Hello. How long have you been standing there? Crickey. Sorry old chum. Been a bit busy. Still am. Not only does my job ask a lot of typing-time, but I'm wrapped up in at least three-other-sit-down-and-writes. The hours I should be calling mine to waste on Gunsmith Cats and Guitar Hero, I'm lending to projects and progress. Someone had to suffer, and I'd rather it was you.
This one is going to be fairly stream-of-consciousness. Not much by way of proof-read, or point. One of the old-fashioned beat-blogs I used to churn out in the goodoledee.
If you're like the vast majority of British kids of my generation, the following image probably means very little to you.
It might be you don't recognise him at all. It might be you can say, 'One of those Action Force lot, yes?'. It might be you recognise him as Snake Eyes, and good for you. And if you think anything like 'Fuck yeah' when you see this guy, then brother, we're on the same page.
The bulk of my classmates coming up played Transformers, or M.A.S.K., but being as pedantic then as I am now I found both lines to be flawed. M.A.S.K. worked on the principle that these were awesome fighting machines disguised as regular vehicles. A Chevy '57 could turn into a six-wheeled battle tank that dispensed mines. A 4x4 would suddenly cleave open and an armoured motorboat would launch from within. The only problem is they were typically the only vehicles you had to use. Miles Mayhem might not suspect that one vintage saloon when it's idling in traffic. But if it's the only car in the playground, then he's going to shoot the shit out of it whether it converts into a APC or not.
In M.A.S.K.'s favour, one of the henchmen, Floyd Malloy, was clearly modelled on Billy Idol.
Transformers confused me even more. You had two robots of about equal size. One turns into a gun, the other a truck, of about equal size. 'Robots in Disguise', sure, but isn't a semi-automatic the size of a one-bedroom flat kinda conspicuous? Wouldn't a giant robot be easier to explain than a handgun that only has to fall on you to kill you? Add to this the robots that aren't about equal size, the jet planes smaller than the ambulance, cassette players bigger than the jet plane...and, a couple of robot dinosaurs and mechanical insects too (it's a weird mark of adulthood that I can embrace the awesomeness of robot dinosaurs fighting a cassette player that ejects A PANTHER now, but I couldn't then. The same way I thought Lockjaw was goofy and Wolverine cool. Today I would so buy a Lockjaw comic over the myriad of Weapon Xers.)
Action Force, Or GI Joe, on the other hand made perfect, well better sense. All of them to scale, (and compatible with the Kenner Star Wars vehicle, a welcome bonus) all of them operating on a principle I could handle. Specialist commando badasses jump in a bunch of helicopters and hovercrafts and go guts and glory against a terrorist threat that could shake the world. There was no need for civilian bits and pieces. No other cars in traffic. No innocents in peril. You made whatever you had into a battlefield and then these guys met, and blood was spilled.
I was playing Action Force right up until I was about 14, I reckon. I was never all that clued in on the comic book mythology - I read a few newsagent Magazines, that stitched together strips and threw in posters and factfiles and what have you. I remember the silent issue, and one where Sci-Fi and a few others (Deep-Six maybe?) where on a crippled Killer W.H.A.L.E. stalked by a lone Rattler. It aped Jaws and even ended with a "Smile you son of a..." as Sci-Fi shot it's fuel tank or a missile or something. (the sound of an exploding Cobra fighter plane? "BITCHOOM!")
The comics, and the line itself owed something to an old Marvel Comics pitch about Nick Fury (Hawk) and his son (Duke) taking on HYDRA (Cobra). The Saturday morning cartoon had another mythology, a lot goofier than the comics, and one with which I'm more familiar. In it Cobra Commander was a cowardly incompetent (akin in sound and manner to Star Scream), everyone shot lasers and never died and Cobra only ever stole momunents or hypnotised people with rock bands. The movie went one better and decided to marry military expertise with Lovecraftian horror as GI Joe discovered the origins of Cobra in a pre-hyborean civilisation called Cobra-la (the writers called it that, a simple riff on Shangri-la, hoping they'd come up with a better name later. Hasbro said 'Fuck it. It's going in.') lead by Burgess Meredith in a flying ball.
None of this really mattered to me, my brother and my Joes.
Our battles were our chance to fudge together as many elements from action movies as we could manage. In many ways this was as much the birth of me as a storyteller as anything going on in school. It was all theft, mind you, but that's where the art starts.
