A LIFE IN BOOKS

 The first episode of my new You Tube series...a life in books

The Red Beret digital version available....

 Digital copies of my latest Commando title, The Red Beret can be picked up HERE

Commando #5469: The Red Beret

The tattered red beret sat upon Major John Bell's head. He and his crack team of paratroopers were on a suicide mission to destroy a bridge to clear the way for D-Day operations. They all knew the risks, they all knew that they might not come back -- but they were brave and their determination was like no other! So why did Bell wear a tattered red beret when his men donned their helmets? As a symbol of survival and luck he hoped would take them to victory!

Achtung!!!! The History of Commando Comics

 Gott im Himmel!

If you think the days of British action comics are long gone, that our square jawed heroes have been replaced by America's costumed crusaders then you are only partly correct in your assessment.

For whilst the glory days of the boy's adventure comic, the days when titles like Battle, Warlord, Hotspur and Victor dominated newsagent's display stands, may have been consigned to history there is one series of adventure comics that are still being published. Commando Comics, published by D C Thomson, first saw print back in 1961 and today more than 60 years later there series is still going strong with four new titles being published every two weeks.

'I've lost count of the number of people who, over the years, have told me they learned all their German vocabulary from Commando. They freely admit that Commando hasn't taught them much of the language but every single one has started the list of words they know with "Achtung!' We're Glad we've done our bit for international understanding.' Calum Laird, one time editor of the Commando series, writing in his introduction to the Carlton Books Commando collection, Achtung.

Though it's not all been stereotypical Germans - Over the decades Commando stories have featured both good and bad German characters, as well as characters from all the other nations that took part in the conflicts featured in the stories. And whilst it is true that the majority of stories have been set around World War II, it is not always the case. Over the years there have been First World War stories, Cold War stories, science fiction stories, westerns, stories of adventures with pirates on the high seas, and lately there have been stories set on the Home Front. The latter series has been very well received - I felt that The Land Army Marches written by Iain McLaughlin with artwork from Vincente Alcazar was a particularly fine piece of storytelling that made the most of the comic book medium.

Each Commando title is a digest sized publication that contains a complete 63 page story, told in panels of striking black and white artwork.

When Commando was first launched back in the 1960's the competition was fierce. Fleetway were the main competitor with it's popular War Picture Library books, and D C Thompson knew they didn't have the budget to compete in terms of the production values of their rival, and so it was a conscious effort to make the Commando covers far more lurid, far more exciting that those of War Picture Weekly. The Commando covers were like a British answer to the American pulp style art and the storytelling within was equally pulpish - high concept plots with steely eyed heroes.

The true origin of Commando though, indeed of war comics in general goes back much further - during the late 19th century the Religious Tract Society began publishing the Boy’s Own Paper, featuring exciting stories of daring and adventure, with strong Christian moralistic undertones. The ‘Boys paper’ was born, and was very much seen as an educational tool for inspiring good young citizens for society and the empire. The publication had a slew of imitators including D C Thomson's first steps into the field with 1921's, Adventure - the paper ran for 1878 issues between 1921 and 1961 when it was merged into Rover.

'Although I’m delighted by it, I don’t know for sure what to put the title’s longevity down to. I think that because each story is so long we concentrate on plot more than visuals (though never at the expense of the visuals) and this gives the finished article a weight that the comics couldn’t. There’s a lot of reading in a Commando so if you’re a story fan, it gives you just what you need.'  Previous series editor, Calum Laird, talking to The Tainted Archive back in 2009

'COMMANDO saw off all its competitors simply because of the quality of its stories, artwork and general presentation, all of which were superior to the likes of WAR PICTURE LIBRARY, BATTLE, WAR AT SEA, AIR ACE and so on. But I have no idea how it has survived. A loyal, hardcore readership? Probably.' Writer, David Whitehead talking to the Tainted Archive in 2009.

