When Commando Gets Creepy: Judgement

So we've been looking at some of the times when British boys' war comic Commando decided to add a little supernatural into the mix. Well, for this final post we have two comics which apparently take their inspiration from Vault Of Horror. 

Each issue uses a framing device before going into individual stories, all of deal with bad people doing bad things.  Interestingly, the miscreants are all on the Allied side. 

Suffice it to say, at the end the hammer of judgement comes down hard.

Commando 5693: Nightmare Express (2023)

Four men are detailed to guard a train compartment. Strangely, for such an important the door isn't locked.  Temptation quickly proves too much and all four men step inside to find something terrifying.

Two airmen murder a comrade and all seems well until he comes back to fly with them one last time. 

A soldier robs the wrong shop. 

A shipwrecked sailor is rescued by a lifeboat from a civilian liner. A liner that sank decades ago. 

(My personal favourite out of the three0

I am confident that there is no way this would have been published in the 1970s because bloody hell, this is straight out of one of the darker Twilight Zone episodes. 

Like a lot of Commando stories, it ends with the bad guys getting their karmic reward; but in most stories, the villain dies and that's it. Here it looks like that's only the start.  

  

Commando 5795:  Strange Frequencies (2024)

 Three members of a medical team are sent out into the desert to check on an observation post. They arrive to find a collection of graves and a single dead body.  What happened; disease or something worse?

 Struggling to get the radio to work, a signal finally comes through from somewhere and for each of the three, the voice on the radio reveals secrets that nobody should even know, sparking visions of a grim end.

Bullying RSM Curtis meets a soldier he tormented one final time. 

 Nurse Mary Barclay hatches a plan to "acquire" a valuable necklace. Shame she also acquires the curse that goes with it.  

Captain Marlowe had a little help to get promoted to an officer. Now he has to face the consequences.  

I loved "Strange frequencies" and the way the threads tie together right at the end. The atmosphere is spooky and, I think, easily one of the best Creepy stories Commando ever did. 

   Like "Nightmare Express" this is a tale of ghastly people running into something unearthly before revealing that everybody is trapped in something darker still. 

  

 Interestingly, considering that Commando is a war comic, the war itself is only vaguely in the background. 

Anyway, that's enough Commando posts for the time being.  

That's All Folks

When Commando Gets Creepy: Ancient Nightmares.

 Hello and welcome to another post about British war comic Commando and the times it got all Weird War Tales.

 (Probably not that often but when you've racked up nearly 6000 issues,  eventually  you end up with enough material for a clutch of blog posts)

 So far we've covered ghosts, haunted artefacts, tanks with a mind of their own, lethal curses and that time a forest started eating people. (See previous posts for more details) 

 I was originally going to finish this series off with one last post but had a bit of a think and really, I would be better off splitting things up.  Makes it easier to write if nothing else. 

Commando 5589: Night of the Gorgons (2022)

1943 A fighter sweep over one of the Dodecanese Islands ends in a nightmare when the Spitfires return to base  and one of the pilots has, somehow, turned to stone. His friend decides to join a commando team investigating the island, expecting some sort of Nazi super weapon. What he finds is an awful lot of statues and a mysterious woman...

 You will be relieved to hear that yes, there is a mid-air fight between a winged Gorgon and a Spitfire. I think we can all agree that this is awesome. 

  The rest is also a good read that takes an out-there idea and runs with it. The way the commandos are gradually picked off is pure horror-film territory. The malevolent Melania Mandrapilias is a memorable villainess and makes a nice change from the usual Nazi brutes. 

Somebody on the editorial team must have liked her as well because, for what may be the first time ever, a Commando villain made a second appearance. 

Commando 5689: Dawn of the Gorgons (published 2023)

 

 A British carrier on the way to participate in the Suez operation runs into -  you guessed it, a deserted ship filled with really good statues. Soon commandos start dying horribly as a pissed off Gorgon gets revenge on the world.  

 What I like about both these stories is that they are set during military campaigns well outside the norm. The ill-fated Dodecanese operation for the first, the Suez crisis in the second. 

 (Hmm, I wonder if the writers deliberately picked operations that were massive failures. )

Also, commandos vs gorgons is a cool idea that somebody needs to make a film about.  Preferably not the Asylum because we all know how that's gonna go. 

I think I preferred the artwork for "Night.." but that's a minor quibble. "Dawn..." is a worthy sequel and I wouldn't mind seeing a third installment. 

Moving eastward and somewhere much, much colder and we get...

  

Commando 5729: Baba Yaga (Published 2024)

 After a Russian T-34 is destroyed by a King Tiger Ivan, the lone, injured survivor meets a beautiful woman. After some reluctance, she agrees to take him to the cabin in the forest where she lives with her sisters. In exchange for performing 3 tasks, they will heal him and then help him fight the Germans. 

  Initially alarmed by the cabin having a whole load of skulls on stakes outside, Ivan takes on the tasks, even if he can't quite understand the reasoning.  There's also something a little odd about the 3 sisters...

Another interesting issue. It's deliberately set up to follow the structure of old folk tales, especially Russian folklore. The 3 sisters, the 3 tasks, the way it all pays off at the end when our hero uses what he learned.  I also think Baba Yaga is aimed at an older readership, who are aware of the old myths about a forest dwelling witch and also why a King Tiger is a big deal.

So to sum up, 3 Commando issues that are worth checking out if you want your war stories with a healthy does of weird shit. 

I have maybe one more post to go so see you next time.

That's All Folks.