Themes and stories
In the early years, all of Commando stories were set during the Second World War but in more recent decades, the comic has extended its range to a variety of conflicts including the First World War, the Cold War, Spanish Civil War, the Falklands, Korea, Vietnam, the Napoleonic Wars and conflicts in the medieval & ancient eras. A handful of issues have also dealt with fictional conflicts such as civil wars fought between imaginary states.[27]
Commando has also featured stories that have crossed into other genres such as horror, supernatural and science-fiction. There were early examples that, although set in the Second World War, incorporated these alternate genres in their stories such as #808 Haunted Skies (1974), #1180 Island of Horror (1977) and #1495 Out of the Future (1981). By the 1990s, Commando was featuring such genres in settings other than WW2. One example was issue #2774 Space Watch (1994), a science-fiction adventure about spaceship battles.
Since the mid-1970s, Commando has been also willing to portray conflicts through the viewpoint of soldiers on the opposite side. Issues such as #1350 Private Schultz's War (1979), #2598 Let Me Fly (1992), #2713 The Flying Musketeers (1993) and #2841 Hero of the Reich (1995) portrayed World War II from the experiences of German combatants. The issue #2574-Giant Duel (1992) was a story told from the perspective of Italian combatants in WW2. Issues #922 A Question of Honour (1975) and #1168 Thunderbolt (1977) featured respectful portrayals of Japanese combatants.
The majority of Commando issues have featured self-contained single stories but a small number have featured recurring characters in a series of multiple issues. One early example were characters Tom, Dick & Harry which featured in two issues released in the early 1960s. Beginning in 1991, a 5-issue series The Bomb Gang was released, featuring a group of misfits during WW2 tasked with bomb-disposal duties. Other series have included Ramsey's Raiders, a series inspired by the exploits of the SAS in North Africa during WW2 and Log of the Lairds, a generational series about an English family-line of special agents operating in the Middle East from the Great War to Operation Desert Storm.[28] Another series was Eagles of Battle, another generational series portraying the interlocked stories of several families in south-west Britain, spanning from the Roman era through to the Second World War.[29]
Despite the emphasis placed on action and adventure, the creators of Commando have placed great importance on achieving historical and technical accuracy as much as possible. The first editor of Commando, Charles Checkley, and his deputy Ian Forbes (who later became the second editor) both served in the Second World War. George Low remarked that Forbes always had a great respect for the Germans and that it was important that distinctions be made between fanatical Nazis and the ordinary German soldiers.[14][5]
In 2019, Commando began publishing stories with a supernatural or horror theme around Halloween each year. The stories maintain a war theme, but have featured zombies, vampires, werewolves and ghost stories.
