Action Force (team)

This article is about the international heroes. For the comics they starred in, see Action Force (comic){{#switch:{{#sub:Action Force (comic)|-1}} != .= ?= .

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Action Force is a human military organisation from the Marvel UK portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
War looks positively fun over in Europe!

Action Force is an international counterterrorism outfit composed of operatives from various countries' armed forces, most notably the United States and Western Europe. Just in case those terrorists have an air force, Action Force have their own unique tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets to use in counter-terror ops.

Its European operations are led by David R. Faireborn, otherwise known as Flint, while the North American theatre is overseen by Clayton M. Abernathy, codename Hawk. Its chief enemy is Cobra, "a secret army of anti-establishment subversives".<ref>"Action Force: An Introduction." from the Marvel UK Transformers comic #153</ref>

A surprisingly large number of Cobra's attacks are focused on the United Kingdom for some reason, so it's lucky the European group are based out of London!

Obviously Action Force is based on G.I. Joe, but the relationship between the two is murky at best. For the purposes of this wiki, we consider Action Force to be an "alternate universe" incarnation of G.I. Joe in a continuity entirely its own. See Notes below.

Fiction

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Marvel Comics continuity

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Action Force appeared exclusively in the UK portion of the Marvel Comics continuity.

When an archaeological team stumbled upon a damaged, berserking Megatron clone in Roman sewers beneath London, Action Force was called in to investigate. Flint, Scarlett, Bazooka, Barbecue, and Airtight ventured underground with Susan Hoffman, the archaeological team's sole survivor. Scarlett thought they were on a wild goose chase, but she changed her mind when the squad saw Blades, who was wandering the tunnels with the same purpose. Hoffman mistook him for Megatron, and the soldiers attacked. Blades blinded them with his photon pistol, but Scarlett kept firing her rifle, and Blades nearly crushed her in rage. However, he stopped himself and declared his duty to protect life, which Flint angrily questioned.

Just as Hoffman realised that Blades wasn't the one who had attacked her group, the Megatron clone shot Blades from the shadows. The humans fled back to the surface, emerging face-to-face with Grimlock and Centurion in an industrial dockside area on the River Thames. Flint was initially worried that they had simply traded one threat for another, but when Megatron erupted from the ground and tackled Grimlock, the humans realised they had a chance to escape.

From a safer distance, Flint called in Dragonfly helicopters and Mauler tanks to target Megatron. When the helicopters fired at him, Megatron blew the rotors off of Wild Bill's copter, but Blades was able to save the pilot in midair. Flint, not realising that Wild Bill had survived, angrily ordered Heavy Metal to roll his tanks into action. Megatron had been trouncing Grimlock and was just about to execute him when the Maulers blasted the Decepticon. But this only redirected Megatron's rage, and he tore the tanks apart. Flint berated himself for acting rashly, as the attack had done virtually no harm to Megatron while risking Action Force soldiers' lives. But he didn't realize the effect it had had on Grimlock, who was reflecting on how there had been a time when he would have gladly left the humans to die, but Action Force's courage against this unstoppable foe was making him reconsider. After all, they had just saved Grimlock's life.

So Grimlock attacked Megatron once again, biting off his fusion cannon and moving their battle into a natural-gas storage area. Meanwhile, Blades had delivered Wild Bill to Flint, who ordered Skystriker jets sent in to launch missiles at the natural-gas tanks, hoping the massive explosion would destroy Megatron for good. Blades worried that Grimlock would perish as well, but Flint thought his life was worth it for the thousands who would be spared Megatron's rampage. Wild Bill was outraged at Flint, since he had seen the one-life-for-many logic applied in combat in south-east Asia, and he didn't want to be party to it again. He was prepared to help Blades airlift Grimlock out before the Skystrikers launched their missiles, despite both the danger to themselves and the danger that Megatron would be able to follow them to safety. Before they could go, though, Centurion (who had been holding back from the battle the whole time out of fear of Megatron) offered to sacrifice himself instead. Blades dropped him into the fight, picked up Grimlock, and got away as the Sky Strikers approached. Centurion successfully kept Megatron in the midst of the giant gas tanks, grinning as he watched the missile barrage descend.

