Preview: ‘Rat Pack: Convict Commandos’ — Classic Brit War Tales Never Done Better

by Richard Bruton

More classic action from the pages of classic British war comic Battle Action now, as we join the band of rogues and villains in Rat Pack for epic wartime action…

One of the things that both classic Brit ’70s comics Battle and Action did so well was ‘borrow’ ideas from everywhere. Hookjaw took the whole shark thing in the <ahem> wake of Jaws and ran with it, and Rat Pack was another one, taking its lead from so many great 70s war movies – I’m thinking Kelly’s Heroes and particularly The Dirty Dozen, where the heroes were nasty, a bunch of colourful rejects, always at odds with them in charge, doing things their way, damn the rules. Cue loads of violence and a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

The Rat Pack’s co-creator, Gerry Finley-Day was a huge fan of The Dirty Dozen and proceeded to steal the idea whilesale and give 70s comic readers his own version, with co-creator Carlos Ezquera giving us the sort of fabulous visuals that sets his work apart from everyone else. So, the Rat Pack is that classic an oh so simple idea – take a group of rogues and misfits and turn them into a crack military team, and then set about telling the stories of their action-packed missions. Here it was Major Taggart springing a group of military prisoners – deserters, thieves, looters – from their prisons and shaping them into a special ops team to carry out the sort of missions that no one else can. Yes, it’s pure cliche when you summarise it like that, but in the hands of first Finley-Day and Ezquerra and then Hebden, Bradbury, and Kennedy, we got some of the finest tales of anti-hero war comics.

But back in the ’70s, where comics traditionally had featured us Brits being clean of jaw and full of noble intentions, Rat Pack was something different (well, in comics at least). And it worked a treat, the strip was a huge hit, even after Finley-Day and Ezquerra passed it on to other writers and artists.

Which is where Convict Commandos comes in – with the writing of Alan Hebdon and the art of both Eric Bradbury and Cam Kennedy giving us everything you could possibly want from a war comic. Loads of over-the-top action, with a small cast of characters with a dark edge to them being shuffled around the theatres of war for plenty of action-packed tales, fleshing out the various dodgy characters along the way, giving them more than just being that band of criminals too often at each others throats.

Garth Ennis, in his introduction to this volume, sums up what’s here in this volume as ‘Rat Pack’s finest hour.’ And I simply can’t argue with that.

Ennis particularly points to the longest storyline here, where the Rat Pack get to steal Hitler’s Train – yep, you can just imagine how much fun that one is, as the Rat Pack stumble from one calamity to another, as the train rumbles on. Drawn so beautifully by Bradbury, it’s a high point of the collection.

Yet again, The Treasury of British Comics brings a classic bit of Brit comics history back into print, giving you the perfect opportunity to get the same ridiculous thrills that a generation of ’70s Brit kids grew up on.