Blood for the Baron!

I'm just curious if the "Battleground" story (Nov. 29th, 1986) was the last tale to feature any of these characters within these pages?

Yep... big sigh. Marvel UK acquired the rights, and Battle was left stranded. The following issue had the headline "British Destroyer fires on British Helicoptor!!!" from the oneshot "Day Of The Jackal" story.

Storm Force was hastily penned to fill the void, and wasn't that bad, considering. Oh okay, it wasn't that great either. I always thought they'd have made a good toy range though.

I think Battle shouldered on bravely until the New Year, or it may have been the following New Year, before being picked up by Eagle. By then Charley's War and Johnny Red were just reprints...

A sad, sad day. On the bright side: the U.K. Marvel stories weren't that bad! They were a mite better than the U.S. stories, I might add. (Don't get me wrong. Larry Hama, the 12 year writer of "G.I. Joe", did a great job... he just never pulled off the feeling that there were "terrorists loose in the U.S."! It felt more like a cartoony adventure. The current writers at Devil's Due [http:devilsdue.net] have also done a great job, but... It's still a 'toon. Unfortunately.)

I think this is helped by the fact that for many years beforehand the Action Force writers and artists developed the Battle storylines, the comic devoted to all-out War stories. I agree that by comparison the Joe comics don't have the militaristic feel of the Battle works. Also, there's often a much higher body count, which I think is responsible for the darker mood of these strips.

However, the same team were also responsible for Storm Force, which was much lighter fare for the Battle crew, and as you so nicely put it, it had a very cartoony feel. I expect that at this time they were under pressure to compete with Marvel comics, and so were forced to change thier guidelines. I think their work suffered as a result, and Storm Force was no substitute for Action Force.

However, if you're still curious about Storm Force, there's a good resource site here: http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/s/storforc.htm

its sad that these characters have yet to still reappear, I am really hoping we see some familiar faces soon at least in the red shadows side of things

After seeing the last 6 issues by ddp I am pretty confident that familiar faces will be appearing soon