Charley’s War: 2 June 1916 – 1 August 1916

Charley's War: 2 June 1916 - 1 August 1916 

By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-627-2

More than twenty years ago Titan Books began an abortive series of British comic and strip classics. There was great material, good production, low prices and no spandex. Except for Modesty Blaise they all sank like stones. This time it’s got to be different. I refuse to believe that work as good as Garth, Jeff Hawke or Charley’s War can’t find an audience.

When Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun began their tale of an impressionable underage lad who enlists just in time to fight in the atrocity of the Somme campaign I suspect they had, as usual, the best of authorial intentions but no idea that this time they were going to create absolute magic.

I know of no anti-war story that is as gripping, as engaging and as engrossing, no comic strip that so successfully overcomes its roots to become a slice of meta-reality. There is nothing quite like it and you are diminished by not reading it.

I won’t go into more detail of plot, script or even the riveting authentic depictions. I won’t praise the wonderful quality of the package and the additional articles in this superb hard cover edition. I simply state if you read this you will get it, and if you don’t, you won’t.

I’ve waited so long and now let’s all make sure that it’s NOT all over by Christmas!

© 2004 Egmont Magazines Ltd. All Rights Reserved.