Review by Luke Williams
Rebellion has been mining its vast archive of material, previously published by IPC, which it now owns, for sometime now. Now, IPC’s venerable (and still publishing) rival DC Thomson, who have access to an equally humongous library, if not more, are getting in on the reprint act.
Their newsstand Commando war comic title regularly features new stories of DC Thomson’s roster of characters from past comics, for example (a “V for Vengeance” adventure coming soon), and there have been a couple of Starblazer collections, too. The archive of the BEANO and The Dandy is regularly mined for annual classic collections. But DCT aren’t just relying on picture strips as a source for represented material – they’re digging out the vast array of text stories in archive.
Following on from the recent release of I Flew With Braddock comes two ebook volumes of “V for Vengeance”, The Deathless Men and The Killers In Grey. These “V For Vengeance” tales are harvested from long gone boys weekly, The Wizard, debuting in 1942, and then weaving their way through the stable of DCT boys weekly papers.
“V” is a rather bloodthirsty tale of group escapees from Nazi oppression; men who had lost everything with a thirst for revenge on the Third Reich even if the price was their own life.
These “Deathless Men”, masked and dressed completely in grey suits, wreak havoc in a grand tour of occupied Europe, working through a kill list of prominent Nazis and collaborators, their assassins leaving their calling card of the name of their victim struck out in blood red.
Despite their death wish, the assassins have no shortage of recruits and remain one step ahead of their pursuers. The reason behind this success is their commander, Colonel Von Reich of the Gestapo, aka Aylmer Gregson of the BritishSecret Service.
Unsurprisingly, the two volumes are quite grim. A group of maimed men, without hope or fear targeting concentration camp commandants, nazi scientists, high ranking SS officers and barbaric provisional governors, find ever enterprising methods of fulfilling their mission. The body count on both sides is eyebrow raising, and the Deathless Men think nothing of throwing their life away to get their man. As much as some of IPCs 1970s content was criticised for its bloodthirsty attitude, the concept of “The Deathless Men” is surprisingly dark for, considering it was first written for teenage boys in the 1940s and 50s.
This does also mean that the Deathless Men themselves are pretty much cyphers. They appear, they kill someone / may get killed and that’s the end of that. What ties it all together is the tension from Gregson / Von Reich’s efforts to direct and assist his men in their mission, while maintaining his cover as a high ranking Gestapo officer. Gregson’s machinations becomes the heart of the stories, with significant appearances from Himmler, Goebbels, Goering and the Fuhrer himself, all quite blind to the fact that the person behind the grey suited killers making mincemeat of middle management in fortress Europe is the guy who is charge of stopping them.
These volumes are a compilation of a weekly text serial, rather than novels. Each mission is around two to three pages long, some running into multiple chapters. That is not to say that the Deathless Men are short on inventiveness in helping their victims meet their maker, but there is a formula to the stories. The target is picked, Gregson runs interference with his “employers”, and the target is eliminated.
Indeed, there isn’t much progression until toward the end of the second volume, The Killers in Grey, when things start changing gear a little, and Gregson’s perilous position becomes more precarious.
As a story “V for Vengeance” has a dryness, due to its lack of levity, something that is difficult to work into this kind of story, but a little black humour wouldn’t have gone amiss. But we are talking about stories that are over sixty years old, and there is still a lot here to like. The missions are thrilling without being jingoistic, the overall story hasn’t really dated and it’s an easy read.
Don’t expect a sophisticated war story, but the reader will be entertained, particularly if they grew up on war comics of the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Luke Williams
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Brought up on a diet of Commando, British Boys Annuals and Asterix, Lucas Williams’s day job limits his reading time. Luckily for everyone else this also restricts his writing time.
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