British Comics: Commando – The War Watch

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Posted by Tom MasonCategories:Editorials,Reviews
Like many others (and you know who you are), one of my favorite comic book shops is the Dollar Store, known by many different names and operated by several different and separate companies. But whether it's Dollar Tree, 99¢ Only Stores, Family Dollar or whatever, you can still occasionally find someone who's dumped a huge pile of bagged comics from the fringes of the industry.
You might think that no one would want them, but, aha, you'd be wrong. I want them.
I was there just the other day when I found a set of bagged comics, 3-in-a-bag, for $1. Two of the comics were from Amalgam (JLX #1 and Super Soldier #1), the mash-up venture between Marvel and DC back in mid-1990s.
The third was a 2008 reprint of a 2006 issue of Commando (#3951, I had to look it up on the Google), one of the venerable British comics series from DC Thomson.
But the reprint is published by Geddes & Grosset, a UK-based company that prints in India and doesn't have a website.
Curiously, there's no info on where these comics came from. Identifying marks on the bag are non-existent, so who knows where they were before they were bagged together or what clearinghouse did the bagging. All three were in perfect condition, so wherever they were – and the Amalgam ones were in storage for almost 15 years (!) – they were well cared for.
I'd read the Amalgam issues earlier, so I read Commando: The War Watch. It's a simple World War II tale of a family heirloom that dates to the 1800s and gets passed from person-to-person on both sides of the war because of unusual war-related events before it ends up, well, you can see where this is going. The ending will be no surprise to anyone who's read a dozen or so Robert Kanigher 1960s war stories from DC Comics, but for the intended audience, it's a fine story well told.
Although I can't get used to the typeset word balloons, the artwork is nice and clean. It's about on a par with a Gold Key comic from the 1960s, and I mean that in a good way. The storytelling is easy to follow and the battlefield scenes aren't in your face violent. The black and white printing adds to "The Good War" effect. This isn't a Saving Private Ryan view of war, more like an Audie Murphy one.
It would've been nice to see the writer and artist credited in the reprint, but Commando only recently started crediting its creators and the original printing of this issue didn't have them listed. That's a shame because I think there's no benefit to anyone in keeping credits a secret and I always like to know who's writing and drawing what I'm reading.
Commando's original format is digest-sized, with just two-three panels per page. This reprint version was clearly altered to fit the standard comic book size with headers and footers added to each page to compensate for the original's stubby-shaped artwork. It's not terribly distracting and as someone who's had to do that in the past, I appreciate the reasons for it.
Next time I'm at the Dollar Store, I'll be looking for subsequent issues. At 33¢ (US) for a 60+ page war comic, it's the bargain of the year. Now if only they'd do this with Judge Dredd…or The Beano…or…