[zuludelta]

Frankly, I'm surprised at all the comments Brekhov is getting. I've always liked the character but never figured he was that popular with other Joe fans.

I'm scaling back the whole idea of making an updated modern Action Force. Re-creating a whole SAS-style Sabre Squadron using Action Force and international Joe characters is just too big a task for me right now, especially after making the Joes. Instead, I'm scaling it down to a single Commonwealth-style troop (that's a platoon to those of you used to thinking in terms of American unit designations). I'm also ditching the Action Force name and characters. Instead, I'm making an all-new October Guard:

October Guard Organizational Outline v1.01

"Wait," you might be asking, "why are they still called the October Guard when they're now a multinational team and no longer have historical or nostalgic ties to the Russian October Revolution?"

Simple. The United Nations was officially established in 1945. The 24th of October of 1945, to be exact. Since my version of the October Guard is now an international organization, the "October" in their name is a reference to the date of the UN's founding.

I'm thinking of this version of the October Guard as being similar to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations' Special Team Six, the multinational special operations force tasked with general counterterrorism, countersniper and high-value target acquisition missions during the waning days of the ethnic conflict in the Balkans.

[Master Thespian]

I like it, z. I can't speak for anyone else, but you've trimmed the team down to characters that I'm familiar with and as such can get more out of your reinterpretations. Eagle can join Major Storm in the zulu Hall of Shame as the only characters to be removed after their images were completed.

[Troynos]

Cool change Zulu. I would have suggested breaking up into 2 units, the UN Action Force and an Oktober Guard, a unit formed from the former Soviet States (how many of the former Soviet States and Warsaw Pact countries are in the UN? How many of the original Warsaw Pact countries even remain nowadays?).

[zuludelta]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Thespian

I like it, z. I can't speak for anyone else, but you've trimmed the team down to characters that I'm familiar with and as such can get more out of your reinterpretations.

Yeah, that was a concern for me as well. As much as I like the old Action Force guys who appeared in the original UK Battle Action comics, I'm not so invested in them emotionally or nostalgia-wise that I can put in the amount of time and effort at remaking them the way I did for the ARAH Joes. And if I wasn't going to be able to do them justice and potentially end-up with half-assed renditions, I'd much rather not recreate them at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Troynos

how many of the former Soviet States and Warsaw Pact countries are in the UN? How many of the original Warsaw Pact countries even remain nowadays?

All of the former Soviet republics who gained/regained independence after the USSR's dissolution in the early 1990s are current UN members. In fact, Belarus and Ukraine were original signatories to the October 24, 1945 UN charter, back when they were still independent states and before they were incorporated into the USSR.

As for how many of the original Warsaw Pact nations remain today... of the original eight Warsaw Pact members of the then-socialist republics of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR, five remain today as independent states (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland & Romania).

East Germany was absorbed into Germany soon after the 1990 collapse of the Berlin Wall. Czechoslovakia split into two separate democratic republics in 1990 (the Czech Republic and Slovakia). The USSR was dissolved in 1991 (although the total dissolution of the state's various military elements wouldn't happen until around 1993). And of course, by 1991, none of the original Warsaw Pact nations were being run as Leninist-Marxist style socialist states.

[zuludelta]

Here's an updated take on Jingles, more accurate to how he appeared in issue #57 of the original Marvel Comics:

Design notes:

• In the original comic, his uniform was coloured khaki. I think this was an error on the colourist's part, as the standard "No.2" dress uniform for the British Army is olive drab, unless his intention was to give Jingles a World War II-vintage uniform, in which case the khaki colouring would be accurate. In any event, I decided to make his uniform contemporary, and coloured it olive drab

Along with Jingles', I updated Brekov's (whom I've assigned the call sign "Colonel"), Chervona Zirka's, Big Ben's and Day's filecards as well, using the colour scheme from the 2005 Oktober Guard figures to set them apart from the GI Joe and Cobra ones (as I mentioned, "my" October Guard is a multinational troop-sized task force vetted by the UN, with "October" serving as a reference to the date of the UN's charter ratification). To read them, click on the Filecard Project link in my signature.

Thanks for looking!

[zuludelta]

Was talking to Spigou (the HISStank member) and he said that to him, there's something wrong-ish about having the October Guard admixed with the SAS guys. I never really gave it much thought but now that it's been mentioned, the notion is rattling around my head. That tells me that there's something to his assertion.

Right now, I'm thinking of splitting my putative October Guard roster into three 5-man patrols. The first would be the правда патруль ("Pravda Patrol"). Pravda Patrol was the original incarnation of the Oktober Guard, and they first appeared (albeit in an allegedly different design and setting) in issue #31 of Marvel's "mature readers comics magazine" Bizarre Adventures in 1982. When then Joe-editor Tom DeFalco needed for Hama to use some special operations-type Soviet villains in issue #6 of the original Marvel GI Joe comic book series, Hama deferred to DeFalco and co-plotter/artist Herb Trimpe and they adapted Pravda Patrol as GI Joe villains:

Unused art for GI Joe #6 by Herb Trimpe & Jack Abel; image retrieved from TNT's Web Camp

For some undisclosed reason, Hasbro didn't approve of the Pravda Patrol designs. DeFalco and Trimpe made multiple revisions to the characters, and with the issue already behind schedule by 3 months, Hasbro finally approved the revised Pravda Patrol, which DeFalco had renamed the Oktober Guard. Captain Yuri had evolved into Colonel Brekhov, Big Bear had turned into Georgian strongman Horror-Show, Mouse became Stormavik, Striker developed into the East German machine gunner Schrage, and Sachi was redesigned as Daina from the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic.

