Golden Age Idol--Who Needs The Blackhawks?!?

Our tale starts with:

Pat Parker--War Nurse!!

Pat hated Nazis so much, she'd sneak out and fight fifth columnists guerilla-style!

And she'd participate in more conventional warfare, too!

Yup, she's a real English rose!

Soon enough, Pat adopted a nice costume, and "War Nurse" became an actual secret identity:

Hmm...Night Nurse needs to step up her game!!

Within a year, however, someone decided that "War Nurse" wasn't a tough enough sobriquet, so she became...

In that same issue, she signed up a couple of friends from previous adventures, and a couple of newbies, to be her sidekicks:

Mei Ling was one of the first Asian heroes in an American comic book!

The next issue, the whole team took on the name "Girl Commandos."

And soon enough, Pat abandoned her costume, and they all got into standard uniforms:

Obviously their name was inspired by Simon & Kirby's Boy Commandos, but these were no children. These were grown women, and they were ready and willing to fight--and kill--the Axis:

Like the Boy Commandos and the Blackhawks, they had an international cast--Pat was English, as was Penelope; Ellen was American; Tanya was Russian; and as we saw, Mei Ling was Chinese. Their uniforms made them seem more Blackhawk-like than Boy Commando-like.

But they loved to go undercover!

And despite not being pilots with special planes, the ladies managed to make it to practically every theater in the war, traversing the globe from month to month. England, Burma, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Greece...

...the Balkans...

...Spain...

...Outer Mongolia (!)...

...Russia...

...there were also adventures in China, Japan, Africa...

Unlike the Blackhawks, the Girl Commandos were unable to make the transition to a post-WWII world, and by early 1946 they were gone, never to be seen again.

I'm not going to oversell them--their adventures were pretty bog-standard for the "non-super-powered military group fighting the Nazis" genre.

But aside from the uniqueness of being an all-female team engaging in the rough and tumble of combat, the Girl Commandos had one special distinction. Obviously, Golden Age credits are often nebulous and obscure at best, and for most of their tales we have no writing credits. But once they became The Girl Commandos, every single one of their stories was drawn by a female artist--either Barbara Hall or (mostly) Jill Elgin, who (probably) also drew Pat Parker's first adventure.

Given that DC is, well, kind of insane in their current use of the Blackhawks name (SPOILER ALERT--the Blackhawks, led by Kendra Saunders, are a covert team put together by Hawkman to prevent the "Dark Multiverse" from breaking out and destroying Earth...no, seriously. REBIRTH!!), I think there's room for an internationally-diverse commando team. Given their heritage, the Girl Commandos would make a nice replacement. And heavens, making them women, and written and drawn by female creators? It sounds like a no-brainer for somebody to pull this out of the public domain and run with it. I'd read it...

Or at the very least, can we get War Nurse?!?

From various issues of Speed Comics #13-42 (1941-46)