If you were to wander into my basement right now, you would find a file cabinet containing a goodly portion of the run from both the G.I. Joe and Transformers comic dries published by Marvel in the 1980s.
Going to Comic Con last year helped renew my interest in comics, and considering IDW holds the rights to both series these days, hitting that panel to kick off this year's full four day assortment of Comic Co goodness seemed like a natural fit.
The big news?
Starting in October, the Joe line kicks off a six issue crossover spanning all three titles: Target Snake Eyes. The most popular of Joes recently turned on his teammates to join the Arishkage, Storm Shadow's rogue ninja clan. The Joes have found out and begin their pursuit of the masked man in this crossover.
IDW also teased, simply, that "Oktober Is Coming" -- which signaled to this long-time reader that we're going to get our first look at the Oktober Guard, the Russian equivalent of the G.I. Joe team, since this franchise went under the province of IDW. More good news. The company is giving serious thought to releasing some bound hardback volumes of past issues -- something that senior editor John Barber thinks would help with continuity, which he admitted can be challenging with three different Joe-related titles.
On the Transformer side, it is all about the Dinobots. Both continuities, Transformers and Transformers Prime, are centering around Grimlock and all his Paleozoically disguised pals. The Dinobots are getting their very own series "Rage of the Dinobots", in the Prime continuity, where they're the last Autobots left on Cybertron to defend against the Decepticons. One of the IDW executives described the Dinobots as a crack team of soldiers trapped behind enemy lines.
IDW also announced two "Primus" Transformer annuals coming out in August and September. Each is its own standalone story, but the annuals were described as halves of a larger tale. There's also a digital exclusive title on the way that serves as a prologue to the Fall of Cybertron video game.
IDW talked about its other Hasbro-connected titles at this panel. Information was scarce on Dungeons and Dragons, only to tease that "something big" was happening later in the year and spilling over into 2013.
IDW also announced a My Little Pony series, if you're into that sort of thing.