Jenny Pearce, a girl juggler from Liverpool, had traveled to New York looking for stage work. She was registered with a little-known theatrical agent, Sam Bartok, and he tried to find jobs for her—but neither of them realised that H. K. Zigfell, the most famous showman in America, was searching for Jenny so that he could give her a part in his new show.
Other Appearances:
Jodie and the Otter ran for 3 series, two series in the Emma comic and it survived a merger with Judy to have one more series in that title, as well as appearing in a Bunty-Judy Summer Special issue. In the first series we meet Jodie Masters and her longtime companion, Buster the otter. Jodie lives in a small Canadian town and is a champion swimmer, she is to fly to Toronto to compete in a long distance swimming championships, but disaster happens along the way when the small plane gets in trouble. Jodie bails out of the plane into the Canadian wilderness. Jodie parachutes to safety and then meets an otter and helps free him from clinging weeds, grateful he decides to join Jodie on her journey and she is glad of the company. Meanwhile, the pilot does manage to land the plane and go for help, and then the search is on for Jodie.
Jodie names the otter, Buster, and the two of them make their way through the wilderness, encountering dangers along the way, such as a mountain lion, rapids, lightning storm, fire, a grizzly bear, rattlesnake, quicksand and a mine collapse! It is the start of a lifelong friendship as Jodie and Buster help each other, Buster helps find her food, saves her life but also causes trouble when he accidentally sets fire to trappers cabin. Jodie sometimes despairs at her situation, such as when the helicopter sees the cabin but doesn’t see her, but Buster helps to keep her going. Eventually Jodie is rescued and Buster stays with her. Even after all her ordeals she is still determined to attend championship, in two days! Her main rival, Karen, isn’t happy to see her return, and Karen’s manager, notices that Jodie relies on her otter, so plans to use it to their advantage by stealing Buster. On the day of race, Jodie is not doing well as she worries where Buster is. Buster manages to break free and finds his way back to her in the water, giving Jodie the push she needs and she wins the race.
The second story has a different artist, two men, Ackerman and Sapstein, from New York visit Jodie with and opportunity to perform with Buster in a water spectacular show for 3 months. Although Buster takes an instant dislike to the Mr Ackerman, Jodie agrees to do it because she knows money is tight for her parents currently. When she gets to New York she finds out they want Her and Buster to perform extreme stunts. When she tries to refuse she learns the small print of the contract she signed, said they can use Buster with or without her, so she decides to stay for his sake. She is locked in an apartment and Buster is kept caged in the water dome. As soon as she gets the opportunity she escapes and finds Buster breaks him out. She doesn’t have much money but they ravel as far as they can. But Ackerman and Sapstein, catch up with them and they have to make a run for it again.
She gets help from a farmer but Ackerman has enlisted a gang, known as the Syndicate, to go after her. She manages to make it to the airport and call her parents, they send, their friend, Joe, a helicopter pilot to pick her up, but the gang gets to Joe first and forces him to fly them all to a cabin, where they tie them up to await the arrival of Ackerman and Sapstein. Buster chews through the ropes and Jodie escaped with him, swimming across a lake, with the gang following and shooting at them. They get to an island in the middle of the lake, then, Buster creates a distraction and Jodie steals the gang’s boat to get back to the mainland and rescues Joe. The police come and when Ackerman and Sapstein arrive to get Jodie and Buster, they are instead arrested and Jodie gets out of her contract. (I should think, kidnapping, hiring gangs and shooting at her would make the contract null and void!)
In the third story Jodie gets an opportunity to go to a training camp for Olympic hopefuls. It is strictly no pets but Buster sneaks into the baggage hold on the bus. Just before they reach their destination, Buster is disturbed and runs off, Jodie spots him and is then worried about him, causing trouble for her in camp as she is distracted. Despite her distraction, she still shows promise, particularly in their practices in natural water. Wen another girl, Angeline, gets in trouble in the water, Jodie rescues her and then catches up with the rest of the girls in practice. The couch is impressed but Angeline is annoyed.
