The Commando "pocket library" "war" comic has reached sixty years of continuous publication and the celebrate has published four brand new issues to celebrate this achievement. If you order them direct from the publisher they come with four prints of artwork from the cover.
Commando was first launched in June 1961 was an immediate success and part of an industry wide plethora of comics and stories devoted mostly to the Second World War which was far more recent in those days than now and many children had relatives who had fought in that brutal conflict.
There were competitors and these were by the time I had started buying them 1/- each and each story from Commando and it's rivals was complete in each issue. there were practically no continuing characters so there was no guarantee the heroes would return alive.
In my view even as a kid they were far superior to the albeit entertaining American rivals Sgt Fury and His Howling Commando's or Sgt Rock so much more realistic. War is a nasty bushiness and people die, these comics reflected that brutality even though the plucky Brits always managed to fight off the Krauts, Eyties and the Nips as we grew up referring to the Germans, Italians and Japanese.
All the other companies books eventually faded away leaving Commando as the sole survivor of a genre that had once dominated the British comics scene. These comics were also covering other conflicts than just the two world wars and there were stories about the Napoleonic Wars, Roman legions and even science fiction thrown in!
Commando has long surpassed the 5,000 issue mark and these anniversary issues are numbered #5447 to #5450 and include a sequel to the very first issue in Die Or Walk! Three of these are set in WW2 but one After 2045 is "science fiction".
Commando Comics are available from: commandocomics.com
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