Commando

A few months ago saw the first of two stories by me for 2024’s Commando comic – “Fallen Sabre”, a tale set during the Korean Air war – and this week I’m following that up with a second jet age action thriller that takes place decades later. Issue #5779 of D.C. Thompson’s long-running war comic series is “Pressure Point”, a story that pits two Royal Air Force pilots against a deadly plot engineered by the KGB.

In the darkest days of the Cold War, the RAF’s interceptor crews lived on a knife-edge, knowing that every alert could be the harbinger of nuclear Armageddon, risking their lives to meet the ever-present threat of Soviet attack – but for one beleaguered Lightning jet pilot, the intense pressure will push him beyond endurance and into a fatal confrontation that could spark World War III!

For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, first published in 1961. Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format, each featuring a single, complete 63-page story – two all-new tales and two reprints. Commando carries on the tradition of action-packed adventure comics with wartime dramas in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.

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The striking cover for “Pressure Point” is by Keith Burns (Iron Cross, Out of the Blue), with interior art by Esteve Polls (Fronteras, Mega-City Noir). For this story, I wanted to go back to the height of the Cold War and pit RAF Lightnings against their Soviet adversaries like the Tu-95 Bear, and build a plot around the high-pressure environment that NATO’s interceptor pilots faced on a daily basis in the 1970s (and still do today!) At one point, the editorial team floated the idea of setting the story during the Battle of Britain, but I convinced them this tale needed to be told under the shadow of nuclear war.

One of my inspirations for this story was “Cheerio Ivan“, this terrific painting by Alex Hamilton, depicting a pair of F6 Lightnings from No.74 Squadron intercepting a Tu-95 – for more about this piece, click here. As always, there’s a bit of dramatic license in my story, but once again D.C. Thompson have given me the opportunity to write about fast jets and my favourite bits of military history; sharp-eyed readers may note that some of the characters in the story have names referencing famous manufacturers of British military aircraft. Thanks to the Cold War Jet Experience team at RAF Hendon, Richard Pike (The Lightning Boys), Chris Sandham-Bailey (Cold War Jets) and Aeroplane Icons for their works of reference, which came in very useful on this script.

“Pressure Point” and the rest of this month’s Commando issues are out now at all good newsagents; for more about this comic, follow this link or go here to visit the official Commando website. You can also check out details of the other Commando stories I’ve written here.

I’ve been doing some more comics writing recently, including work on tie-in strips for the classic Gerry Anderson series Stingray, but 2024 will also feature a pair of all-new stories by me for D.C. Thompson’s long-running war comic series Commando – the first of these is issue #5761 “Fallen Sabre” on sale today, an action-packed tale of aerial jet combat inspired by a series of real events…

During the fierce fighting of the air war in Korea, both allied and communist forces were desperate to gain an edge in battle – Soviet-built MiG-15s duelled with American F-86 Sabres in the skies known as “MiG Alley” – and they would stop at nothing to capture an enemy aircraft intact!

For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, first published in 1961. Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format, each featuring a single, complete 63-page story – two all-new tales and two reprints. Commando carries on the tradition of two-fisted, action-packed adventure comics with wartime dramas in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.

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Once again, Neil Roberts has created another amazing cover for “Fallen Sabre“, with sterling work on the interior art by Paolo Ongaro. Last year, during a visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio, I was able to visit the Korean War Gallery and see a real Sabre and MiG-15 up close, and it’s been great to tell a story featuring these classic jets. You can see more about them at the museum’s website here.

As noted, this storyline is based on a real incident that took place in October 1951 during the Korean War, when an F-86 was shot down by a North Korean MiG and crash-landed inside enemy territory; the NK military and their allies in the Soviet Union were desperate to learn the secrets of the Sabre, which at the time was the only aircraft that could match their frontline MiG-15 – and so a high-stakes recovery operation went into action, with both sides fighting over this lost jet.

For dramatic license, I took a few liberties, but as with several of my other Commando comic stories, “Fallen Sabre” features elements of my favourite bits of Cold War Jet Age military history, and writing it allowed me to indulge my love for ‘fast iron’!

I must give a big thank-you to my good friend Michael Clarke, who brought the story to my attention (one of the characters in the comic is named after him), Ralph Wetterhahn for his article in Air & Space Magazine and Mark Felton, who produced this excellent short video (at left) which details the events that inspired my fictionalized version.

For more about “Fallen Sabre”, follow this link or visit the official Commando website. You can also check out details of the other Commando stories I’ve written here – and keep watching the skies for my next story “Pressure Point”, a Cold War-era tale coming later this year.