The plot would run something like this:
Cobra would steal a pair of nukes (Thunderball, Broken Arrow). A handfull of trusty Joes, like Barbeque and Dusty, old guard types, would intercept one of the bombs on a relatively easy mission, only to get ambushed and one of the bombs go off. Sacrifical lambs, because what's a story without a revenge element, right?
Blizzard would stumble across Cobra's mountain-top (of the stairs) base on a recon mission. He'd get chased by Fangs as he skiis down the banister (A View to a Kill), and he'd get a signal back to Joe HQ. The gang would mount up. Snake Eyes would parachute in first to disable anti-aircraft batteries - usually an AT-AT, opening things up for a crack squad of Joes in a Tomahawk. Then things go a bit You Only Live Twice as the Joes wreck the base. The narrative trick is to get Snake Eyes out of the way, or else he'll do the whole damn thing single handedly. GI Joe the movie has him captured by a tree. A trained Ninja AND commando, dispatched by a big bunch of vines. FAIL. In the recent Warren Ellis penned animation GI Joe: Resolute, he gets it right. Same device me and my brother called upon. Honour. Snake Eyes would have to break away from the main conflict to confront half-brother and Cobra ninja Storm Shadow (much like Luke can't join in the Battle of Endor)
Jesus Christ this thing is geeky. Like so geeky. There needs to be a regular footnote that just says 'Yes. I have had girlfriends and sex, even.'
A Forero Rocher box filled with water becomes a trap for Flint, as Destro has been told to capture him as a trophy for Cobra Commander (I didn't have a CC figure, so he was always the Blofeld to Destro's Emilio Largo.) At the last minute Tunnel Rat would knock one of the Dreadnoks - let's say Road Pig into the trap, and then he and the watery tomb would go in the freezer, where the cold would then damage the joints or the rubber in the figure and when I next defrosted him, he'd probably lose his leg from the knee down, or even snap at the waist. These figures would later become SFXs of sorts, blown apart by grenades.
Destro would see his plan start to fail, and try and escape. By underground train...wow, I riff on Mission Impossible for this next bit, which means I was playing with these guys as late as, what '95? I'm 15? I lose my virginity in the next 12 months. Christ.
Anyway. A polysterene box that once held my ghetto blaster doubles as Destro's secret railway. Dial Tone, who has defused the nuke sees Destro try and make his escape, and manages to get onboard the train just as it starts whistling down the tracks. It needs to be Dial Tone for the next bit. A Flint, a Hawk a Snake Eyes...they're just too heroic, too capable, too strong. Dial Tone was a good figure, but he seemed like a bit of an underdog, a nerd. Facing up to Destro would scare him.
As Metalhead flies Destro's experimental VTOL Stealth Bomber - made out of an old Y-Wing, down the tunnel, after Destro, to try and save him. Dial Tone, and the metal-faced warlord would battle on the roof of the train. Then it would all crash, and in a bit of a fudge, the underground train would find itself balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff (Cliffhanger). Destro and Dial Tone would have a fistfight, and Destro would lose his footing and fall to a watery grave (A View to a Kill again, or, if Dial Tone kicked him, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.) Just when Dial Tone thought he was safe, Metalhead would emerge, and threaten him once more (the henchmen in most 007 movies), until Flint comes to the rescue by...and this was a certainty...flying a jetplane right into Metalhead.
Mark Millar has done the crash the jetplane into the baddie in both The Authority and The Ultimates. It's a great pay off. Falling is the better pay off, though. It's the Die Hard pay off. I absolutely love the fight at the end of A View to A Kill. An airship, on the Golden Gate bridge. Christopher Walken climbs out and tries to kill Roger Moore with an axe.
Imagine for a second Walken pitching that. His voice.
"Airship. On the Golden Gate Bridge. I...try to...KILL...Roger Moore. With an axe. But, then, I fall. To my doom. And Roger Moore escapes. With Tanya Roberts." (The italics indicates the squinty-eyed throaty voice he does.)
You should watch this.
Stephen Sommers will piss all of that into cocked hat.
Ok. Updates. As this blog thing is dying, I'm going to try and give you something in return. Something ugly, for now, as the medium, the format, isn't quite right.
Monsterwork Comic Books
Also I've added new links up on the sides there. "If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger..." is a really good blog to dip in and out of. I recommend it.
Right. Sleep.
