Joe Declassified

I know I haven’t put up issue #2 yet, but in the meantime I decided to showcase an article that didn’t have room for inclusion. After the cut is a short Wraith piece by none other than Joe writer and character creator (and bald misfit), Brandon Jerwa.

IN DEFENSE OF THE INVISIBLE MAN
By Brandon Jerwa

When Chris Chung first approached me with the request that I write about my beloved original character WRAITH, one of the ideas on the table was a rewrite of the action figure filecard to bring the information more in line with my personal vision and the continuity of the comic series. After blowing the extremely generous deadline for this piece (but only by one day!), I have decided against that approach. Honestly, I’m still so flattered that Hasbro decided to give Charles Halifax the action figure treatment that I wouldn’t even presume to change a thing about their presentation. The dossiers rarely reflect the comics in exacting detail, anyway, so we’ll just let that one pass.

I would like to share some background on the character’s genesis, for those of you who might be interested in such a thing. When I was offered the chance to pitch for the job as writer of the ongoing series, Wraith was a prominent character from the outset. Originally, his first appearance was supposed to be an assassination attempt on Destro that would reveal duplicity on the part of both men. This would have been revealed to be an audition of sorts, with the prize being a long-term contract with Destro’s version of Cobra. This entire angle went by the wayside when Devil’s Due decided to make Wraith more of a featured character. Please note that I do not perceive that as a negative situation; it was an extremely mind-blowing turn of events at the time, seeing my original character given his own back-up feature with a hotshot artist.

There will always be people who call Wraith’s techno-motif into question, but the science is very firmly rooted in bleeding-edge technology from our present day world. If you have any further concerns about the subject, please visit your favorite G.I. Joe reference site and read about Serpentor, Cobra-La, B.A.T.S. or the Star-Viper. Let me know if you have anything else to say after that.

I would like to close by thanking everyone who bought the toy, embraced the character or even dared to question his place in the mythology. I created this villain and you reacted. What else could I ask for?

It’s been especially gratifying to see people considering violence against their fellow collectors in the name of obtaining the “stealth variant” version of the figure. My mother-on-law bought me one from a secondary market site for Christmas because I didn’t even have one of my own! That’s really saying something, don’t you think?

Now, if we could only get that awesome statue that was produced but never released a few years back. Believe me, it was the most awesome thing ever…

Thanks go out to Brandon for taking the time to put this together, even though it didn’t make it to print. More to come!

Nomad

*edit*
Speaking of the Wraith statue, this is the computer model from First4Figures (thanks go to Jeff Bohn):

Wraith