This month at Joe Reloaded.com, we have the privilege to have with us Mr. Dan Jolley.

Dan wrote the second arc of GI Joe Frontline, helped write the first Devil’s Due G.I. Joe vs. Transformers Crossover and is now at the helm of the G.I. Joe vs. Transformers Volume II crossover.

Joe Reloaded.com (JR): Dan, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to answer some questions for us.

Dan Jolley (DJ):It’s my pleasure!

JR: My first question is did you grow up with G.I. Joe?

DJ: I grew up with the cartoon, mainly; I was aware of the comics, and had read some of them, but I was primarily a fan of the TV show. Of course, to say “fan” is probably a little mild; I loved that show. Probably the only other cartoons I was that excited about were, appropriately enough, the Transformers and Voltron.

JR: How did it feel to get the opportunity to write a G.I. Joe Frontline arc?

DJ: It was great! And unexpected, actually. A little backstory: I had very briefly talked to Josh Blaylock about a year and a half or two years previous (I forget the exact timeline), when Steve Kurth called me up and said, “Hey, I’m working with the guy who just got the G.I. Joe license, and he was wondering if you could introduce him to the guys at Top Cow.” So I got on the phone with Josh, and gave him the contact info for Top Cow, and we chatted a little bit. Top Cow passed on the property, of course, so I didn’t actually help him out any, but we seemed to get along okay. So when he announced that there was going to be a Joe book with rotating creative teams, I mentioned that to the guys I was working with at the time (Jolly Roger Studio) and called Josh up. I was thinking that maybe we’d be able to do one issue of the book, and of course only get paid on the back end; but Josh said, “Okay, why don’t you guys do a four-issue arc,” and he laid out the up-front page rates he’d be able to give us. So we all jumped on board, and “Icebound” was born.

JR: On the same note as the last question, did you know that your Frontline arc would follow Larry Hama’s arc and how did that feel? Was there any added pressure?

DJ: We weren’t exactly sure where our arc was going to fall; I remember there being the possibility of Greg Rucka doing an arc, and our placement was dependent on that, but I don’t think that ever got off the ground. Once we found out we were going to be the second arc, and that we’d be following Mr. Hama, yeah, that was kind of daunting – but the pressure was really just self-imposed. Nobody at Devil’s Due ever said anything to give us performance anxiety.

JR: In “Icebound”, you decided to follow a more science fiction approach with a tie in to Duke’s Black Ops days. How did you come up with the idea for the story? Also, what type of guidance did you get from Devil’s Due?

DJ: Drew Johnson initially had the seed of the idea: that one of the Joes was involved in some serious goings-on during the team’s seven-year hiatus, and that it was coming back to bite him in the keister. Building off that – and with Josh’s suggestion that we use Duke – I came up with the whole arctic-lab-with-weirdo-mutants story. A lot of people compared it with John Carpenter’s “The Thing” – and I’ll readily admit, that’s a fair comparison – but what I was thinking of more was the episode of The X-Filescalled “Ice.” Either way, it was a somewhat familiar setup, but I enjoyed dropping the Joes into it and watching them run around.

JR: Fast forwarding to your next story line, how did you become involved in the first G.I. Joe vs Transformers story?

DJ: At the time I was writing a good bit of stuff for Devil’s Due – the Frontline arc, Voltron, Micronauts – and toward the end of the story Josh found himself sort of swamped with having to actually run the company. So he gave me the general idea for the last two issues of the mini and asked if I could take over the scripting.

JR: When did Devil’s Due approach you about Volume II of the crossover?

DJ: Pretty much as soon as they decided to do it, I think; I guess it was around March or April of 2004. Maybe a little earlier.

JR: Can you tell us how you came up with the story for Volume II?

DJ: Well, originally, I wanted to do a story about a group of Joes who wind up on Cybertron and have to become sort of an underground freedom-fighter unit; I had a thought about them being able to get into places and do things the Autobots couldn’t, because they were organic and wouldn’t show up on a lot of the Cybertronian sensors (an idea that eventually found its way into the final version). But when I turned that pitch in to Josh, he decided it wasn’t really enough. He said that since the first story revolved around Transformers on Earth, simply reversing that situation wouldn’t really cut the mustard, so to speak. So I went off and thought for a couple of days, then came back with what has to be the biggest, weirdest, most outrageous story idea I’ve ever pitched – and Josh loved it. He immediately had me write it up, then kicked it upstairs to Hasbro, who also loved it. And off we went.

JR: I just finished reading #4 (of 4) of Volume II and I have got to say….You are the man! Many people for years have been bouncing around the idea of having Cobra-La in the comics, but you actually had the stones to do it. What made you decide to end the series with that twist?

DJ: Oh, if only I could claim credit for that! I’m afraid the addition of Cobra-La was a last-minute revision by Devil’s Due’s own Tim Seeley. I had already written that script, turned it in, and seen most of the art for it when editor Mark Powers called me up and said, “So Tim’s had this idea…”

JR: Are there any plans for a Volume III that you can tell us about?

DJ: Nothing concrete enough to comment on yet, unfortunately.

JR: Would you be interested in writing another G.I. Joe story in general at some point?

DJ: Sure! Bring it on!

JR: Is there anything unique about writing G.I. Joe that you don’t have to face with other titles that you write?

DJ: The biggest thing to take into account right off the top is the sheer size of the cast. I mean, you’ve got, what, eighty characters to choose from at the very least. Not something I’ve had to face on Firestorm, for instance.

JR: As we wrap this up, are there any other projects that you are currently working on that you want to tell us about?

DJ: There are three new ones in various stages of development, but I can only talk about one of them in any kind of detail, and then only sparingly. I’ll go from least specific to most: first, I’m developing an original creator-owned series with an independent publisher that’s going to have some thematic similarities to my DC book Bloodhound. Second, soon I’ll be starting on a truly gigantic project for Metron Press. And third, I’ve signed on to write a series for another independent publisher, a brand new entity called Funnel Cloud 9. FC9 is owned and operated by a guy whose name will no doubt be familiar to Joe fans: Tilman Goins, the (Reloaded) series’ first military advisor. Tilman created a concept for a book called Hell, Michigan, about an entire town that’s possessed by a demonic force, and approached me about writing it; I liked the concept, and I especially liked how professional Tilman was about everything, so I signed on the dotted line. Hell, Michigan will probably be the first of these to hit the stands, sometime in late spring (I think) of 2005. I’m not sure yet about the others.

JR: Well, I wish you the best and thanks for answering our questions hopefully when Volume III comes out we can do this again.

DJ: Definitely!


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