Joe 90: Countdown - 1971



Joe 90 was introduced (or reintroduced if you recalled Joe 90: Top Secret and TV21& Joe 90) to Countdown readers, from issue 2. As with The Secret Service which also debuted in this issue, the artist was Jon Davis.

Like Captain Scarlet from this issue, Joe 90 was relegated to a single monochrome page - a seeming continuation of a declining weekly page count for the strip. Seemingly never the most popular of Anderson series, the strip received no extra promotion, and only seemed there as an afterthought to up the rotation of available tie-ins. This resulted more in a dilution of talents, rather than the hoped for printfest of TV SF at the time - BBC TV's recently regenerated Doctor Who proving the more popular than older Anderson series (Look-In having nabbed ITV's Timeslip, and ex-TV21 artist Mike Noble to draw it into the bargain), and original strip Countdown upping the colour pages with what was presumably a relatively cheap license in only using designs from 2001: A Space Odyssey, rather than characters and formats.

Joe 90 strip guide - part three


Josef Nineski (Story One)
Writer: Unknown.
Artist: Jon Davis. 1 page, b/w.

Part 1, Issue 2, week ending 27 February 1971
An explosion in the frozen wastes of the Eastern Bloc’s Siberian province signals the successful completion of another mission for Joe 90. Pursued by soldiers, Joe escapes on a motorised sledge. As he is snatched to safety by a rescue helijet, he drops his Most Special Agent badge in the snow. Suspecting that this agent 90 is some kind of superman, the KGB instruct their scientists to devise a way of transferring the skills of many men to one agent. The scientists create a computer and a tiny gadget to make this possible, and the KGB’s agent Manski is chosen to shatter WIN with their own weapon...

Part 2, Issue 3, week ending 06 March 1971
The Eastern Bloc use their new system to mastermind numerous espionage missions against the West - infiltrating British security in London, stealing a new fighter from a USAF base in Omaha, and destroying a consignment of arms in Antwerp docks.Shane Weston suspects a security leak, but Sam Loover’s intelligence suggests the Russians have developed a system similar to Mac’s BIG RAT. So, to maintain their advantage they formulate a plan to discredit it. Two days late in a gun battle on the street, Sam Loover seeks political asylum at the Eastern Bloc Embassy. He reveals he has just shot Shane Weston, but Commisar Shrivroff is not convinced and orders Sam to be thrown out to the waiting police...

Part 3, Issue 4, week ending 13 March 1971

However the Embassy officials reconsider and decide to inform Dr Kraskie before ejecting Loover. Having watched the incident from a nearby building, Joe and Mac head back to the cottage where Joe receives Sam Loover’s brain pattern. Meanwhile Dr Kraskie orders Loover to be guarded, and plans to send his envoy - with Loover’s brain pattern - to steal details of the WIN agents from Sam’s office. Weston’s murder is announced in the newspapers the next day. Once Joe has received Sam’s brain pattern, he is able to predict how Loover would break into his own office... while at the same time, someone else - Nineski, with the same brain pattern - is following that exact route. But when he reaches Loover’s office, the foreign agent finds Joe 90 waiting for him...

Part 4, Issue 5, week ending 20 March 1971
Joe shoots Nineski with a sleeping dart, and they take him back to Mac’s cottage. While he is still unconscious, Mac gives him a new brain pattern, that of the charlady’s five year old son, inserting a mini transistor into the Russian’s scalp before returning him to WIN HQ. The agent is picked up by his comrades who assume from his behaviour that he has cracked up. Kraskie’s computer expert suspects it could be a reaction from the brain pattern input, rendering their invention potentially useless. Nineski and Loover are to be recalled - but Sam is concerned when he learns that he is to travel in a coffin...



Part 5, Issue 6, week ending 27 March 1971
Soldiers surround the Embassy demanding Loover’s release. While the officials prevaricate, Joe breaks in via the roof and discovers that Sam has already been shipped out. Some time later, Joe calls at the Embassy pretending to be Sam’s son, demanding to be reunited with him. Shivroff initially sends Joe away, but has second thoughts and calls the boy back, planning to use Joe to guarantee Loover’s loyalty. Several days later he and Joe arrive at the Brodsi prison where Kraskie awaits...

Part 6, Issue 7, week ending 03 April 1971
Joe is taken to visit Sam in his cell. Once alone, Joe is able to squeeze out through the bars on the window and climb the outside wall. He stuns the guard, steals his gun and is able to free Sam. Loover is determined to take Kraskie with him to blow the Josef Nineski operation wide open. Taking Kraskie by surprise, they make for his private helijet while Joe holds off the guards. They are able to make their escape across the border in a circus train. A short time later, the KGB declare the computer worthless, having now additionally cost them the abduction of one of their top men.

