Heavy Duty
- Heavy Duty is G.I. Joe-aligned human from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
One might be surprised to learn that Sergeant Hershel Dalton, codename Heavy Duty, is a classically-trained guitarist who specializes in Bach. After all, if this was a video game, then Heavy Duty would be the team "tank", wading into the midst of it with his personal weapons platform and leveling everything that shows up on his display. But then, everyone needs a hobby.
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 continuity
Heavy Duty was an early member of the G.I. Joe team, and on one occasion met their predecessor and namesake, Joe Colton. Secret Raiders: A Revolution Prelude
During the Ore-13 crisis, Heavy Duty was stationed on Governor's Island when Action Man stormed the base to investigate rumors of Transformer activity. Though Mayday Morris and the other Joes on duty couldn't stop the British superspy from escaping with Kup in tow, and were forced to scatter when a low-power orbital barrage hit the base to cover their escape. The Modern World
Shortly afterwards, a G.I. Joe taskforce consisting of Mayday, Flash, Quarrel, and Heavy Duty were deployed the remote country of Schleteva to investigate a sudden communications blackout in the capital city of Verenya. They discovered that the inhabitants of the city had all been transformed into Dire Wraiths; when Rom arrived, the Joe squad teamed up with the Space Knight and tracked the energy to a strange Talisman stashed beneath the city. In the ensuing battle between Action Man, Garrison Blackrock, and the Oktober Guard, the Talisman was activated. Though Rom's Neutralizer was able to shield some of the humans, Heavy Duty wasn't one of them, and as a result he was transformed into a Dire Wraith hybrid. He and the other two mutated Joes were placed in the care of the Action Man Programme in the hopes of finding a cure, while Mayday pledged to un-mutate her teammates. Crisis Intervention
Notes
- Heavy Duty owes his existence in IDW continuity to an odd retcon performed by G.I. Joe vol. 3 #11, which saw Roadblock's early IDW appearances, in which he used the code name "Heavy Duty" for trademark reasons, retroactively declared to be a separate character.
- That issue established Heavy Duty's real name in IDW continuity as "Lamont A. Morris", which was the character's original real name for most of his history. However, Action Man: Revolution and Roadblock's profile in Revolution #3 gave his name as "Hershel Dalton" , which is the character's real name in the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra live-action movie and G.I. Joe: Renegades animated series.
