Commando Comics Issues 5935 through 5938 are on sale this Thursday from all good TG Jones and select newsagents, offering another powerful mix of action, horror, and real‑world heroism.
Perfectly timed to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8th March, this latest set includes the heroic tale of a tenacious nurse in Crete in 1941, written by Hailey Austin, a Lecturer of Visual Media and Culture at Abertay University with a particular interest in comics, video games and the international creative industries, inspired by true events; and the explosive fifth chapter of “Commandos vs Zombies“, written by Commando‘s own Georgia Standen Battle, one of the title’s first female writers in 30 years.
Spanish artist Vicente Alcazar makes a welcome returns to the title on art dutires for the new Zombies story, whose many credits in his career span work for US publishers DC Comics – particularly his 1970s run on Jonah Hex – and Marvel Comics, as well as many Commando stories.
Vicente has a long association with the war comics genre, collaborating with fellow Commando artist Carlos Pino under the dual pseudonym CARVIC, drawing war stories for the magazine Chío (1967) and for various past UK comics and companies, including IPC’s War Picture Library.
If you missed previous “Zombies” stories, DC Thomson have republished them in two collections, Commando Presents: Commandos vs. Zombies Volume 1 and Commando Presents: Commandos vs. Zombies Volume 2, released in 2023 and 2025 respectively. (AmazonUK Affiliate Links)
There are plenty of stories of the 28th (Māori) Battalion who played a pivotal, heroic role in the May 1941 Battle of Crete. They were known for fierce, close-quarter combat and bayonet charges. Key actions included defending Platanias, counterattacking at Maleme airfield, and fighting at Galatas. Despite heavy losses and a challenging withdrawal to Sphakia, they earned a reputation as elite, feared fighters. After the evacuation of allied troops, 71 Māori were left behind, and become prisoners of war.
Commando 5935 (Home of Heroes): Commandos Vs Zombies 5
Story: Georgia Standen-Battle
Art: Vicente Alcazar
Cover: Neil Roberts
After the explosive events on the island, Oberführer Randolph Mensch flew towards his private prisoner-of-war camp. Housed there were the Soviet and British inmates Mensch used for his vile, mad experiments.
Miles away, a small raiding force of British Commandos were on a doomed mission – and they had no idea what was awaiting them at the camp!
Commando 5936 (Gold): The Good Soldier
Story: Feldwick
Internal Art: Denis McLoughlin
Cover Art: Ron Brown
First published 1984 as No. 1818
Mario Galasso was a very good type indeed — brave, cool-headed and thoughtful. In battle, he would never ask his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.
But when he returned to his home village after the war, he was arrested for war crimes! And the trouble was, he seemed to be the only one who knew he was innocent…
Commando 5937 (For Action and Adventure): Captured in Crete
Story: Hailey Austin
Art and Cover: Carlos Pino
The Island of Crete, 1941. What did an English Nurse, a Māori soldier, a Cretan monk and a German general all have in common? They were all captured in Crete!
After German paratroopers descend on the island, the Allied forces, nurses and Cretan people must fight back against the invaders in any way they can. Resistance and soldiers unite, while Nurse Stavros moves over 500 wounded soldiers to a cave and tricks the Germans into feeding them — all inspired by true events!
This story, created to mark International Women’s Day this year, was inspired by the story of Red Cross nurse Joanna Stavridi, a British nurse of Greek heritage who served as a military nurse during World War Two. She was the only nurse to remain during the battle of Crete, where she cared for 500 wounded patients.
Her story was first adapted into comics in True Comics magazine, published in September 1942. More details below.
Commando 5938 (Silver): The Two Deserters
Story: Feldwick
Internal Art: Blasco
Cover Art: Jeff Bevan
First published 1982 as No. 1607
It wasn’t that Mike Briers had really meant to desert. Not exactly. It was just that Foxy Billings had persuaded him to leave the rest of the lads so that the two of them would have a better chance of escaping the Germans.
So how was it that he found himself wearing civilian clothes and fighting for his life on top of a French goods train that was about to be sent to its destruction?
• Commando Comics is online at commandocomics.com | DC Thomson – Subscriptions | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Commando Comics on AmazonUK | Commando Comics on Magzter
• If there’s a past Commando comic you would like to see reprinted, contact the team via generalenquiries@commandomag.com
Commando Comics 5935 – 5938 Cover Gallery
More Zombies!
• Commando Presents: Commandos vs. Zombies Volume 1
By Georgia Standen Battle (Writer) Vicente Alcazar (Art), Neil Roberts and Ian Kennedy (Cover Art)
In the freezing woods of Norway, dead men leave footprints in the snow. Their SS uniforms are riddled with bullet holes, their hearts frozen solid, and their rotting flesh frostbitten. What should have been a routine raid takes a horrific turn for Commandos Leo Mantelow and Lionel Stone as they face down something from out of a nightmare!
Blending war and supernatural horror in a classic British Comics black-and-white format, this collection brings together the three bestselling Commandos vs Zombies issues from Britain’s longest-running war comic.
This collection features all the original covers, as well as a brand-new wrap-around by Neil Roberts, and a never-before-seen prose story is included as a bonus, alongside an interview with the creator, and contributor biographies.
• Commando Presents: Commandos vs. Zombies Volume 2
By Georgia Standen Battle (Writer) Vicente Alcazar (Art), Neil Roberts (Cover)
Deep in German-occupied Norway lies a dark forest and a shadowy factory hidden within. Inside its fetid walls, two Nazi doctors work feverishly, tampering with nature itself to create a German soldier like no other — stronger, faster… with an unyielding loyalty to the Third Reich. But what they unwittingly created was something far worse!
