Crisis Intervention

	"Crisis Intervention"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	January 18, 2017
Cover date	December 2016
Written by	John Barber
Art by	Fico Ossio
Colors by	Sebastian Cheng
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Hedgecock
Assistant editor	David Mariotte
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era

This article is about the real-life issue. For the in-universe treaty, see Crisis Intervention Accord.

Kup, Action Man, Sovereign, and Mayday find themselves flung together to investigate the mystery behind an enigmatic relic that sparks conflict between Rom and the Oktober Guard.

Synopsis

In the years that have followed the end of its war with neighboring Galibi, the Caucasus country of Schleteva has rebounded, rebuilt, and become a beacon of peace to a world beset by visitors from other planets. That all changes on the day that an energy wave of unknown origin ripples through the capital city of Verenya, transforming all living beings in its path—human and animal alike—into Dire Wraiths! A G.I. Joe unit consisting of Heavy Duty, Flash, Quarrel, and team leader Mayday arrive to investigate the cessation of communications out of the city and are set upon by the Wraiths, who tear their Tomahawk chopper out of the air. Stranded and unable to get a signal out to call for exfiltration, the Joes seem doomed—until salvation arrives in the form of the Wraiths' ancient enemy, Rom the Space Knight! Rom explains that the creatures are not true Wraiths: they are still fundamentally humans, overtaken by Wraith genetics, but not beyond saving. Per his code, Rom will not kill them; Heavy Duty admits to having shot one already, which Mayday grimly informs him they will just all have to live with. Rom uses his Neutralizer to knock the creatures out, and the Joes decide to tag along with him as he traces the energy wave that caused the transformation back to its source.

The trail leads to a subterranean bunker, but Rom and the Joes quickly learn they are not the first ones to arrive when they discover the dead body of Shturmovik, member of the rogue Russian military unit known as the Oktober Guard, lying in the tunnels. Pressing on toward the bunker, the group finds that it has already been blasted open... and the blasting is still going on inside, where British super-agent Action Man and half-man/half-Cybertronian Garrison Blackrock are locked in battle over the mysterious obelisk that released the energy wave! Rom and the Joes intercede, Mayday's familiarity with the two men helping to bring their fight to an end quickly... whereupon the rest of the Oktober Guard, led by ex-Cobra Major Bludd, comes smashing through the bunker wall in an armored vehicle! Rom and Blackrock take the Guard on while Mayday tries to get some answers out of Action Man, but a missile hit from Bludd sends Blackrock careening back into the obelisk, triggering it once more. Rom uses his Neutralizer to shield as many as he can from the new energy wave it releases, but Heavy Duty, Flash, and Quarrel are all caught in the blast and transformed into Wraiths before the survivors' eyes. Major Bludd is also unlucky—the wave clips his arm, mutating it, and forcing Daina to amputate it as it tries to attack him! As the heroes try to hold off their mutated former allies, the Oktober Guard abscond with the obelisk, but Action Man gives chase back through the tunnels to the surface. It seems like the Guard are going to get away, but Action Man has an ace in the hole waiting outside: his Autobot buddy Kup, who rams the Guard's vehicle off the road! While Rom uses his Energy Analyzer on the obelisk to determine its true origins, Action Man jumps on the Oktober Guard's overturned vehicle so he can keep his gun on them—but that means he is in range when Major Bludd suddenly activates a teleporter that whisks himself, the Guard, and the obselisk away... and Action Man with them!

In the hours that follow, plans are made. Blackrock explains that the obelisk—codename: "Talisman"—was originally found by G.I. Joe's predecessor, the Adventure Team, and given to the British Secret Intelligence Service for study, hence Action Man being sent in in response to its activation. Blackrock believes that it can help explain the full extent of his Cybertronian heritage to him; Mayday is more interested in recovering it to help restore her teammates and the rest of the city's afflicted population, who are being taken into the care of the Action Man Programme for examination in hopes of creating a cure. Unable to divert himself from dealing with the more clear-and-present danger of true Dire Wraiths any longer, Rom departs with Blackrock's blessing. Kup and Mayday decide to stick with Blackrock, who tells them he has some "small thoughts" on what to do next...

