It may seem like a no-brainer to entrust the deadliest ninja in the GI Joe universe to Rob Liefeld, co-creator of Deadpool, but make no mistake: Snake Eyes: Deadgame brings with it the kind of spark that could spread… which is no doubt exactly what IDW Publishing is hoping.
The fan-favorite ninja soldier is both the deadliest and most recognizable GI Joe characters, meaning the announcement of a solo comic miniseries is hard to question. But considering how the brand’s popularity has fallen against its superhero competition, IDW has turned to a heavy hitter. The story and artwork are both coming from Liefeld, sending the silent assassin on a mission too strange to spoil for any interested readers. But if fans of Liefeld’s work expect a storm of blades and gunfire… well, they’re sure to get it. But they’ll also be taking a journey of ancient weapons, mystical enemies, and a fight that could determine the fate of humanity. Needless to say, we needed to get more details straight from the source.
The creative team joining Liefeld further demonstrates IDW’s hopes for the miniseries, with Chad Bowers scripting, and Federico Blee on colors. Our interview with Liefeld steers clear of major spoilers, but it’s clear Deadgame #1 is only a taste of what’s to come–from the rest of the miniseries… and who knows, maybe more stories to follow? Readers can find our entire interview below.
Screen Rant: You’ve called this a bucket list book, and it really does seem like a match made in heaven. I mentioned to a friend that you were doing a Snake Eyes comic, and his response was, “He hasn’t already?”
Rob Liefeld: There you go.
I imagine there was more to it?
Well, I can tell you that Chris Ryall from IDW, who has long held the GI Joe license with Hasbro, called me last April of 2019. It was when Major X, a new series I had from Marvel, was coming out. He and I have talked over the years, and he said, “Rob, now’s the time. Let’s get it on the books. Let’s do Snake Eyes; let’s do GI Joe. Let’s do a project.” And I said, “Okay, that sounds great.” I literally thought the extent of my Snake Eyes and GI Joe interaction would have been the few covers that I did for them over the past 10 years; just a smattering of maybe three or four covers. But now it’s like, “Wow, okay.” I said, “Chris, I’m on board. I’d love to do it. Tell me what we have to do to make this a reality.” And he’s like, “Send us a storyline, and I’ll send it to Hasbro,” because they have to approve everything. So I said, “I’m gonna swing for the fences here. This is the story that I would do with Snake Eyes.” I really just had that afternoon. I send it in, and the next day he’s like, “Hey man, Hasbro’s good to go if you’re good to go.” And we were off to the races.
Obviously, things got somewhat delayed with the pandemic – as I think there was a question of whether or not people were even going to be able to receive comics. But here we are; it’s out tomorrow, and I got my physical copies in hand this morning. I’m thrilled that it printed great. My concern always is: did it print well? The first job that I had as a kid, my dad put me to work at a printing press that was affiliated with my elementary school. As a junior hire, I was running printing presses and adjusting ink levels and water levels and so on. I’ve always been really keen on the printing, and Snake Eyes came out great. I’m really excited.
So when someone sees you opening up a comic and looking at it really closely, they think you’re looking at the art, but you’re looking at the paper?
Well, I’m looking at how the ink printed and the color production. All of it. Man, there have been some covers even in recent years, not through IDW but through other publishers, that are like sunburnt because they’re so dark. Trust me, when the printer looks away, those levels can kick up – and you’re getting suddenly more red instead of blue, and it changes the hue. I’m going way off on technical craziness.
The most important thing when I get a book is that the pages flow well together. Do the page designs and the page breaks and the layout come off as you imagine them? Because I really think anybody who knows me knows I’m obsessed with comic books. It is my obsession as much as it as it is my craft. Comics to me are what films are to Spielberg. I’m a student of the game as well as a participant and a contributor. I look at a body of work from page 1 to 27. Like with Snake Eyes #1: Did it flow? Did it come off the way I intended; the layouts, the page design?
It’s more than just drawing guys with guns and katanas. It’s how each panel cascades one after another and builds on each other. It’s the language of comics, and I have had great success at it because I deeply care about these aspects I’m sharing with you. When I held it, I was like, “Oh, there’s a couple pages that really build off each other. Great.” I’m very happy. I’m an old man; I’m making comics, and I feel like the last decades had work I’m really excited by. I feel like I’ve been building towards where I’m at now for years, and I’m really happy with the end result. I feel like I’m putting it all together in a way that maybe I wasn’t capable of even in my heyday in the ’90s. So, it’s fun.