2023 has been a great year for expanding my experience of writing comics, with the Rivers of London: Here Be Dragons miniseries published this past summer. But I couldn’t miss an opportunity to do another story for Commando, my sixth for D.C. Thompson’s long-running war comic series – and out today is issue #5707, a Cold War-era story set during the early years of the Space Age entitled “Duel in the Dark”…

In the early years of the Space Race, as the United States of America and the Soviet Union challenge one another for dominance of the ‘High Frontier’, two Air Force astronauts find themselves trapped in a dying space capsule when an out-of-control Russian weapon threatens to spark World War III…

For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, first published in 1961. Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format, each featuring a single, complete 63-page story – two all-new tales and two reprints. Commando carries on the tradition of two-fisted, action-packed adventure comics, with wartime dramas in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.

The cover for “Duel in the Dark” is another great piece of work by Neil Roberts, with interior art by Gary Welsh.

I’d been kicking around the idea of pitching a space age Commando story for a while, after reading about the aborted space programs of the US Air Force from the late 1950s and early 1960s – specifically the Dyna-Soar spaceplane and the “Blue Gemini” and Manned Orbital Laboratory. At the time, the USAF were developing their own military space projects alongside the civilian NASA agency, born out of the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, who at that time were the world’s only space powers.

Based on NASA’s two-man Gemini space capsules, the plans for the so-called Blue Gemini were to create a larger, modified version of the craft for USAF operation – perhaps, as some observers suggested, one that might eventually be equipped with weapons! In tandem, the USAF were working on the Manned Orbital Laboratory (or MOL), a small space station that purported to be a base for low gravity science experiments – but this was the cover for the MOL’s true mission as a space observation platform, from which America could spy on the USSR. Russia also had its own military space projects in development, including the Almaz, an armed platform designed to destroy enemy satellites in orbit, which was allegedly live-fire tested in space in the 1970s.

Perhaps for the better, Blue Gemini, the MOL and the Dyna-Soar projects never went the distance, cancelled when it became clear that unmanned spy satellites could fulfill the same missions for a fraction of the cost – and the high frontier of space did not (at least for now) turn into another Cold War battleground, with many of the astronauts trained for the project transferring over to the early Space Shuttle program at NASA.

I was inspired by watching the brilliant alternate-history space drama series For All Mankind (currently in its 4th season on Apple TV+) and I returned to my original idea for a story. My Commando comic posits a different take on real events, where the US and Soviet military space programs continued onward, leading to the deadly confrontation that takes place in “Duel in the Dark“.

Although the story is fiction, I tried to draw from reality wherever I could – for example, the scene where KGB agents secretly record their conversation with the American astronauts and run out of tape is based on a moment that actually happened to some of NASA’s Apollo mission crewmen. I took a few dramatic liberties to make the narrative flow, but in the writing of this comic I had a great time delving into the history of these lost space endeavours and I hope that shines through in the story.

If you’d like to know more about these programs, check out this Discovery Channel documentary on YouTube. For more in-depth detail, I recommend reading The Dorian Files Revealed from the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance and Bill Rose’s Secret Projects: Military Space Technology, both of which were invaluable resources while researching this story.

For more about “Duel in the Dark”, follow this link or go here to visit the official Commando website. You can also check out details of the other Commando stories I’ve written here; and I’m pleased to say I’ll be back with more Commando adventures in 2024 – keep an eye on this blog for further information…

I’ve penned another script for an issue of D.C. Thompson’s long-running war comic series Commando, and #5531 “Old Dogs” is on sale today, with a story that once again highlights my love for classic military jets – taking the lead this time is the venerable English Electric Canberra, the Dassault Mirage 50 and a few other examples of contemporary airpower…

During the mission known as ‘Operation Folklore’, the Air Ministry knew they had to box clever if they wanted to beat the invading Argentinians out of the Falkland Islands. Flying an unarmed Canberra under Chilean colours, they would recon the enemy without arousing suspicion… But when the pair operating the aircraft is a reckless young RAF pilot and the veteran officer who made his training a misery, the two will have to put aside their differences to face a ruthless killer willing to do anything for the bounty on their heads!

For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, first published in 1961. Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format, each featuring a single, complete 63-page story – two all-new tales and two reprints. Commando carries on the tradition of two-fisted, action-packed adventure comics, with wartime dramas in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.

The cover for “Old Dogs” is a terrific piece by the late Ian Kennedy, with interior art by Paolo Ongaro (who previously drew the first of my Commando stories, “Edge of the Sky“).

My original pitch for this story was set closer to the present day, but after discussions with the editorial team we decided to shift the events back a few decades to fit in with Commando‘s Falklands at 40 commemoration – so it is now part of a trio of issues marking the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, along with “Cold Conflict” by Colin Maxwell, with art by Klacik and a cover by Neil Roberts, and a reprint of the 1992 story “The Deadly Trade” by Ian Clark, with art by Carlos Pino and another great cover by Kennedy.

