Boy Commandos

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Boy Commandos was a 1940s comic book series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for DC Comics. A combination of "kid gang" comics and war comics, the title starred an international cast of little tough guys fighting the Nazis — or in their own parlance, "the Ratzies".

The eponymous characters were André Chavard from France; Alfie Twidgett from England, Jan Haasan from the Netherlands, and "Brooklyn" from the United States. An elite commando squad of orphaned children, led by grown-up Captain Rip Carter, they fought on all fronts of the Second World War.

It was revealed years later that Brooklyn was Dan Turpin, that André Chavard had become the head of the French Intelligence Departement Gamma, and that Alfie Twidgett was now the head of the firm Statistical Occurrences Ltd. (SOL), with his daughter Twiggie.

The idea of children fighting at war is at odds with most modern sensibilities, although as late as the 2000s there are children-soldiers in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. But like teenage sidekicks from Batman's Robin to Captain America's Bucky, this was acceptable wish-fulfillment to the children of the 1940s, who in real life could only help the war effort through paper drives and saving their dimes to buy Liberty Bonds. The Boy Commandos and similar groups, such as Timely Comics' Young Allies, provided vicarious empowerment.

The series debuted in Detective Comics, which had previously featured only characters who were in some sense detectives. The team became extremely popular, soon earning the characters a space in World's Finest Comics and eventually their own title beginning in 1942-43 which lasted 36 issues. The series remained popular for a time even after the war, when the international group was gradually replaced with solely Americans.

In the 1970s, during Kirby's involvement at DC, several of their stories were reprinted in various books, especially the ones Kirby was putting out. They even got a brief title (2 issues in 1973), before disappearing again.