 Hi, everyone. Welcome to our panel. I'm Hawk. I help run a lot of Rising Sun. I'm more of the publisher side of things here. I'd like to introduce you to some people. This is Bill Nendro, our writer on what we're about to talk about here today. And we have David down here, and David is an editor inside of this, helping me run this thing. Yeah? No? So, today we're going to talk about Adventure Team. Everyone's excited about Adventure Team. We've got something special we want to show you. Hopefully you'll like it. We're going to crank the music on this thing, and let's see what you think about it. So, this project got started in 2020 by Tim Ellis. Tim Ellis did this art. And Hawk noticed it on the interwebs and said, that's an interesting idea. Let me talk to you about that, Tim, and see what we could do. And they worked out an idea, and Hawk brought on me as the editor for this project. And we brought on Bill Nendro to be our writer for this project. It is basically a reimagining of the Adventure Team, and a continuation of the Adventure Team, both. What is going to be going on is there's a new threat that forces the Adventure Team to come back to the forefront of where the military is to fight this new threat. The name of that is going to be the Apex Event. And it is a worldwide, planet-wide event that they have to come together to fight. And there's other people on the earth that is also fighting this event. But we're focusing mainly on the Adventure Team. So, there's some familiar characters and some reimagined familiar characters that you'll notice if you're familiar with the old Adventure Team and their characters. So, the first character we're going to... I want to talk about this art real quick and then get into it. Sure. So, you can see here that what Tim Ellis has done is this book is intended to be a nostalgic throwback. It has a lot of cues, like a piece of artwork that is very loved and read over and over again. A lot of people get this confused and they start asking, is this a real thing? And the question is that if it wasn't then, it will be now. So, we're going to try and keep a homage to that 70s style of storytelling. And there's going to be a lot of foldback into that kind of idea of what comes down to this Adventure Team comic. This is a concept of work in progress and all projects involved. So, we're going to go through some characters and let you guys kind of talk about story and characters and everything else. We're going to try and do come out in 2024 with it. We'll see if that holds still. And we're going to talk about the Adventure Team now. So, we want to talk a little bit about story and then we can go into character. Sure. Go for it, Bill. Yeah, I was brought in after they had spoken to Tim. And it was initially, or instantly, really kind of gripped by the idea that they had going on here. These are some characters that I hadn't had a chance to kind of play with in the 70s. So, it was great to kind of, like you said, reimagine them a little bit and kind of figure out where they fit in this new world. I'm really excited as well because I've been knowing a lot of kind of realistic military fiction. So, this kind of gave me a chance to flex my wings a little more, do more of lean into some other things that I haven't been able to do in my writing career thus far. And really instantly kind of fell in love with a lot of these characters, which is part of the joy of writing. You get to see these characters grow and evolve and see how they're going to respond to these threats that form the context of this world. We're ready for this first roundout of character here. We're going to talk about the Commander. I'll let you take him from here. So, the Commander existed prior. He was part of the original Adventure Team. And so, we've kind of taken a kind of a new tact with him. We made him a career military person, and we're also connecting him to the larger GI Joe continuity that has existed. And some of what we're doing is going to leak into a real American hero, but not huge, just little tidbits, little teeny tidbits. But the Commander is the leader of this team. He brings this team together, and he's the one that's in charge of making sure that they combat this new threat. And he's very strong, he's very dedicated, he's very committed, and he's in control at all times in the story as you go through. You know he's the leader. It's been interesting to read from a character perspective, because nominally he appears to be maybe the weakest of the characters in terms of power set, but as David said, he's got skills that more than make up for that. So, it's been a lot of fun to read. And you can see here, of course, where we're playing off of the black American adventurer, you know, bearded adventurer, you know, that came out in the 1970s. We wanted to, you know, rather than do, you know, the Commander or Joe Colton as something below him, we decided to kind of go a different route, you know, allowing us to explore and be able to tell stories a little outside of maybe some of the content news that are already there. And our next character is Eagle Eye. Now, for you fans of the old G.I. Joe, you may remember that there was a figure of Joe Colton, Eagle Eye Joe Colton. We're reimagining that character as a completely new whole cloth character that is more of a Native American character that has skills in that vein, but also part of the adventure team. So he's in the military, he has those skills as well, and he's a very unique character, and the writing process has been a little bit of a pull and tug on how far we want to go with the Native American aspects and how far we don't want to go. So we've been playing with him. He's been our toughest character to try to develop. I'll let you go. I'm just going to say, yeah, there has been some challenges, but what's been really exciting is, personality-wise, he's characterized one way, but when we meet him, we meet him in a situation where that's being very much tested right away. So there's instant conflict within him. It's been interesting to kind of explore that and see how he's responding to these challenges that we're immediately introduced to. Our next character is Bullet Man. Everybody knows Bullet Man. Everybody loves Bullet Man. He's basically the Bullet Man that we all remember. This is a younger Bullet Man in that vein, so he's more impetuous. He's going to be one of the action characters of the series, and so the commander is going to have to try to reign him in because he's so gung-ho. But we really love playing with this character. He's been a fun character to incorporate into the series, and I think all the readers are going to enjoy him as well. Yeah, he