Storm Force!
Created | Updated Jan 15, 2003
A British comic strip that appeared in traditional boys' title Battle, in the late 1980s.
Storm Force could be seen as the spiritual sucessor to the British Action Force comic, previously published in Battle before the late-80's rejunvenation of the Action Force toy range and Marvel UK getting the comics gig. A fammilar set-up (top-secret team of military and espionage specialists fighting worldwide terror) hid from the causual comics-rack browser Storm Force's use of extreme violence and moral jaundice. It had lashings of death and destruction, and was thus eagerly lapped up by bloodthirsty little tykes like myself.
The origin story spread over several issues, and went thusly:
John Storm was a down-on-his-luck former soldier and mercenary, coping with the loss of his lower left arm in combat. He finds himself suborned by shadowy intelligence chief The Mole into heading up the field section of Storm Force, a ultra-secret international anti-terrorist organisation. I say "suborned" because, even though Mr. Storm eventually chose of his own free will to take the job, he would actually be killed by The Mole if he'd turned it down, to keep Storm Force secret - John Storm probably never became aware of this...
An early perk of his new post (one given to him even before he signed on the dotted line) was the grafting of a neuro-wired socket onto Storm's left stump, allowing him to plug in all manner of deadly weapons and control them with his thoughts. The attachment he most often used was a sub-machine gun, though he could easily carry other attachments in his rucksack for shooting down helicopters or frying the enemy as circumstances dictate.
Joining Storm on SF's global beat are kickass female commando and sub machine gun fan Stiletto, chirpy super-strong exoskeleton user Magnus, computer expert and frustrated hero Mikron and sociopathic knife-fighter-in-a-suit-covered-in-knives Porcupine. Pleasingly, Storm Force avoided one worn cliche; that of the team of mismatched personalities who don't get on, and have to draw together to face a greater evil than each other. No, the SF members generally seemed to get on famously and worked well as a team, with the exception of Porcupine who was a miserable, psychotic git - but a fairly convincing one at that.
Storm Force had to get on - they had quite enough on their plate without petty bitchery derailing things every ten minutes.
Their prime enemy were the legions of darkness under the direction of arch-enemy Tarantula, who was by turns feeble and genuinely disturbing. As a boy, he was abandoned to certain death-by-poisonous-spider by his jackass brother and equally shiftless parents. His sanity destroyed, he not only survived but actually thrived amoung his would-be killers, returning to the outside world as an insane murderer with an affinity for spiders, spider venom and spider-like decor. Needless to say, victims no. 1, 2 and 3 were his mother, father and brother (yep, nasty).
Though a ridiculous figure at first sight, Tarantula proved to be a genuinely vicious, menacing and evil foe. His plans actually killed the innocent, occaisionally in large numbers. Even his love of skin-tight black bodysuits actually worked for him, leading the reader to the conclusion that he truly, utterly believes he's a spider.
Spider-lad wasn't the only enemy SF faced; there was also a steady stream of one-shot villians to be vanquished. These included a radioactive, megalomanical chap with world-destroying plans of some kind or other(the memory is vague on exactly what they were; I seem to remember it involved something nuclear at some point), another mutated genius stealing the launch codes for Britain's nuclear deterrent; and an agreeably nasty mutated American mercenary and his horribly-maimed crew of ex-military nutcases stealing, er, a nuclear bomb... I think.
So the central themes of Storm Force were: excessive violence; slight moral ambiguity; over-the-top mutant villains; nuclear weapons. I'm almost tempted to say that that's everything a growing boy needs. On this overview, Storm Force sounds like shallow, over-blown pap for juvenile psychopaths - and perhaps it was. But the strip was solid, well-written fare, at a time when the traditional British comic scene (i.e. everything except Marvel and DC's UK branches) was starting to fall into oblivion. And it sticks in the mind to this day, because it was good fun.
Storm Force could be seen as the spiritual sucessor to the British Action Force comic, previously published in Battle before the late-80's rejunvenation of the Action Force toy range and Marvel UK getting the comics gig. A fammilar set-up (top-secret team of military and espionage specialists fighting worldwide terror) hid from the causual comics-rack browser Storm Force's use of extreme violence and moral jaundice. It had lashings of death and destruction, and was thus eagerly lapped up by bloodthirsty little tykes like myself.
The origin story spread over several issues, and went thusly:
John Storm was a down-on-his-luck former soldier and mercenary, coping with the loss of his lower left arm in combat. He finds himself suborned by shadowy intelligence chief The Mole into heading up the field section of Storm Force, a ultra-secret international anti-terrorist organisation. I say "suborned" because, even though Mr. Storm eventually chose of his own free will to take the job, he would actually be killed by The Mole if he'd turned it down, to keep Storm Force secret - John Storm probably never became aware of this...
An early perk of his new post (one given to him even before he signed on the dotted line) was the grafting of a neuro-wired socket onto Storm's left stump, allowing him to plug in all manner of deadly weapons and control them with his thoughts. The attachment he most often used was a sub-machine gun, though he could easily carry other attachments in his rucksack for shooting down helicopters or frying the enemy as circumstances dictate.
Joining Storm on SF's global beat are kickass female commando and sub machine gun fan Stiletto, chirpy super-strong exoskeleton user Magnus, computer expert and frustrated hero Mikron and sociopathic knife-fighter-in-a-suit-covered-in-knives Porcupine. Pleasingly, Storm Force avoided one worn cliche; that of the team of mismatched personalities who don't get on, and have to draw together to face a greater evil than each other. No, the SF members generally seemed to get on famously and worked well as a team, with the exception of Porcupine who was a miserable, psychotic git - but a fairly convincing one at that.
Storm Force had to get on - they had quite enough on their plate without petty bitchery derailing things every ten minutes.
Their prime enemy were the legions of darkness under the direction of arch-enemy Tarantula, who was by turns feeble and genuinely disturbing. As a boy, he was abandoned to certain death-by-poisonous-spider by his jackass brother and equally shiftless parents. His sanity destroyed, he not only survived but actually thrived amoung his would-be killers, returning to the outside world as an insane murderer with an affinity for spiders, spider venom and spider-like decor. Needless to say, victims no. 1, 2 and 3 were his mother, father and brother (yep, nasty).
Though a ridiculous figure at first sight, Tarantula proved to be a genuinely vicious, menacing and evil foe. His plans actually killed the innocent, occaisionally in large numbers. Even his love of skin-tight black bodysuits actually worked for him, leading the reader to the conclusion that he truly, utterly believes he's a spider.
Spider-lad wasn't the only enemy SF faced; there was also a steady stream of one-shot villians to be vanquished. These included a radioactive, megalomanical chap with world-destroying plans of some kind or other(the memory is vague on exactly what they were; I seem to remember it involved something nuclear at some point), another mutated genius stealing the launch codes for Britain's nuclear deterrent; and an agreeably nasty mutated American mercenary and his horribly-maimed crew of ex-military nutcases stealing, er, a nuclear bomb... I think.
So the central themes of Storm Force were: excessive violence; slight moral ambiguity; over-the-top mutant villains; nuclear weapons. I'm almost tempted to say that that's everything a growing boy needs. On this overview, Storm Force sounds like shallow, over-blown pap for juvenile psychopaths - and perhaps it was. But the strip was solid, well-written fare, at a time when the traditional British comic scene (i.e. everything except Marvel and DC's UK branches) was starting to fall into oblivion. And it sticks in the mind to this day, because it was good fun.
