Author's G.I. Joe biography
As a kid starting 1982 in Oklahoma, Josh was a collector of any G.I. Joe toy or comic he could find. He got all the toys, and like most, sold the vehicles all in a garage sale including the U.S.S. Flagg, which other then his dog he considers the greatest Christmas present he ever got. But, he never sold his beloved G.I. Joe comics or figures. By the 1990's, he was collecting way more then G.I. Joe comics and was a comic completist before he even knew what the term meant.
Like so many children of the 80s, Josh took a break from collecting in the mid-90s for college and girls, although he did still buy the G.I. Joe Special off the shelf. But to fund his move to Los Angeles in 2002 to start his film career, he sold all his remaining non G.I. Joe comics and his boxed Star Wars toys his mom had kept, all on eBay getting over $1,000 dollars.
In 2001, Devil's Due Publishing brought G.I. Joe back to the four-color world of comic books. So wondering down a street in Chicago, he saw a comic store and on a random "I haven't been in comic store in years" kind of day went in. And G.I. Joe Image #3 with Zartan on the cover was on the shelf. He walked out with number #1,2,3 and a convention exclusive and a new fire was lit under Josh, who then opened his eBay account to start shopping.
Since 2001, his return to G.I. Joe comic collecting he has been determined by the phrase "have to get them all" which is any variant, version, edition, cover, character appearance, in any language from any country as long as its GI Joe comic based he collects it. The best highlight story of his collecting career is that he has found international non-English G.I. Joe comics in comic stores in Netherlands, Italy and the UK.
By the mid-2000s, Josh was helping YoJoe.com with the comics section creating pages, writing summaries and uploading covers like crazy eventually becoming the Senior Editor for the YoJoe comic section for over a decade until the late 2010's. During that time he created the YO Joe International Comic Section.
.
And in 2008, Josh got hired on Dark Sky the codeword name for the G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra movie, he is credited in the Second Unit Production Assistant section.
"For 10 years, I helped entertain the world working in Hollywood, for another 10 years, I helped a few people and starting in 2019 for the next 10 years I am turning myself into a writer and After Action Report Volume #1 was my first book" Josh Eggebeen
YO Joe!!
I thought I would share my lifetime journey with G.I. Joe comics:
Here is my full history with G.I. Joe comics from 1982 to 2026:
Starting with G.I. Joe A Real American Hero issue #5 Tanks for the Memories in 1982 I have had a comic pull list at a comic shop. In Tulsa, OK my Dad took me to a comic shop (likely my first at age 10) and I discovered G.I. Joe A Real American Hero and got it and the early ones and then never missed a month, even today still never missing a month as my comic pull list is at a comic shop called House of Secrets in Burbank, CA (been my LCS for near 20 yrs, even when I didn’t live in LA or even in the country).
So, since 1982, I am proud comic collector. From 1984 till early 1990s I did collect JLA, Wolverine, Superman Man of Steel, Suicide Squad and few others. Those were sold on eBay in early 2000s. At this point at age 53, I mostly only collect G.I. Joe or adjacent like Disavowed and some Star Wars (I loved the High Republic era stories). My G.I. Joe collection includes nearly 100% everything domestic, I mean everything newsstand variants, Direct Market, 2nd Printing, alt or variant covers, and everything else all the way to current. (The only exception I am not collecting is the Skybound Energon Transformers Retailer Exclusives, which range from 10 to 250 (not a typo on the 250) per issue) My passion within my comic collecting passion is International G.I. Joe, give me those foreign language I can’t read (Google translate now helps) what is in my collection ranges from Argentina, Mexico to Canada jump across the pond to many European countries then a few from the Middle East and over to near the Pacific Ocean with Chinese, Japanese, Indonesia and Australia. I recently added the brand newly discovered G.I. Joe comics from the Czech Republic. A Holy Grail I didn’t know I was hunting for until 2022. When I travel I like visiting foreign comic shops as part of my traveling tradition, and bringing what I find on the shelves and buried in comic long boxes back to the US, these hunts have been some my greatest moments of my collecting.
