Blood for the Baron!

Space Commander wrote:Cheers Jamar! You'll be glad to know I'll be able to order your book soon.

cool! I think youll like it!

Hey Jamar..., guess what just arrived...?

WOW!

Thank you!

What an amazing book. Shame it arrived with a bit of a dent at the top of the spine, but I guess it HAD travelled a long way to get here.

It is GREAT to see all these old stories restored to their full glory again, especially the one which showcases the earliest characters; Codename; Tracker, starring Tracker, Quarrel, and Red Vulture, among others.

However, I've spotted some changes. (DestroN for example, and no pilot Red Wolf anymore).

Were some of the names changed because of copyright reasons? Or because the restoration team wanted to make these stories blend with other comic-book continuities?

This chap http://www.bloodforthebaron.com/assassi ... %2003.html looks very interesting! Was he in the original comics, or has his story been put together by a fan taking snippets from Battle Action Force and carefully recolouring them?

But yes, on the whole an AMAZING book and I REALLY hope the gang is working on Volume II already!

Any chance of one of the Space Force short stories being included next time, please?

Space Commander wrote:Hey Jamar..., guess what just arrived...?

WOW!

Thank you!

What an amazing book. Shame it arrived with a bit of a dent at the top of the spine, but I guess it HAD travelled a long way to get here.

It is GREAT to see all these old stories restored to their full glory again, especially the one which showcases the earliest characters; Codename; Tracker, starring Tracker, Quarrel, and Red Vulture, among others.

awesome! you got it! good to know you like it! thanks for the kind words and ya we are working on volume II as we speak!

so to answer some of your questions

Space Commander wrote:
Any chance of one of the Space Force short stories being included next time, please?

no time soon, to be honest those stories will only come before the Kraken story of course if we had someone that said HEY I want to do all the space stories then It would be done but only then

Space Commander wrote:
Were some of the names changed because of copyright reasons? Or because the restoration team wanted to make these stories blend with other comic-book continuities?

There was a lot and I mean a lot of reasons for this
1. Yes copyright reasons came into play so they were changed to protect ourselves
2. I have a page of the script of the Great Cobra Robbery, it was supposedly sent by a family member of the writer to me long ago , on the script it read Quarrel and not scarlett but the story was later changed to scarlett, ( I got to get that page out of storage and post it here) So I believe there was at least some intent, at least for a while, whether its a mistake or not, for the original characters to be shown instead of the altenate ones. This is possibly one reason we see some people drawn as thier older UK exclusive versions, for example : stalker drawn as Jammer ( big z force logo on him ) in later issues when hes referred to as stalker, Visually hes Jammer as Stalker never had a big z on his chest but hes referred to as Stalker.
3. The restoration team is indeed without a shadow of doubt led by a dyabolical tyrant dictator called Jamar Miller, he can be a real ass at times , very demanding and bull headed person, wont listen to anyone EVER ! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, oh wait.

4. My reasons for these name changes were varied, it was indeed for these stories to fit better with continuity. If the casual Joe fan thinks these stories as out of continuity they will just skip over it and not pay much attention to it, My goal was to start a Action Force revival and to do that I wanted to draw in as many casual Joe fans as possible. There was many times where the characters were way out of character IMVHO and people would have just said Hey stalker or scarlett would never do that! so a simple name change eliminates that and any out of character/continuity behavior.

Again my goal was to reintroduce ACTION FORCE to the masses, and people are easier to attract if you have characters they know interacting with people they dont know. If it was just a Scarlett and duke story then people would be less likely to read it because it doesnt offer much new to them plus the stories/ characterizations is out of continuity, or that is would be a prevailing idea floating around. But see if you have DUKE with characters like QUARREL, GUACHO, Jammer and such then people see something new, they dont have complaints about it being out of character because now they are discovering new characters interacting with old favorites. Now they read a story about duke and Quarrel and they start asking whos quarrel, whos Jammer , whos Guacho! and then they start looking at the old guys, then they are drawn to characters like SKIP, DOC ,and Scout and they discover how great these characters are. They discover who there enimies are and why we love the RED SHADOWS, Black Major and THe Baron People that read comics are also more easily drawn by females so I specifically targeted quarrel/ scarlett stories too.

SO the name change was done to maximize our chances of reintroducing this great line to the masses and To be honest I was hoping it would also offer something new to the old fans, this way the old fans could get something new out of it also.

