Review by Karl Verhoven

Rat Pack featured in the first issue of Battle Picture Weekly in 1975, the concept of a group of convicts released to fight in secret missions during World War II shamelessly ripped off from The Dirty Dozen. However, Convict Commandos isn’t a chronological reprinting, but a presentation of their best run from 1979 into 1980, by which time Alan Hebden and Eric Bradbury were the creative team.

Briefly, Dancer is a commando skilled with a knife who was caught looting, Rogan is a deserter and a prime athlete, Turk is a brute and Weasel is a safecracker. Taggart is the commanding officer capable of brutality equal to his men, and their hatred of him unites them. That’s a fine emotional stew for Hebden to play with but he goes the extra mile with his plots, not restricting them to the standard short missions behind enemy lines that characterised the strip’s early episodes. An example is sending the team to Brazil in carnival season to rescue a scientist having second thoughts about working on the atomic bomb. Other shorter strips feature a multinational bar brawl in Naples, a Romanian nobleman fond of the dark, and a whimsical Christmas story set in the Norwegian snow.

That last one’s drawn very nicely by Cam Kennedy, but this is Bradbury’s collection. An astute comment from Dave Gibbons in the background material notes Bradbury as a painter in ink, and he certainly shows a sense of painterly composition when it comes to packing individual panels, yet still ensuring the story can be understood, yet his pages also thrill. There’s personality to the Rat Pack, and yet somehow they’re at their most sinister if ever shown smiling.

As noted in Garth Ennis’ introduction, the epic strip here is the Rat Pack being sent to steal Hitler’s personal train. Except stealing it proves the easy part. It’s great stuff, with Bradbury never shirking despite having to draw a massive great steam engine several times an episode, and Hebden throwing one obstacle after another into the plot, while also finding time to provide Rogan’s backstory, revealing why he deserted. He even has Weasel convincingly play an ailing Hitler: “Fools! Imbeciles! My life is threatened yet you dare question the authority of my bodyguards. Do you also question my authority?” For the sake of the story you have to believe the Rat Pack have taken their German lessons seriously.

Each three or four page episode is packed with action, there’s no formula, and everything rattles along at velocity. The effort put in by Hebden and Bradbury in 1980 ensures Convict Commandos remains very readable today.