Blades and the Action Force agents watched in awe as a tremendous explosion consumed the combatants, followed by what seemed to be a pair of fiery figures plunging into the Thames. Wild Bill wondered if that could have been Megatron and Centurion, but Flint declared that nothing could have survived the heat. Blades ruminated on Centurion's motivation, suggesting that Centurion saw himself as an ancient relic who was only a detriment to the Autobots and would be better off giving his life in a literal blaze of glory. Flint thought that Centurion was less an "ancient relic" and more an "old soldier", and he and Blades gave a salute to Centurion's sacrifice. Ancient Relics!

Action Force VS G.I. Joe

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Going only by its appearances in Transformers comics, Action Force could be construed as simply the name that G.I. Joe uses when it operates in Europe. Outside of Flint being identified as "David" instead of "Dashiell", the characters seem to be identical. Moreover, when the Transformers and Action Force comics merged, the "Action Force" content was simply G.I. Joe reprints.

However:

  • The crossover between the Action Force and UK Generation 1 comics is firmly out of continuity with G.I. Joe's appearances in the US Generation 1 comic. Bumblebee's transformation into Goldbug, occurring for American readers in the G.I. Joe and the Transformers miniseries, happens under entirely different circumstances in the UK comic. Plus in the Action Force crossover, definitely set after the time period of G.I. Joe and the Transformers, the Action Force agents seem a little too ignorant about Transformers to be the same people.
  • Examining the Action Force comic series outside of its Transformers crossover, little attempt is made by its writers to maintain continuity with the G.I. Joe comic, despite the latter being reprinted in the Action Force books (as the adventures of the American branch of Action Force) and occasionally edited to conform. Storylines often don't sync up, some storylines are reordered, others are directly replaced by UK originated stories to explain changes in circumstances, and characters are given conflicting biographies (such as "David R. Faireborn" and several others being non-Americans)<ref name="profiles">Character profiles from several Action Force issues</ref> and presentations (such as Destro being disfigured under his mask<ref>"The Prisoner" from Action Force Monthly #13</ref> and Outback being a revenge-obsessed, borderline-psychotic<ref>"Wild, Wild-Life" from Action Force Monthly #11</ref> Scotsman raised in Australia<ref name="profiles" />).

For the reasons above, this wiki considers the UK crossover to be a divergence into a fully different universe from the American G.I. Joe crossovers, similar to the divergent creation of Goldbug. And that the G.I. Joe reprints in the UK Transformers were also a separate universe from Action Force's.

Look, just enjoy Megatron stepping on tanks and the cool dudes with big guns, alright?

Notes

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  • In the early 1980s, Action Force was far different to G.I. Joe and had strips in the comic Battle Action Force (née Battle Action) by IPC, which had to take some rather creative contortions when the toyline became closer to G.I. Joe. When Marvel UK got the rights, they chucked out the previous Action Force continuity.
  • In late 1989 the toyline and comic reprints in the UK were renamed to G.I. Joe the Action Force, with a special mini-comic explaining that the Europe-based Action Force was merging with its US counterpart G.I. Joe. This contradicted the previous comics: karma!
  • Quite who Action Force works for and how wide a scope they have is unclear. Scarlett calls them the finest counter-terror group in the "Western world", yet the toy bios say the team has Asian, Caribbean, and African members; the actual strips don't bring up anyone's nationality, this being the days when comics wanted you to be very aware the person speaking was foreign, and so implicitly they're Anglo-American; and Action Force Monthly #1 said they operate "from bases in Geneva, London, New York, and cities all over the world", yet we only see the London base and North America's Joe base!
  • Transformers writers Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop would resurrect Action Force for the G.I. Joe convention comics by Fun Publications,<ref>2009 and 2010 con comics</ref> though with a focus on the older, early-80s toys. Another homage to the original line came in 2016, when Tom Scioli and John Barber put 1983's Quarrel in "Escape from Primus". Barber would further homage Action Force in the main IDW universe with the inclusion of Quarrel and Baron Ironblood in Revolutionaries.

References

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