Blood for the Baron!

Okay, made you look. I'm not talking about the toys though, I love those, I'm talking about the comics, specifically Duke's team.

Serious gripe of mine is how the worlds most elite counter-terrorist team never figured out that Baron Ironblood and Cobra Commander were one and the same, when the evidence was overwhelming! You can probably add more clues to the list, but heres some to get the ball rolling:

1. Baron vanishes after extorting $200 BILLION from the worlds governments and is never seen again. However, shortly thereafter, from nowhere, appears Cobra, an amazingly well funded terrorist organisation led by a leader who wears a full face mask!

2. Cobra uses numerous weapons formerly used by the Shadows including: Hyena Tank, Roboskull ( ) and Escape Armour.

3. Cobra has amongst its number of villains a bionic man with a silver head (I mean honestly, how many of these are out there walking around?) who is suspiciously similar to Red Jackal.

4. Cobra's chief pilot (of a Roboskull no less) is Red Wolf!

5. The Red Shadows were fanatics, willing to die for their leader. Cobra soldiers are fanatics willing to die for their leader. Being able to inspire that level of fanaticism is actually a fairly rare trait.

Anyway, what do the rest of you think?

Red Wolf is fairly easily to rationalise as he is described as a Mercenary flying for money (and revenge on Moondancer) not for the cause, so he could change sides.

The disappearance of Ironblood and Red Jackal, and the subsequent appearance of Cobra Commander and Destro is harder to ignore/work around. It would have been good if some suspicions were raised by AF about the origins of their new enemy.

My other problem with the AF era team in the comics really revolves around how the characters were used, I recently re-read deep cover, a late AF era story. In that Duke and Scarlett travel into space with Moondancer aboard a shuttle which is just about plausible, but in another story (from one of the specials I think) they are flying the triad fighter pod ships, and in another special they were piloting Skystrikers.

So perhaps the AF team were too busy learning how to do every job possible to have time to think!

Another thing that bugged me was the use of Snowjob in a story with no snow, he was still wearing his snow outfit!

There was also quite a distinct difference between The Red shadows and the Cobra Troopers, being that the Shads were all brainwashed. Mindless minions with no will of their own, whereas the Cobra Troopers, like you say, were mercenaries.

I always thought this was the most chilling aspect of the Shadow enemy, soldiers who were willing to die for a cause that they weren't even aware of!

But yeah, using the same gear wasn't quite shedding the skin, was it?

The Baron wrote:I always thought this was the most chilling aspect of the Shadow enemy, soldiers who were willing to die for a cause that they weren't even aware of!

Actually this is a very good point, as the Shadows were actually brainwashed they were neither aware of or responsible for their actions. In a sense these were innocent civilians who Baron Ironblood had fighting for his cause, and who were willing to die for him. Not something that was ever really touched upon in Battle Action Force comic (little too cerebral for the target audience perhaps), but it has a nasty implication as Action Force knew the Shadows were brainwashed.

On a modern battle field under those conditions, Action Force could very well find themselves investigated for war crimes for killing these people!!

The Brainwashing by Baron Ironblood was touched upon in the Black Major origin story (although in his case it was of course just the finishing touch).

In Revenge of the Red Shadows the Black Major and Red Laser 'rescued' the Red Shadows from various hospitals where they were being deprogrammed.

I think the other thing with the Shadows seems to be that they were already killers or criminals, but were brainwashed into serving, so I wouldn't go as far as calling them innocent civilians. And also the loyalty doesn't always seem to be too good and self preservation comes to the fore, as in the attempts to kill the Black Major in codename Kraken .

Perhaps only the suicide squads were completely brainwashed, as an effective military unit would require troops who could think for themselves as well as blindly following orders with no iniative of their own. Many, like the Black Major and Red Vulture , may have been corrupted to a lesser degree to retain more creative thinking and leadership.

Yeah, but let's not forget that Action Force did launch a massive counterstrike to Ironblood's heist, knocking out Jackal's base, and many more. As far as they were concerned they broke the back of the Shadow movement. Add to this the later resurgence of the Shadows and you can see why they didn't join the dots. Let's not forget they were also up against the Gibli, the Mamba, rebels on the jebel and assorted tin-pot dictators worldwide!!!

Ahhh yes, theres another clue of a sort, thanks for mentioning that Baron. The Mamba Men!!

Not all that long before the Shadows go belly up and Cobra comes onto the scene, Action Force do battle with a splinter sect of the Shadows themed around snakes. They knew that these were Ironbloods minions. Granted, Z Force did a pretty good job of wiping them out, but it's still a relevant clue as to the identity of who was behind Cobra I think.

Oh you're right, they're just dumb.

their base was made of cardboard, pretty dumb, did they never read about the three little pigs?

Yeah! Just look at what happened to Strawhenge and Woodhenge!