Leg Before Commando

The making of a legacy comic

Troy here. Last week my mainstream comics debut finally happened. ‘Leg Before Chindits’, a story about soldiers from the British Indian Army deep in the jungle of Burma during WWII.

Being around since 1961 Commando Comics are pretty prestigious and, having grown up reading them myself, this feels pretty surreal. Commando comics are traditionally aimed at boys aged 8-12 but, in reality, are mostly read by men in their 50s… like most Western comics, I suppose.

Although the setting is based on history the story itself is only very loosely based on any facts at-all. It requires just a smidgen of suspension of disbelief but surely that goes for any ‘boys own’ adventure tale, right?

Quite how I managed to shoe-horn in cricket, IPA and Indian food (three of my favourite things) into one story I don’t know, but it worked!

The Pitch

Commando comics have a very specific pitching format a writer must follow. Essentially you are required to write a brief elevator pitch, followed by a page-by-page (63-pages) break down of your story so the editorial team can see that your story has a beginning, middle and end. Add some brief character descriptions and any references and you’re good to go.

This was my second attempt. I had pitched a different idea initially. That story was about a pair of female snipers on the Eastern Front in WWII. But my timing was off, Russia had just invaded The Ukraine and the editorial team were understandably not keen on touching similar themes with a barge-pole.

So, I went away and developed an idea that had already started to grow inside my crazy brain. That idea became Leg Before Chindits.

Once the pitch was accepted, I signed the contract and was paid, in advance, to write the script - again, you must follow their unique script format, which is a little different to how I would typically format a comic script, but I assume the uniformity is for the sake of familiarity for the, typically, European artists.

Because DC Thomson are old school, this whole process is not, like most modern comics, a collaborative experience between writer and artist. Once submitted, your script is effectively owned by DC Thomson and taken over by editor Kate McAuliffe, and team. They pick an artist and you, the writer, do not see or hear anything again until the book is on the shelf in your local WH Smith or McColls.

I have to say, the subtle tweaks made by editorial all met with my approval. A little extra dialogue here, a subtle language edit there. Nothing vastly different to my original script. All edits that I may have made myself had I been in a position to do a lettering pass after seeing the artwork. I’m sure they probably picked up in numerous typos… if you saw my fingers and my typing technique you would see why that is.

Anyway, speaking of artwork…

Marc Viure

Aside from the scorching cover by painterly master Keith Burns (of Johnny Red fame) the sequential artwork is by Spanish up-and-comer Marc Viure. I have included a couple of pages of his original artwork, swiped from his Instagram account (@marcviure_comics) - give him a follow.

I love this page, with the Japanese soldiers emerging from the jungle. I’m sure, when he saw the script that he must have had a minor heart attack at the thought of drawing ‘hundreds of Japanese soldiers’. But he killed it!

Unlike most comics the digest format of Commando comics means that you usually only get two panels per page but, somehow, Marc has made this page tell so much story with so little space. I’m sure we will be seeing a lot more of him in the future.

Also, I don’t know why, but I love this guy right here…

The submissions window for Commando Comics is currently closed but you can find them over on www.commandocomics.com

Hopefully, I won’t be a one-hit-wonder and you will see my name in a Commando Comic again sometime in the future.

Troy