Notes:
• Countdown’s original plan was to include as many Anderson-based strips as possible, but this initially had a negative effect on the Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 strips, with approximately 15 frames squeezed onto one page, resulting in some cramped and crude artwork. The first instalment of this story comprises linework only; later parts are drawn in line and wash, and are generally an improvement, although Jon Davis would go on to produce much better work for Countdown in the coming year.
• It is not clear how the Eastern Bloc came to record Sam’s brain pattern.
• The char-lady is unnamed in the strip. Presumably this is not a mistaken reference to their housekeeper Mrs Harris in the series, who is in any case a little too mature to have a five year old son!
• Parts 1,3 and 5 are untitled.
• This strip bares no relationship to the similarly named Joseph Ninetski from the 1968 storybook.


Spy School (Story Two)
Writer: Unknown.
Artist: Jon Davis. 5 pages, b/w.

Issue 8, week ending 10 April 1971
At a top security military depot, the gate sentry hears suspicious noises beyond the perimeter and calls out the guard truck. They find an old tobacco tin which they suspect has been dropped by a local poacher.They plan to take it to the local constable later for identification. As they climb back aboard the truck, they are watched by a group in the shadows.As soon as all the guards are back aboard, one of the watching figures activates a control, and the soldiers are rendered unconscious by a high pitched scream emitted from the tin. The watching gang are able to steal the truck and later penetrate the Prideaux Experimental Establishment , stealing a Mamba missile.
WIN’s field agents discover that there were eight attackers, all under five feet tall and weighing under 105 pounds. Meanwhile in Devon, the governors of Brinkley Academy hold an emergency meeting: the headmaster reports that their ‘project’ went without a hitch.
WIN’s leads point to the Academy, making it a job for Joe 90. Joe is given Sam Loover’s brain pattern and is to take the place of a new pupil, Austin Rylands, who is sent off on a holiday to Kenya in the meantime.
On his arrival at the Academy, Joe’s housemaster Mr Iverson introduces him to his new classmates. However once they are left alone, Joe is confronted by their ringleader, Bradshawe, and has to use his judo skills to teach the bully a lesson. His actions earn Joe popularity with most of the other boys . He later learns that Bradshawe and his friends are the headmaster’s elite corps who go on special projects and receive extra lessons. That night as Joe is making a radio report to Sam, he is abducted from his bed by a gang of hooded boys, who plan to punish him for insulting one of the ‘elite’. Luckily Joe is able to put his glasses on before he is taken to the East Wing. There, the gang plan to tie Joe to the end of a rope and haul him up the chimney as punishment. Joe attempts to escape, flooring several of the gang with his judo skills but is defeated by sheer numbers. However he is saved by the intervention of the headmaster who is impressed by Joe’s performance. He promotes Joe to the elite and plans to include him on the next ‘project’. However the next day Joe is spotted radioing his report to Sam duing a cross country run. The headmaster confiscates Joe’s radio, under the assumption that Joe was only using it to listen to music, but decides to have the boy’s movements monitored.
That night, Joe breaks into the headmaster’s office but is caught by the headmaster and the chairman of the governors. They bind Joe and plan to leave in the helicopter with him and the stolen missile. As they attempt to leave under cover of night , WIN arrive with the army to round up the gang. Sam reveals that they became suspicious when Joe’s radio was tampered with, releasing the automatic alarm. Sam reveals that they boys won’t face charges as they thought they were being trained to spy for their own country.

Notes:
• For the second consecutive story, Joe receives Sam’s brain pattern in an espionage plot. This seems a little unimaginative, and ignores the continuity in the series, along with Mac’s burgeoning brain pattern library and the array of futuristic vehicles on show in the episodes.
• Joe’s radio has an automatic tamper alarm.
• The artwork is an improvement on the first story, but still suffers slightly from a cramped 12 panels per page. Davis’s line and wash work is looser, and the likenesses better.
• The story stretches the format in that it features other child characters, avoided in all but one TV episode probably for reasons of cost (and that one child was a virtual twin of Joe!).The episodes themselves featured a much smaller regular cast than Captain Scarlet anyway, and several of those were revamps from the previous series, so the cost of showing some (or any) of Joe’s friends in the series must have been prohibitive.


Story Three
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Michael Strand. 6 pages, b/w.

Issue 16, week ending 05 June 1971
It is 2am one February morning, as a gang breaks into Bramsmoor Top Security Prison to free ‘Hammer’ Mint from his cell. Once safely away , Bovis and his gang demand a share of Hammer’s hidden loot from a previous robbery. Hammer agrees and leads them to The Warren, where his money is hidden in the caves.

