Fictional Character Biography
Colin Doobrey-Smiff, otherwise known as Combat Colin wanted to be a war hero, but even the army thought he was too thick for them; instead, he lived with his Mum and Dad in a suburban English neighbourhood. In the beginning, the strips were simplistic complete slapstick half-page stories. As time progressed, the strip's popularity enabled it to become a full pager. Here, Stringer was allowed to develop the character in a series of two to six part serials. Colin also acquired an assistant, Semi-Automatic Steve, and a host of supporting characters including their girlfriends The Giggly Sisters and a catalogue of recurring villains such as Madprof, Dr Nasty, and Megabrain.
A fan of The Prisoner television series, Stringer often added references to the TV show in the strip, most blatantly when Combat Colin found himself in "The Place of No Return"; a village resembling Portmeirion in the TV series. Trapped in the Village, Colin discovered it to be a place where old comic characters (Stringer's comedy back-up characters for Marvel UK) were "retired" to. Starting a revolt, Colin led his fellow heroes to escape.
In the final issue of Marvel UK's Transformers series, Combat Colin fought a final battle against Megabrain. Afterwards, he and Steve threw away all their weapons to live a life of pacifism - unfortunately, one of those weapons was a nuclear bomb and they were seemingly killed. A new story Stringer produced for a one-off mini-comic revealed that the nuclear bomb had thrown the heroes back in time to Blackpool in 1967.
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