The Commando books are now iconic and their contribution to pop culture can not be overestimated - there have been exhibitions of the comic's artwork held at the National Army Museum and stories about the series have been featured many times in the national press - 

'Mein Gott! Donner und Blitzen! Can it really be true? The Commando comic has just turned 60.  For  more than half a century, schoolboys have thrilled at these action-packed wartime stories.' 

The Daily Mail announced when the title turned fifty years old back in 2011. That same newspaper would make a big fuss in 2013 when it was announced that Commando Comics would now be printed in Germany. That article, written in the Mail's usual bombastic style can be found HERE.

And now decades later Commando remains the only British war comic still in production, and although sales may not match the incredible circulation figures of the 1960's and 70's they are still healthy - servicing a loyal core readership and hopefully gaining new readers from time to time. The title is still published in print (ask at your local newsagents) but it has been joined by a digital edition which can be read on tablets, eReaders and computer screens.

I have written two Commando titles myself, with several more in the pipeline...I am honoured to be a part of this long tradition of good old action adventure.

Long may they continue to be published.

Find the official Commando website HERE 

Find my interview with both David Whitehead and the previous editor of Commando HERE

Read David Whitehead's article on writing Commando Books HERE

The Red Beret by Gary Dobbs

 My latest title for Commando Comics is available in shops now, alongside three other all action stories - current titles are Survive Leningrad, I was a Nazi General, Flying High and my own story Red Beret. Commando have been publishing for 60 years with their first titles appearing way back in 1961.

I never fail to get a kick when I see an issue with my name on it - I've been reading the comic books since I was a snobby nosed kid and so actually being involved with the line feels mighty fine indeed.

My own particular effort which details a dangerous pre-D-Day mission to destroy a vital bridge is drawn by the talented Jaume Forns and housed within a moody cover drawn by Mark Harris.

The tattered red beret sat upon Major John Bell’s head. He and his crack team of paratroopers were on a suicide mission to destroy a bridge to clear the way for D-Day operations. They all knew the risks, they all knew that they might not come back —but they were brave and their determination was like no other!

So why did Bell wear a tattered red beret when his men donned their helmets? As a symbol of survival and luck he hoped would take them to victory!

 

Story: Gary Dobbs

Art: Jaume Forns

All issues are also available in digital editions.

Lord Peter Flint is back after nearly thirty years!!! Commando Comics brings back a classic character

To men of a certain age, those who grew up reading British adventure comics, the name of Lord Peter Flint will be a familiar one. The character, a kind of war-time James Bond, first appeared in the premier issue of Warlord comic way back in 1974 - I was eight years old at the time. The strip quickly became the flagship story with the comic even launching a Warlord club in which you, the reader, could join and become a Warlord agent - in the issue dated July 4th 1981 it cost a 30p postal order to join the top secret Warlord club and for this you would get a code book, a membership card and a rather spiffing badge.

Warlord Comic ran some great stories over the years - it was published weekly between 1974 and 1996 - and many characters became favourites - Union Jack Jackson, Killer Kane,  Major Heinz Falken and many others but Lord Peter Flint, Codenamed Warlord remained the centerpiece of the comic.



It was therefore great news to learn that Commando Comics, the UK's longest running comic series which has been publishing non-stop since 1961, recently brought the character back to action in the pages of its digest sized Commando books.


The return of Peter Flint, entitled Codename Warlord was published this August and was written by Iain McLaughlin, a scribe who in his younger days had been a fan of the character.


"The first issue of Warlord came out on a week when I was off school with a stinker of a cold. My dad bought me this new comic to cheer me up a bit - and also so he could read it himself. I read that issue of Warlord and I was hooked. After that, I read every issue for the next six or seven years. A huge part of what kept me reading was Codename Warlord with Lord Peter Flint. He was part James Bond, part Scarlet Pimpernel and completely brilliant. The scripts and the art came together to tell wonderful, gripping stories that stick in the memory even to this day. When I was asked to come up with ideas to bring Lord Peter Flint to the pages of Commando I leaped at the chance. Flint is a fantastic character with so much potential for the kind of fantastic adventure stories Commando is famous for. I hope the readers have as much fun reading Flint's return as I had writing it,"  Iain McLaughlin

 The re-birth was successful enough that a second book featuring the character, Codename Warlord: Ship of Fools was published only last month.

