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When I bought DC's BOY COMMANDOS #1 (my original copy that is, not the replacement I now own) back in the early '70s, I suppose I just assumed it was a one-off (a 'one-shot' as they're called today), because I never saw any further issues. It was only a couple of years or so ago that I learned there'd been a second ish, and it's only in the last week that I got around to buying it from eBay. That's it above, finally acquired a whopping 46 years after it first came out. I can now bathe in the satisfaction of owning a complete set, even if it consists of only two copies. (That's the first ish below, just to keep its 'sibling' company. Incidentally, the hands holding the guns aren't by either SIMON or KIRBY, but are a '70s addition to this cover.)
A caption at the end of the second story says that it's the last issue, which leads me to an interesting speculation. On sale around this time was MISTER MIRACLE #17, the second-last Kirby issue. Did DC know that Jack was considering returning to MARVEL when his contract ended, and decide there was no further point in promoting any minor comic mag by him? This was 1973 and Jack's last issue of KAMANDI went on sale around January 1976, but it would have been turned in a few months before that. Truth be told, none of Jack's DC mags had really set the world on fire, with Kamandi being his longest-running title, but the honeymoon period of JK and DC had been over for a good while.
Remember the DC house ads in advance of the release of Jack's first DC mag? 'The Great One Is Coming!' Well, the 'great one' came, stayed for a bit, then left, but hardly made much of a mark at the time. His comics certainly didn't have the impact on sales that DC had anticipated. It fell to others at a later date to more fully incorporate Jack's characters into the DC Universe and exploit them to (arguably) greater effect. Or am I reading far too much into it? It's likely that issue 2 of Boy Commandos had been prepared before the sales figures for 1 had come in, and when they did, DC saw that the demand wasn't great enough to continue the title, so a new end caption box was inserted at the last minute announcing the fact. Maybe it's as simple as that?
What do you think, Crivs?
A caption at the end of the second story says that it's the last issue, which leads me to an interesting speculation. On sale around this time was MISTER MIRACLE #17, the second-last Kirby issue. Did DC know that Jack was considering returning to MARVEL when his contract ended, and decide there was no further point in promoting any minor comic mag by him? This was 1973 and Jack's last issue of KAMANDI went on sale around January 1976, but it would have been turned in a few months before that. Truth be told, none of Jack's DC mags had really set the world on fire, with Kamandi being his longest-running title, but the honeymoon period of JK and DC had been over for a good while.
Remember the DC house ads in advance of the release of Jack's first DC mag? 'The Great One Is Coming!' Well, the 'great one' came, stayed for a bit, then left, but hardly made much of a mark at the time. His comics certainly didn't have the impact on sales that DC had anticipated. It fell to others at a later date to more fully incorporate Jack's characters into the DC Universe and exploit them to (arguably) greater effect. Or am I reading far too much into it? It's likely that issue 2 of Boy Commandos had been prepared before the sales figures for 1 had come in, and when they did, DC saw that the demand wasn't great enough to continue the title, so a new end caption box was inserted at the last minute announcing the fact. Maybe it's as simple as that?
What do you think, Crivs?
8 comments:
Kid, did you enjoy the comic? From what I understand, BC was DC's 3rd biggest seller during WW2. BC#4 (1943) may have been the first US comic with a full feature length story. It was about DDay....and came out in July 1943, a year before DDay!
I haven't had a chance to read #2 yet, S64, 'cos I'm working my way through other comics first, but I re-read #1 a few months back and enjoyed it. It was of its time, of course, but was an entertaining enough read.
I always thought that this was a strange reprint even for DC comics as it was 30 odd years old, what would a teenage want with them Then I remember 1977 is over 40 years ago so maybe those reprints from the 70s are looked at by today's kids as strange artifacts from bygone age in the same way I thought of this comic
I can only imagine that Boy Commandos were popular as back-up tales in the 25 cents comics, McS, hence DC thinking that a title all about the wartime team might prove popular. Remember though, that although strips in the UK about the war (Captain Hurricane, Steel Commando, Sgt. Rock, etc.,) were new (at the time), they were still wartime stories aimed at kids who had never experienced it firsthand. I suppose that US kids perhaps viewed the BCs in the same way. My old man was always going on about the war throughout the '60s, '70s. '80s, etc., so he must've viewed it as still 'recent', in the same way that WE view OUR youth as being not all that long ago.
My father was born in 1927 and he always referred to the Second World War as "this war" - like it was still happening!
I think to those who'd taken part in it, CJ, it still was - or at least yet seemed very recent.
We were still reliving WW2 right through to the 70s. We played WW2 in the school playground. As a result there is still a generation ( and maybe more than one) that is backward looking. When I now talk about WW2 my kids give me a really strange look.....
Otherwise I recall reading somewhere of a quote from a DC editor: No WW2 war comic ever lost money. On this basis I'm surprised the BC was for only 2 issues....
On another note, I recall that Agent Axis was a BC foe. Kirby forgot about this and brought him back as a Captain America GA baddie in the 60s. Roy Thomas also used Agent Axis in the Invaders. The first DC/ Marvel cross-over?
I think there was obviously a time when WWII comics didn't lose money, S64, but I'm not sure they're so popular now, otherwise they'd be loads of them on the shelves of comic shops. In the UK there are 4 monthly digest-sized war magazines (Commando) by D.C. Thomson (which obviously sell, though I suspect nowhere near as well as they once did), but that apart, I can't think of any other current WWII titles in either the UK or the US. Who knows, maybe their time will come again.
As for BC lasting only 2 issues, perhaps they were seen as just too whimsical for a '70s audience, at least in a mag of their own, though they seemed to be popular as back-ups in various DC Kirby titles in the '70s.
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