Elsewhere, Action Man awakens to find himself wearing a space suit. A good thing, too... because as he soon learns, he is on the surface of the Moon, chained to the remains of a long-abandoned Cobra lunar base!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	G.I. Joe	Oktober Guard	Action Man Programme	Others
Garrison Blackrock/Sovereign (9) Kup (14)	Heavy Duty (2) Flash (3) Quarrel (4) Mayday (5)	Shturmovik's body (7) Major Bludd (10) Dragonsky (11) Daina (12) Horrorshow (13) Gorky (14)	Action Man (8) Terrence Salmons (16) Bryce Chan (17)	Dire Wraith mutates (1) Rom (6)

Quotes

Rom: "The outpouring of energy was Dire Wraith in nature. Even from America, my Analyzer detected it. That is all I know, Mayday... other than I work best alone."
Mayday: "We got a job to do and a city to save, chromedome. Flash, can you confirm any of this?"
Flash: "Well, I'm pretty sure he's right—he doesn't need us."

"Whatever your game is, this is my world, and rule number one is—don't turn people into monsters!"
"That's rule one? What about, like, washing your hands after using the bathroom?"

—Action Man and Blackrock banter

"One of the Americans is following!"
"Hate to break it to you, but I'm from South London, mate."

—Daina and Action Man

Notes

Continuity notes

The warring countries of Galibi and Schleteva were the setting for the fourth volume of IDW's G.I. Joe series, which detailed the Joe and Cobra intervention in the conflict Mayday mentions in her narration (Cobra, as she notes, had at this point in the story remade itself as an international peacekeeping force as a public cover for its activities). The series was cancelled before reaching a proper ending (leading into the IDW Joe hiatus that has only recently been broken with the publication of the fifth volume), but that ambiguous conclusion is here exploited to reveal that the failure of Cobra's attempts to keep the peace in the region saw the whole organization collapse.
Mayday is retroactively established to not be a new Joe, but to have always been a Joe, who just worked for the Earth Defense Command while the team was decommissioned. Issue #4 would clarify that she transferred to the EDC when Joe went public in G.I. Joe vol. 3, presumably staying on when Joe was shuttered between volumes 4 and 5. Mayday notes in this issue she served under Duke in the "Nanzhao conflict", an engagement that took place during the "Cobra Command" crossover in all of IDW's Joe books back in 2012.
An editor's note in ROM #5 suggests that the Space Knight's appearance here occurs before that issue (though presumably not before its opening scene, in which Rom departs Autobot City).
Mayday encountered Rom during Revolution, and recalls his killing of the Dire Wraith posing as Joe Colton from Revolution #1.
The Oktober Guard previously appeared in IDW continuity in the fourth and final arc of the 2011 Cobra series (Cobra vol. 2 #17-21), during which they abducted Major Bludd from G.I. Joe custody, only to then fall under his leadership when he killed their commanding officer, Colonel Shtern. The whole team are drawn to appear more like their classic selves, compared to the extreme redesigns they underwent for their earlier appearance; in particular, Horrorshow was a mute hulk who gave his name extra meaning by hiding his face behind a hazmat-suit-like mask, while Gorky was a scarred, sadistic torturer.
Garrison Blackrock has been a supporting character throughout "season 2" of Robots in Disguise. He discovered that he was a Transformer, unbeknownst even to himself, during the "Conquerors" and "All Hail Optimus" storylines that ran for the final year of the book. His original Cybertronian identity as "Sovereign" was reawakened by Sentinel Prime during the Titans Return storyline, but a counter-frequency courtesy of Soundwave reasserted his human personality. He was last seen being returned to Earth by Prowl after the Titans Return adventure concluded, in More than Meets the Eye #57, and Optimus Prime #2 made it clear he was now out on his own, no longer acting in support of G.I. Joe.
Flash remarks that he's wearing a new uniform; indeed, he's gotten some new togs since appearing in the Action Man: Revolution one-shot, where he wore an outfit hewing closer to his original 1982 action figure.
Action Man and Kup teamed up during the Revolution storyline, after Action Man broke the old 'bot out of G.I. Joe captivity in the Action Man: Revolution one-shot, which Mayday remembers him from.
Action Man notes he thought Major Bludd died in Nanzhao; that's because the Joes immediately took him into custody when he surrendered to them at the end of the conflict (Cobra vol. 2 #11) and threw him in a private prison facility with no official record of his apprehension (Cobra vol. 2 #14). He languished there until the Oktober Guard freed him.
Kup remarks that he's given up cy-gars, the metallic cigars that were something of his trademark during All Hail Megatron. They were later revealed to be a way of managing an Ore-8 addiction, but he hasn't used them since returning from the Dead Universe in "Dark Cybertron"; obviously billions of years of cold turkey in the Dead Universe'll get'cha clean.
Rom's Analyzer reminds Kup of "something he found" on the planet Ki-Aleta, an alien world introduced waaay back in Spotlight: Hot Rod. Ki-Aleta was home to the Magnificence, the magical ball of plot convenience that has been one of the biggest dangling threads from that era of IDW's titles... is that what Kup is referring to...?
Speaking of dangling plot threads, the Cobra moonbase that Action Man wakes up next to is "Section Sabine", introduced in 2010's G.I. Joe vol. 1 #16. In real-world terms, the base—accessed via Cobra's M.A.S.S. Device teleporter—was quite obviously set up as a seed for a future plot, but when the "Cobra Civil War"/"Cobra Command" storyline was conceived, that plot had to be dropped. As such, 2011's G.I. Joe vol. 1 #27 featured the destruction of the M.A.S.S. Device, and the issue concluded by "tying off" the Sabine story—which had gone unmentioned since its introduction—with the reveal that the base's personnel were now all stranded on the Moon. The castaways wrote "HELP US" in the lunar dust with a bulldozer—a message Ian wakes up next to in this issue—and though they saw it, the Joes were unable to do anything for them.
This issue contains a two-page timeline of major IDW continuity events. Readers of IDW's Transformers titles should be familiar with all the major moments called out, including Kup's disappearance into the Dead Universe (from The Transformers: Infestation #2), Primus's creation of the Guiding Hand (More than Meets the Eye 2012 annual), and Shockwave's invention of Ore-13 (Spotlight: Shockwave). Dates given for the events of major landmark Transformers moments (the breaking of infiltration protocol from Infiltration, the Decepticon invasion of Earth from All Hail Megatron, the beginning of the More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise era, and the events of Revolution) are all taken from the real-life publication dates of those comics. Additionally, the timeline gives a hitherto-unmentioned date—seven million years ago—for the settlement of the Cybertronian colony world Eukaris. One IDW continuity reference you may not immediately recall is the foundation of the first human city-state in Sumeria—credited to the effect of the Enigma of Combination in The Transformers #36. The timeline's reference to Dante Alighieri being a Cobra agent, meanwhile, comes from a story in G.I. Joe vol. 3 #13.