The welcome return of the character has been met with a strong response and Commando have revealed that other classic characters from its extensive archives will soon see print in the pages of Commando Comic - me, I'm eager to see the return of Union Jack Jackson and his Irish-American sidekick.

Tally Ho, Chaps!!!

The Comics at War Part One: The Early Days

Recently whilst reading the latest titles from DC Thomson's Commando Comics, a series of titles that have been running for longer than I've been alive, I was struck the realization that war stories have been a staple of comic books for as long as the medium's existed. It is said that at any point in time, on some foreign field, the British Army is fighting one war or other, and I suppose in many ways British history has been shaped by events on the battlefields. From Lionhearts crusades to the current struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, stories have echoes down the centuries and inspired poets, novelists, storytellers of all kinds.

So it would seem natural that children's literature, the forerunner of the modern comic book, would turn its attention to war stories with early titles such as Boy's Own Paper, and Halfpenny Marvel churning out tales set during the Crimean and Napoleonic Wars. It is interesting to note that early war comics and story papers concentrated on war at sea which reflected Britain's pride in having a Navy that then truly ruled the waves.

War stories were part of a mix of tales that included sport, crime, western and adventure but by the end of the Nineteenth Century, with the country gripped by the wars against the Boer, comics and story papers started to present patriotic tales with these struggles as the backdrop. Fictional stories would sit alongside reports of true accounts of heroism and gradually comic books and the story papers became part of the national consciousness.

'

The real boom started in the mid 19th Century when the literacy rates were rising in Britain thanks to the sterling work done by social reformers, and when William Gladstone, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, abolished duty on paper mass market publishing was able to come about. A number of entrepreneurs turned their attentions to the growing boys fiction market. Kids across the country, unable to find X-Boxes or Playstations in the shops, were eager for entertainment. Cheap fiction was hugely in demand by working class children who could not afford to buy books - Alice in Wonderland for instance which was first published in 1865 cost 6 shillings. This was a third of the average industrial worker's weekly wage. However children could manage a penny a week and this brought in the era of what would become to be known as the penny dreadfuls.

A popular title of this period was The Boys of England which sold, at its peak, around 250,000 copies a week but given that each copy wold be shared by around nine different readers it was estimated that its readership was more than two million.

Edwin Brent started his Newsagents Publishing Company in 1866 and as well as being responsible for the aforementioned The Boys of England, realized that there was a market for more salacious reading material, and he started churning out the first penny dreadfuls. These magazines were, in effect, part work novels which subjects that covered murder, street violence and other lurid subjects. Brett's published, The Wild Boys of London in 1866, which was a tale of juvenile street criminals in the capital city and this title became particularly notorious. It contains violence, mentions of nudity and a flagellation (torture) scene and it sold like the proverbial hot cakes and started the boom in the penny dreadfuls,  which would soon come to the attention of politicians.

'The malign influence of the "bloods" (penny dreadfuls) was creeping not only into the houses of the poor, neglected and untaught, but into the largest mansions; penetrating into religious families  and astounding careful parents with its frightful issues.'  Lord Shaftsbury, speaking in the House of Commons in 1878.

A moral backlash followed and fearing that soon issues would be forced out of publication, many publishers started to clean up their act. In 1879, the Religious Tract Society first published, The Boy's Own Paper, which would go onto become one of the most enduring and popular of boy's story papers. The first issue featured sport stories, adventure stories and for the first time in a boy's magazines, stories about the perceived glories of warfare. There were also features on hobbies, nature and health. One story, From Powder Monkey to Admiral, started in the early issues and across its run told of how an ordinary boy from the working classes joined the Navy and gradually worked his way to the highest rank. This may seem unlikely but, in fact, history proves otherwise and the story was very much influenced by the life of Admiral Edward Hopson, a boy of humble stock who did indeed attain the rank of Admiral.

