New 'G.I. Joe' puts on a public face for relaunch

• Fred Van Lente takes over the flagship 'G.I. Joe' series in February
• The ongoing Joe vs. Cobra war returns to American soil
• Van Lente has chosen a cast of old favorites from different eras

G.I. Joe is going public.

The top-secret military task force that has been a part of toy and comic-book pop culture for 30 years shifts status quo for IDW's relaunched G.I. Joe series in February, with a new No. 1 issue, new characters (as well as old favorites) and a new creative team in writer Fred Van Lente and artist Steve Kurth.

It'll act as the flagship for the new line of books next year, including Chuck Dixon and Paul Gulacy's G.I. Joe: Special Missions (debuting in March) and Mike Costa and Antonio Fuso's G.I. Joe: Cobra Files (April), which features Cobra Commander and his cronies in the evil organization Cobra.

The trio of current series — Dixon's G.I. Joe and Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow as well as Costa's Cobra — wrap up their runs in January.

With the new movie G.I. Joe: Retaliation in theaters in March, IDW wanted a change with the franchise in 2013 — "which I most certainly am," says Van Lente, who collected the Adventure Team G.I. Joe action figures as a kid in the 1970s and was a fan of the '80s G.I. Joe title that writer Larry Hama and artist Herb Trimpe did for Marvel Comics. (Hama's G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, an IDW continuation of his original series, will be unaffected by the relaunch.)

The new writer says the most obvious change is that the Joes are out and about in a public fashion. In Dixon's run, Cobra pulled a WikiLeaks on the heroes, making their existence known to the world — a problem since everyone believed them to be deceased with fake death certificates and the like.

Van Lente liked the plot element and decided to make that the foundation of a new series: The Pentagon relocates the G.I. Joe team to Governors Island in Upper New York Bay and, with their distinctive outfits and code names, they'll have to deal with the general population, which could be good or bad, depending on the situation.

"G.I. Joe themselves are very like, 'I don't know if this is a good idea… ' One of the fates of all soldiers in every era has been to put up with and somehow make the best of dubious decisions made by your commanding officers," says Van Lente, teasing that Manhattan may become a magnet for Cobra attacks.

G.I. Joe over the years has run the gamut, on TV, movies and comic pages, from the campy to the ultra-realistic. There will be "fantastical elements" in his book, Van Lente promises, but mainly it's going to be about what it's like to wage war in the modern era.

So, Cobra's more apt to be using iPads than a Weather Dominator.

There are a certain number of topics Van Lante wants to tackle — he points out the serious sex scandal involving David Petraeus that has sucked in other generals and the high suicide rate in the Army as examples of things that are going on in the armed forces today.

Overall, Van Lente hopes to take the Joes out of being a faux Navy SEALs group and have them deal with aspects of all branches of the military, from "hearts and minds" operations to recruitment and public relations.

"A lot of fans were like, 'Well I thought G.I. Joe was supposed to be a spec-ops group.' But in the '80s, G.I. Joe has a tank and fighter jets," Van Lente says. "Speaking as someone who knows how special operations work, the Navy SEALs don't have an armored division — for a very, very good reason. There's no such thing as a stealth tank."

In choosing his Joe team, Van Lente looked at the expansive line of characters and picked those he related to, plus also reached out to fellow comic-book creators for their recommendations.

He also has been inundated with fans trying to get their favorites on board — Van Lente received one long e-mail singing the praises of the V.A.M.P. driver Clutch and the military-police man-and-canine duo of Law & Order.

"I wish I could remember all the names," Van Lente says. "I'm like, 'What about Windmill? No Windmill love? Come on!'

"When you're talking about the rosters, it's almost like that way lies madness."

His job was made easier by the fact that certain characters were off the table. Scarlett heads up a clandestine group in Special Missions, and Flint and Lady Jaye are key characters in Cobra Files.