Meanwhile Buster gets into trouble with some hunters but finds an ally in a Native American named Stands Tall. They get caught in storm and Stands Tall is injured by a tree felled by lighting. He is found by hunters and get brought to the nearby camp but Buster runs off. Hearing about the otter that was with the man, Jodie now has hope that he is near. Sneaking out to search for him, finally they are reunited. Jodie tries to keep Buster secret but he causes a mess in the dorm room and scampers off, she has to confess everything to her coach. He doesn’t believe the otter could have traveled so far to find her and thinks she had sneaked him in from the start, he tells her to leave camp for breaking the rules. Stands Tall has recovered and meets Jodie while she is out looking for Buster. They rescue Buster from a Wolverine, and Stands Tall comes back to the camp with Jodie, to corroborate her story, but the coach is not interested in listening. As Jodie packs her bags, Angeline is attacked by a snake, but Buster catches the snake. Grateful, the coach now listens to story and allows Jodie to stay and Buster to be the camp mascot. Angeline is also grateful and becomes friends with Jodie. Now able to concentrate on her swimming she is pleased when herself and Angeline both qualify for the Olympic team.
After Sue Spiker, this character appeared the most in the short lived Emma comic. It had two sequels, one that was in the merged Judy and Emma comic, with the first episode printed in the last Emma issue as well as Judy to entice readers over. Girls finding wild companions is not unusual, and it does give the artists opportunity to draw some wonderful wildlife details. There are different artists, for all the stories, and the last looks to be partly done by Rodney Sutton, they all do a good job with the wildlife aspects, though the 2nd artist had some dodgy human expressions in parts! The second story overall is probably the weaker of the three, plot wise as well there is a lot of contrivances, and getting the gang involved in kidnapping for an otter to do some tricks for 3 month show seems a lot more hassle then it’s worth!
The stories are all quite different but adventure is a major theme in all of them. They are entertaining reads, the first and third being my favourites. I like the third had Buster having his own adventure before finding Jodie, while still keeping Jodie’s story line interesting. The first is good at establishing why the two would develop such a strong bond, and is certainly the most exciting adventure. While it only had one series once Emma merged with Judy, it still had a good run with 3 series total and a summer special, again showing that Emma comic had a lot to offer.
When Cindy Roberts was marooned on a Pacific island, she had Brassribs, a robot butler invented by her dad to look after her.
Spoilt Tanya Leroy was forced to bale out of her father’s private plane over the Canadian forests. There she met a strange woman named Diver, who offered to guide her back to civilisation, but Tanya’s tantrums were causing a lot of trouble on their journey.
Eighteen Year old twins, Judith and Ann Terry had many adventures at sea as they had traveled far, their father was managing director of Tropical Fishes Ltd. the well known London aquarists.
Steve Johnson thought his daughter, Ada, had died in a blizzard and he was responsible – so he abandoned his homestead and set off to join the great California Gold rush. But Ada was safe and with her pet grizzly bear, Lady Grey, she was on her way to California to try to find her father.
Published: Commando #2583
Artist: Janek Matysiak
Writer: Unknown
I have come into another Commando drawn by Janek Matysiak, the son of popular DCT artist David Matysiak. It comes with both a gorgeous Matysiak Jnr cover and interior Matysiak Jnr artwork, which seems to be rare thing for Matysiak Jnr in Commando, who most often drew just Commando covers. So we get the best of both worlds here. Strangely, the issue is another omission from the wiki entry that is supposed to list all Commandos with Janek Matysiak as creator.
Plot
By World War II, most British cavalry regiments have gone over from horse power to machine power, but not everyone is happy with such newfangled developments. Among them is Major “Galloping Jack” Faraday, who would have a horse over a tank any day and still wears spurs with his uniform. Faraday’s constant companion is Trooper Tom Tuttle, although he does not share Faraday’s enthusiasm for horses. He’s a mechanics man, and his idea of riding is motorbikes. They are an odd couple for sure.
The Depot Commander doesn’t like Faraday and is always coming up with ways to get rid of him. Anything with a horse in it is guaranteed to do the trick, but right now the only thing available is an assignment to deliver old A-Nine tanks to Russia. Faraday accepts it all the same, as he can speak some Russian. He takes Tom along because his mechanics expertise will help with the tanks.
In Russia, the A-9s are loaded onto a train at Murmansk for delivery. But in transit, they have to be offloaded prematurely because the Russians require them for immediate action at a newly opened front. While Faraday and Tom are waiting for their return train, a freight train pulls up with a Cossack regiment aboard, who are bound for the front. Five of their horses have fallen ill and the Cossacks are all set to euthanise them, but horse-loving Faraday intervenes. He diagnoses their condition as colic, which is treatable. He waives the return train in order to take care of the sick horses, using the waiting room at the train station as their stall, and using all manner of bribery and bullying to get everything needed to treat them. The Cossacks head to the front on their remaining horses.
