Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview

Thursday, March 6th, 2014 9:12AM CST

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We saw an interview just last week with Tom Scioli and John Barber, creators of the upcoming IDW Publishing Transformers vs G.I. Joe comic, but Comics Alliance have also just posted their own interview with the two writer/artists! Check out snippets below, including a preview of some of the artwork, and read the whole thing here.

Transformers News: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview

Transformers vs. G.I. Joe is a crossover that sells it self, but the downside of that is that it’s been done often enough that it can be difficult to get excited about the next version. Unless, of course, you tell me that it’s going to be co-written, drawn, and lettered by Tom Scioli, the man who wrote the line “Robot Dracula is an efficient torturer” and rendered all other comics obsolete. If you do that, you have my attention, and that’s exactly what they did when they announced that Scioli and John Barber were kicking off an ongoing series about the two teams, set to launch with #0 on Free Comic Book Day.

To find out more about how the project came together, I spoke to Scioli and Barber about how the project came together, Scioli’s massive pitch document, and how their life-long and relatively recent love of the comics influenced their storytelling. Believe it or not, I don’t think we talk about Destro at all.

ComicsAlliance: We’ve seen Transformers vs. G.I. Joe stories before, going all the way back to Marvel.

Tom Scioli: Right, once or twice.

CA: What made you each want to tackle the project in a new form, aside from just the idea that people love the Transformers and love G.I. Joe?

John Barber: At IDW, I think we wanted to do this for a long time, institutionally, just for that very reason — but we’d always sort of resisted it. Without anything interesting to do with it, there was no reason to do it. We have some G.I. Joe comics, we have the Transformers comics, I think they’re both pretty good… but if you’re going to combine them, you have to do something really different and really special. Knowing this year was going to be the 30th anniversary of Transformers and the 50th anniversary of the original G.I. Joe, we really wanted to do something with the two. We weren’t going to waste the opportunity, but if there wasn’t anything good to do, we didn’t want to do it. And then, enter Tom. [Laughs]

Tom Scioli: For me, I’m such a backseat driver with every movie I see. You almost can’t help it, once you get involved with writing, drawing or whatever. You start viewing the whole world that way. From day one of the Transformers movies, for me, it was like “okay, if I was doing the Transformers story, I’d do this, I’d do that,” and when John suggested doing a Transformers vs. G.I. Joe story, that was perfect. That’s exactly what Transformers kind of needs. The Transformers themselves were cool, but the humans never held up their end of the bargain, so having G.I. Joe be the humans, that’s perfect. They’re iconic, comics-y, sci-fi characters in their own right, so you finally have that missing ingredient.

[...]

CA: So how did you guys get together? Did you have to convince Tom that he should be drawing Transformers vs. G.I. Joe?

TS: It took no convincing at all. In fact, if I recall, John was vaguely apologetic about it, like “I don’t know if you’d like to do this or not, but…” and to me, of course, that sounds awesome. That’s right up my alley. Giant robots and quasi-superhero sci-fi army men. That’s perfect.

JB: The whole dirty secret of this is that Tom had emailed into IDW, and I was a big fan of his from Myth of 8-Opus and Godland. I was sitting there, and I don’t know how this train of thought got to me, but I was reading East of West, and looking at Nick Dragotta’s art, and thinking about how when he and Jonathan Hickman had done Fantastic Four, he was doing a little more of a Kirby thing. I’d emailed Tom that day about something else, and I thought, “you know what would be absolutely bananas? Doing this comic with Tom.”

TS: John had this elevator pitch of what he wanted this comic to be, and it sounded great. It was the sort of thing I could run with, and the ideas just kept coming. At that point, it was just sort of a “maybe.” Even though it wasn’t a thing yet, even though it was just a notion, I started thinking about things we could do. I’ve had that happen a couple of times, and I’d gotten to a point where I’d fight that impulse, but in recent years, I just let my imagination go where it’s going to go. I can do something with it. Even at that point, I was thinking “okay, if this ends up not happening, I can use some of this energy and some of these ideas somewhere else.” I’ve been working on a creator-owned sci-fi thing in the background, so if worse comes to worse, I can repurpose some of these ideas.

