Broken Frontier

The latest quartet of Commandos are officially released today so here is the lowdown on them.

Commando No 4463 — The Improbable Mission

Second-Lieutenant Clement Cleveley of the Army Educational corps was a real boffin. A research student before the war, his mathematical speciality was probability theory…which didn’t really fit with anything in service life.
   As it turned out, that wasn’t quite the case which was how, instead of peacefully working at a classroom blackboard, Clement ended up charging around the desert dodging bullets with a bunch of crack SAS men.

Script: Alan Hebden
Art: Manuel Benet
Cover: Manuel Benet

Commando 4464 — Night And Fog

In Occupied Europe during the Second World War, dawn raids and midnight arrests became regular occurrences. They were feared by all the occupied peoples but soon they began to lose their ability to invoke terror.

That’s when an evil Nazi scientist decided that it wasn’t enough just to arrest people. He wanted to make them disappear into the…

Night and Fog

Script: Alan Hebden
Art: Morahin
Cover: Janek Matysiak (Not Ian Kennedy as it says in the credits grenade!)

Commando 4465 — Terror Zone

It started as a routine training patrol to test five top Aussie recruits — until their radio packed in and their NCO was killed in an accident.
   Then the dense New Guinea jungle became a terror zone as a bullet flew from out of the shadows. Someone — or something — was trying to kill them…but there wasn’t supposed to be an enemy for thousands of miles!

Introduction by Calum Laird, Commando Editor

Commando fans have always held Carlos Pino’s artwork in high regard, and rightly so. Here he brings the clammy jungle and a band of dishevelled Japanese to life in a few strokes of the pen and brush.
He’s giving form to a story by another long-serving Commando regular, Mike Knowles, whose plots have entertained for long enough to earn him a long-service medal and a well-deserved retirement.
   Phil Gascoine did a limited number of Commando covers, but every one was a little gem — even when he had to show an all but invisible figure in the background.

Terror Zone, originally Commando No 2673 (June 1993)

Script: Mike Knowles
Art: Carlos Pino
Cover: Phil Gascoine

Commando 4466 — The Lion’s Den

…that’s where safe-cracker turned secret agent Danny Gregg was headed, to wrest secrets from deep within a Nazi lair.

And he had to succeed. For Danny the reward would be a pardon from his criminal past. For Britain it could mean the difference between victory and defeat!

Introduction by Calum Laird, Commando Editor

   At the heart of every Commando story is just that, the story. And here Bernard Gregg, who wrote almost 100 Commando tales between 1972 and 1999, weaves a cracking plot. He takes the “safecracker given the chance to go straight” idea and gives it a fresh twist…or two.
   He’s ably complemented by artist Janek Matysiak whose detailed artwork and envelope-pushing layouts really bring things to life. Nearly 20 years later, Janek’s still working for Commando doing covers, but this black and white work is up there with the best of them.

The Lions Den, originally Commando No 2632 (January 1993)

Script: Bernard Gregg
Art: Janek Matysiak
Cover: Janek Matysiak