War stories then were a stable of The Boy's Own Paper from its early issues. Largely these stories told of The Crimean War (1853-1856) or the Napoleonic Wars but there were stores that dealt with the French (1793 - 1815) and the Indian Mutiny of 1857. All of these stories were driven by a feeling of patriotism and national pride, but did not always seen things from the British perspective. One story, The Drummer Boy (1881) told of a yound boy conscripted into the French army for Napoleon's ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812.

In 1880 another titles was published. The Union Jack was billed as a magazine of 'healthy, stirring tales of adventure by  Land and Sea for Boys'. It was priced at one penny and it was hugely popular and offered strong competition to the Boy's Own Paper. Most of the stories were set in previous wars but the magazine did become the first title to set stories on campaigns which were then ongoing. In 1882 the magazine published a story that looked at the Sudan Campaign. Readers lapped the magazine up but after 129 weekly issues it ceased publication. However by this time there was no shortage of for British readers and new titles were launched at a speedy rate. These magazines, lavishly illustrated,  were all text based stories, and the dawn of the first true comic was still some way off but it was these magazines that were very much the parents of the modern comic book.

Commando Comics Commemorate Armistice

The Commando series of comic books have been going strong since 1961  - something quite unique in British comics. Sure there are some titles that have been going longer - The Beano  springs to mind, but the Commando comics are the only adventure series to enjoy such a long run. Noted for their distinctive 7 × 5½ inch, 63 page format the Commando comics  have remained more popular than many other British war comics, and some would say British comics in general, despite their simplistic stories and black and white artwork, with only the covers in colour.

The series continues to prosper and these days digital editions are released alongside the regular books, taking the series into a future un-imagined when the first title rolled off the presses all those years ago.

This month Commando are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, with four new titles in the shops now that are based around that momentous day when the guns fell silent.

Titles are War Bus by George Low with artwork by Manuel Benet

Danny's War by Iain McLaughlin with artwork by Dafeo and Morhain

Stolen Glory by C G Walker with artwork by Carmoa

Front Line Fear by Robert Smith with artwork by Janek Maysiak

All are available now priced £2.25

Danny's War, although a stand alone story, is part of a five part series with the subtitle, The Weekes War - the Weekes family are all involved in the Great War and each issue will presumably centre on on a different member of the family, with the first telling the story of Danny Weekes, a trench-hardened Captain. The second and third story featuring the Weekes family will be out November 15th 2018.

Fall in: New Commando titles

There are four new Commando books on sale this week - titles are The Cutting Edge, Agents at War, Sea-Strike and The Pact.

Commando is Britain’s longest serving war comic, publishing stories of action and adventure since 1961. These stories, with their mixture of excitement, danger and courage under fire, and the dynamic artwork that accompanies them, have won Commando a loyal readership over the decades.

Lately the series has been on something of a roll - I've especially enjoyed many of  the Home Front set stories. These really bringing a freshness to the long running series.

This week I especially enjoyed, The Pact by Heath Ackley, which centered on the Indian Army which during the second world war was the largest volunteer force in history. Their contribution to the war effort is often overlooked so it was especially good to see Commando focusing a story on the Indian troops.

Other titles available now:

Achtung - Commando Comics

Gott im Himmel!

If you think the days of British action comics are long gone, that our square jawed heroes have been replaced by America's costumed crusaders then you are only partly correct in your assessment.

For whilst the glory days of the boy's adventure comic, the days when titles like Battle, Warlord, Hotspur and Victor dominated newsagent's display stands, may have been cosigned to history there is one series of adventure comics that are still being published. Commando Comics, published by D C Thomson, first saw print back in 1961 and today more than 50 years later there series is still going strong with four new titled being published every two weeks.

