G.I. Joe in Britain: How Action Force Became a Weekly Comic

In Britain the line carried the name Action Force, and the Marvel UK weekly of that name ran from March 1987. It reprinted the American G.I. Joe stories under new labels and added strips of its own, which makes it the clearest place to see how the British edition of the franchise differed from the American one.

The name predates Marvel’s comic. According to the Hey Kids Comics wiki, Action Force began as a strip in IPC’s war anthology Battle in October 1983 and was later retitled Battle Action Force. It ended in early 1987 when the licence went to Marvel UK, and a strip called Storm Force took its place in Battle. Marvel UK kept the name for its own title.

The Marvel UK weekly carried a cover date of 7 March 1987 and finished with the issue dated 13 February 1988, after 50 issues. Most of each issue was the American Marvel series, with “G.I. Joe” relettered as “Action Force” in the reprinted pages. The rest was new British material: original Action Force strips, a Master of Kung-Fu backup, a humour strip called Combat Colin, and character factfiles. The G.I. Joe wiki credits Richard Starkings and Steve White as editors. The Hey Kids Comics wiki lists Kev Hopgood, Anthony Williams, Staz Johnson and Mike Collins among the contributors between 1987 and 1989, though it does not say who drew what.

A monthly Action Force took over from June 1988 and ran for 15 issues, to August 1989. The G.I. Joe wiki says its material later reached American readers as the G.I. Joe: European Missions series. The same wiki records a four-part story called “Ancient Relics!” in issues 24 to 27 of the weekly, a crossover with Marvel UK’s Transformers comic. The Hey Kids Comics wiki says the Action Force title was eventually merged into Transformers, at that comic’s issue 153.

Our own comics hub dates Marvel UK’s Action Force from 1987 to 1991. The two wikis support a weekly run from March 1987 to February 1988 and a monthly run to August 1989, and neither reaches 1991. We have not found a primary source for the later years, so the hub stays as it is for now.

Sources: the G.I. Joe wiki entry on Action Force (weekly) and the Hey Kids Comics wiki entry on Action Force. Both are fan-maintained, and we have not yet checked their dates, issue numbers or credits against the original issues.