The longer a career goes on, and the more visibility you have, it’s a double-edged sword, right? Because people start knowing what to expect. I just started off by saying that you doing a Snake Eyes story made total sense, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read a more shocking first page of a single comic ever. Where did this story come from?
I love this! Look, here’s the deal: The story came from weapons of war. I’ve always been obsessed with weapons of war. Once a knight or a Viking or a ninja picks up that weapon, it is a weapon of combat or engagement or war. Snake Eyes himself is a weapon of war, and Storm Shadow is a weapon of war. All of our characters are going to realize their roles in this, and our bad guy most certainly views himself as a conduit for the most powerful weapon of war, which is the Sword of the Dead. We are going to see all of the different objects that the Sword of the Dead has clashed with in the past, and why it didn’t take hold maybe in a way that we we feared, because it was put down by other weapons of war or maybe it was the conduit of those weapons of war and the way that they mastered them.
So, that was the overarching idea. I have loved weapons of mythology, whether it’s Excalibur – I think prior to this age of Marvel movies, Excalibur would probably be the the most popular, most renowned and legendary weapon of war. But with my kids growing up in this Marvel Cinematic age, it would have to be Mjölnir. I encountered Thor in the encyclopedia of my school in first grade before I encountered Marvel’s Thor. And I was like, “Wait!” when the Marvel book came out. I’m like, “That’s that painting I saw on that encyclopedia, that guy battling those giants.” And Thor in the encyclopedia had red hair and braids. It wasn’t the blonde hair, beautiful Hemsworth, model-looking God – who I love, I have bought thousands of comics with Thor in them.
But Thor and Mjölnir, or King Arthur and Excalibur, or whether it’s the spear that pierced the side of Christ – the Spear of Destiny – we have a great mythological legacy of all these fabled weapons. I built the story around that, and we’re off to the races. Let’s see how Snakes Eyes fares as he goes up against the Dead Sword.
Did you see that as an opportunity, or something that this property in particular had the capacity to include? Before Marvel, it feels like GI Joe was the most visible property in the world, and this feels surprisingly refreshing.
It’s twofold. The GI Joe property, even though I took my kids at 9 and 7 to see those films, when they asked me what I was doing and I told them I was drawing Snake Eyes – they didn’t know what I was talking about. I was really like, “Wait a second, No, this can’t be lost on you.” I plopped them down and put them in front of a familiar delivery service that they know called Netflix. I called up the Toys That Made Us GI Joe episode, which I would recommend to anyone to see the glorious history of Hasbro’s GI Joe toy line.
I interacted with the adventure team GI Joes being put out in 1974 – yes, I’m an old man. Yes, I was seven years old. That was my favorite toy; my first love as a toy. I don’t remember toys before my giant GI Joe dolls, as my dad called them. I had the Kung Fu Grip, I had the Eagle Eye, I had the Atomic Man, I had Bullet Man. This was part of the GI Joe adventure team, as they moved away from military to an adventure team because Vietnam was controversial, and Hasbro made the wise choice to to pivot. And of course, once the adventure team was done, it went away for a little while and reemerged as what I call the Reagan era Real American Hero. Let’s be honest, they dominated the culture. GI Joe, for Marvel, was battling it out with X-Men as the number one book in their line, especially in those first four or five years. And these are iconic characters in those covers by Mike Zeck. I mean, that is an amazing property; that is an amazing group of characters. It’s just an honor to jump onboard and interact with these characters.
I feel like when you said early on, “Why hasn’t this happened before?” Let me tell you my approach with the story that I’m telling. I didn’t want to do a traditional militaristic – or even Cobra, they’re a cartoon terrorist group and a fictional group of criminals or whatever they call them. I don’t know if I’m speaking out of turn. I wanted to do something bigger than that, and my villain that I’ve introduced has ties to neither Joe or Cobra. But it’s on their radar as of issue #2 big time. They are now completely engaged by this villain, who has been resurrected.
But what I tried to do is I tried to put Snake Eyes in a Rob Liefeld story, rather than put Rob Liefeld in a GI Joe story. That was specific. I’m taking a big swing here. I just wanted to do something out of the ordinary and cast my line in the lake to see if I’ll get some bites. The jury’s still out, the book hits on July 15. Hopefully there’ll be a great reception. Before I jumped on with you, a retailer was emailing me saying he had to reorder the book because he didn’t order enough. This has happened a couple times now; people love to doubt me, and I kind of need that. My kids watched The Last Dance with Michael Jordan with me, and they’re like, “Is this what you do, Dad? You make everyone your enemy?” I’m like, “Yeah, kinda.”
