New Guinea Gold : Commando comics in the Pacific

Abstract

Commando comics have always been well regarded by their readers for the accuracy of its depictions of conflict and the research that goes into each story. However, much of Commando Is Anglo and Euro-Centric, operating with clearly defined tropes. Stories may be improbable, but rarely impossible.

However, there are times when the stories move beyond the known, when the borders of geography, history, time, narrative, ethnicity and probability become stretched and break. Drawing on depictions of the war in Burma, Papua New Guinea and Australia, this paper looks at the ways in which this loss of boundaries provides a space for narratives that are often far more complex than those presented within the more constrained boundaries of European theatres of conflict.

Yet while the blurring of geographical boundaries, the reconstruction of historical reality and over-riding of local perceptions of identity has sometimes led to the creation of stories that verge on the fantastical, they are still bounded by the invisible frameworks of assumptions and expectations about how people must behave, the roles of particular ethnic or national groups and the unspoken assumptions about culture, society and empire of the period 1939-45.