So I just kept going, and basically from the day John said it was something we could do, I’ve been working on it. So when it was finally something we were going to do, I had this huge thick stack of story that I dropped on John.

JB: You came in gangbusters, and it was all cool stuff. The floodgates opened, and I think it really helped that you were coming in as a fresh set of eyes.

TS: I think you’re right. To have this enthusiasm for the material. You’re a longtime fan and you’ve been working on it, and you still have an enthusiasm, but it’s probably not as white-hot as it was when you were a kid first discovering it. It’s nice to have a balance of someone who has the experience and knowledge of this stuff, and then someone whose head is currently exploding with how great it is.

Credit(s): Comics Alliance

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Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555557)
Posted by Sabrblade on March 6th, 2014 @ 10:30am CST

Wow! The colors on those last two pics are so vibrant and lively (as opposed to the more drab, faded colors of the Optimus/Megatron pic) that it really does look like something straight out of the Silver Age.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555577)
Posted by rpetras on March 6th, 2014 @ 11:52am CST

I really want to be excited by this series, but the art style really turns me off.

I get that it is emulating the silver age, but I was very glad when the prevailing comic art style changed away from this.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555705)
Posted by CaptainMagic on March 6th, 2014 @ 8:25pm CST

I have to admit, Scioli's enthusiasm could be contagious enough to make me give this series a shot. Plus, the first issue's free, so what the heck? I am really confused why he chose to draw this thing in a 60s style, though. Why not go for the 80s and double up on nostalgia for the right time period, rather than jumping back twenty years to a time many fans probably won't care about? Oh well, it looks bad in some place and cool in others, so I guess we'll call it art.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555709)
Posted by Sabrblade on March 6th, 2014 @ 8:32pm CST

CaptainMagic wrote:I have to admit, Scioli's enthusiasm could be contagious enough to make me give this series a shot. Plus, the first issue's free, so what the heck? I am really confused why he chose to draw this thing in a 60s style, though. Why not go for the 80s and double up on nostalgia for the right time period, rather than jumping back twenty years to a time many fans probably won't care about? Oh well, it looks bad in some place and cool in others, so I guess we'll call it art.

To pay homage to legendary comic scribe Jack "The King" Kirby.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555733)
Posted by 1984forever on March 6th, 2014 @ 10:45pm CST

No to silver age Transformers!

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555769)
Posted by Dead Metal on March 7th, 2014 @ 3:55am CST

Sabrblade wrote:
CaptainMagic wrote:I have to admit, Scioli's enthusiasm could be contagious enough to make me give this series a shot. Plus, the first issue's free, so what the heck? I am really confused why he chose to draw this thing in a 60s style, though. Why not go for the 80s and double up on nostalgia for the right time period, rather than jumping back twenty years to a time many fans probably won't care about? Oh well, it looks bad in some place and cool in others, so I guess we'll call it art.
To pay homage to legendary comic scribe Jack "The King" Kirby.

Which is still just wrong. It looks nothing like Kirby's artwork. In fact it barely looks like Silver Age to begin with, yea sure Silver Age looked kinda primitive and had bad colouring, but it didn't look this inept. The characters where drown with sharper detail and more realistic proportions than this.
This whole paying homage is just an excuse for bad artwork while firing everyone up for retro homages to convince them this is something worth having.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555781)
Posted by robotmel on March 7th, 2014 @ 6:01am CST

Looking forward to this series and where it goes!

The Transformers and G.I. Joe back in love again! :grin:

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555782)
Posted by BumbleDouche on March 7th, 2014 @ 7:11am CST

Dead Metal wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
CaptainMagic wrote:I have to admit, Scioli's enthusiasm could be contagious enough to make me give this series a shot. Plus, the first issue's free, so what the heck? I am really confused why he chose to draw this thing in a 60s style, though. Why not go for the 80s and double up on nostalgia for the right time period, rather than jumping back twenty years to a time many fans probably won't care about? Oh well, it looks bad in some place and cool in others, so I guess we'll call it art.
To pay homage to legendary comic scribe Jack "The King" Kirby.

