The Solar Pool
Follow Me For Updates On:
  • Blog
  • Revisitation
  • Transformation
  • Book Shop
    • Heart of the Pool
    • Disclaimer
    • Links

Transformation 271: Blackrock and G.I. Joe.

20/7/2017

11 Comments

 
Picture
It's a first for the comic this week...

But not one to be proud of.

plus, Mindwipe strieks and Combat Colin meets his doom!

All in my look at ISSUE 271!


11 Comments
Ryan F
21/7/2017 04:37:13 pm

I feel your pain - this issue was pretty terrible. By this point I was getting the comic out of habit, rather than because it was actually any good. Thank goodness for Combat Colin!

(I actually use the word 'Yampy' in real life, and have done since I was a kid, just because of Combat Colin.)

Reply
Tim Roll-Pickering link
21/7/2017 05:31:53 pm

Dr Doom
vs
Thomas the Tank Engine

If only...

(And a joke a few months late as otherwise this is presumably intended to be Combat Colin's contribution to the Acts of Vengeance crossover that ran around the start of Matrix Quest.)

I wonder if earlier editors like Rimmer and Furman (or indeed a later one) would have tried to reorder the crossover scenes in order to get some Transformers into this issue? It's tricky given the flow of the story but they were never above tampering with the US material when it would produce better cliffhangers.

Reply
Ralph Burns
21/7/2017 09:45:33 pm

At the comic's lowest point, Combat Colin has now become the main selling point!



SPECIAL TEAMS!

Reply
Tigerbread
21/7/2017 09:51:28 pm

I was also getting tired of the book around this time, thanks in no small part to the thrilling Joe crossover. As a diehard fan I was compelled to keep going, at least until things improved, they must have lost a LOT of readers during it's run

Reply
Dave
22/7/2017 09:59:48 am

I've been surprised by some of the comments over the last few weeks. Not because I disagree with them. But as a kid I'd assumed I was alone in disliking GI Joe and Action Force because they were such a mainstay of the comic. So while I found this period a struggle, I'd assumed all other readers were okay with it. Was GI Joe ever actually popular in the UK or was it purely Hasbro's desperation to keep the brand alive that kept it tied to the Transformers comic?

For me I seen to remember the comic reaching a golden age after this; I was unaware of the difference between British and American strips (The switching speech bubble designs was confusing though!), and not knowing it had been seen before I really like Machine Man as it was a breath of fresh air after years of GI Joe. So it will be interesting to see what everyone thinks at that point

Reply
Tim Roll-Pickering link
22/7/2017 02:59:18 pm

The G.I. Joe/Action Force toyline was a solid seller that lasted many years here but I don't recall it ever being that big a thing. It *may* have been different earlier in 1980s when Palitoy and IPC were handling things.

I suspect that Marvel UK had signed up to the rights with a contract that committed them to rather more appearances than the market could really sustain - they ran the weekly strip across first Action Force weekly and then Transformers for almost exactly four years before stopping with just a few specials for another couple of years and that has a whiff of contractual obligations carrying on despite the standalone weekly no longer being viable. The Monthly was probably an attempt to crack the US market in order to recoup some of the money spent.

The whole thing feels like the problem of a toyline that's not popular enough to sustain its own title but not *un*popular enough for the toy company to let licensees give up early on so it wound up in the only other Hasbro licensed title.

Reply
Ralph Burns
22/7/2017 10:11:00 pm

Action Force US strips also ran in the short-lived THE INCREDIBLE HULK PRESENTS. It was the series that Marvel UK would not let die.



SPECIAL TEAMS!

Reply
Simon Hall
22/7/2017 03:40:19 pm

To this day, even having owned various runs of Transformers, I never the G.I. Joe back up strip. It just never interested me. I had a couple of the toys, which I liked putting together, but that was about it.