“Old Dogs” draws inspiration from a real life covert mission run by the RAF during the Falklands War that has only come to light in recent years. Operation Folklore was a clandestine series of reconnaissance flights where British aviators and unarmed PR9 Canberra photo-recon planes were secretly deployed to airfields in Chile, from where they could overfly the Falklands and report on the positions of the Argentinian invasion force. To conceal their presence, the RAF Canberras were repainted in the colours of the Chilean air force, the Fuerza Aérea de Chile. The story also has a bit of my own Commando comics continuity in it – the character of cocky Harrier jump-jet pilot Ryan Cross is the grandson of Aiden Cross, the pilot of the World War II Wellington bomber central to the plot of my previous story “J-For-Judas“.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a tip of the wings to author Rowland White, for his detailed article in Aeroplane Magazine and his excellent book Harrier 809 talking about Operation Folklore in greater depth – both are great reads and highly recommended for anyone interested in stories of modern military aviation.

For more about “Old Dogs”, follow this link or go here to visit the official Commando website. You can also check out details of the other Commando stories I’ve written here.

Your Local Newsagent. Present Day.

It’s been a good few months since my last crack at writing for Commando, publisher D.C. Thompson’s long-running war comic series, but today a new quartet of titles hits the stands and issue #5463 features “Target Tomcat”, a fast-paced 80’s aviation drama that is my unabashed love letter to the Grumman F-14.

Adversary pilots Shane Whitman and Ghazi Khadem will stop at nothing to achieve air superiority over the other — proving once and for all who the best top gun flyer is! What started out as an arrogant competition between rivals has turned into a quest for revenge and neither will stop until the other is dead. But with both men piloting the iconic F-14 Tomcat swing-wing, this is a duel that only the swiftest will survive…

A fantastic cover there from Keith Burns (who also did the honours for one of my previous Commando stories), “Target Tomcat” also features great interior art from Vicente Alcazar; as for the storyline, I was inspired by the thought of a “What If…?” scenario

In the 1980’s, the only two nations flying the swing-wing F-14 air superiority fighter were the USA and Iran, once former allies turned bitter adversaries. In the real world, their jets never faced off in the air – but my story pits Cat vs. Cat in the skies of the Middle East.

One of the things I love about writing for Commando is getting to indulge my inner aviation geek – and “Target Tomcat” allows me to feel the need for speed a little! I first encountered the iconic F-14 in the late 70’s as a kid when my dad and I built a certain Airfix kit…

…and of course the movie Top Gun cemented my enthusiasm for this big jet, but it was a good few years before I actually got to see one for real at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

Writing this story was great fun – my thanks to Kate McAuliffe and the editorial team for helping me knock it into good shape – and I plan to be back with another new Commando tale featuring some more iconic fast jets in the coming months!

For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, first published in 1961, and it celebrates it’s 60th anniversary this year! Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format, each featuring a single, complete 63-page story – two all-new tales and two reprints. Commando carries on the tradition of two-fisted, action-packed adventure comics, with wartime dramas in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.

For more details of “Target Tomcat”, follow this link or go here to visit the official Commando website. You can also check out details of the other Commando stories I’ve written at this link.

A fresh set of Commando comics hit the racks on January 9th, including Fog of War, a new story by me! This one is my hat-trick for Commando, and my second World War II era tale after the RAF and POW tale J-For-Judas.

I was inspired by some of my favourite war movies like Operation Crossbow and The Guns of Navarone to write a story about a special forces unit coming in to attack a remote enemy outpost – but rather than cast the Allies as the raiders, I flipped the script to make it a Nazi attack force raiding a British Army base…

The excellent and atmospheric cover for this issue comes from artist Keith Burns.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Commando, it’s one of Britain’s longest-running comics, celebrating it’s 59th birthday in 2020! Four issues are published every two weeks in a ‘digest’ format featuring a single, complete 63-page story. Commando is largely known as a throwback to “Boys-Own” adventure comics, packed with wartime drama in the tradition of movies like Where Eagles Dare or 633 Squadron.)

I’ve always been fascinated by the Sea Forts off the East Coast of England, and when I hit on the germ of an idea for Fog of War, I knew they would be the perfect location. I invented the fictional “Blackland Sands” fort, inspired by the real Shivering Sands Fort out in the Thames estuary.

The sea forts are an unusual piece of British military history, and you can still see them today – boat tours will take you around them, but sadly the rusted hulks are now too dangerous for visitors to go board. Here’s a Pathe newsreel from 1940 showing them in action…

I’m indebted to Bob Le-Roi, whose great website Fort Fanatics provided me with lots of useful information on the sea forts and their designer Guy Maunsell – the character of Royal Navy Captain LeRoi who appears in my story is named after him as a thank-you! I’d also be remiss if I didn’t also note that Fog of War owes a debt to one of my favourite action movies – as a nod, a couple of characters are named after actors from that film…

Go Here for more about Fog of War or visit the official Commando website.