Hasbro franchise references

Quarrel was a character from G.I. Joe's British antecedent/counterpart, Action Force. She was a blonde repaint of Scarlett, and also appeared briefly in Transformers vs. G.I. Joe. It's not clear if she's British in-story, but Jed Dougherty's cover for this issue shows her with a Union Jack armband, like that found on her 2013 Fun Publications G.I. Joe Collectors Club-exclusive toy. The shuriken more commonly associated with Scarlett, molded onto her toy's forearm, are also shown.
The flamethrower-wielding member of the Oktober Guard was not part of the team in their previous appearance, and is not named in this issue. He is, however, immediately identifiable as classic team member Dragonsky, thanks to his characteristic weapon of choice.
Though Action Man claims the bunker is a "British facility," when the Oktober Guard come crashing in, a chunk of rubble can be seen flying through the air in the background that hints toward its true nature. It bears a logo showing a fist clenched around a globe, surrounded by red "wings," along with the word "IRON"—the logo of General Blitz's I.R.O.N. Army, the enemy force from the World War II-set early-90s G.I. Joe spin-off Sergeant Savage and his Screaming Eagles.
The loss of Bludd's arm portends his acquisition of a bionic prosthetic. Such a limb was apparently a feature of the character's original design back in the 80s (his original toy had an immobile, all-black right arm), but it's rarely been played as such in fiction—the Devil's Due Press comic book saw Bludd lose his hand, rather than his whole arm, and gain a cybernetic replacement, while the short-lived G.I. Joe Renegades animated series featured him getting his arm bitten off by an alligator, but didn't last long enough for the character to get a prosthesis.
Though quite a bit rounder-looking, certain design cues (like the four visible lights inside his torso-windscreen, or his long, thin kneecaps) indicate that Kup has been redesigned to resemble his Titans Return action figure, which would hit stores a couple months after this issue came out.

Errors

You already corrected this error once, so why do you repeat it again?

