Team America #5 Cover date October 1982
It looks like this team book is continuing the interesting tactic to ignore the concept of team and focusing on another solo story. This time the ultra gay Honcho. In what the cover promises to be a 'spectacular solo adventure!' Just from Honcho's smouldering brown eyes staring out at you from the cover, you know this is going to be a full-throttle ride! Even though pencilling this issue is Alan Kupperburg, an artist that brings out the very worst in Colletta's inks. Shudder! But let's ignore that and get straight into the all gay action of Honcho's story!
'Triple Cross' starts off with Team America, well not really, it's only Honcho, Reddy and Wolf, (Cowboy and Wrench don't even get a cameo in this issue) doing a stunt show. Watched by a mysterious man who thinks about Honcho jealously, “Why would... Honcho... wastes his talents on them... when he is so much more useful to me!”
Cut to a locker room. Wolf is standing around naked while Honcho tells him and Reddy that “I'm doing the town by myself for a change!” Then thinks, “too bad I can't let them know what I'm really up to!” Oh, Honcho! You must feel so isolated. Not even being able to trust your closest friends with your secret. Feel Honcho's pain!
Honcho soon meets up with the mysterious stranger who turns out to be an old CIA friend called, Adrian. Adrian buys Honcho dinner and solicits him to join his new secret spy agency supposedly set up by the president. Honcho accepts as the smoke rings Adrian's been blowing, lower themselves seductively around Honcho's body.
The next day finds Honcho standing on a street corner in his tight white leather jumpsuit. Adrian crawls up to the curb in his car, winds down his window and invites Honcho to join him. He takes him to a parking garage, and just in case there wasn't enough subtext yet, they both go down together... on a platform into a secret ultra tech spy base.
Then follows a montage of Honcho being tested. Big image of Honcho sweating and straining. With an immediate cut to Honcho sitting buck naked on the edge of his bed as Adrian let's himself out of the room, saying, “Good news, Jim! You've still got your edge – and that makes you the best man I have!” No doubt... no doubt...
Honcho decides to do some snooping around the secret base, so dresses in his Team America brightly coloured tunic. He informs us via his thought balloons that he knows that Adrian's spy agency is secretly a crime organisation and Honcho was pressed into service by the FBI to infiltrate the criminal spy ring and bring it down. His FBI contact orders Honcho to do “Whatever he wants you to do!” Let's just say that I think Honcho has already more than followed that order.
Honcho then heads out on his phoney mission. Capturing a plane with a valuable defecting Soviet spy on it. Honcho goes about hi-jacking the plane in the standard manner... running his motorbike up to it as it takes off, then leaping onto the wing before climbing along the fuselage and using his helmet to smash open the cockpit window and slide in. Try and imagine how many laws of physics have to be not just broken but entirely ignored to manage that feat!
Adrian is there as Honcho lands the plane on a secret airstrip. He calls for his FBI contact to swoop in and holds a gun on Adrian and co. till the FBI guy arrives. When the FBI fellow does turn up it's discovered that he's in fact a double agent and doesn't work for the FBI at all! Hence the title of the story 'Triple Cross'... which may make it one of the only Team America stories with a story title that actually makes sense. Also in this scene it becomes painfully obvious that Kupperburg has no idea how to draw a hand gun... or a motorbike for that matter...
Having got Honcho to successfully complete their mission, and now having captured Honcho as well, Adrian and his criminal cohorts do the only thing they can. Namely tie Honcho up to a chair (oh, that saucy Honcho!) in the basement of the underground lair, start flooding the complex and set a bomb to blow up the building... Even Mantlo can't help but have Honcho comment that this death trap is clearly overkill!
As the water rises and threatens to drown him, Honcho struggles at his bonds before passing out. And who should then take that opportunity to appear and apprehend the crooks on his big black bike of justice..? Yep, the mysterious Marauder! He makes short work of them and roars off. Just as Honcho reappears, claiming that he must of freed himself while unconscious via “reflex”! I've no idea exactly how many reflexes a person has while passed out, but I'm guessing the 'free yourself from being tied to a chair' reflex isn't one of them. Just saying is all... Honcho doesn't let the near drowning slow him up. So quickly goes about defusing the time bomb, using what must be a crafty CIA learned technique. Reaching into the device and just ripping handfuls of wires out. Unsubtle, but it appears to work. End of Honcho's homoerotic hi-jinxes where he had to go undercover to lick a spy ring!
It's really not such a bad story. It makes as much sense as any Bond film from the same period anyway. It's interesting seeing what Mantlo was doing with this series. Being lumbered with a book which had no history and characters who were not more than blank slates cut to the shape of a clich̩, Mantlo stepped away from writing a team book and started telling individual solo stories. Each one being framed in a different comics genre. Maruder's solo story Рclassic superhero fair. Wolf's РEC Horror. And Honcho's Рspy thriller. Building up each of the characters separately before integrating them back into a team. A bold move, that I don't believe works that well. As it both destroys any momentum the book had built in the first two issues, as well as there being no reason why character building stories couldn't have been told within the context of the team structure.
Two more Marvel Materwork Pin-ups. This time for the Marauder and Wrench. One of Marauders many specialities seems to be leadership. Leadership? I don't get that. The Marauder is more of a loner than life of the party and kid-friendly Wolf. Have we ever seen Marauder lead anything? No, I don't think so.
Wrench's Hydra Classified File gives us the snippet that he's an amazing inventor and a competent rider. But only a 'competent rider' on a team of four other extraordinary riders you understand... make of that what you will.
The letters page has three more writers suggesting that the Marauder is a being created by all of Team America via their strange link. This time the editors suggest that the idea may not be too far off but it's not quite on the money. Another letter writer points out Honcho's uncomfortableness around women and suggests a female character for the team... Ha! Not going to happen in this sausage-fest!
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