IDW also wanted to keep each book distinctive in terms of cast members, Van Lente says, "and not turn anybody into, for lack of a better word, the Wolverine of the Joe-verse where he's on every single team." (We're all looking at you, Snake Eyes.)

Van Lente recruited a team of fan-favorites and more obscure soldiers, beginning with a trio featured in the upcoming Retaliation film: machine gunner Roadblock; Joe Colton, a high-profile general in the mold of a Petraeus or Colin Powell; and Duke, who is "really the sun around which everything else revolves." (In the movie, those guys are played by Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis and Channing Tatum, respectively.)

The writer included Doc, a female version of the original medical officer from the '80s who was created for the Devil's Due comics in the 2000s, and Quick Kick, a martial-arts expert who fills the ninja gap left by Snake Eyes and is also a favorite of comic artist Jamal Igle, who contributes a variant cover for Van Lente's first issue.

The sailor Shipwreck is on board, too, and so is his parrot from the cartoon. "Let's just say he's being reinterpreted," Van Lente teases.

He also liked Tunnel Rat "because he's based on Larry Hama, who basically created this franchise," and Cover Girl, "a famous fashion model who joined the Army and apparently just made her way up the ranks, which sounds nuts to me," Van Lente says. "I've got a great specific backstory for her that I'm kind of excited to reveal."

He's trying to pull a little from every era, and fans will find out soon that the Adventure Team Joes are major players in this book, as well.

"What I like doing is taking obscure characters and making people love them," Van Lente explains. "One of the problems you can get into dealing with these big franchises — and with genre in general — is people tend to want to see the same thing over and over again. That's not aesthetically fulfilling to me as a writer and that leads to a stagnant franchise.

"You've got to take that risk of doing something people at first may react negatively to, but then it's my job to persuade them otherwise."

And like any good public organization nowadays, G.I. Joe even has a social-media expert, the new character Hashtag. The first Indian-American Joe, she's an embedded journalist and blogger "who has a family military background and they think they can control her," Van Lente says. "Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong."

Another change Van Lente wanted to make was to take the ongoing Joe vs. Cobra war that has been international of late and plant it firmly in the United States — the main reason the first arc of the relaunched series is titled "Homefront."

Van Lente's favorite story from Hama's original run was when Cobra secretly took over Springfield, a small town in America, and the writer has taken that conceit and pumped it up with a little Black Hawk Down influence.

During the economic crisis, the villains have worked to get their tenterhooks into smaller, ignored Rust Belt areas by telling folks Cobra can help where the Joes and the U.S. government has failed them. They're in at least one town, and the first arc explores if Cobra's successful anywhere else and their Red Dawn-style takeover works.

"You're taking these classic archetypes of G.I. Joe and Cobra, and you're grafting it onto something a largely American readership can immediately identify with," Van Lente says.

"The tension becomes G.I. Joe becoming the U.S. military's face of its best and brightest and really what America's supposed to be up against Cobra, which to me is the darker side and the more radical, dissatisfied part of America."

Cobra will be trying to outgame the Joes in the propaganda department with the Baroness, a favorite femme fatale of Van Lente's and the franchise's female Darth Vader clad in skintight leather, glasses and attitude. (She also stars on a first-issue variant cover by Arthur Adams.)

The arms dealer Destro and Major Bludd also play a significant role in the new series, as well as a Cobra member fans have been clamoring for, Van Lente says. "He's going to make a big comeback in New York City. And if he can make it there, he can make it anywhere."

One of the things Van Lente most liked about the original 1980s comic was it resembled HBO's The Wire in the way that Cobra characters and their soap opera was in many ways just as compelling as what was going on with the good guys.

However, Van Lente feels strongly that his G.I. Joe will focus squarely on his American heroes.

"While you'll be seeing a lot of development within the Cobra guys," he says, "it will have to take a back seat to what's going on with the G.I. Joe guys who need to be more than just what's on the back of their file cards and more than just their functions, and flesh them out as real people."