So, about that timeline. It dates the foundation of G.I. Joe to 2006, and their defeat of Cobra and subsequent shuttering to 2014. It's quite possible to fit the entire present-day run of IDW G.I. Joe books into an eight-year timeframe: the first three years' worth of stories are clearly stated to take place over two years in-universe, and there's a five-year gap between volume 3 and volume 4, leaving a year for the two-dozen-or-so remaining issues from volumes two and three to take place—tight, but believable. The problem, however, is that the G.I. Joe: Origins series showed the founding of G.I. Joe to take place years before all the present-day stories recounted in volumes one through four, which makes things a lot harder to reconcile. Perhaps the idea is that the five-year time-skip is being retconned into a shorter amount of time.
The timeline says that approximately 12 million years ago, the Knights of Cybertron left Primus when it should read that they left Cybertron. The Guiding Hand had already fallen by the era of the Knights' departure.
The timeline also dates the end of the First Cybertronian Civil War to eight million years ago, but captions in Robots in Disguise #30 and #34 date the war's end to 10 million years ago.
The timeline mentions that after the Chaos event, "members of non-aligned colonies" returned to Cybertron; in the comic, the NAILs were simply expatriates who had left Cybertron before the war. Proper colony worlds and their inhabitants wouldn't show up for another few years.
The timeline uses the miscolored G.I. Joe groupshot with the Caucasian Stalker from Revolution #0, rather than the corrected version printed in Revolution #1.
Mayday mentions serving under Col. Hauser in the Nanzhao conflict... but Duke wasn't in Nanzhao, as he was still recovering from a Cobra bio-weapon he had been infected with in G.I. Joe vol. 2 #5. In fact, he wasn't even promoted to Colonel until the immediate aftermath of Nanzhao in G.I. Joe vol. 2 #12! Duke was involved with the conflict, being in charge of the "home team" at Fort Baxter, but subsequent issues of Revolutionaries make it clear that Mayday was on the ground in Nanzhao.

Other trivia

Originally solicited for release in December 2016, this issue arrives a full month late in mid-January 2017.
Subscription cover A was packaged in a plastic sleeve with a reprint of the "Sgt. Savage vs. Gen. Blitz Part II" mini-comic, drawn by Joe Kubert and originally packaged with the Cyborg General Blitz figure from the Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles toyline. A reprint of the "Part I" comic was similarly included with G.I. Joe #1.
In addition to the timeline, extra material for this issue includes a cast page with full character bios for Kup, Mayday, Blackrock, Action Man, and Rom, and a reprint of Action Man's full-page profile from Revolution #2.
Blackrock's Sovereign identity has a completely new design from his original toy-based Titan Master design featured in Titans Return. His design now sports more human-shaped curvature, a visible mouth, and an Autobot symbol on his chest. Blackrock also demonstrates the ability to quickly form change between his human and Cybertronian forms, which he demonstrates by changing into his fully-dressed human form.
Early interviews with Barber stated that this story was originally going to take place in Kalistan, home country of Iron Klaw from G.I. Joe Extreme. Adjustments to the story apparently occurred as Kalistan does not appear until issue #4.

Covers (10)

Regular cover: Rom and Action Man, by Tradd Moore and Felipe Sobreiro
Subscription cover A: Major Bludd and the Oktober Guard surrounding our heroes, by Tone Rodriguez and Jordi Escuin
Subscription cover B: The gang's all here, and so are Optimus Prime, Scarlett and Acroyear, by Fico Ossio and Sebastian Cheng
Subscription cover C: Blank cover for sketches
Subscription cover D: Our heroes, plus Major Bludd, by Andrew Griffith and Thomas Deer

Man, Action Man
Rom, your crotch is rusting
Hey, what are those guys doing here?
Subscription cover C
Pay no attention to Kup's character model.

Retailer incentive cover A: Graffiti of Rom, Kup, and Action Man by Sara Pitre-Durocher; part of a series of "graffiti" variants by Pitre-Durocher which combines with covers from Optimus Prime #1, Lost Light #1, G.I. Joe #1, and M.A.S.K. #1 to form a complete image.
Retailer incentive cover B: Rom crashes through the wall of a child watching the Transformers on TV, by Sonny Liew; one in a series of variants by Liew on the above-mentioned issues.
Retailer incentive cover C: Rom by Paul Pope and Lovern Kindzierski; one in a series of variants by Pope on the above-mentioned issues.
Kwan Chang exclusive cover: Destro, Cobra Commander, and the Baroness by Jae Lee; available exclusively from Kwan Chang.
Zing exclusive cover: The cast, plus Scarlett and Quarrel, by Jed Dougherty and Jason Millet; available exclusively from Australian retailer Zing Pop Culture.