I knew some people would not like it,( i have received 2 negative e-mails and over a 100 positive e-mails in the year and a half we been doing it now ) but I felt it was a good way to bring awareness to this whole line and hopefully bring it back in some small way.

To be honest I think we have succeeded too, We got the RED SHADOW back in the comics briefly , including one appearance that has to be Vaughn as the Black Major. We got ACTION FORCE in a cameo in World War III which included QUARREL HUNTER MOONDANCER and BLADES , Prices for the line has gone up in the last year on auction sites, and I have seen customs of these characters pop up way more often too. We have seen this site go from 100 members to 271, old fans are finding this place a lot easier too. So all in all I think its succeeded.

Space Commander wrote:
This chap http://www.bloodforthebaron.com/assassi ... %2003.html looks very interesting! Was he in the original comics, or has his story been put together by a fan taking snippets from Battle Action Force and carefully recolouring them?

:

That was me! that was me who did that!!!! and that guys is SEI TIN from Brazil

These 8 pages in the book and online feature the Argentina and Brazil exclusives characters. IM a big fan of foreign guys as Im kind of sick of the US ones to be honest so I wanted to do something for those South American fans . It was also in hopes to draw a few of them here so they too could discover Action Force and I do know some of them have come here and are members now. ( everything was done to increase things for ACTION FORCE hahahaha )
So ya I wanted the book to offer something for everyone

One little tidbit was the name International Heroes was chosen not only to honor the fans but also to honor all the colorist because our team is truly international and they are truly heroes for helping us on this. It was also the term used for Opertion Dragon fire ( for the DIC fans ) instead of a Real American Heroes theme

Okay so how was it done? yes the comic was done by cutting pasting resizing ereasing and flipping things around with some small drawing being done on them and they very careful coloring ! it was a ton of work but pretty cool when you look at where the original images / pages came from and you compare them.

Especially Cobra De Aco and cobra Mortal pages , Im really pleased with those

and my blabbing is now done!

is anyone still here????

"...no time soon, to be honest those stories will only come before the Kraken story of course if we had someone that said HEY I want to do all the space stories then It would be done but only then..."

Hmm, i MIGHT have to do something about that!

I'm afraid I don't know diddly about scanning and recolouring, but I might be able to manage something simple; Battle Action Force used to feature single-page Combat Files, short stories with a picture, and I happen to have one of the Space Force ones, along with an SAS story and a few others. Maybe you could use just a few as "bumpers" between stories in Volume II?

It'd give a computer caveman like me a chance to contribute in some small way!!! (If I manage to do a good job of it. After all, I'm used to cave paintings...)

That's a good idea! We normally test out colourists with a Datafile, but all of the Combat stories are here;

http://www.bloodforthebaron.com/Blood/Combat.html

WOW, COOL!

Yes, I have some of those, including Sky Raider Strikes Back.

I know Jamar would like to use the comic-strips most likely to encourage GI Joe fans first, and with good reason, but these little snippets might be a good way of gradually introducing the earliest Action Force characters to new fans. And they'd take up very little space.

Now if only we could find someone who knows what they're doing to colour them!

Naturally, I vote for Sky Raider's story first. But there are plenty of Q, Z, and SAS Force ones to go around...

hey thanks for wanting and trying to contribute!

the data files of the space force guys would definately have my vote for you to do , if you really want space force stuff!

we have a super easy 6 step guide to coloring on photoshop that is simple to follow and anyone can do it, all it takes is some time

look for the coloring for dummies thread in the coloring section and look at MY POST i break down the excellent post by another person into 6 easy to follow steps that is much less wordy

again thanks for wanting to help

AAAGH!!!

Well, after days of trying to get 'Photoshop' on the bloody computer, and the computer just packing-up with each attempt, I've decided to request volunteers. (Don't even ask about the disasterous attempt to use 'Paint' instead).

Sky Raider Strikes Back consists of ONE picture. This one;

http://www.bloodforthebaron.com/Blood/Combat%2019.html

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE could someone with some computer knowledge and a halfway decent machine PLEASE colour this thing in and send it to Jamar!!!?

Thank you,

Frustrated Space Commander

...And after all that, I had a rubbish night's sleep as well... zzzzzzzzzz

I'm on my way out now, but I'll drop you a PM tonight and try to help sort out your Photoshop installation.