Combat Colin vs... Doctor Doom!?! - Acts of Vengeance

Now here's perhaps the most overlooked entry in the "Acts of Vengeance" saga but don't worry, its inclusion will be explained...

Once upon a time Marvel UK produced many additions to the Marvel universe, whether additional tales that enhanced characters created in the US books such as the Black Knight or originated characters aimed at the British market such as Captain Britain. But by the late 1980s this had largely dried up with the company increasingly focused on licensed titles that ranged in age from Thomas the Tank Engine through to Doctor Who Magazine. (The 1990s would see a return of superheroes and British originated material, before the company came crashing down due to over expansion.) One of the best known titles of the period was Transformers, a (mostly) weekly that combined reprints of the robots in disguise from the US comic with originated British strips plus some reprints of other US strips, most notably G.I. Joe under adapted titles.

A feature of many of the Marvel UK titles of the era was a comedy strip, offering a humorous take on some of the broader themes. Easily the most admired is Lew Stringer's Combat Colin, which originated in the weekly Action Force (an import of G.I. Joe) but got carried over into Transformers via a notional merger and proved popular enough to stay for the rest of the title's run. Had Transformers UK's reprint schedule gone according to plan then issues #270 and #271 should have been midway through printing about US #64, which came out in the States just after "Acts of Vengeance" finished its run. (Instead this period saw some scheduling problems in obtaining the latest US stories, resulting in the decision to instead raid the archives and run the G.I. Joe vs the Transformers mini-series that Marvel UK had previously not used.) So it's reasonable to treat this little adventure as another entry in the event.

Our story sees daft military nut hero Combat Colin and his sidekick Semi-Automatic Steve attending a convention of British heroes and comic characters, including Macho Man from the old Secret Wars II comic, where they're attacked by the robotic Steamroller Man, sent by a mysterious master. The villain is revealed to be none other than Doctor Doom, sick of being defeated by all the US Marvel heroes so hoping for an easy victory.

At two pages it's a quick fun piece, with nice little touches such as Doom's cloak having a greyscale effect that often arises from converting colour comics to black & white thus making him look like an American import whereas all the British characters and setting have a clean-cut black & white look. Steamroller Man sings a song to the tune of the original Spider-Man cartoon. There's fourth wall breaking but it's worth it. And there's a brilliant final line suggesting an encounter we'll probably never see. The story may lack an official tie-in triangle but it's good to see one of Marvel UK's strips joining in the spirit of things.

This story hasn't been reprinted anywhere, and I suspect the use of Doom means that copyright will prevent it appearing in the current series of Combat Colin reprints. However it was posted online a few years ago at Lew Stringer Comics: Combat Colin vs... Doctor Doom!?!