Review by Frank Plowright

Action Force was the European name for the action figures marketed as G.I. Joe in North America, but the material in these treasury editions reprints stories created and serialised for the British market, not reprinted American material.

The background is established as Baron Ironblood’s Red Shadows capable of striking anywhere in the world, and occasionally in orbit, yet one of four action force teams is always there to put a stop to the plans. From a limited beginning, a fair range of characters have been introduced, giving chief writer Gerry Finley-Day a range of options when it comes to which heroes are in the spotlight.

Unless it rekindled fond memories of childhood, there was little of note in Red Tide Rising, but World in Peril sees the quality rise. There are two contributing reasons, the first being pretty well every story is now continued, not complete in four pages. While the plots are never sophisticated, thrills remaining the priority, more space allows for greater creativity and more twists, and the writers duly take advantage.

The second reason is the addition of John Cooper to the artists. What a difference he makes. Most of the first volume saw the cast barely able to breathe due to being so tightly compressed into panels, and while Geoff Campion is neat, Cooper is transformative. He uses his experience of action strips to provide space and brings an illustrative grit emphasising combat rather than costume, and take a look at those brutes on the sample art. They’re fighting men.

Scott Goodall writes Cooper’s first story, setting it in Canada’s timber country, starting with corpses being discovered in the timber slides. Specialist SAS saboteur Jacques Peter Smith, alternatively known as Beaver, is tasked with discovering how an entire undercover squad has been wiped out. Cooper delivers cinematic action making the most of hostile territory, and that it’s an unusual solo mission adds to the surprise. Cooper draws around a third of the book, with another third by Jim Watson whose well choreographed action makes him the only other artist to approach Cooper’s level. He loves the technology as seen on the sample art.

With Cooper at the helm and the technology rolled back, ‘Operation Claymore’ is the longest story to date, occupying the collection’s final third. It’s an epic set in the Scottish highlands, with Finley-Day amusingly even managing to incorporate a battle reconstruction society.

The opening volume of this initial trilogy didn’t offer much hope for quality, making it difficult to see the appeal beyond the original audience, but this may have that appeal. To pretend it’s a masterwork would be wrong, but it solidly hits all the action points the first volume didn’t. The hardcover presentation makes these Treasury Editions an expensive luxury, so if budgeting, this is the volume to go for to relive your youth. It’s varied, occasionally surprising, and rounded off by fact-filled pin-ups pages and the times when the feature made the cover in the 1980s.

Axis of Evil is next. This isn’t circulated via online booksellers, but is available to comic shops and from co-publisher Total Toy Books.