Retro Comic Read Through: Team America #10

Team America #10
Cover date March 1983

The cover has all five team members riding straight at the reader in a V-wing. Either out of a fog bank or clouds of their own exhaust fumes. It's unclear. Above them is the spectral head of Marauder. With all their faces fully masked they take on a cold inhumane quality. Almost menacing, even in their bright red, white and blue garb. The cover art doesn't give any sense of the story inside, and as we open the book up we quickly discover that was a wise choice.

After just two issues of building a new theme and feel for this book, issue #10 is a fill-in story. Gone is the Cowboy/Georgianna, team dynamics and racing subplots. Gone as well is Shooter on plotting duties, which is a shame as he's got a good sense of what this book could be. Steven Grant is marked down as scripter which would suggest it was editor Tom DeFalco who plotted this slight bit of storytelling. Alan Kupperberg is back as penciller but mainstay Colletta continues the inking chores. There just seems to be no shaking the man loose from this book.

This thrilling chapter opens up with a scene of Las Vegas and a hippie posting a letter to Jim McDonald aka Honcho. You know he's a hippie because his hair's a bit shaggy and he's wearing a purple T-shirt. No sooner has he mailed his letter than he's confronted by a group of more hippies, lead by Minister Ashe. A balding man with an evil looking beard, in a fringed Daniel Boone style jerkin. With intimidation Ashe discovers who the letters going to. Then blows a cloud of dust onto the fellow which dissolves him into a pile of more dust. After killing the guy in the street, Ashe takes his hippie followers away. Why? Because, as he says, “We can't retrieve that letter now without drawing needless attention to ourselves!” Personally I would of thought that after turning a guy into a pile of dust, busting open a mail box wasn't really that much of an attention grabbing thing.

Team America are in Las Vegas for time trials of a three-wheeled bike race. I don't know if it's an Unlimited Class Race or what, because after three panels we never see or hear of it again. Once again the idea that this is a book about a team which races is ignored in favour of a useless one-shot villain of the moment story.

The team go off to gamble. Honcho wins and Cowboy is a loser. On returning to their hotel the concierge attempts to give Honcho a letter that's arrived for him, but Honcho doesn't notice. Doesn't say much for his spy skills if he can't notice a man yelling his name across a hotel lobby. Upon returning to his room Honcho finds a hippie ransacking it, for the letter. When discovered the hippie throws himself out the window and turns himself into a pile of dust.

Upon investigation on the street, Ashe and his youthful hippie cult kidnap Honcho. When he wakes up he's stripped to the waist and is stuck in wooden stocks. Then is almost eviscerated by a drugged out large breasted girl wearing just her underwear (an ironic end for Honcho!). He's saved by Ashe who wants to question him about the letter. Honcho knows nothing but we learn that the man who posted it was an old CIA colleague of Honcho's who hated him. And Ashe is a former chemist who discovered the deadly dust and decided to amass a pseudo religious murderous cult around himself.

The story then unfolds with the rest of the team (but no Wrench or Georgianna) battling their way into the cultist compound to free Honcho (but not on their bikes, or even their uniforms). Getting trapped in giant glass tubes and finally breaking themselves out. It's so immensely standard fair that theirs nothing of note in it at all. Though Ashe threatening Honcho by killing a hamster in front of him is kinda funny.

Team America is chased away by the cultists hippies and Ashe tries to destroy Las Vegas with his deadly dust in a plane but has his plans defeated by Marauder. Though Ashe does escape. The next day as the team return to their hotel. Honcho finally gets the letter that started this whole adventure when they're confronted by Ashe and his remaining hippies. Grabbing the envelope, Ashe declares that, “No one can tie my cult to its illegal activities without this letter” and tears it in half. Oh no! What a twist. Has the villain actually won? Nope. Because there's another twist on the way. The letter is filled with deadly dust and promptly kills Ashe dead! It turns out that the undercover CIA agent was trying to kill Honcho all along! Which raises the questions, do the CIA really investigate cults? And just what was Honcho's former relationship with the agent that he pissed him off so badly that he tried to kill him years later? None of this is addressed, and we'll never find out. Mostly we can be glad that the story just ends here.

No letters page or additional material again. And it's beginning to feel as if this book has been given up on by it's creators. No regular writers or pencilers. And with fill-in issues like this they're just marking time till the inevitable cancellation. Which is only two more issues away.

FEAR THE HAMSTER, HONCHO.