Jorge Fornés Talks Writing ‘G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Sssilent Missions — Firefly’ #1

Jorge Fornés is the Spanish artist known for his acclaimed works Rorschach, Batman, and Danger Street. Later this month, Fornés will write and draw G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Sssilent Missions — Firefly #1 from Image and Skybound Comics. I spoke with Fornes about his history with the original G.I. Joe silent issue, writing and drawing a story without dialogue, and if he’d like to do more writing in the future.

Check out our conversation below.

What's your own personal experience/connection to GI Joe and the original silent issue from Larry Hama? How exciting it is to write and draw this story (with colorist Dave Stewart) and be among a class of talented creators on the new silent stories one-shots?

I remember when I read that issue, it made a strong impression on me. I was still quite young at the time, and it was one of the most original and powerful things I had read up to that point.

When I ran into Larry at a convention in Spain, many years later I had the chance to tell him.

So, when the folks at Skybound offered me the chance to contribute to this miniseries and also write the script for the first time in my career, I jumped at the opportunity. I remember having a lot of trouble fitting it into my schedule, but I think it was worth it. It’s been one of those experiences that connects your present self with your past self, you get that feeling that you’re contributing, even if just a little, to the story of those characters, and also paying tribute to something that was important to you at the time, and you hope that maybe what you've done now will also be important to someone who is in the same situation you were in.

And of course, getting to work with the fantastic team behind the book, it’s always a pleasure to see Dave’s colors over my work, he’s one of the best in the industry.

There's a wide array of different panel and page structures — nine-panel grid, continuous movement on pages, and more — was that a conscious decision to try many different looks on the page or was it moereso business as usual?

Well, I’ve always liked experimenting with storytelling, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so, since there’s no dialogue or narration, so you have the reader’s full attention. Plus, it’s a challenge, since the story has to be completely understandable without any supporting text, so I let myself get carried away a bit and had a great time. I think the reader will sense that when they open the book, those things show. If you have a good time, they probably will too, or at least I hope so, haha!

What are the challenges of penning a silent story as opposed to one with dialogue? And what was the advantage?

The challenge is that you don't have the written text to fill in 50% of the medium. The reader won't know what the characters are thinking, and anything you don't show in an image, they won't discover.

The big advantage is that you have 100% of their attention on the images, you can afford to include more subtle details, hoping they’ll notice them, since they’ll pay much more attention to what they see, and you also have more space since you don’t have to worry about where to place the text. I think it’s much easier to set the pace of the book this way. Sometimes you try to speed it up, but if the writer includes long passages of text, it’s impossible, or it creates the opposite effect. This way, it’s entirely up to you.

Would you like to do more writing going forward?

Well, it’s not something that keeps me up at night, but I’d like to keep doing it whenever my work schedule allows.

I’ve enjoyed this story more than I expected, and I think I might actually enjoy doing it more often.

So maybe this won’t be the last time.

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – Sssilent Missions: Firefly #1 arrives at CaptCan Comics on April 29th, 2026. Pre-order the issue now to ensure you don’t miss out