Motor Vehicle
Driver
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File Name: Lance J.
Steinberg
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Birthplace: Asbury
Park, New Jersey |
Rank: Sergeant
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Primary Military
Specialty:
Transportation
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Secondary
Military Specialty:
Infantry
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Status: Reserve
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First Appearance:
G.I. JOE #
1 (July 1982)
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Clutch
was born in Asbury
Park,
New Jersey. His first job was working at his uncle's garage. Like many
of his friends, Clutch was a car fanatic and was quick to race or play
"chicken" with other cars. Clutch takes little seriously and is known
to
joke even when in dangerous situations. Someone once said that Clutch
cares
about little else than cars and women. After enlisting in the army,
Clutch
graduated from many armored and wheeled vehicle training schools. He
eventually was assigned as General "Iron Butt" Austin's personal
driver. On one assignment, Austin only made the vague suggestion that
someone should pick up his command truck at McGuire Air Force Base and
drive it to Fort Holabird. Clutch did just that, but found a handcuffed
and blindfolded officer in the back seat. He later learned it was Lt.
Colonel Clayton " Hawk" Abernathy, recently
court-martialed. On the
drive, a group of mercenaries in a van attacked the truck, armed with a
heavy machine gun. Thanks to Clutch's incredible driving, he avoided
the mercenaries, whose van ended up in a rollover. The attackers had
been hired by a rogue general, and that knowledge was used by General
Flagg and Sparks to blackmail the
general into dropping the charges
against Hawk. It was Clutch's driving skills
in that incident that helped earn him a spot on the newly-forming G.I. Joe team.
Clutch was one
of the
original
13 members of the G.I. Joe team. He was part of many of the Joes' major
missions including the rescue of Dr. Adele Burkhart and was on the
first
mission in which the Joe team met the Soviets' October
Guard. On that
mission,
Clutch was responsible for saving the team after evading capture from a
Cobra soldier and stealing his
uniform.
Clutch, Steeler and Breaker
were
driving the MOBAT tank in a parade down New York's Fifth Avenue when
Cobra
attempted to steal the tank. The vehicle was not carrying any
ammunition,
so the Joes had to outsmart the attacking Cobra soldiers. Once they
were
stopped, Clutch rammed the parade's reviewing stands and revealed a
hidden
Cobra control room under the stands. Clutch had an often adversarial
relationship
with Scarlett, who thought he was nothing
but a chauvanist. Clutch gave
little evidence for her to think otherwise. They were teamed up on a
mission
to thwart Cobra's attempted assassination of a middle eastern
ambassador.
Scarlett respected Clutch's fighting skills, but the two never became
friends.
Following a
major Cobra
assault
on G.I. Joe headquarters (aka "The Pit"),
Clutch went on leave to his
home
town. Once there, he discovered that Cobra wa attempting to infiltrate
the town. He eventually saved the town, due in part to a timely rescue
from the Joe team. A short time later, Clutch was part of the team that
captured Cobra Commander. After the
re-dedication of G.I. Joe
headquarters,
aka "The Pit", Clutch and many of the other original Joes were taken
off
active duty. Shortly afterward, while on leave, Breaker, Clutch and Rock & Roll were nearly killed
when the Dreadnoks ran their car off the
road.
They captured the Dreadnok named Buzzer, and later recovered from their
injuries. Clutch
returned to the field many times despite being off active duty. He was
one of the many Joes to participate in the invasion of the
Cobra-controlled
town of Springfield. Shortly after that battle, Clutch led a small
group
of Joes into Argentina to assist a former Nazi who claimed he knew the
location of a crashed bomber filled with poison gas. Clutch found it
difficult
to lead the mission after remembering the horrors his grandmother had
gone
through at the hands of the Nazis as a young Jewish woman in Germany.
While
Clutch's team protected the Nazi from Israelis who wanted him dead,
another
team of Joes found and neutralized the poison gas, learning that he had
lied about what had occured, stole money and killed the plane's crew.
Clutch
told the Nazi that the deal was off. While the Joe's protected the man
from the Israelis, they left the man in the hands of the other Nazis
that
now knew of his betrayal. While leaving the Nazi's jungle retreat, the
Joes heard three gunshots from inside the home, but just kept walking.
Clutch's next assignment was to a small team of Joes who were testing
new
weapons for the team. During one such mission, the team was attacked by
Cobra and eventually repelled the attack. During the Cobra Island civil
war--which the Joes entered on the side of Serpentor--
Clutch drove the
AWE Striker that transported Hawk as he led
Joe forces.
Clutch's bad
luck on leave
continued when he once again unsuspectingly ran afoul of Cobra. He and
Rock & Roll drove to Broca Beach in New Jersey only to discover
that
the town was run by Cobra. The two Joes tried to escape but were
captured.