You just need a personality that’s like, “Who am I gonna fight today?” I wake up every day going, “Okay, who am I gonna fight? Because I gotta win.” There’s enemies at every turn, and Snake Eyes is my latest entry into the battle on the comic book racks to power up GI Joe and restore its former glory. Let’s hope I’m successful.
Deadgame is a miniseries. I know some people will see that and think that this is Rob Liefeld’s GI Joe story beginning and end, but you’re not saying this is explicitly one and done. Can you can give your fans a bit of hope that this isn’t a one-off?
I would love to dance in this world for a while. As with Star Wars or Planet of the Apes or Predator or Alien, these are not my properties. These are licensed. Hasbro controls GI Joe, and hopefully they’re happy with me. IDW, I think, is really happy. I tell this story because it was the fire that was lit under me. When Chris extended the invitation to do this, I went to catch up on the latest GI Joe offerings. “I don’t think I have the latest issues; I’m gonna go check them out.” I went to a store called Pop Comics in Anaheim – I’m referencing it because the clerk there will verify what I’m telling you. I went to Torpedo Comics in Orange; same thing, the clerk will verify.
I walked in, “Hey Rob, what’s up? How you doing? It’s not new comics day. You looking for back issues?” I’m quiet, keeping to myself and going down the alphabet of the rack of new comics. Going up and down the store and I’m following the alphabet. I got to G and there’s Green Lantern, but there’s no GI Joe. I quietly pivot over to where they put the books from the last three months, and I still can’t find the Gs. I said, “Hey, where’s GI Joe?” “Oh, we don’t carry that for the shelf, Mr. Liefeld. But we can order it for you if you’d like to put it on your subscription.” And I’m like, “What?!” GI Joe doesn’t make it to the shelf? My childhood had a bit of a fit right there, and I stormed out and drove to Torpedo Comics, where I got the same story.
I went home and checked the sales, and I saw that they were at about 3000 copies a month. So, IDW’s gotta be thrilled. I think we’re at over 60,000 and going back to press. I’m doing my childhood a solid, okay? And there’s a time and a place. When I accepted this, there was no Henry Golding Snake Eyes movie. Boy, I would kill for that trailer. I would kill for some air support. Because I view comic books and and the rest of us in the comic community, and the way the pop culture has always treated us, as the guys storming the beach at Normandy. The boat is about to pop open and I’m going to get shot the minute I walk off the boat. I storm off the boat, because I’m going right into the line of fire. What helps tremendously is when those big giant airships fly overhead and blast what’s in front of me so that I can have a clear path. But I ain’t getting that.
I was hoping, all through the pandemic. It would be a great time to release that Snake Eyes trailer, or one single frame from the movie. Please, dear God. Henry Golding is a sweetheart. I’ve met him online, we’ve talked. He – in the shock of shocks – publicly posted on my Instagram that he played with the Cable and Deadpool action figures as a kid, as if I needed to feel older. But I was tremendously – if you don’t think I didn’t run around the house that day… My daughter’s like, “Dad, calm down.” It was very exciting. The thing is, I could use that air support, but we’re not getting it this go-round. They announced that they were making a Snake Eyes movie about two months after I signed on to the comic book, and I was thrilled. The movie sounds awesome. I know the studio is so excited they’re moving forward with more GI Joe. The new toys are in stores, and they’re fantastic. The new deluxe GI Joe 6-inch action figures have everybody flipping out; they’re amazing. So, I think we’re coming out at a good time. The comics are back, the toys are great, and there’s a movie coming – or so they tell me.
The book was a blast to read the first issue. And now I can go and recommend a comic to pick up, where readers don’t need to know anything other than GI Joe and Snake Eyes. Right?
Thank you! I really feel that that’s the question I get the most, from all the people who have commented on my social media that this is the first time they’re interacting with GI Joe. I’m telling you, if you like X-Force, if you like Deadpool, if you like Cable, or anything I’ve done in the past – check it out. We made it so that you didn’t have to read any GI Joe ahead of time. I think that was a concern when I read over the script, and in all the details that we gave. Because people are like, “Hey, I’m literally coming to GI Joe for the first time. Do I need to read anything?” And I’m like, “No, you can jump right in.” Hopefully what they’ll do is they’ll finish it and go, “I’m gonna go buy more GI Joe stuff,” and order back issues galore from IDW. That would be fantastic.
Snake Eyes: Deadgame #1 is available now from your local comic book shop, or digitally from comiXology and IDW.
