News · 2026-10-10
Pye Parr has drawn all seven of Battle Force 2000, and the Baroness has joined Cobra
Most of the G.I. Joe roster turned up with a face, a file card and at least a chance of a line in the cartoon. Battle Force 2000 never got the third of those, and the entries in our own archive for the seven of them all finish the same way: did not appear by name in the Sunbow or DiC episode synopses.
Skybound spent Saturday morning at New York Comic Con on the Energon Universe hour in North Room 406.2, and it put the Joe half of what it had to say on its own Instagram account while the session was still running. Two books came out of it: M.A.S.K. #8 on January 6, and G.I. Joe #30 on January 20. The seven names, a line of cover copy addressed to Hondo MacClean and the $3.99 price are all on those slides and in none of the captions.
M.A.S.K. #8 is written by Dan Watters and drawn by Nikola Cizmesija, with Pierluigi Casolino on colours and Rus Wooton on letters. The solicitation runs: General Flagg brings new allies to M.A.S.K., Battle Force 2000 among them, “but nothing is as it seems”. The cover slide adds a line the caption leaves out, addressed to one man: “Hondo MacClean… ready for your crash course?”
Seven names, in the artist’s own handwriting
Two of the six slides are character design sheets, both credited to Pye Parr, and between them they name all seven. The first is Maverick on his own, worked up from four angles and annotated in pencil: “WHITE FLIGHT SUIT”, “TECHY HEAD STUFF”, “BIONIC EYE + ARM + LEG”, with “BF2K MAVERICK” written beside the full figure. The second lines up six more in two rows, labelled underneath in the same hand: Blaster, Avalanche and Blocker across the top, Dodger, Knock Down and Dee Jay below.
The file cards and the carded figures gave fans the seven names, and the cartoon never gave them faces to go with them. On a sheet that is still pencil and flat colour, every one of the seven has a different build. Blaster is bulked out in green under a hard-shell helmet, Avalanche is pale and gridded in cold-weather kit, and Blocker, striped and with a sidearm raised, is the only brown on the page. Below them Dodger is bare-armed under a ballcap with a rifle slung across his back, Knock Down wears a visor rig over a leather jacket, and Dee Jay is the slim one in white with the collar gear. Their file cards never got that far, and mostly settled for a specialty line and a hometown [1].
Five covers come with it, and the list runs A by Parr, B by Nick Bradshaw and Jim Charalampidis, C by Ben Oliver, D the 1-in-25 streetwear variant by Fadime Yildirim, and E a 1-in-50 by Derek Charm, at $3.99 US, a price printed in the Image corner box on the art itself and stated nowhere in the announcement [2]. Yildirim’s slot is the second of the six M.A.S.K. covers we went through in September, the run that carries her from #7 through to #12.
One oddity, on the slides rather than in the book. Both of the M.A.S.K. cover slides close on AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL COMIC SHOP JANUARY 6, 2026, a Tuesday that has been and gone. The caption gives January 6 with no year at all, the Joe slides in the same wave read January 20, 2027, and TFW2005 filed the lot under Skybound’s January 2027 solicitations. January 6, 2027 is the Wednesday this is for.
Cover A, by Pye Parr, who also drew both Battle Force 2000 design sheets.
The Baroness picks a side
G.I. Joe #30 follows two weeks later, by Joshua Williamson, Marco Ferrari, Lee Loughridge and Wooton again. The Instagram caption only asks the question, Baroness, Agent of Cobra?, and leaves it hanging. The cover slide answers it outright: “After the events of G.I. Joe versus Night Force, Baroness has joined Cobra!” What the slide does not say is what any of it means for her, and the caption only asks the same thing back: “what does that mean for the most unpredictable former member of G.I. Joe?”
Night Force has been this book’s business since #25, and #29 is the issue that ends it. So #30 is the first issue out the other side, and Skybound has given it to the Baroness.
Six covers on this one: A is by Tom Reilly, who was the G.I. Joe name up on the Saturday panel, B is by J. Scott Campbell and Alex Sinclair, C is by Stanley Lau, D is the 1-in-25 streetwear variant, Yildirim again and the last of her six-issue Joe run, E is a 1-in-50 by Phil Noto, and F is a 1-in-100 foil by Jenny Frison. The price is $3.99 US on this one too, and again it is only on the art.
Neither book is orderable at a retailer yet, and Skybound’s own instruction on both posts is to pre-order at your local comic shop, so a pull-list slot is the way to be sure of either. The earlier run is already collected and in stock. G.I. Joe Vol. 3: Dreadnok War is in stock at Big Bad Toy Store at $16.99, and Codename: G.I. Joe Deluxe Edition Book 02 is in stock there at $49.99.
Baroness changing sides is the headline, and of the six covers, Campbell’s is the one most likely to sell on the artist’s name alone. But the slide worth saving off this announcement is the grey one with six figures standing on it and a name pencilled under each, because Battle Force 2000 have spent nearly forty years as codenames with vehicles attached, and Pye Parr has finally worked out what the seven of them look like!
The rest of our convention coverage is on the NYCC 2026 hub.
Sources: Skybound on M.A.S.K. #8; Skybound on G.I. Joe #30; TFW2005, Skybound’s Energon Universe solicitations for January 2027. Key art, design sheets and solicitation copy: Skybound Entertainment, Image Comics and Hasbro.
[1] Our archive dates six of the seven to carded Hasbro figures in 1987. The Dee-Jay entry on this site covers the 1993 Arctic Commandos version of the character rather than the Battle Force 2000 one.
[2] Read off the corner box on the cover art at full resolution. None of the trade write-ups of this announcement carries a price for either book.
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