really fits that archetype of the youthful exuberance. And again, just because of when we're meeting this team, some of that nae-de-tae is kind of starting to tarnish a little bit. So it'll be interesting to see how he responds to that and how he grows over the course of the run. And our next character is Power Man. Now this is a reimagining of Power Man, because that was also a Jill Colton toy, Power Man was, and so we reimagined this character as a kind of a military scientist type character that incorporates different technology into the physical aspects of himself, and there's struggles that he has to realize the limitations of those technological advancements that he's incorporated. And every one of our characters has human aspects to them that will be developed through the stories that will show that they are not just one-tone characters. There's levels to these characters and levels in the stories, as we tell these stories. And this is a character that you're probably going to shed a tear as the story goes on, because he's going to struggle that he's dealing with. One of the first things we did in the process was sit down and start to develop a character bible and look at what these characters could and couldn't do and really flesh out what made them human and would make them relatable and synthetic to the readers. I'm kind of proud of where we have them at the moment. I think this character, out of all of them, he has the most human arc, I think, beyond all of it. So I think it's something we can all relate to, you know, as we went through this. And our next character is Cheetah. Now this is a character that was in the original adventure team. He didn't have a name. He was just one of the versions of G.I. Joe. He wore the red jumpsuit. So we're kind of reinterpreting him. Part of this adventure team and this new threat is some of these characters end up with skills because of the Apex event, and those skills are incorporated into the characters. So this is another character that is kind of new, but kind of existing with new kind of attributes because of the Apex event. I don't want to give it away, but you can look at this piece of art and kind of have an idea of where this character is going. And I don't want to give too much away of what happens to this character. But this character is an integral part of this series, and you're going to want to keep reading to find out what happens to this character. But I don't want to give too much away. Yeah, I think I'm not going to add anything to that just so that, yeah, nothing is ruined. I want to talk about the design element because I've looked at this black and white, and I was looking at it black and white for a while. And then whenever the color come on, I was like, well, okay, you know, we're definitely going there. It's bright, it's really quite fun. I love the leopard print, you know, kind of like the engagement between it. So I'm really happy with how that came out. We'll move on to our next question. I do want to say one thing. Tim Ellis is our designer and artist that brought this project together. He's designed all these characters. He's designed the new adventure team logo. And by the end of the panel, if you haven't already gotten a adventure team pin, come up and I will give you an adventure team pin. He developed the new logo for the adventure team for this new project as well. Tim Ellis is a toy designer. He's also worked in packaging. He works with automotive. So he's definitely has a design degree. And I think, you know, you can see that throughout his work he's really thinking about spaces and all of those aspects and how they're merged together. His artwork has been really, really useful when we first started talking. We had names, we had some kind of ideas, and I was starting to get to know these characters and see how to write them. But then seeing this stuff just kind of breathes life into them, so that when I sit down and write, they just kind of are living things on the room. And our next character, hmm, wonder who this is? This is going to be a little bit of a question mark. That's all I'm going to say. His name is Black Oni and that's all I can tell you about this character. But looking at him, it's going to be interesting to see where he goes. So he's a very important character within the story and he affects the characters and the adventure team in this story. And that's all I can tell you. Bill, you want to add anything on that? That's all that will let me tell you now, but lunch is right after this, so if anybody wants to take me out, we can. I'm going to be following behind him. All right, let's move on. I want to show, go ahead. This is the first cover for issue, we're calling issue zero, but it's actually going to be issue one of a three-issue miniseries to start and depending upon the popularity of the series and the impact of whether you guys want more down the line and if it's something you're excited about, we are ready to continue on with this. It's being published by Rising Sun Publishing and it is going to be distributed, I believe at this time through Diamond Distribution which is a comic book distribution company that's worldwide so we're going to try and hit as many eyeballs as we can with this project to get that popularity up so we can make more of these for you if you guys want to see it. It's been a very fun, enjoyable process working with Bill, working with Tim, working under Rising Sun and I hope you all enjoy this and look forward to talking more about this next summer when we plan on having issue one by Joe Fest across my fingers. Everybody's working hard. Bill? I'm going to be less vague. I think if you're sitting here right now you are going to enjoy it. The question is going to be whether we can get enough people kind of seeing it and enjoying it as well. I want to know where these characters and I want to know where they go so hopefully who's planning on me getting Joe Fest? Holy, great. Hope to see this issue there. Hope to see you guys enjoying it and spread the word so that they call me back. I think what I want to say is this is still in Congress we're still working out the details we've written the stories and as you see this issue is zero here the reason why that issue is zero is we actually wrote a much bigger story which was much more in depth and we felt like we needed a little bit lighter getting in off the ramp so Bill's actually working on a revamped lighter story to get us through the hoop and onto some bigger storytelling aspects so that's why you're seeing an issue zero instead of one as we're going through our process and the hope is that we get an end diamond and we hope that everyone approves