Which is still just wrong. It looks nothing like Kirby's artwork. In fact it barely looks like Silver Age to begin with, yea sure Silver Age looked kinda primitive and had bad colouring, but it didn't look this inept. The characters where drown with sharper detail and more realistic proportions than this.
This whole paying homage is just an excuse for bad artwork while firing everyone up for retro homages to convince them this is something worth having.

I agree wholeheartedly. There is a reason few (if any) modern comics emulate this kind of aesthetic: it is bland, dreary, poorly/lazily drawn & depressingly coloured. Also I'm skeptical of the rationality behind trying to emulate an era of comic book history that preceded the franchise being depicted. In those old days, comics were looked down upon as the lowest rung of the reading ladder, a medium accused of adversely corrupting the young target audience - who were supposedly children ONLY.

As such, artists were quick, simple & efficient, adhering to boring "set standard" designs (e.g. in some old comics, the faces of several characters look EXACTLY the same). This was done to the point of blandness because artists were not necessarily interested in the content or the medium, they just needed a job! Some writers/artists didn't even use real names on their work so as to dissociate themselves from the social stigma surrounding comics at the time, perhaps thinking that admitting their involvement would negatively impact their future career choices. The medium was considered sub-standard drivel aimed at children, & therefore unimportant, except as a vehicle through which to advertise & sell toys.

But when those supposedly "sub-standard, mentally deficient" children became comic-loving ADULTS, the industry exploded with writers & artists who genuinely LOVED their work & as a consequence GREATLY improved the medium. The question then becomes WHY would anyone WANT to go BACK to a time when characters are introduced in a way that reads like a toy catalogue? Modern comics are, by comparison & in general, FAR superior in that they are tightly drawn, consistent between panels, well written & talk about issues & ideas that can be engaging & entertaining for older audiences, but still be broad enough to appeal to younger audiences.

The advances in printing technology alone have helped enormously in this endeavour, introducing rich palettes of colour, of which an artist can CHOOSE his colours to best get his or her point across to the reader in direct association with the written text. Ever wonder why so many enemies of Spider-Man are green & purple? Because there were limited colours available to print with (& they couldn't use red & blue since that was on Spidey).

It has always been my opinion that comics are the best way to introduce children to reading, both by what is said & what is left UNSAID on the page. It takes a skilful artist to be able to do this, but by limiting their colour palette, you are denying the artist access to the full creative freedom afforded to them by current technology. By going backwards with something THIS ugly, you're not encouraging new readers to pick up a comic that LOOKS like it was written 60 years ago.

From the excerpts I've seen here, I see no evidence of anything original or particularly creative about this series. For these reasons & those mentioned above, I think this series in particular is a WRONG step BACKWARDS. I simply see no logic behind PURPOSELY retrograding the comic medium to a bygone era of inferior quality writing, drawing & colouring... At least, not in the Transformers universe (others, like Spider-Man, perhaps, but not Transformers).

In closing: peace through tyranny!

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1555808)
Posted by rpetras on March 7th, 2014 @ 9:01am CST

Man!

I thought my two lines were harsh.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1556003)
Posted by BumbleDouche on March 8th, 2014 @ 12:17am CST

Sorry - I'm a stickler for quality control

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557061)
Posted by Va'al on March 12th, 2014 @ 12:57pm CDT

Comics and entertainment news website Comic Book Resources also wanted a piece of the Tom Scioli/John Barber pie, and add themselves to the list of interviews about the upcoming IDW Publishing Transformers vs. G.I. Joe series, set to debut in May, with Free Comic Book Day. Read on below for some snippets and more preview pages from the free issue, and head here for the whole interview.

CBR News: John and Tom, aside from the obvious implications of the title, what exactly is "Transformers vs. G.I. Joe" all about?

Tom Scioli: We're pretty close to figuring that out ourselves. So far it looks like each issue is going to be a complete "Transformers vs. G.I. Joe" epic that, when taken together, will add up to a multi-chapter mega epic. We've got a really good plot going. Figuring out the tone is the next big challenge. How serious, how funny, how topical.

