Addendum 6: A Force to Be Reckoned With.

8/10/2014

It's a brave, if exposition heavy, new world as Transformation goes twice weekly to cover the adventures of Action Force! Will Wild Bill bring the skills he learnt on the mean streets of Hull to stop Megatron? And will Centurion contribute anything? It's all in my look at:

Ancient Relics! Part 2.

7 Comments

Simon Hall

8/10/2014 03:05:36 pm

Well that's boo about Centurion. I liked the Morris / III storyline. Mind you, the US series does the same with all the
III/ RAAT stuff which just gets dropped like a stone sometime between the Throttlebots being turned into toy cars and Furman's start. So basically, after fighting Galvatron, the Dinobots salvage Centrurion and Wheeljack rebuilds him just because.

Although the fortnightly Action Force comic died a death, its interesting that it did resurface as a US format book by Marvel UK, roughly around the time they dabbled with Dragon's Claws, Death's Head and The Sleeze Brothers (the latter oddly published by Marvel's Mature Readers/ Creator Owned Epic imprint). I only had #5 of that title (it came with a free sticker album) and featured a reprint of Ancient Relics - so was the rest of the monthly book similarly made up of reprints from the fortnightly title?

Stuart

9/10/2014 02:55:33 am

Ancient Relics was reprinted across the first six issues of Action Force Monthly (presumably with the TF issue split in half), the title as a whole did contain original material alongside the reprints and was actually published in America as "G.I. Joe: European Missions".

The fact #125 never gets mentioned alongside Man of Iron as an issue represented in the States says a lot about how successfully the Euro Joes book was.

With Centurion, it just about works if you assume Swoop condemed Morris to death by never telling any of the others about him and that, on the assumption it was just a living robot, Wheeljack actually built a sentient and quite polite being out of the wreckage.

Tis a mess though.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

11/10/2014 03:41:42 am

I can't help on the Shang-Chi story as it's several years since I last read the full run of Action Force. But this storyline did stand out for being a rare one that doesn't feature Fu Manchu, which rather makes a mockery of the info dump story specifically commissioned to introduce the back-up strip.

Format wise Action Force actually varied a bit between two and three stories an issue. G.I. Joe Special Missions often provided a source of slightly more "timeless" adventures that featured toys currently on the shelves whilst the regular series reprints were a few years too old for UK toy shelves despite starting the main run at G.I. Joe #25. (Hence, perhaps, the need to flesh out the background on Major Bludd.)

I'd never thought to much about whether the three story format was unpopular in itself for Transformers - most of the letters printed at the time complained about black & white and reprints, and occassionally about Action Force replacing Visionaries (rather than Visionaries's last TF run being the *third* UK printing of their origin in barely a year!), with very little comment on the split itself. It may even have been popular in some sections because it had "more stories" - that rationale can be found in places - and increased the chance of every issue having at least something that was good (until the rather jokey Earthforce stories coincided with the G.I. Joe limited series).

Action Force Monthly began almost immediately after the weekly ended which would make it almost exactly contemporaneous to Dragon's Claws. Most of the book was new material with only about five pages an issue given over to reprints - after Ancient Relics they started rerunning the entire weekly output from issue #1. The lead strips had some good ideas and a slightly darker tone - there's one in issue #2 where Furman kills off Action Force's MoD boss Trent, perhaps the origin of the Furmanator.

Stuart

11/10/2014 03:47:06 am

I'd have loved to see Fu Manchu turn up, shame.

I think the new format as whole didn't go down very well, it's just the B&W and reprints got most of the flak. But refreshing myself on the letter's at the time when I get there might change that.

I hadn't realised AF Monthly started that quickly, I assumed it's run was much later and coincided with a period when Action Force wasn't in Transformers. Hasbro must have been really keen to push it.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

11/10/2014 05:02:09 am

It lasted fifteen issues so would have just about overlapped both rounds of Visionaries - presumably that's what you're thinking of.

But you're right about someone pushing the line a lot - after AF Monthly ended reprints of Special Missions turned up in the Incredible Hulk Presents (which had four stories and made that a selling point) as though they just weren't going to be allowed to die. I wonder if Marvel UK had found the licence worth rather less than they paid for and were doing whatever they could to recoup the money. Or they had signed agreements with Hasbro/Milton Bradley for more appearances than the market would support. They ditched the regular strip at almost exactly the four year anniversary of starting it and only ran a few specials and annuals after that - as though the moment their obligations relaxed they couldn't wait to get out.

Felicity

2/11/2019 02:20:32 am

Centurion looks a lot better in this story—redesigned by Geoff Senior?

Stuart

2/11/2019 03:09:58 am

It is indeed a Geoff Senior redesign.

Addendum 6: A Force to Be Reckoned With.

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