Once the horses have recovered, Tom and Faraday start their journey to return them to the front. It’s Tom’s first time in the saddle, and he struggles with it at first, but he begins to learn the basics of old-fashioned cavalry riding from Faraday. Their old A-9s and then horse carts give them tracks to follow to the front, but it’s a hard journey, and there is the problem of how to get back home once they deliver the horses. Faraday discovers the horses are “gun shy” i.e. they take fright at the sound of gunfire, something they must get used to in combat. He starts giving them training to cure them of that.
They are spotted by a Russian unit, led by Sergeant Afonka, who are hauling machine guns on horse carts to Major Taras Grischuk’s squadron at the front. Afonka, who is unfamiliar with British uniforms (and apparently, German ones too), mistakes them for Germans and opens fire. This spooks the horses as they are still gun-shy. Fortunately, the misunderstanding is quickly cleared up.
Afonka has lost one of his cart horses, so Faraday lends him one of their horses for the job, and the two parties combine forces. But when they meet up with Grischuk, he suspects the British soldiers are German spies. Then they are all attacked by German planes. Tom saves the day with his mechanics expertise, which enables him to wield one of the machine guns at the planes. After that they are welcome in Grischuk’s Cossack unit, and Grischuk insists Faraday call him by his friendly title of Taras Ivanovich.
The Cossacks move on next day and come across an enemy advance of foot soldiers. They charge, with Faraday far more experienced than Tom in horse cavalry charges. Tom is still not the best of cavalry horsemen and falls off his horse, but carries on in the fight with his gun. Meanwhile, Taras is impressed at Faraday’s prowess in the saddle. Their attack is a success and they capture a lot of arms and equipment that will prove useful later on.
Taras has been wounded and stubbornly carrying on without seeking medical assistance. Worse, another enemy advance is coming, and this time it is more than a match for the Cossacks because it is a tank unit. Taras sacrifices himself to buy time for his troops to get away by setting himself up as a decoy for the tank units.
The Cossacks are all for a revenge charge, but Faraday has a better idea. Using his mechanics expertise, Tom uses the mines they took from the first enemy column and then deploy their machine guns to attract the Germans’ attention and lure them into a trap – a minefield all set for them. After the trap is sprung and proves another success, they clean things up, including the unexploded mines.
Afterwards they go back for Taras’ body. Surprisingly, Taras is still alive – just – and with his dying breath he adopts Faraday into his family. For this reason the Cossacks choose Faraday as Taras’ successor to lead them and give him Taras’ sabre. Faraday is stunned at such an honour, which must make him a “King’s Cossack”.
Faraday sets his squadron to work in harassing enemy supply lines, with the captured explosives and Tom’s expertise, which are followed by Cossack horse charges. They carry out many such attacks and capture a lot of vital supplies, including feed for the horses. Fortunately for them, Blitzkrieg was not mechanised at the rear end, which still deployed horses and infantry, making it the most vulnerable point in Blitzkrieg for counterattack. The Germans turn the tide a little with occasional Luftwaffe strikes and, when winter comes, German ski patrols. The machine guns bring down those patrols.
But Faraday is still clad in British uniform, which looks a bit odd in a Cossack unit and makes him conspicuous. There are going to be questions when the Brigadier pays a visit to the unit. The Cossacks hastily disguise Faraday as a Cossack, but he insists on retaining his monocle (Cossacks don’t wear them, surely?) and still has a British accent. The Brigadier is told that Faraday is Taras’ brother and his accent is due to a broken jaw from childhood, but they’re left feeling the Brigadier is suspicious. Besides, the Brigadier said he received reports about the successes of the Cossack unit, but surely the reports also mentioned that the leader was in British uniform?
The Brigadier informs them that the Germans are rushing headlong to reach the railway, and they are detailed to support a tank regiment in bringing down those Germans. Along the way they come across the last of the old A-9s and bring it along for its last fight. Faraday suggests a strategy his unit knows very well: set up a trap of explosives, in this case a frozen lake, and use themselves as bait to lure the Germans into it and send them to a freezing death beneath the ice. The plan works, though Faraday has taken a bullet in the arm from it.
The Brigadier presents Faraday with the Order of the Red Banner and has a message for the “English Major”. Yes, he saw through it, and Faraday has lost his fake Cossack moustache anyway. Also, the British are asking about their two missing men. So Faraday and Tom are under marching orders – or rather, flying orders – to go home, and their plane is waiting. They leave with great respect from the Brigadier and cheers for “Galloping Jack” from the Cossacks.