I did a couple of passes, color thumbnail comics in a style similar to [Scioli's creator-owned series] "Satan's Soldier." In those tests, the tone ended up being in the neighborhood of [Scioli's other creator-owned series] "American Barbarian" and "Satan's Soldier." John is bringing a 21st century version of Classic '60s Marvel tone. I think we'll really nail it down when we find a tone that isn't "AmBarb," isn't '60s Marvel, isn't Alan Moore, isn't Frank Miller, but a tone that is "Transformers vs. G.I. Joe" -- a tone that is unique and specific to the demands of this particular story.

What's it about? Change or die. It's about a big universe where people build crazy, wild, awesome things and use them to kill each other. I'd like to shepherd the characters to a place where they don't want to kill each other anymore, but I don't know if they'll ever get there or not.

So far, the script for this first issue, which we're close to finishing, is the best thing I've ever worked on. I've spent more hours per page on this than anything I've done before, and the results are better than I could've imagined.

John Barber: Yeah, what Tom said. I came into this with a certain idea of where we were heading, and we've wound up somewhere way, way, way better.

The basic idea of the series is that the G.I. Joe team has been fighting COBRA for some time, but just when they think they've defeated their foe, everything blows up to the next level -- and the Cybertronians arrive.

We'll see the origins of our heroes; we'll see first meetings and secret pasts. This is the ground floor of an astounding new reality, here.

[...]

Tom, your style is very cosmic and Kirby-esque in nature, so is it safe to assume "Transformers vs. G.I. Joe" will be on a grand, cosmic scale?

Scioli: "Transformers" is a grand, cosmic thing to begin with. "G.I. Joe" is a heightened, sci-fi, 20 minutes into the future version of military adventure. Today's military technology is sci-fi by any reasonable definition, so it does kind of push things in that direction.

Early drafts were extremely serious, hard sci-fi, with absurdist touches and pitch black dark humor. John's brought a little more of a sense of adventure and fun to it. We're folding all of that stuff together and hammering it into what feels like a real, breathing universe from which we can pluck any story we need.

Barber: I think it's fair to say "grand and cosmic" yeah -- maybe "expanding" is another good word.

Merging two major properties like these is something IDW is clearly not taking lightly. How did this idea get started, and how long has it been in development?

Scioli: Months, it seems. When John first floated the idea, I started getting the wheels turning, even before it was confirmed as a thing. I can't help it. I used to fight that urge. Don't work on that, there's no point. I decided not to fight it. If your imagination goes somewhere you'd rather it not, don't fight it, let it happen and see where it goes. So I didn't fight it.

To make this as good as it needs to be, I couldn't wait to get the final okay before I start working. Doing this story one issue at a time just wasn't going to work, so even though I wouldn't advise working on a job you don't yet have, I don't think I'd have gotten the results I wanted if I figured the story out in issue-long chunks, one bit at a time. I knew from past experience, for best results I had to envision what I wanted my entire run to be and then figure out the story as a whole, before I even started work on Issue #1. It's foolishness, but the kind of foolishness you need to create great art.

Barber: At IDW, we'd been interested in doing a "Transformers"/"G.I. Joe" crossover series for a while, but it had to be the right thing. It had to be something really unique and interesting, not just some sort of a cash-grab. 2014 is the 30th Anniversary of "Transformers" and the 50th Anniversary of the original "G.I. Joe" line, so it seemed like we had to do something. But we've got existing comics universes that are pretty clearly not set in the same world. We were trying to figure out what would work and not just feel, well, inessential.