'I've lost count of the number of people who, over the years, have told me they learned all their German vocabulary from Commando. They freely admit that Commando hasn't taught them much of the language but every single one has started the list of words they know with "Achtung!' We're Glad we've done our bit for international understanding.' Calum Laird, one time editor of the Commando series, writing in his introduction to the Carlton Books Commando collection, Achtung.

Though it's not all been stereotypical Germans - Over the decades Commando stories have featured both good and bad German characters, as well as characters from all the other nations that took part in the conflicts featured in the stories. And whilst it is true that the majority of stories have been set around World War II, it is not always the case. Over the years there have been First World War stories, Cold War stories, science fiction stories, westerns, stories of adventures with pirates on the high seas, and lately there have been stories set on the Home Front. The latter series has been very well recieved - I felt that The Land Army Marches written by Iain McLaughlin with artwork from Vincente Alcazar was a particularly fine piece of storytelling that made the most of the comic book medium.

Each Commando title is a digest sized publication that contains a complete 63 page story, told in panels of striking black and white artwork.

When Commando was first launched back in the 1960's the competition was fierce. Fleetway were the main competitor with it's popular War Picture Library books, and D C Thompson knew they didn't have the budget to compete in terms of the production values of their rival, and so it was a conscious effort to make the Commando covers far more lurid, far more exciting that those of War Picture Weekly. The Commando covers were like a British answer to the American pulp style art and the storytelling within was equally pulpish - high concept plots with steely eyed heroes.

The true origin of Commando though, indeed of war comics in general goes back much further - during the late 19th century the Religious Tract Society began publishing the Boy’s Own Paper, featuring exciting stories of daring and adventure, with strong Christian moralistic undertones. The ‘Boys paper’ was born, and was very much seen as an educational tool for inspiring good young citizens for society and the empire. The publication had a slew of imitators including D C Thomson's first steps into the field with 1921's, Adventure - the paper ran for 1878 issues between 1921 and 1961 when it was merged into Rover.

'Although I’m delighted by it, I don’t know for sure what to put the title’s longevity down to. I think that because each story is so long we concentrate on plot more than visuals (though never at the expense of the visuals) and this gives the finished article a weight that the comics couldn’t. There’s a lot of reading in a Commando so if you’re a story fan, it gives you just what you need.'  Previous series editor, Calum Laird, talking to The Tainted Archive back in 2009

'COMMANDO saw off all its competitors simply because of the quality of its stories, artwork and general presentation, all of which were superior to the likes of WAR PICTURE LIBRARY, BATTLE, WAR AT SEA, AIR ACE and so on. But I have no idea how it has survived. A loyal, hardcore readership? Probably.' Writer, David Whitehead talking to the Tainted Archive in 2009.

The Commando books are now iconic and their contribution to pop culture can not be overestimated - there have been exhibitions of the comic's artwork held at the National Army Museum and stories about the series have been featured many times in the national press - 

'Mein Gott! Donner und Blitzen! Can it really be true? The Commando comic has just turned 50.  For half a century, schoolboys have thrilled at these action-packed wartime stories.' 

The Daily Mail announced when the title turned fifty years old back in 2011. That same newspaper would make a big fuss in 2013 when it was announced that Commando Comics would now be printed in Germany. That article, written in the Mail's usual bombastic style can be found HERE.

And now decades later Commando remains the only British war comic still in production, and although sales may not match the incredible circulation figures of the 1960's and 70's they are still healthy - servicing a loyal core readership and hopefully gaining new readers from time to time. The title is still published in print (ask at your local newsagents) but it has been joined by a digital edition which can be read on tablets, eReaders and computer screens.

Long may they continue to be published.

Find the official Commando website HERE 

Find my interview with both David Whitehead and the previous editor of Commando HERE

Read David Whitehead's article on writing Commando Books HERE