|
Writers: Gerry
Finley-Day, Scott Goodall, Frank Noble, James Nicholas, Ken
Owen, P Rudge, Alan McKenzie and Peter Milligan. |
Artists: John
Cooper, Jim Watson, Geoff Campion, Eduard Vaňo, Tony Coleman,
Ron Turner, Cam Kennedy, Josep Gual, Eric Bradbury, Jim Bleach,
Carmona and E B Romero. |
|
In 1983,
incumbent Battle editor Terry Magee oversaw a project that would
be something of a make or break gamble for the weekly. With
sales in sharp decline, IPC had abandoned the 'all-war' format
of Battle's golden era and taken on an 'adventure' strand. The
tide was turning against Battle as early as 1981, when Johnny
Red and the pilots of Falcon Squadron had urged the readers to
join them in the battle against poor circulation by encouraging
friends into placing a regular order with their newsagent.
Luckily, a
solution was found in the recently re-launched Action Man range.
Mattel were keen to exploit the marketing potential of the new
line of figures, and Battle needed both the money and the
readers an alliance would bring. In early June, a two-part story
was published. The reception proved favourable, and by October,
Action Man had moved in for the long haul. The comic was
re-named Battle Action Force, with free variant copies of the
first issue given away to enhance the profile of the venture
with non-comic buyers.
Unfortunately,
the price for Battle's own identity was a high one, giving over
half of each issue to the Action Force stories. This meant
cutting original strip down to around ten pages, just enough
room for Johnny Red, Charley's War and The Hunters or its
replacement The Nightmare. The rest of the comic was made up of
feature pages and 'Best of Battle' reprints. Action Force was
presented as a 'comic-within-a-comic' for a while, but was soon
dominating from cover to cover. John Cooper was taken off of
Johnny Red to draw the Action Force stories, seemingly because
he was too popular to be working outside the franchise. Most of
the other Battle stalwarts at the time took on one of the Action
Force strips, with the exception of Carlos Pino, who took over
Johnny Red.
Things went well
for around three years, but then Mattel pulled the plug,
choosing to publish Action Force comics with Marvel UK,
unencumbered by Battle's ongoing series. Battle floundered
around for a few weeks, then launched the ill-conceived Storm
Force series at the beginning of 1987 as an attempt to recreate
the success of the Action Force stories. Unfortunately this
failed to excite the readers, and a year later Battle was merged
with the new version of Eagle, where reprints of Johnny Red and
Charley's War held the torch alongside the Storm Force
characters for far longer than the Battle name managed to stay
on the cover.
Jim Marshall has
dedicated a site to the Action Force franchise, and has placed
all the Battle era strips together at
www.bloodforthebaron.com, alongside the Marvel version. |
