By various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-025-3
For most of the medium’s history British comics have been renowned for the ability to tell a big story in satisfying little instalments and this, coupled with superior creators and the anthology nature of our publications, has ensured hundreds of memorable characters and series have seared themselves into the little boy’s psyches inside most British adult males.
One of the last great weekly anthology comics was the all-combat Battle, which began as Battle Picture Weekly (launched on 8th March 1975), and through absorption, merger and re-branding (becoming Battle Picture Weekly & Valiant, Battle Action, Battle, Battle Action Force and Battle Storm Force) before itself being combined with Eagle on January 23rd 1988, after 673 blood-soaked testosterone drenched issues, fought its way into the bloodthirsty hearts of a generation, consequently producing some of the best and most influential war stories ever.
This action-packed compendium features the opening salvos of some of the very best from those 13 odd years produced by a winning blend of Young Turk writers Pat Mills, John Wagner, Steve McManus, Mark Andrew and Gerry Finley-Day and stalwarts of the old guard Tom Tully, Eric and Alan Hebden, with art from Colin Page, Pat Wright, Giralt, Carlos Ezquerra, Geoff Campion, Jim Watson, Mike Western, Joe Colquhoun, Eric Bradbury, Mike Dorey, John Cooper and Cam Kennedy.
The strips featured are D-Day Dawson (a sergeant with only a year to live and nothing to lose, by Gerry Finley-Day, Ron Carpenter & Colin Page), Day of the Eagle (a spy serial by ex-SOE agent Eric Hebden and artist Pat Wright), The Bootneck Boy (a little lad who lives his dream by becoming a Marine, by Finley-Day, Ian McDonald & Giralt), and the legendary Dirty Dozen-inspired Rat Pack, by Finley-Day and then featuring some of Carlos Ezquerra’s earliest UK artwork.
Ezquerra also shone on Alan Hebden’s anti-establishment masterpiece Major Eazy, whilst Fighter from the Sky is the first of the comic’s groundbreaking serials telling World War II stories from a German viewpoint. Written by Finley-Day and drawn by the superb Geoff Campion it tells of a disgraced paratrooper fighting for his country, even if they hated him for it.
Hold Hill 109 by Steve McManus and Jim Watson was a bold experiment: basically a limited series as a group of Eighth Army soldiers have to hold back the Afrika Korps for seven days, with each day comprising one weekly episode. Unbelievably only the first three days are collected here, though, as apparently there wasn’t room for the complete saga!
Darkie’s Mob (John Wagner & Mike Western) is another phenomenally well-regarded classic as a mysterious maniac takes over a lost and demoralised squad of soldiers in the Burma jungles intent on using them to punish the Japanese in ways no man could imagine, whilst Finley-Day and Campion’s Panzer G-Man tells of a German tank commander demoted and forced to endure all the dirty jobs foisted on the infantry that follow and Johnny Red, by Tom Tully and the great Joe Colquhoun, follows a discharged RAF pilot who joins the Russian air force to fight over the bloody skies of the Soviet Union.
Joe Two Beans by Wagner and Eric Bradbury follows an inscrutable Blackfoot Indian through the Hellish US Pacific campaign, The Sarge (Finley-Day& Mike Western) follows a WWI veteran as he leads Dunkirk stragglers back to England and then on to North Africa, and Hellman of Hammer Force (Finley-Day, Western, Mike Dorey & Jim Watson) follows a charismatic and decent German tank commander as he fights Germany’s enemies and the SS who want him dead.
Alan Hebden and Eric Bradbury’s Crazy Keller was an US Army maverick who stole, cheated and broke all the rules. He was also the most effective Nazi killer in the invasion of Italy, whilst The General Dies at Dawn saw Finley-Day and John Cooper repeat the miniseries experiment of Hold Hill 109 (this time in eleven instalments each representing one hour – pre-dating Jack Bauer by two decades) as Nazi General and war hero Otto von Margen tells his jailor how he came to be sentenced to the firing squad by his own comrades even as Berlin falls to the allied forces.
I don’t really approve of Charley’s War being in this book. Despite it being the very best war story ever written or drawn, uncompromising and powerfully haunting, as well as Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun’s best ever work, it’s already available in beautiful collector volumes and the fifteen pages here could have been better used to complete Hold Hill 109 or even reprint some of the wonderful Complete-in-one-part war tales the comic often carried.
Enough barracking: Fighting Mann, by Alan Hebden and Cam Kennedy, was the first British strip set in Viet Nam, and followed the hunt of retired US Marine Walter Mann who went “in-country†in 1967 to track down his son, a navy pilot listed as a deserter, and the book concludes with Death Squad!: A kind of German Rat Pack full of Werhmacht criminals sent as a punishment squad to die for the Fatherland in the icy hell of the Eastern Front. Written by Mark Andrew and illustrated by the incomparable Eric Bradbury this is one of the grittiest and most darkly comedic of Battle’s martial pantheon.
This spectacular blend of action, tension and drama, with a heaping helping of sardonic grim wit from both sides of World War II and beyond as well as the unique take on the American soldier, hasn’t paled in the intervening years and these black and white gems are as powerful and engrossing now as they’ve ever been. Fair warning though: Many of the tales here do not conclude. For that you’ll have to campaign for a second volume…
© 2009 Egmont UK Ltd. All Rights Reserved.