So that is the collector side. The digital Yo Joe and physical book After Action Report side starts in 2004 with being asked to write summaries by Phil Kost for the short-lived comic series G.I. Joe Reloaded from Devil’s Due. Phil Kost ran a long-gone G.I. Joe comics forum called G.I. Joe Reloaded, where my avatar was Antarctica (same on YoJoe, HISS Tank and many others of that era). That simple ask lead to a half a lifetime of documenting G.I. Joe Comics. By 2007, I was the Senior Comic Editor of the YoJoe.com Comic section, basically as Terry Dizard & Phillip Donnelly were doing the toys, I was doing the comic page creation with the help of Ted "Skinny" Jacobson (who helped for more then decade),Jeff Bohn (who pasted the torch to me) and Roger Taft (who had lots of international comic knowledge to share and we made trades together) as I created the YoJoe International Comic Section. A reminder this was a long time before Facebook with the forums on many sites being how we connected with other Joe fans and in person at the G.I. Joe Convention (aka the Collector’s Club) yearly convention and later at JoeFest Toy & Comic Show. In the mid-2000s, I became part of the Joe Declassified group helping document and preserve G.I. Joe on the comic side with same the guys documenting the toys.
So if you have ever read a comic summary on YoJoe.com, you are looking at my work. Either I physically built the page or wrote the summary. Skinny wrote nearly all the IDW summaries as I built the pages (remember 2005 to 2010 the internet website building was a very different approach then the modern one). Then in 2018, YoJoe.com was sold and myself, Terry and Phil were pushed out as the company that bought YoJoe has failed in the past decade to update it. Our passion for G.I. Joe drove us to keep the site updated regularly and for the comics monthly until the end. Now YoJoe is still likely the best resource fans use and in fact I have found when using AI that it will quote (aka be a search resource) the answers from these summaries. At this point by default, the information in YoJoe is the basis for much of the learned info for AI, which means that fans forever in the future will get what many of the early website databases for G.I. Joe were doing. To see my work quoted in AI is odd and reassuring feeling.
And then in 2020 as the world was shutdown by CoVid, my old friend Roger Taft literally called asking a question “Would you like to do a project that will take a year?” He pitched what would become the first After Action Report book Volume #1 The Marvel Era book. And by 2021 that first book was in hand with Vol#2 Devil’s Due Era following quickly. Then a major roadblock (pun intended) happen with Vol#3 IDW Era, Command Files Vol#1 (a G.I. Joe character guide) and the 2nd Printing of Vol#1 that delayed everything over a year and we lost a lot of money due to the publisher failing to provide the paid for books. Once that was solved in 2024, it was off to the races on After Action Report books.
Being an author and making guide books that the fans love and can’t find the info on internet has become my passion. G.I. Joe comics has never left my life (except from the late 1990s when G.I. Joe disappeared). In 2001 as Josh Blaylock of Devil's Due Comics brought back to comic shop shelves ARAH #1, I returned to collecting armed with the internet, eBay (the early 2000s version), new friends found on online and a non-stop release of Joe comics every month. I now attend conventions as an author, sell my books online as a business at AfterActionReport.Net and just keep going. My philosophy is there is no reason to stop. And based on having 4 books planned up to 2028, I don’t plan on stopping making AAR books.
As one ages, and especially GenX, I have found I love G.I. Joe more now as middle age grey haired man then I did as kid, who in Oklahoma only knew what Hasbro promoted or what Larry Hama wrote in the comic, or even in my late 20s whose passion was rekindled with the return of G.I. Joe in early 2000s.
So many highlights of my life revolve around G.I. Joe and Star Wars, from working on the movie G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra (my name is in the credits in the 2nd unit section) and also Thor to seeing every Star Wars movie in a theater together with my Dad (Mando & Grogu was 49 yrs of seeing them together) to talking to so many fans about G.I. Joe in person at cons. It is a wonderful life. And Now you Know all about Josh’s journey through G.I. Joe and why I make books. YOJoe