and we're hoping that our pitch is well received to all of those in charge and they like it and that's really involved with you guys as to whether or not you guys want to see more of this kind of comment coming through so I think that's got everything all of us done back to the original concept Do you want to watch the video again? Do you guys want to see the video one more time? Okay, we're going to do the video one more time for the people that came in a little bit That covers awesome by the way Thank you Yeah, we can talk to you That's what we're going to getting into I've got a hiccup in the party go again so let me fix that If you can't I'll hum over the So we could start with a couple questions maybe Just unplug it, just be careful it's going to pop I have to unplug it every time I I think so, they were trying earlier once they got it coming Who ever wants a question? Yes So you mentioned you were working on with Tim Seeley for the new logos and stuff Did he do the layoffs and then did you did he do the layoffs like the cover and the cover design as well Yes Okay, really good Yeah, he's a really good designer and he's been working really hard with us to develop this concept and we've had to try to reimagine some of this stuff and we're going back and forth with some things Like I said earlier Igor has been our most difficult character to try and bake Hock likes to use these cooking terms all the time like bake this and cook that and this, so we're trying to bake this character, trying to make him real and make him not stereotypical, so he's been the hardest one Any more questions? I was going to talk a little bit about our color process very briefly Have you noticed that we're using textures and tones because we want to pull back that idea of the four color process planning that was done in the 1970s So we're really trying to push that idea of 1970s storytelling and we really want the book to have that feel and so we're going for that idea you know, that this is you know, that you could have picked this up in the 70s and it would have been like yeah, this would have been total and we're going further with that I don't know if I should let this sneak by yeah, wait, tell them we're going to have some ads in the back of the comics, gag ads that are going to be like 70s stuff that you're going to be like selling Twinkies, that type of stuff, but gag versions of those that will be all done in this style as well, to have fun with it to really show you that this was possibly out at that time frame you two can be like Power Man with your see-through C-munk C-munk, exactly Make it like some sort of a play on it, like Sea Otters or Sea... We have an idea, we have an idea I can't reveal it yet, but we have an idea in that vein, Jason The one that everyone tells me no is you know, I want to do one of get your own radioactive chemical set, you know, complete with plutonium and they're going, oh no No, you should do that put like crazy disclaimers like 100% non-responsive So they're going to be really fun So we're trying to make this as fun as possible and nostalgic as possible Who's next? Who had a question? Is this the first time you've shown anything for We had a quick reveal at Joe Fest during the Rising Sun panel, but there were so many things in that panel, we didn't feel it got the notice that it needed so we wanted a full reveal and this is our first full reveal I think it was fairly well received then, and you know hopefully the word gets out and we're still getting a bit more interested as we move on Any other questions? Yes Can you go into some detail about Tim's background, what's he known for or anything like that? Is there anything you can discuss about that? He's not a lot of design design work designer primarily is what he's done, but he's worked on a little toy product with oh gosh, I can't remember their name they do these subscription packages stuff so he would do, he would work for a Funko Pop So some of his work is like Funko Pop related and things like that but he also works a lot in the car industry so he would go to shows and he actually designs the show booths stuff like that for the automotive industry and so as a freelance designer, he keeps him on the move quite a bit and his design aspect would go quite far if you look at this, then you look at something else that he's worked on for automotive night and day, completely different completely different concepts and I think he's been there for quite a while, maybe 20 years or so in doing pop up displays and things like that He doesn't have like a comic book resume or anything like that? He has a little bit of a toy resume but no comic book this is his very first comic book of all time She's one of that contents We're also looking at some other artists that join him in that may help out with some of the stories as we're moving forward we won't reveal any of those names yet but we'll see whatever we get there I think you guys would be pleased if we get a few of those guys we've been talking to We're trying to get that aesthetic of the 70s style art the way that the panels are set up the way that the pages are set up so you can look at this and like oh, this could have come out in 1976 or something like that as a comic book that's the whole idea the whole premise of this whole project and I think it's coming along really well There's no better way of getting there I'll say this, there's no better way of getting there than asking someone that worked in the 70s Any other questions? Yes, Martin Is the idea that this would be a sort of a non-profit thing? This one's going a little bit different this time so we are going to seek out where we're gauging the, you know, field response seeing what people really think about it that we're really interested in what we're doing here and then we're going to go for more of a formal aspect in order for diamond distribution things like that I'd like a little bit to share a few minutes to apologize for the cover for the book, are you doing a pre-order or is it going to be something that just diamonds can distribute up front and go in Maya wherever it is I think what we're going to do is we're going to be shooting for official licensing and like I said, we're going to try that first and see how it goes hopefully it's really well received and, you know, if not this may get buried deep down in the depths of Hasbro and Baltimore who knows but the idea is we're probably going to go straight to diamond and I'm not going to be surprising some pre-orders with exclusive content we'll never get that far so there's a couple other things that we're working on adjacent to this that may unfold as we're building up to it Any other questions?