Back When Comics Were King (War Edition)

After my stint in the army in the yard of St Cuthbert’s infant school sometime in 1969 I was demobbed. Playing British and Germans upon moving to the big boy’s yard games like that were frowned upon so I got my war fix by reading such comics as the Commando series.

I use to buy them… well dad did! In Harding’s the Tool shop on Mill Lane market where they did a sideline in second hand books and comics.

Comics were big news as I grew up in the sixties and seventies every Monday I would run around the shop and I would have Topper, Wednesday in was The Beezer. Growing older my taste in comics changed to Victor and the Hotspur and war themed comics like Warlord, Battle, and the aforementioned Commando comics.

I was still buying and reading comics into my late teens but comics were changing with their popularity waning. There was no computers, nor gadgets the kids have been growing up with over the last 20 years, and back then, there was no telly to speak of so it was the comic to the rescue.

Titles by Commando Comics and War Picture Library concentrated on World War II mostly with their gun oh artwork on the cover in full smashing colour. They were easy reading with the cover a splash of colour but inside we had the standard 64 pages of black and white action.

The typical story would have a group of squaddies or a lone maverick succeeding against the odds, misfits who come good, patriotism, esprit de corps, and mateship. And laced up, inevitably, with a strong dose of xenophobia. The British and its allies would win the day has the turning of every page would lead to the expected grand finale, dead bad guys.

The Cold War open the door so a new enemy in Russia so sometimes the Germans were shown in a heroic light, usually with honourable Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe officers as the heroes. These tales were usually set on the Eastern Front to ensure the Germans were not shown killing their British or US enemies, the Russians being useful bogeymen. In the Far East, the Japanese were always seen as nasty badies who were always shown as merciless killers.