I've a got a few issues of the US Joe book used to launch TF:G2, and they're awful - the title is trading solely on Snake Eyes being the most popular (to the extent its his name on the cover, with G.I. Joe in tiny writing above) - a weird mix of ninja bullshit mixed with some attempt at a serious military story (always something I found risable about G.I. Joe when you've got the likes of Dr Mindbender wandering about).

i do like the first live action Joe film, though...

Reply
Harry
22/7/2017 04:57:57 pm

I suspect that one great advantage that Transformers, as a toyline, comic or cartoon enjoyed which G.I. Joe didn't was that, while the Earth-based stories in the comic and cartoon largely took place in the USA, the main characters themselves were aliens, making their battle of good versus evil more universally palatable than the Amerocentric bias of the Joes? Not that I'm indulging in knee-jerk liberal bashing of the US, lest anyone think so, but the property did lend itself to 'Murica F**k Yeah!' jingoism even if the likes of Larry Hama didn't intend this (though I read online that there were some barbed comments in the comics about people who bought non-US made cars?). And the solution adopted by Marvel U.K. and Hasbro, rebranding the Joes as Action Force and changing the nationalities of characters to make it an international anti-terrorist organisation, was a brave attempt but it never truly worked (as a kid, I knew about G.I. Joe as an entity and that Action Force was somehow our edited version, but, then, I also sussed the difference between the US reprints and original UK material in the main Transformers strip quite early on as well!). My brother and I did own some of the toys, I admit, but it never really hit as big here as Transformers did.

Reply
Richard link
25/7/2017 04:27:42 pm

I wonder if the popularity of the Commando comic in the UK was in any way part of the GI Joe's trouble in getting traction over here? "Why have sci fi / pseudo military when you can have the real thing?"

Reply
Felicity link
15/12/2019 05:31:35 am

Weirdly enough, I had the theme from “The Living Daylights” playing in my head before I encountered this entry!

It’s been too long since I read the comic so I don’t know for sure, but doesn’t the mini-series at least establish that Anthony is OK at the end? There’s some pathos with wondering whether being a discarded victim of Bombshell means he’ll be catatonic for the rest of his life.

Good for GB Blackrock, pitching in. (IIRC his crew captures the parachuting Cobras.)

In the cartoon, Mindwipe was scarily powerful, based on what little we saw. He could mind-control anybody once he’d gotten close enough to talk to them. Even his Nebulan partner, the brainy Vorath, was immediately subdued. Sadly, we never got a full fourth season to find out more about the implications of this.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Stuart Webb. Who knows everything about nothing and not a lot about that.

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011

    Categories

    All
    Action Force/G.I. Joe
    Animated
    Announcement
    Armada
    Audio
    Avengers
    Baker
    Bay
    Beast Wars
    Big Finish
    Brosnan
    Capaldi
    Carpenter
    Carte Blanche
    Cartoon
    Combat Colin
    Comedy
    Comics
    Computer Games
    Costa
    Cullen
    Davison
    Death
    Discworld
    Doctor Who
    Dragon's Claws
    Dreamwave
    Dynamite
    Eccleston
    Ellis
    Fantasy
    Film
    Fleetway
    Frost
    Furman
    Generation 2
    Generation One
    Generation One
    Holmes
    Horror
    IDW
    James Bond
    James Roberts
    Jeffrey Deaver
    Ladybird
    Machine Man
    Marvel
    McCarthy
    Mccoy
    Mcgann
    Mosaic
    Nick Roche
    Nimoy
    Nintendo
    Panini
    Pegg
    Pratchett
    Prime
    Rescue Bots
    Revisitation
    RID
    Rincewind
    Science Fiction
    Science Fiction
    Shatner
    Signature
    Smith
    Sponsored
    Spy
    Star Trek
    Su
    Tennant
    Tipton
    Titan
    Torchwood
    Transformation
    Transformers
    Tv
    Visionaries
    Weatherwax
    Witches
    Wizards
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.