I can understand why people who grew up reading Action Force may have felt SF was a poor substitute, but I never got Battle regularly (huge fan of the toys but we were a one-comic-a-week household and my Dad grew up with Eagle, so that's what we got - since made up for it though). That is I never got Battle until my Dad bought the Storm Force debut issue home with him one day as a surprise.
I loved it from the start - mostly because of the art by the Vanyo brothers (who draw/ink a great machine gun imho), but also because of the imagination. Personally I think it deserves more credit than it gets. At the time it was hugely popular – when Battle merged with Eagle only three strips were carried over and two of them were reprints – Storm Force was the only strip to get all new stories.
I was fortunate enough to have some communication with two of the creators/writers a couple of years ago and they expressed a lot of fondness for the strip. They enjoyed the freedom they had with a creator owned strip, like being able to kill off characters (the Web Masters, and even one of the original team in one of the later story arcs) as opposed to some of the restrictions imposed when working on an owned property like Action Force.
Speaking of Action Force, two of the very few Battle Action Force issues I did have as a kid featured the School for Snakes story with
and 
facing off against 
and the 
's. It’s drawn by Vanyo and is one of my favourite stories ever. Vanyo’s Red Shadows are some of the best drawn, plus a liked all the female Cobra students in tight black uniforms…but I’ve said too much.
