Since its debut last year, Hasbro and Skybound’s Energon Universe has breathed new life into a 40-year-old franchise, giving readers a thoroughly modern take on the Transformers and GI Joe. Last week, phase two of GI Joe’s return launched with Kelly Thompson and Marco Ferrari’s Scarlett. One-half of ComicsXF’s Has-Bros, Tony Thornley, sat down with the duo to talk about the series, the franchise and why Scarlett is the right entry point for this corner of the Energon Universe.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tony Thornley: Hi, Kelly and Marco, thanks for sitting down with us. Can you tell us about your history with GI Joe?
Kelly Thompson: Sure, so Marco is gonna tell you he is too young to have seen the cartoon back when in his formative youth because we’ve been joking about how he’s making everyone feel very old with his beautiful youth. But for me, I’m old.
So I loved the cartoon. It was, what Scarlett was, one of my first touch points, as like geek stuff and sort of boy-coded stuff that I was getting into when I was young. I thought she was an amazing character. I think a lot of boy-coded stuff from that era has trouble sometimes making a great female character among the leads, like sometimes she’s very girly in a negative way. That is frustrating.
But, like Scarlett didn’t have any of that stuff. She was just as tough as everyone else. She had a cool weapon. You had a crush on her. You wanted to hang out with her. She was your best friend. It was great. Skybound, letting me try to tell that, or try to break her new story in a new universe, was truly exciting. And I hope I gave Marco enough to help him fall in love with her, too.
Marco Ferrari: Yeah, as Kelly was saying, we were joking about it. I’m too young to have grown up with GI Joe. So my first contact with it, with the franchise, being with the movies, and with Scarlett, of course, because I’m jumping in the series as the readers for the first time in this universe.
But it’s like I always knew them, as I’m working on them.
Tony: GI Joe has always been a pretty fantastical concept, closer to James Bond than war comics like Sgt. Rock or Sgt. Fury. What’s your favorite part of that world, both as a fan and as a creator?
Kelly: I think you’re right, that there’s a lot of sort of science fiction in GI Joe that keeps it really fun. I mean, I was just rewatching some episodes just to try to bone up and sort of relive the memory. (And by the way, the GI Joe theme song has been running through my head all weekend.)
And, you know, you watch those old episodes, and you just remember how interested they were in crazy ideas. Like, they invent the synthoids, which are basically like a way to do clones, like perfect clones that then they can melt down and stuff. So there’s all these incredible fantastical science fiction ideas in there that I have to say is probably what keeps me interested in it, because historically, I’m not super interested in war stories or soldier stories.
It’s just never been my thing. And so I do think the science fiction aspects of it really make it interesting for me. And that’s certainly true in this Transformers/GI Joe world, where that’s a real focus.
Tony: And what about you, Marco?
Marco: I agree with Kelly. This sci-fi part, it’s the one that’s probably the most fun to create, and the opportunity to have the Energon Universe is that we can also bring robots. I don’t know how much we can say, but there is something very Transformers in this series, too. So we have a lot of opportunity to work on the sci-fi part. That’s something that probably makes it more interesting than a more classic action-military type of story, or a spy one.
Kelly: Yeah, yeah, they’ve got all the gadgets like Bond, which is interesting. And Marco’s right, like we’ve been seeding it slowly. I mean, there’s a mention of a weapon in the first issue. And so that’s sort of your first clue that maybe there’s some cool sci-fi, techy, Transformers-adjacent something going on in here. And there certainly is, because this isn’t just about building one character and who she is within this universe. It’s about building all this stuff up, building a world, you know.
Tony: Yeah. And I mean, Josh [Williamson] already did that with what he did with Cobra-La and Cobra Commander. And you guys are able to take something very different, but related, in a different corner of that universe.
Which leads exactly to what I was going to ask next: The Arashikage [Note: Tony tries to pronounce it and comes close, but Kelly corrects him — Arr-ahsh-ih-ka-jee] are probably the most important faction to the world of GI Joe outside the Joes and Cobra themselves. Why are they entering the story of the Energon Universe so early? What made Scarlett the perfect entry point character?
Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I think that they’re fan favorites for sure, like they’re one of the most interesting pieces of the GI Joe universe. And they also … obviously two of the most popular characters in the GI Joe Universe spin around the Arashikage, which are Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes.
And you know, Snake-Eyes being truly the most fan-favorite character maybe I’ve ever heard of. Like I just feel like everyone’s answer’s Snake-Eyes when you say, “What’s your favorite character from being a kid?” Snake-Eyes, that’s who it is. But Storm Shadow was fascinating, you know. He’s so layered and complicated. He really just sort of follows his own compass.
Not just moral, but, like, he’s looking to support the Arashikage at all costs. That’s his priority. And so the choices he makes through that prism are interesting. They don’t always align with what we think is right or wrong, but it’s interesting to me. And so it was great to get them on the board right out of the gate. It was great to have sort of a way to that, an organic way.
Scarlett does feel like she fits with the Arashikage characters, if only because of her ties to Snake-Eyes, but she’s also got ties to Jinx, and we beefed those up considerably here, and made that a really important touch-point character for her, and then set her loose on this, and I just think she fits really well with all those characters, and it’s a really great way to get them on the board in a big way right out of the gate.
Tony: And you mention the relationship between Jinx and Scarlett, it’s completely unique to this incarnation of the GI Joe universe. What led you to those changes in their bond, in their relationship? What kind of prompted you to make them more sisterly than we’ve typically seen before?
Kelly: So it came from wanting to not tell the exact origin story that we know already with Shana, which is, I don’t know, it’s a little played out. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just think we’ve all seen a lot of this sort of take on it since we were kids. And so like, let’s update it for 2024 to something a little more interesting, something we maybe haven’t seen before for Shana.
So I developed this really close bond with Jinx that, like they met in training or something, and they’ve been friends all this time. They live together. They consider each other like sisters, and so … I knew that they weren’t going to let Snake-Eyes just be like a guest star in the Scarlett book. Like that’s not how you want to roll out one of your best, biggest, most important characters.
So I was looking for other connections for her, and Jinx ended up being one that really felt right, and that aligned very nicely with what I knew we wanted to do with the Arashikage. And so it just really worked out, and I hope it creates a powerful bond that I hope will carry through forever, and like that’ll become that Scarlett and Jinx are incredibly close, and that this beautiful relationship is, like, a real touchpoint.
Tony: For you, Marco, the Joes have very iconic looks. They are literally set in plastic in the real world. But you got the opportunity to do some redesigns. How do you balance keeping those classic, recognizable elements for each of the characters that we see here in the first issue — Scarlett, Jinx, Snowjob — while giving them a modern spin?
Marco: Oh, it’s been fun! But a little bit of back-and-forth prior to first design, I’ve done all of the main characters, ‘cause … I’m coming straight from the super euro comics [where I was] working with more primary color key, and I’m trying to give them normal-shaped bodies and anatomies.
But working with the editors, we found the … I think, a very nice synthesis of what are the actual toys’ design and characters’ design, with a more modern look for them.
And I think at the end, keeping the main color scheme of each character really helped make them recognizable. But also without giving them a very problematic — hmm — making probably the fans not very happy for redesign. Because it happens every time with a lot of remakes, and of very loved franchises and brands. Our redesign has to be very faithful to the original characters, but has to be also grounded in the new year that the story is set.
We should look at how it’s now a technical crossbow instead of giving her a very classic one. Or look at, what’s the new type of technical gear a spy should have, or how a helicopter should look. So I tried to put all of these in the new design, and I hope it’s good for the fans and it looks cool.
Kelly: Marco did such a good job, because I think that designing or redesigning GI Joes is really hard, because you’re not only dealing with, as Marco said, the fan base that needs and desires them to be recognizable, to hit that nostalgia spot that makes them feel like, “Oh, that’s Scarlett,” you know. But you not only have to do that, but you’re also dealing with … you know, modern design tends to be much more streamlined and sort of elegant and clean, and that’s just not the Joes.
