Touch and Go was one of the more difficult episodes I have written. I was asked to write a storyline around the Collectors Club's reproduction Magnum Power set. If you don't know AT Joe, Magnum Power is pretty much the Holy Grail of 1970's G.I. Joe sets. A complete boxed one just sold for over $13.310.
The Club's reproduction is superb, and, as with the original, contains basically, a rifle, 3 scopes, a bullet-proof vest, and some camo fatigues. If this were a military comic it would have been simple, pick a scope, shoot someone, go home. The Adventure Team Chronicles, however, is an adventure story and we have to be more creative in our problem-solving.
Part of the difficulty I faced was that the character at the center of the story was the Adventurer, who I had established was a pacifist in a dossier published a short time earlier.
BTW If you look at the 1970.s Adventurer, African American, short hair, tan fatigues you might notice he is a pair of shades and a med bag away from looking just like Doc from the RAH line. I blurred the line a bit more by making him a med student from Concord. Ma. Doc's home town.
So yes, if the guy in panel three looks a bit familiar, that was intentional ;)
Similar to the Man of Action who goes by "John Steele," Tom Stone's name comes from the European Action Team version of his figure. They called their Land Adventurer figure "Hard Rock." I passed on that and went with “Joe.”
In my original progression of stories, in the next episode Joe was to be sent off to a Shaolin Temple to get a handle on his anger issues. That story got bumped and he is still an angry dude.
As challenging as this episode was to write, when it was done Rod Whigham, generally a man of few words, emailed a single line of feedback that I consider one of the highest compliments I have ever received.