Then Tom emailed in out of the blue, and I'm a big fan of Tom. We started talking about another thing, about Tom doing a cover for another series -- and one day I just thought of Tom doing "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe." So I emailed him, and he was interested -- and I kinda inserted myself into the proceedings as co-writer, which is me kinda staying out of the way and then trying to steal the glory later

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557153)
Posted by BumbleDouche on March 12th, 2014 @ 7:08pm CDT

Utter garbage.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557165)
Posted by daningotham on March 12th, 2014 @ 8:40pm CDT

I will be picking this up for sure. I loved the Transformers and G.I.Joe comics in the 80s. Not getting my hopes up that it will be as good as those but I will still check it out.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557183)
Posted by Sabrblade on March 12th, 2014 @ 9:27pm CDT

MegaDump wrote:Utter garbage.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

And this has "crazy Silver Age fun" written all over it.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557202)
Posted by 1984forever on March 12th, 2014 @ 10:20pm CDT

We will NEVER get a decent G1 comic from IDW! They are obsessed with publishing garbage! These are the last days, my friends. There won't be a 40th anniversary because the Transformers franchise will be completely destroyed in less than 10 years!

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557203)
Posted by Sabrblade on March 12th, 2014 @ 10:22pm CDT

84forever wrote:We will NEVER get a decent G1 comic from IDW! They are obsessed with publishing garbage! These are the last days, my friends. There won't be a 40th anniversary because the Transformers franchise will be completely destroyed in less than 10 years!

Cool story, bro.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557207)
Posted by Burn on March 12th, 2014 @ 10:56pm CDT

Art is bad, I don't expect the story to be any better.

Hopefully His Awesomeness Rob Liefeld takes over the art.
Heck I'd settle for John Romita Jr. ... anything's better than that.

84forever wrote:We will NEVER get a decent G1 comic from IDW! They are obsessed with publishing garbage! These are the last days, my friends. There won't be a 40th anniversary because the Transformers franchise will be completely destroyed in less than 10 years!

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557351)
Posted by Go-Faster-Wings on March 13th, 2014 @ 2:12pm CDT

I'm loving this. This art is great, and I love this writing. I am really looking forward to this!!!

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1557834)
Posted by BumbleDouche on March 15th, 2014 @ 9:55pm CDT

Go-Faster-Wings wrote:I'm loving this. This art is great, and I love this writing. I am really looking forward to this!!!

Said no-one, ever.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1568448)
Posted by TheCrookedMan on April 24th, 2014 @ 6:22pm CDT

I think that people who don't appreciate Kirby, Steranko, and Ditko's work aren't going to understand or like this. These pages could have been ripped from New Gods, Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, or Shade, the Changing Man. I'm really looking forward to it.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1568450)
Posted by Sabrblade on April 24th, 2014 @ 6:31pm CDT

TheCrookedMan wrote:I think that people who don't appreciate Kirby, Steranko, and Ditko's work aren't going to understand or like this. These pages could have been ripped from New Gods, Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, or Shade, the Changing Man. I'm really looking forward to it.

So, you would argue that this really is evocative of Kirby's work and not a poor attempt at imitating his work?

(fyi, I do agree that it is Kirby-esque)

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1568476)
Posted by TheCrookedMan on April 24th, 2014 @ 8:19pm CDT

I think this post on his Web site makes it clear how much he intends this as an homage to Kirby.

http://www.tomscioli.com/?p=229

Also, see his entire Godland series.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1568479)
Posted by Sabrblade on April 24th, 2014 @ 8:25pm CDT

TheCrookedMan wrote:I think this post on his Web site makes it clear how much he intends this as an homage to Kirby.

http://www.tomscioli.com/?p=229

Also, see his entire Godland series.

I know and recognize the intention, but others beside myself would argue that the intention was not met with satisfactory results, hence a lot of the scorn these TF/Joe covers from Scioli keep getting.

Re: Tom Scioli And John Barber Talk ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’ - Interview (1568630)
Posted by Dead Metal on April 25th, 2014 @ 10:00am CDT

Sabrblade wrote:
TheCrookedMan wrote:I think this post on his Web site makes it clear how much he intends this as an homage to Kirby.

http://www.tomscioli.com/?p=229

Also, see his entire Godland series.
I know and recognize the intention, but others beside myself would argue that the intention was not met with satisfactory results, hence a lot of the scorn these TF/Joe covers from Scioli keep getting.

Even colouring Kirby's pencils does not make it look like the terrible art in this comic, in fact it makes it look even worse because we get to see even more details of Kirby's superb work.