Interestingly enough, Big Bear would reappear a decade later as an ARAH action figure, beating the "comic book Oktober Guard" to a plastic rendition by several years.

I'm not entirely sure how I'll be creating separate October Guard and Pravda Patrol teams from the collected Oktober Guard figures created by Hasbro over the years, although I'm leaning towards using the Russian-born characters (Stormavik, Dragonsky, Big Bear, Lt. Gorky, Sgt. Misha) as Pravda Patrol, and then using the non-Russia born ones (Red Star, Daina/Vorona, Horror-Show, Schrage, Wong -- the Chinese Oktober Guard "cowboy" from the DIC cartoons) as my multinational October Guard with Colonel Brekov in overall command of both units.

Of course, that still leaves the question of where the Commonwealth Nation GI Joe allies (Big Ben, Backstop, Skymate, Jingles, Sgt. Day) fit in all this. Do I make them a "Commonwealth Guard" of sorts to mirror the theme of an October Guard composed of commandos from non-Russian former Eastern Bloc republics and a Pravda Patrol made up of special operations-capable soldiers from the Russian Federation?

[Master Thespian]

Splitting them up like that can work, but you'd need a reason to segregate the teams and since its now done by country of origin, the SAS division of forces based on unit expertise doesn't work as well anymore. It can work, but you'll need a solid reason for the choice if you choose to keep them under the same banner.

That said, if you're keeping them together as a whole unit and still breaking the teams down by country, I'd still like to see you keep the October Guard name for the entire unit. Beyond that, you could use your own version of the Action Force subteam naming structure for the individual units. You might even consider adding a fourth patrol made up of the best/your favorite Action Force characters. That way, you can still toss some French, Spanish, Greek, etc operators in the mix as well.

[zuludelta]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Thespian

Splitting them up like that can work, but I'd still keep them under the same banner. You might even consider adding a fourth patrol made up of the best/your favorite Action Force characters. That way, you can still toss some French, Spanish, Greek, etc operators in the mix as well. Keep the October Guard name for the entire unit, and you could use your own version of the Action Force subteam naming structure for the individual units.

Yeah, really considering keeping them under the same banner. Not October Guard though. The name itself is so loaded it's hard to disambiguate it from the characters it's associated with (Brekhov, Horror-Show, and Daina, in particular). I know if I keep digging in GI Joe history I'll eventually find a unit name that will make sense contextually.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Thespian

The only thing is that you'd need to come up with a plausible reason for the choice of keeping the units segregated and the specialization of each team (shouldn't be based on the SAS model, IMO).

Well, they could be grouped according to regional and language specializations (October Guard = Eastern Europe & Eurasia; Pravda Patrol = the Russian Federation; Jingles & co. = Commonwealth of Nations), similar to a deployable United Nations Civil Affairs/CIMIC unit.

[Loose Cannon]

Damn I've never seen that Pravda Patrol stuff before. Amazing how they can just dust the stuff off and then use it later. Just the same as Big Bear.

You could have a level of of cooperation with the European Countries, and therefore keep the October Guard and Pravda Patrol with the other European operatives, making a European platoon. But who will take orders from Brekov? you should have Seperate Affiliate teams with the October Guard and the Pravda Patrol. Where is Brekhov or the newest member that showed up in DDP? Ruslan I think was his name.

That way you can still have an Action Force platoon size team under, Eagle or Trent using most of men under the queens crown working together.

Create a seperate UN team with the rest of the Europeans, maybe similar in size with the 5-6 man teams. Call them Europact or something, with the French, Belgium, Dutch, German, Italian, Swiss, Spanish any others?

Not sure about the most likely Muslim/Arab/North African action force guys. Is there enough for another 5-6 man team?

You can't call anyone but russians October Guard.

[zuludelta]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loose Cannon

You could have a level of of cooperation with the European Countries, and therefore keep the October Guard and Pravda Patrol with the other European operatives, making a European platoon...

... Create a seperate UN team with the rest of the Europeans, maybe similar in size with the 5-6 man teams. Call them Europact or something, with the French, Belgium, Dutch, German, Italian, Swiss, Spanish any others?

Good suggestions. I'll have to think about them further and see if I can line them up with MT's suggestions and my own ideas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loose Cannon

You can't call anyone but russians October Guard.

Well, the "Oktober Guard" name is an anachronism in a post-Soviet world, since it references the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. If anything, the "Oktober Guard" name for a special ops unit would only make ideological and contextual sense with a Cuban team, as it's the only remaining Marxist-Leninist state of note (China, while nominally the world's largest "socialist" nation, pretty much discarded Euro-centric & Ruso-centric ideology back in 1961 and considers its ideological origins as stemming from Mao, and not Marx and/or Lenin). The way I've made the name relevant is to use "October" as a to reference the October 1945 founding of the United Nations.