They’ve got a lot of gear, and you want that gear. You want all that cool stuff, right? And so it’s very hard to do updated, sharp looks that also have all the gear. I think Marco really found a really great sweet spot for us, and like you can really feel it on that cover to me, because, like, I’m looking at it right now. And she was completely loaded down with gear. And yet the silhouette and the look is like, really cool, really works. It’s hard to do, man. It’s very good.
Tony: It still feels very distinctive to the classic look. Like, it’s instantly recognizable while being modernized.
Kelly: Yeah, it’s tough, tough needle to thread, honestly.
Tony: So with this being an Arashikage story, there are some obvious characters that are going to show up or at least get hinted at in this story (I mean, I assume Snake-Eyes will at least cameo, let’s be real). That last page of Storm Shadow arriving, it was fantastic. Could not have been a better final page.
Without spoiling anything, are there some surprises to come with them?
Kelly: I think there are surprises. But don’t expect, you know, a million cameos going forward like we’re basically the rest of this issue. These issues of this series take place either inside the Arashikage stronghold in Japan or in — gosh! — I think it’s Tokyo. We set most of it for these other buildings, these other things.
You get two very different sides of Japan. But the story keeps it fairly tight over that you might get a Cobra cameo like something related to that. That’s more specific. But yeah, I mean, I think these are your core characters that you’re gonna be seeing here: Jinx, Storm Shadow and Scarlett. That’s your core for this story. There are some surprises, I think, regarding the weapon, and how we get there. And some of the fight scenes hopefully are like incredible set pieces.
And hopefully we also get this emotional journey for Scarlett, of what’s gonna happen with Jinx. But yeah, I mean, listen, it’s always really great when you get to have your cliffhanger be the delivery of a character everyone is dying to see. That makes your job a lot easier. I was very grateful that I could deploy Storm Shadow in such a fashion in that first issue.
Tony: To wrap up, what’s your favorite moment in GI Joe history, and how has it influenced you?
Kelly: So I mean in my history, the franchise is mostly the show. I’ve read some of the comics, definitely. Not all of the comics. I mean, my favorite comic is everyone’s favorite comic, the GI Joe #21, “Silent Interlude.” It’s great.
But mostly the show was the touch point for me, which is why I was so excited about Void Rivals and everything Skybound’s doing. Like I read that Void Rivals comic, and I was like, “You’re kidding me! This is a Transformers comic! That’s where they’re going with this?!” I found it’s such an interesting entry point.
And it gave me true excitement for what I thought they were gonna build here because there are a lot of ways to build a Transformers universe or a GI Joe universe, or even a combined one that still feels like everything you’ve already seen before. But all of this felt very new to me. It feels very new to me to give individual characters miniseries to organically build the world that’s going to be a larger thing.
And that’s going to lead into much larger books and, I’d assume events, you know, down the line. It’s really cool, how they’re connecting all of it. It feels very well thought out, well planned and people who really want to build a universe. Sometimes this stuff doesn’t feel like that. This feels really great, and it’s cool to be a part of it. It’s cool to get to tell our little part of it.
Marco: And it’s probably a new standard for comics. How we’re working on this series, and any of the other series like Transformers. Cobra Commander had some very intense artwork. I think it’s really a plus on the work everyone is doing on the Energon Universe.
Kelly: And if you’re reading Void Rivals and you like [Lorenzo] De Felici’s work, please check out Kroma, which is one of my favorite creator-owned books to come out in a few years. It’s through Skybound, and it’s fantastic. Yeah, and he wrote and drew it. It’s beautiful. It’s awesome.
Tony: Thank you!
Scarlett #1 is available now from Skybound/Image Comics.
And for more with Thompson, listen to next week’s ComicsXF Interview Podcast!
Buy Scarlett #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