Included in this latest deadly volume is the prequel to the best selling Commando vs Zombies trilogy, alongside two brand-new spinoff comics expanding the Commando vs Zombies universe!
• Commando Comics is online at commandocomics.com | DC Thomson – Subscriptions | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Commando Comics on AmazonUK | Commando Comics on Magzter
Inspirational Stories from Crete: Red Cross nurse Joanna Stavridi
Joanna Stavridi, the inspiration for Hailey Austin’s story, “Captured in Crete”, was a British nurse of Greek heritage, who served as a military nurse from the outbreak of the war and through the Greek campaign of 1941. She would be the only British nurse to remain on duty during the Battle of Crete.
She is one of many whose life is celebrated annually on Ohi Day (Oxi Day) on 28th October in Greece, Cyprus, and by Greeks worldwide, commemorating Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas’s 1940 refusal to allow Axis forces into Greece. The day honours the resistance of the Greek people throughout the Second World War and the Allied forces who supported them, including those from Australia. These forces include hundreds of nurses from Australia, New Zealand and Britain.
Joanna, whose story is recounted in Heroines of WWII by Eric Taylor, was born in 1903 in London, the daughter of John and Anna Stavridi, her family coming from Ermopouli, then known as Syra.
Describing herself as “an ardent feminist”, Joanna was keen to play an active part in the war effort when war broke out in 1939.
She began her nursing training with the Red Cross, serving at a First Aid Post in London and initially went to Greece to care for her sister, who was ill in Athens. With the Italian invasion in 1940, she joined the Greek Red Cross, completed her nursing training and was posted to an ambulance train tending and transporting the wounded from the Albanian front.
When the Germans invaded Greece in early April and the Allied Forces began evacuating, Joanna and her sister travelled to Crete aboard a yacht with a party of medical staff led by British Colonel Hamilton-Fairley. The yacht was bombed and eventually destroyed, with many crew members killed and six badly injured. Marooned on the island of Kimolos, they had to wait to be picked up by another vessel and eventually arrived at Chania, the whole journey took ten days. Throughout the ordeal Joanna cared for the wounded men.
Once the other Allied nurses had evacuated Crete for Egypt, Joanna was the only nurse to remain on the island, serving as matron and theatre nurse at the 7th British General Hospital, a large, tented field hospital of around 600 beds. It was here that the wounded referred to Joanna as “the Florence Nightingale of Crete.”
Despite its Red Cross markings, the hospital was bombed, and machine gunned, medical officers killed, others wounded and much of their supplies destroyed. Fortunately, the area contained ready-made bomb shelters – caves along the rocky coast, and so Joanna and the other staff moved the hospital and its patients to these caves.
“Joanna’s extraordinary courage, especially in tending to Australian and Allied troops, resonated deeply in postwar Australia,” note the team at Women at War. “Newspapers across the nation reported her story, and it featured in True Comics magazine in September 1942.”
The story ran in True Comics #16, published by America’s Parents’ Magazine Press, the issue considered in the public domain and archived here on Comic Book Plus.
The Grand Comics Database notes Parents’ Magazine Press published a line of comic books between from 1941 to 1965, and magazines heavily featuring comics, including such long-running titles as Calling All Girls, Children’s Digest, Polly Pigtails, True Comics and True Picture-Magazine. Parents Magazine Press also published Humpty Dumpty from the 1950s through the early 1980s, until it and Children’s Digest were sold to The Saturday Evening Post company.
Today, the flagship title of Parents’ Magazine Press, now owned IAC Inc., first published in 1926 as Children, The Magazine for Parents, is published digitally as, simply, Parents, its previous print incarnation, Parents’ Magazine, ceasing publication in 2022.
As tough as any man and as tireless as the fittest of them
In an article for Neos Kosmos, published in 2021, Jim Claven notes Colonel Hamilton Fairley wrote of Joanna as one of the most valiant he had encountered, adding “she was as tough as any man and as tireless as the fittest of them. Utterly fearless.”
The writer and philhellene Dilys Powell wrote in 1941 of Joanna as a symbol of Greece’s resistance “a solitary woman, after the deliberate destruction by bombing of the hospital at Maleme [who] spent the last week nursing the wounded in caves by the sea.”
Joanna Stavridi’s service awarded her the Hellenic Red Cross and the Distinguished War Certificate by the Greek Red Cross and British Red Cross respectively.
Joanna returned to England after the liberation of Greece and died on 8th May 1976. She is buried with her mother and father in the family grave at Hendon Cemetery, London.
• Neos Kosmos: Remembering Nurse Joanna Stavridi, the Florence Nightingale of Crete by Jim Claven, published 1st November 2021
• Follow Women at War on Facebook
Inspirational Stories from Crete: Ned and Katina
• Ned and Katina: A True Love Story
By Patricia Grace (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Ned Nathan, a Māori soldier from Te Roroa, Ngāti Whātua, and Ngāpuhi, was wounded in Crete during World War Two. While recovering, he met Katina Torakis, a young Cretan woman from Sklavopoula whose family risked their lives sheltering Allied soldiers. Despite language and cultural barriers, they fell in love.
After the war, Ned returned to marry her in the village church in 1945. Together, they then headed to New Zealand, settling in the Far North and built a life in Aotearoa — weaving her Greek heritage into their Māori whānau (family). Their story is told by Patricia Grace in Ned & Katina: A True Love Story; a tale of courage, sacrifice, and aroha that bridged two worlds.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Current British Publishers, Comic Previews, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
Air war rules new Commando comics, out today 
Shaken, stirred? Blame Adrian Apollo, a new 2000AD 3riller! 
Action Stations! New 2000AD, first Action collection on sale now 
Book Palace Books TV Express “Biggles” collection flying your way