But Faraday and Tom are not home for long, as the Depot Commander is always eager to get rid of Faraday. When Faraday recovers from his bullet wound, he assigns him to a horse-and-mule transport unit in Burma. Faraday volunteers Tom as one of his team. “Here we go again…” thinks Tom. Those assignments never give poor Tom the chance for well-deserved disembarkation.
Thoughts
This Commando came out the year after another Matysiak Jnr Commando, “Traitor’s War”, and one can see how his artwork has advanced between the two issues. The linework is cleaner, sharper and neater, and there is more attention to fine details, while in “Traitor’s War” some details look like they could have been handled with more care.
Horse stories are always popular with girls comics readers, so the story should give girls comics readers some appeal as well as boys. It gives the reader a taste of the world of the war horse, which makes a change from stories about ponies and show-jumping. And the glimpse we see informs us that the world of the war horse can be a tough one.
For one thing, there are the conditions the war horses face, which in warfare can be hellish, such as trekking across harsh terrain, being at the mercy of the weather, and there is the worry of running out of horse fodder, which may not always be easy to resupply in wartime. Not to mention the horrors and terrors of battle itself. By instinct they rear and bolt at the sound of gunfire, yet have to “stand like a rock” when a gun goes off right at their ears. “I’m blooming sure I wouldn’t!” thinks Tom, who must have felt great pangs of sympathy for the horses he has to help cure of gun-shyness. They are also at the mercy of their masters, and not all masters would be like “Galloping Jack”. This is illustrated in the scene where the Cossacks, out of ignorance and probably haste to get to the front, decide to shoot the sick horses, and they would have been if Faraday had not been there. Thank goodness there were no scenes of outright cruelty to the horses, which must have been an occupational hazard of the war horse as well.
The story makes a change from the more usual Commando formula of hero vs villain, which climaxes in a final confrontation where the villain gets killed off (blown up, shot, nasty accident or whatever) or captured. Instead, it’s more of a character development story, plus it features the journey story (always popular in girls comics) and action and adventure for the boys. Using the odd couple scenario also adds humour to the story. Tom and Faraday are an odd couple over machines and old-fashioned horses, but events prove that together they make quite a team, with their opposing intererests complementing each other and both proving invaluable to the cossack unit.
Faraday is somewhat pompous and obtuse – for example, he seems totally oblivious to the fact that his depot commander, “an old enemy”, dislikes him. And he refuses to remove his monocle when he dons Cossack disguise although wearing it could mar his disguise: “Certainly not. A chap has to keep up certain standards.” And his love of horses goes a bit overboard sometimes. But for the same reasons he’s also a funny character and gets many of the best lines that make the reader laugh.
Tom is more the sympathetic character of the odd couple. Although he’s Faraday’s constant companion, he seems to be a long-suffering one and never gets the chance for disembarkation because he always gets roped into those damn assignments with Faraday. He suffers even more in learning to ride a horse and the ins and outs of cavalry, and by the time it’s time for the cavalry charge, he hasn’t fully mastered it. He finds operating something mechanical, such as the machine guns or setting mines, a welcome relief from riding a horse. It’s not clear just how experienced he has become as a horseman or whether horses have grown on him by the time he leaves the Cossacks, but he must have emerged appreciating horses a lot more.
Both their interests prove invaluable in making the traditionalist and somewhat backward Cossack unit a more formidable fighting force than it would have been otherwise, what with Tom’s expertise in mechanics, explosives and modern warfare technology and Faraday’s experience with German forces as well as horses. The Cossacks start off not knowing a thing about German uniforms and call tanks “iron carts”, and emerge much more strategic and clued-up about how modern warfare works. Let us hope that they can now get along fine without Faraday and Tom. It must have been quite a wrench for them to leave the Cossacks. They were well settled in by the time they were discovered, and readers must have been hoping and wondering if they would stay. Sadly, their orders were to go home, and orders were orders.
Josie and Emma Redford had travelled to Tibet with their father on the track of a mysterious flock of birds that had attacked people near their home in England — birds thought to have been extinct for three million years. In Tibet they befriended Lo-Ching, a Tibetan boy educated in England. He had travelled with them on their journey to the mountain city of Ganzing.
Nikki Ferris was groom to Anita Eldon-Jones, international showjumper. While flying to South America their plane was hijacked and crashed on Danger Mountain. Nikki and Anita were forced to try and trek to safety while being pursued by the two hijackers.
The world was at the mercy of the Dangerweed, a deadly fungi which caused terrible destruction. The only hope of overpowering the plague lay in a formula devised by Professor Radlett, After he had been caught by the weed, his three children, Nina, Judy and Jamey, began the long and dangerous journey to deliver the formula to London.