took on a life of his own. And then they [Skybound and Robert Kirkman] were like, “would you write it?” Part of me was like “yes,” because I need to, I think, for what we're doing, but also I wanted to. I really love the character and the stuff we were talking related to him was such a different take on him.
Then when I started thinking about his relationship with Duke and how the two of them are going to be on this kind of parallel journey. What they both were going through on an emotional level was actually very similar. So I was like, “oh, this is really interesting having two people going on a similar journey but ending in two completely different places,” but then also how that will cause them to be in conflict with each other and how they were both were reacting differently. It really just worked out. It really was a very organic thing that came together.
Derby Comics: And from what I've heard, you do love your bad guys and your villains. What was it like writing Duke, a story about a character who could be considered a golden boy?
Williamson: Well, so here's the challenge, and I learned this from writing The Flash, it's not who I am as a writer. I have to have a jerk around, there has to be a jerk character. I'm writing like there has to be some kind of character that makes snide comments so that the other character can bounce off them. So with this [Duke], it's a bit of a spoiler, but I introduce a character that is the jerk opposite of Duke. And that makes you realize Duke is definitely the shining golden boy character who's definitely broken. We're breaking Duke down a bit. That was part of what made it more interesting.
Derby Comics: What is it like drawing for a franchise which has been around for decades? Did you have to balance creating your own version of it while still trying to be true to what people expect a G.I. Joe comic to look like?
Reilly: It was a fun challenge. GI Joe does have a great cast of character designs and all the vehicles are classics. Everything looks very cool, but it's like having all the toys on the shelf but you can only play with a couple of them. We've been talking a lot all day about patience. So I've had to exercise a lot of patience and kind of deciding what we put in and what I use for visual influence. I've been able to come up with a lot of my own original designs too because some of this takes place before a lot of the things that people are familiar with. It has been very cool. They [Skybound and Hasbro] have been open to new ideas, new designs, things that have not existed before, when they could easily just tell me to make things look the way they look on the toy box. So I've been having a lot of fun spinning original designs into something that could be believable for the world that we’re building here.
Derby Comics: Josh, I've heard you also are a huge Disneyland fan. Speaking of all the establish G.I. Joe lore and large cast of characters, if you had to spend a day in the parks with one G.I. Joe character, who would it be and why? <laughs>
Williamson: <laughs> With one GI Joe character? Oh my gosh, that's tough. I’m trying to think of who…
Reilly: Shipwreck.
Williamson: Yeah dude, Shipwreck would be a lot of fun actually. Also because Shipwreck, if you watch the cartoon, was made to sound like Jack Nicholson. And so it's really weird, the guy doing the Shipwreck voice and the acting for him was basically doing a Jack Nicholson impersonation. So it would be really fun to hang out with him and just have someone basically pretending to be Jack Nisholson all day.
There a part of me that thinks it would be interesting to go with somebody like Cobra Commander. Just like, see what happens…see what happens!
Reilly: Roll with it!
Williamson: He’s such a weirdo! <laughs> It would be interesting to hear his take on things as he's around everything. He’d be figuring out how does he turn this into some kind of death trap or something. That would be probably too stressful. <laughs>
I wouldn’t want to go with someone like Duke or anyone like that, they’d be too serious. But yeah, that’s a good call Tom. Shipwreck would be a lot of fun.
Reilly: It would definitely be Shipwreck.
Derby Comics: Well, I really appreciate your time. Thanks to both of you and thank you to Skybound. It's awesome and really gracious of you both to spend your time with me. Good luck with Duke!
