Joshua Williamson on taking big swings with ‘G.I. Joe’ #1

The following interview was edited for clarity.

I never considered myself a G.I. Joe fan.

But when Joshua Williamson and Tom Reilly launched their Duke miniseries last year, it hit like a thunderbolt — and fully hooked me on the entire Energon Universe. G.I. Joe #1 not only reunites Williamson and Reilly but it builds off the events of previous Energon Universe miniseries, including the Cobra Commander miniseries (from Williamson and artist Andrea Milana). 

I sat down recently with Williamson to talk all about G.I. Joe #1, and how this corner of the Energon Universe has grown to fully smash sales records while also drawing in a whole new generation of fans. As it turns out, though, Williamson didn’t know he’d have such a hit on his hands.

“I was just having fun,” said Williamson. “I had no idea how people would respond to it — I know I like this, I know the people at Skybound like this. It was important to us to make sure that hardcore Joe fans were happy with it, but also trying to appeal to new readers…at the end of day it was about fun.”

The reaction, however, makes total sense — the debut issue G.I. Joe is a blast as it throws Duke and his newly-forged G.I. Joe team against the legions of Cobra. For Williamson, part of the fun comes from exploring the character dynamics.

“I like these characters a lot, so being able to write them clashing with each other has been fun and getting to write Cobra Commander being Cobra Commander, in charge of Cobra, having little conflicts with Destro…it’s been really fun,” said Williamson. 

One of those aforementioned conflicts? Having the Baroness — a character who’s normally aligned with Cobra — joining up with Duke’s team of Joes. That was intentional on Williamson’s part, as he wanted to shake up the usual dynamics that fans have come to expect.

“A major part of what we’ve been doing with the Energon Universe is trying to do things that are not expected,” he said. “If the G.I. Joe world was a pond…what we did is because of the Transformers’ introduction and the stuff that’s having in Void Rivals that leads to the creation of G.I. Joe and Cobra…that’s a big rock. And we threw that rock into that pond. And you see how it ripples out. And you let the characters react to those ripples. One of those ripples was that Duke would meet Baroness in this moment in time before Cobra was created, and how does that change things?” 

Courtesy of Image/Skybound.

Williamson continued, “Baroness, at the end of the day, is an opportunist,. So who gives her the opportunity first? Before those opportunities were given to her by Destro, by Cobra…here, Duke is the first person to make that offer. She’s like, ‘Freedom with the G.I. Joes or being locked up forever? I’ll take G.I. Joe.’ It makes sense for her.” He also likened her to the “wild card” of the team, and said that future issues would have some great moments with her as she’s one of his favorite characters to write.

Reilly, of course, is right there helping Williamson in pushing G.I. Joe into exciting new terrain. As such, Williamson also had nothing but praise for his collaborators work/approach. 

“I love Tom,” he said. “Tom and I…I found him online, like a lifetime ago I think. And I reached out to him and we started talking and I said, ‘Did you want to do a creator owned book with me?’ The two started working on a creator-owned project, but couldn’t find the right format — coupled with Williamson’s increasing workload at DC Comics and Reilly working on Marvel projects (like Ant-Man and The Thing).

Williamson added, “I would watch him do these books and I was always like, ‘Oh my god I can’t believe I let this guy get away.’ He’s everything I love in a storyteller.” A chance meeting at New York Comic Con’s Artist Alley led to the pair reuniting and then eventually working on Duke.

Courtesy of Image/Skybound.

Collaborators aside, we also had to touch on Williamson giving the Joes a supreme disadvantage since Cobra is working with Energon-powered technology.

“Oh it’s the best!” he said. “It creates different kinds of storytelling, when you have the bad guys who are so overpowered and so much of a challenge. It turns your characters into underdogs, it makes you want to root for them.”

It’s all part of Williamson’s love of surprises, which are admittedly hard to come by in the age of social media.

“I love surprises; I wish there were more surprises. So often things get spoiled, and not intentionally, but by solicits,” he said. “That’s the stuff I think we all respond to.” He listed the first issue of Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley’s Thunderbolts run, the current run of X-Men books at Marvel, and of course Void Rivals #1 as an example of those surprises.

I’ll certainly say that G.I. Joe #1 is a surprise in how well written and gorgeously illustrated it is, and if Williamson and Reilly can keep up those surprises I’ll be truly proud to call myself a G.I. Joe fan.

G.I. Joe #1 is available on November 13.

Courtesy of Image/Skybound.