They were held prisoner in the town and brainwashed. They were
eventually
rescued, but they and the other Joes knew nothing of what Cobra had
done
to them. Once they were inside the Pit in Utah, Cobra activated
Clutch
and Rock & Roll's "programming," sending them into a "berserker
rage."
The two Joes overcame the brainwashing because, according to
Psyche-Out,
their morality overrode the programming.
From the very beginning of the G.I. Joe team Clutch integral part of
the
team and he stayed close to the original members. Many of his
subsequent
missions remain classified, but Clutch stayed on the Joe team until it
was disbanded in 1994. In the years following, Clutch brought his
skills
as a mechanic to the Indy Racing League circuit, earning more wins for
his drivers than any other mechanic in recent history. In 1996, the
Philadelphia
Naval Base was shut down, as far as the general public knew. In
reality,
one section of the base was still being used for top secret missions.
Clutch
began working there as a mechanic, though he sometimes missed the
action
of being part of the Joe team. After the Joe team was reinstated in
2001,
the Joes began using the naval base and Clutch joined the team in
fighting Storm Shadow when the ninja
infiltrated the
base. Clutch is now happy
to
be part of the team once again. He was one of the many Joes to take
part
in the battle against the forces of a revived Serpentor on Cobra
Island.
A short time later, Clutch was present for Cobra bombing of a
television
studio where Hawk was giving an interview, and later helped rescue
survivors
under the rubble. Clutch took part in a disastrous mission into the
Cobra-infiltrated town of New Moon, Colorado. After a surprise Cobra
attack, Clutch and the rest of his team barely made it out alive before
Cobra used planted explosives to level the town. The Joes were blamed
for the incident and all those involved were arrested by the cabal of
Generals known as the Jugglers, who began to take control of
the team to reign it in, if
not disband it altogether. Clutch was eventually
released along with his teammates, but they did not return to the Joe
team. Eventually, G.I. Joe's roster was cut down
to only a dozen Joes. After the remaining team members stopped a plot
by Cobra to unleash
the weapon known as the Tempest, and defeated a new threat, the Red
Shadows, the military again disbanded the team.
One year later, the Joe
team was reformed with a smaller roster of active members. Clutch,
like most former Joes, was made a reserve member of the new team.
Clutch was called back to the team to assist Jinx in infiltrating the
Tokyo headquarters of Hayatu Toba -- a Japanese businessman who was
secretly building an Army to topple his country's government. Though
the mission called for stealth
and subterfuge, the only Joes available to assist Jinx were Clutch,
Rock & Roll, Gung-Ho and Wild Bill
-- none of whom are noted for their stealth or
subtlety. Instead, they all posed
as obnoxious businessmen meeting with Toba and started to fight amongst
themselves in his office to distract security. They were soon captured
and learned that Toba's group was involved with Destro's forces,
represented by Armada. When Toba refused to
follow her orders, she killed him and started the coup without him. As
the rebel forces rolled through the streets of Tokyo, many of the
soldiers turned on each other. Budo had worked to subvert many of them
away from Toba's control, and they and the Joes put a stop to the
attempted coup. Clutch and his teammates decided to spend some extra
time in Tokyo after the mission, no doubt getting into trouble on their
own.
During the global conflict known as World War III, Clutch and Rock & Roll were sent to Israel to investigate Cobra activities. There, Clutch was reunited with Ibraham Efrati, the leader of the Mossad group he met while pursuing Otto Totenschadel years earlier. The trio met another group of Joes who were closely followed by Cobra's elite unit, The Plague. The Joes barely survived the battle that followed, but escaped. Clutch and Rock & Roll remained in Israel until the war was won.
Artwork: G.I. JOE #22 (cover) by Michael
Golden;
G.I. JOE #55 (interior) by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky; G.I. JOE
Battle Files #1 (interior) by Josh Blaylock
Appearances:
- G.I. JOE: #1, 3-10, 12, 14,
16-20, 22, 23,
27-33, 35,
46-48,
55,
59, 64, 74-76, 89-91, 93, 97-100, 109, 110, 145
- G.I. JOE Special Missions: #2
- G.I. JOE vol 2: #8, 9, 26, 28,
29, 33, 34,
35, 36
- G.I. JOE: Battle Files: #1
- Snake-Eyes:
Declassified: #6
- G.I. JOE: Special Missions: Tokyo
- G.I.
JOE:
Declassified: #1-3
- G.I. JOE: America's Elite: #29, 30, 36
(compiled with help from Bryon Hake)
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figure/filecard links at YoJoe.com :
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