Mac, Sam and Joe read about Hammer’s escape in the morning papers. Joe recalls that the Mints are a local family, and that Hammer’s father used to be their gardener. So it’s possible he may head back home after escaping... Suddenly there is a knock at the cottage door. A man asks for help as his friends are trapped in The Warren. When the rescue team arrives, they reveal it is Hammer Mint and his accomplices who are trapped by a rockfall. One of the men escaped, leaving the others cut off by the rising level of rainwater.
Mac decides they should try to help, so Joe receives the brain pattern of Joe Mint who has extensive knowledge of the local caves. Sam and Joe are kitted up and head off for the caves, crawling behind the waterfall into a narrow passage. As the water level rises, Joe slips, but Sam is able to pluck him to safety. They descend down a rock wall into a cavern and have to use a rope bridge to cross the final obstacle, the mill race.
Joe finds the men, trapped on the other side with their bullion. He lets them believe he is alone and offers to lead them to safety. But Hammer plans to escape without the police’s knowledge. The men intend to dam up the mill race long enough to move the gold. Joe realises that this will increase the water pressure and cause the mountain to collapse, so he escapes and hurries back across the rope bridge. Viciously, Hammer cuts the rope before Joe can reach the other side, but Sam is waiting and is able to haul the boy out in time. Although Joe’s ankle is broken, they are able to escape.
They hear an explosion behind them - the gang have used gelignite to cause a rockfall to block off the mill race as planned. But as they cross, the water pressure builds up and blasts through the rockfall. Joe and Sam are ripped off their feet but manage to escape to safety, but the gang are washed away by the current.

Notes:
• Mac apparently had a gardener at the cottage, Joe Mint.
• Joe actually sustains an injury in this story, a broken ankle.
• The story does not stretch the envelope any further, being pretty run of the mill. No prototypes to steal, no secret missions to undertake. Potholing was previously featured in the episode ‘Relative Danger’.
• The artwork is more polished and less cramped than the two previous stories, although like most of the complete Countdown stories it still weighs in at around 10 frames per page.
• This was the last Joe 90 strip to appear in Countdown.

Countdown Annual 1972

Joe 90 Resigns
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Jon Davis.
3 page text story with colour illustrations
One evening at the cottage, Mac concudes that he can no longer allow Joe to be a WIN agent, although he doesn’t expect Joe will be able to understand his reasons. That night, Joe is unable to sleep, so he slips out of his room to see his father. He finds that Mac is missing, and there are bloodstains on the carpet. Sam confirms that Mac has been kidnapped. Sam wants Joe to receive a brain transfer, but Joe initially refuses as he recalls his father’s wishes. But they have no alternative, so Joe recieves the brain pattern of Henri Charriere, the world ski champion.
Several hours later, Joe is dropped by helijet in the French Alps. According to WIN’s information, Mac is being held in a small hut in the valley below, awaiting the aircraft which will whisk him away behind the Iron Curtain, probably for ever. Joe approaches the nearest guard, pleading in his best German that he is lost. Then he speeds off down the slope . A mile down the slope, Joe ploughs to a halt yards from the hut. Drawing his gun, he bursts in, holding the two guards at gunpoint. As helijets scream across the valley, Joe shuts the guards in the hut with an anaesthetic gas capsule for company. Dodging gunfire, Mac and Joe board Sam’s watting helijet. Despite taking a bullet in the fuel tank, they manage to get clear.
That evening in a Paris hotel, Joe apologises to his father for going against his word. He now realises exactly how Mac feels when Joe goes on a mission - he thought he’d never see his father again. Mac has also reconsidered his viewpoint: he realises how selfish he has been in wanting Joe to stop working for WIN. He realises it is necessary for Joe to use the BIG RAT for the sake of world peace.

Notes:
• The Iron Curtain is not mentioned in the series, the writers preferring the more vague ‘Eastern Alliance’, as in the episodes 'Arctic Adventure' and 'Attack of the Tiger'.
• Presumably Mac is targetted due to his invention, the BIG RAT, as in the episodes ‘Project 90’ and ‘Three’s a Crowd’.
• There is no specific reason why Joe would have to be used to rescue Mac on this particular mission.
• Henri Charriere is in fact the author of ‘Papillon’, published in 1969, which tells of his escape from the penal colony of French Guiana.

Despite the editor’s initial plan to feature the maximum number of Anderson series in rotation, Joe 90 and The Secret Service fell by the wayside very early on, both formats proving less popular than their predecessors both on screen and on paper, although the limited scope of the stories and limited space given to the strips can only have hastened their demise. Both made their final appearances in the first Countdown annual which contained a pretty good haul of Anderson-related material. Interestingly, later issues would feature five or six page complete stories of a non-Anderson nature, although whether this was due to a perceived lack of popularity of these two series, or the cost of either licensing or new artwork (the number of TV21 reprints notably increased in Countdown as time wore on) is not known.

Version 1.1 - 31.10.05


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