Larry Hama Accuses Toy Dealer of Stealing His G.I. Joe Collection, Then Calls a Truce

Larry Hama, the writer who built the mythology behind Marvel’s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, spent part of this week airing a very public dispute with toy dealer Mark Bellomo over a haul of vehicles and figures that vanished from his hands before the pandemic and never came back.

Hama laid out the accusation in a Facebook post:

"Has anybody been in touch with Mark Bellomo? He has ALL of my GI Joe vehicles and figures. He hauled them away before the pandemic to sell them for me on line, and so far, I have not received a single cent. I have asked him repeatedly for an accounting, and to return my property. At first he made excuses, saying he was having personal issues, but I see that he is on FB selling toys again. He has not returned my calls in over a year. If anybody has purchased signed GI Joe toys or figures from him, please contact me. "

Bellomo apparently resurfaced to claim he’d already responded on Hama’s page. Hama wasn’t having it:

He claims he replied to my page. So far, I haven't seen it."

Then came the money. Bellomo sent Hama a PayPal payment of $850, unannounced and unexplained. Hama posted a screenshot of it and refunded the transaction on the spot, laying out exactly why:

“Just got this. No accounting, no explanation, nothing. At this point I don't want his money. Especially not an arbitrary amount he made up. If he has never sold any of them, I want the toys back. If I accept this, he is off the hook."

Days later, the temperature dropped. Hama posted that the collection was coming home through a third party:

"Mark Bellomo has promised to pack up all my stuff and return it via Carson Mataxis. He has made his mea culpa, and apologized for stalling so long. I accept his explanation, and agree with him that the personal issues involved in this are just that- personal, and need not be gone into any further. I don't hold grudges, and I hope nobody else holds anything against Mark for this."

That would be a tidy ending for a dispute over a private collection, except Hama tacked on a coda that had nothing to do with Bellomo:

"One positive thing is that this brought all the trolls, and lurking 'gaters out of the woodwork. They popped their heads up, and I blocked about ten of them. The comments on his rant made up most of that list."

Nothing in the sequence ties comicsgate to a toy reseller failing to pay a Marvel writer for online sales. The connection exists only in that closing jab, and Hama never explained it.

The collection itself matters beyond its dollar value. Hama didn’t just write G.I. Joe. He invented the file card format that turned a line of plastic action figures into a cast of characters with service records, specialties, and personalities, the backstory engine that made Hasbro’s toy line a cultural fixture in the 1980s. A Vietnam veteran who entered comics after his military service, Hama spent years lettering and scripting for Marvel and built G.I. Joe into one of the publisher’s longest-running licensed titles. Toys built on his own writing disappearing into a reseller’s garage for years, with no payment and no answers, lands as a strange footnote to that career rather than a routine collector dispute.

The reconciliation post ties things off cleanly on Hama’s end, but plenty stays unexplained: what Bellomo actually did with the collection for over a year, why a payment showed up only after Hama went public, and what comicsgate had to do with any of it.

What’s the more interesting story here: a Marvel legend’s decades-old collection getting tangled up with an online reseller, or the reflexive swipe at comicsgate tacked onto a resolution that had nothing to do with them?

Sign up for the Ayla Rin: Gateway to Doom Crowdfund, coming soon for great cosmic comic books with a cover by legendary Green Lantern artist, Ethan Van Sciver:

NEXT: Grant Morrison Watches “Lanterns,” Delivers Mixed Verdict After Slamming Damon Lindelof