Luke Owen catches up with IDW’s John Barber…
Today sees the release of IDW’s Action Man #1, which kickstarts a Hasbro expanded universe that brings together several of their other properties including The Transformers, G.I. Joe, Micronauts, M.A.S.K and more. Sadly, My Little Pony is not part of it. To celebrate the comic’s release, we caught up with the man who is spearheading this series – John Barber.
Barber is a man who has been hailed as ‘The God of Continuity’, and has previously worked with Marvel before jumping to IDW and writing for Transformers – both the Michael Bay movie tie-ins and IDW’s on-going series. But now he’s moving into a slightly less known territory of Action Man. So, why use him over more established characters?
“Well, it goes without saying that Action Man is the biggest character in the Hasbro stable,” Barber jokes. “No, I love Action Man, but I kid. [He’s] got a great set of fans, don’t get me wrong, but this comic is really about introducing the character to readers while honoring his history. The lead-up to Revolution is part of the DNA of the book Paulo Villanelli and John-Paul Bove put together. We’re not going to hit you over the head with it on page one, but Action Man is really the first book we’ve launched post-plans about the shared universe—I guess Rom #0 was the first, but Action Man was in that book in preview form, anyway. And Action Man absolutely plays a key role in Revolution—in fact he’s the first character you see in Revolution #1—but we’ll start to see these characters interacting in most of the comics leading up to Revolution (I say “most” as Micronauts is in another universe and More Than Meets the Eye is in deep space so we’re not cramming anything in that isn’t organic to the story).”
Is it going to be difficult to bring in characters from G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc?
“In a way, even though you don’t have to be reading Transformers,” he claims. “Revolution grows from the events in the Transformers comic Andrew Griffith and I do. Optimus Prime has declared Earth is under his protection, whether it wants to be or not. And for a lot of people, “not” is the answer. So when something starts going wrong with Ore-13—a substance Transformers can convert to energon, their food—signs point to the Transformers.”
He adds: “Action Man is one of the first discoverers of how bad things are with the Ore-13 crystals, and his actions cause G.I. Joe to be called in. Meanwhile, Rom’s been running around killing these shape-shifting aliens called Dire Wraiths, and the Transformers and G.I. Joe don’t know what to do with him—they don’t know what he’s up to, but Rom knows who the Cybertronians are. As the story goes on, the Micronauts enter the scene in a big way (no pun intended), and M.A.S.K. is formed… there’s a lot of moving parts, but Cullen Bunn—who’s co-writing the Revolution event with me—and Fico Ossio—who’s doing the amazing art—and I are making sure the story is clear and that everybody has a legitimate point of view and desires.”
As mentioned earlier, Barber came from Marvel where he worked on titles such as Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, before moving over to IDW five years ago. “The biggest difference is I’ve been doing more writing at IDW – and that’s definitely the direction things are going for me,” Barber says of the difference in companies. “The other thing is Marvel has this big, great universe with a history and a texture to it, and I’m really excited to get to be a part of forming a universe with the Hasbro characters. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.”
IDW is no stranger to the world of crossovers, having brought Green Lantern to the world of Star Trek and countless team-ups between Transformers and G.I. Joe. There have also been connecting comics like Infestation, which tied together their on-going comics for Ghostbusters and Transformers but never saw the characters interact.
“IDW’s done really cool, really fun stories where they put together some great characters, like Star Trek/Green Lantern. And Tom Scioli (and slightly me, but Tom deserves all the credit) did absolutely amazing stuff on Transformers ss. G.I. Joe,” Barber says. “Then there have been line-wide stories like Infestation and Conspiracy where there’s a central spine and tie-in comics from different series, but the characters from one series don’t necessarily interact with each other—just with the central spine. I love those stories, but they’re very self-contained – that’s got advantages, of course. Transformers vs. G.I. Joe wouldn’t have the personality or impact it had if ten comics tied into it. But I think with the right project, it’s really great to have an event with big consequences in the comics crossing over.”
So how does Revolution differ? “This is going to have big repercussions,” Barber answers. “The individual titles will all maintain their own identities, their own stories, their own styles—but the canvass they’ll take place in will be this big, unified world, which I think is a ton of fun. It’s really great to have the ability to move characters between books and have these characters interact.”
Which brings us to Action Man #1, available today. Released in the late 1960s, Action Man was the UK version of America’s G.I. Joe – a 12-inch doll for boys to play with in various different army outfits. It was popular, but found a new lease of life in the 1990s when he was brought into a new adventurer role (think Indiana Jones if he also rode snowmobiles or went to the outback of Australia). He captalised on the Extreme Sports trend of the decade and even got a new TV series off the back of it.
However Action Man – even here in the UK – hasn’t been seen for some time. A live-action movie has been teased and talked about for several years, but he’s hardly at the same level as other franchises that IDW own like Transformers.
“I was really excited the minute it came up,” Barber says about bringing Action Man out of retirement. “I really wanted to do something that provided a new take on the character but honors the legacy. The character has never been the biggest character in the U.S., and the idea was to go back to the classic Action Man—like, not necessarily the 1990s extreme-sports version of the character. The original Action Man, just like the very initial version of G.I. Joe, didn’t exactly have a story established in fiction. So it was a weird mix of a blank slate in some ways, and an overwhelmingly big and cool legacy in others.”
Being that Action Man is a British character, Action Man #1 spends a lot of its time in our fair capital of London. And, quite refreshingly, the depiction of the city is incredibly accurate. “I think it’s nice when a comic or a movie can really give a feeling of location—it’s sort of hard in 20 pages of an action comic to really set up what a city is like, but we’re doing our best,” says Barber. “I lived in London for a while and I love the place, so that part’s relatively easy. And there are specific things I can delve into, like the Shepreth Wildlife Park’s Tiger Enrichment Programme in issue 1. I used to take the train between London and my then-girlfriend (now wife) is Cambridge and you could look out the train and BOOM there are tigers! That’s crazy! I actually had to reach out on twitter to find out the name of the place, because I didn’t remember. So I put that in the story, because it was a cool specific thing that’s fun if you don’t know it, but is a nice nod to a real place if you do. And Paulo does his research, too, and gets the places right. AND John-Paul Bove, who’s coloring it—he’s a great writer on his own, and he’s giving the dialog a once-over to make sure my dialog sounds proper English.”
Will we see classic villains like Doctor X and Gangrene? “Part of the setup is that this is a long-running programme so kind of anything that’s been in any version of Action Man is fair game to show up somewhere in here,” he says. “As the series goes on, there are a lot of nods to the different eras of the character.”
With so many iterations of Action Man as a character – from cartoons to comics to TV shows – how will Barber’s version differ?
“The premise is simple: Action Man is a role different people have filled over the years,” he explains. “The current Action Man is hyper-competent—he’s a master of all forms of fighting, communication, and disguise—a tenth-level judo black belt, a member of MENSA, and a three-star Michelin Chef. And then he gets killed. And young guy named Ian Noble takes the role—he’s partially responsible for the situation that got his predecessor killed, and the circumstances of that death and Ian’s survival force Ian into a role he’s not necessarily ready for, and now he’s working with people who might resent him, or be more qualified for the job. And beyond that, it’s a lot of frantic, fast-paced action as Ian tries to track down Doctor X—who’s really responsible for the last Action Man’s death. And that kind of kinetic action is exactly what Paulo Villanelli excels at. He’s amazing at translating these complex fight scenes with kicking and guns and trains and all sorts of stuff, and making it work beautifully.”
