The Good old days of comic books

 Growing up comic books were of vital importance - They mattered to a young boy. There were just another of the essentials needed for any kind of  life. As every young boy knew the true necessities for a happy life were food, water, shelter, assorted candy and comic books.

It wasn't like today where kids can grab a DVD

from a shelf, switch on a computer or fire up a video game. This was pre-home computer, pre cable television, (WTF is streaming) even VHS video tapes were still some time in the future.

 We had three TV channels - two from the Beeb and one commercial station - entertainment, particularly for an imaginative young boy was thin on the ground. Sure we had our cartoons but they only played at certain times of the day, the rest of the time the small screen seemed obsessed with soap operas, game shows and current affairs. Hardly the material designed to stimulate young minds.

All in all you'd think we were starved of exciting adventure stories designed to stir the blood, but there was one avenue open to us. 

There was a medium offering wildly entertaining stories whenever the fancy took us.

 That medium was the comic book - the newsagents shelves were stuffed full of books with titles like Tiger, Warlord, Battle, Victor, Action - they cost pennies (I think the average price of a comic book when I started buying on a regular basis was around 5p) and yet provided entertainment worth many times that paltry sum.

In the far off United States (a country that seemed so exciting to any British kid) the comic book industry was dominated by colourful stories of super heroes, but in the UK super heroes, with very few exceptions, failed to take off.

 If Superman's capsule had crashed down in Clacton instead of the Mid-West, then Kal-Ell would have been grounded from the off. 

It wasn't that British comic books were any less fantastic, but  by and large the settings for our tales were far more grounded in reality. Of course we had our science fiction strips, Dan Dare and so forth but for pulse pounding adventure it was the war comics to which we turned.

War comics were always popular in the UK - And for decades after the guns of the second world war fell silent, British kids celebrated our victory over the Nazis in wonderfully drawn, black and white comic books. Characters like Lord Peter Flint kept a stiff upper lip while besting evil Nazi spies, Union Jack Jackson fought alongside the Americans and usually got them out of some tough spots, and the Rat Pack were too good at Hun killing to leave rotting in a high security prison. In skilfully drawn pages, scores of humble Tommies stood up to the might of the enemy and gained victories against incredible odds.

By the time I started reading comics in the early 1970's there was already a rich history of boy's adventure comics - Victor, Valiant, Lion were the hot titles but these belonged to the previous generation and it was newer titles like Warlord from DC Thomson and Battle Picture Weekly from IPC that caught my imagination.

Warlord first hit the stands in 1974 and was far grittier than the usual war comics for sale during that period - so successful was it that rival publisher, IPC launched Battle Picture Weekly in order to snare some of the readers eager for this new kind of comic book reader.

Warlord was the first UK title to be dedicated solely to war stories, other comics usually contained several genres. And right from the start it set the bar very high in terms of artwork and storytelling.

Below there is a video presentation in which I look through the first issue of Battle Picture Weekly.

Battle Picture Weekly, first published in 1975, was launched directly as a result of the success that rival publisher, D C Thomson were scoring with Warlord, and to my mind became far the superior title. With a creative team that included Pat Mills and John Wagner how could it not be! This was the comic that would one day feature a truly ground-breaking first world war strip by Pat Mills, called Charley's War which remains arguably the best war strip ever produced.

“Pat (Mills)  and John ( Wagner) wrote the initial Battle episodes and then farmed them out to other writers. GFD ( Gerry Finley Day) was the author of D-Day Dawson. Lofty’s One-Man Luftwaffe – 

'That was John and Pat. Their brief was not only to create a new title but bring new talent into the industry. We’d worked with a bed-rock of people. When you launched a new title, you rang up Tom Tully, he would do four of the new strips, Ted Cowan – people of that era – Ken Mennall. A lot of the people in Battle #1 were new to me."  Original Battle Staff Editor, Dave Hunt.

Perhaps the main difference between Warlord and Battle were rooted in the British class system. Battle felt working class, while Warlord seemed to be establishment. No better is this illustrated than in the original flagship characters in each title. Warlord had Lord Peter Flint, a wartime secret agent who when not away saving the country, was living the life of a wealthy aristocrat, his pleasures no doubt funded by the tax payer. But Battle's answer to the character was Mike Nelson, a working class bruiser who was billed as Britain's deadliest secret agent. And where Lord Peter Flint believed in giving the enemy a fair shake, Mike Nelson had no such morals - in the very first frame of his first appearance in Battle he shoots a German soldier in the back.

The original Major Easy

Now back in the day I read both Warlord and Battle, but Battle soon became my publication of choice. Where Warlord's heroes would dispose of the enemy with ease and then return home for tea and cakes, Battle's heroes seemed to bleed. The Mike Nelson character would become less important to Battle as the title found its true identity. The first adventure would run until May 1975, and although the character returned from time to time, it was the other strips that became reader favourites. Strips like Rat Pack, about a group of convict soldiers, was a huge success with readers, as was D- Day Dawson and in 1976 Battle introduced a character that became so iconic that he has been re-invented as Cursed Earth Koburn in the pages of Judge Dredd Magazine. This character was Major Easy, created by Alan Hebden and Carlos Ezquerra, a laid back James Coburn lookalike who usually fought the war from a horizontal position.

MAJOR EASY LIVES ON AS CURSED EARTH COBURN

It was in 1979 that Battle finally came of age, with the strip Charley's War which was written by Pat Mills and drawn initially by Joe Colquhoun. Debuting in the landmark 200th issue, this was a different kind of war story. For one thing it was set in the First World War, when most adventure strips tended to favour the second world conflict, and for another it was an anti-war strip. 

YEP, AN ANTI WAR STRIP IN A WAR COMIC!!!!

'I did not want Battle to glorify war, and Charley's War is an anti-war story," said Mills. "I think that in the 1970s and 80s it was legitimate, more so than it is today, to describe the Great War as a tragedy, a mistake and criticise the incompetence of generals. In 2014, revisionists have been trying to improve the image of the generals." 



Charley's War is a true work of literature - a harrowing, intricately drawn look at the Great War as seen through the eyes of working class, semi-literate Charley Bourne. Pat Mills took the inspired method of telling much of the story through young Charley's diary. The strip was truly ground-breaking, featuring not gung-ho adventure but a look at the war as it truly must have been.

'A combination of well-researched and heartfelt scriptwriting, Pat’s work is the antithesis of the ‘war is hell’ gung-ho Sergeant Rock-style story. While never doubting for a second the heroism of the brave men in the trenches, The Great War is shown to be the tragedy it was, a meat-grinder that took the lives of millions of soldiers and set the stage for the even greater horrors of World War Two.

The artwork for Charley’s War was provided by Joe Colquhoun, one of comics’ great unsung heroes. The Gustave Doré of British comics, Colquhoun created beautiful expressive storytelling week-in week-out. Both Joe and Pat put their hearts into Charley’s War, and readers of all ages were drawn to the care evident in their work.

'We often imagine that Armageddon is a horror that awaits us sometime in the future. But Armageddon has already happened. It was World War One." Pat Mills




Charley's War are available as a series of handsome graphic novels from Titan Books.


These days the British comic industry seems to consist of 2000AD and a plethora of licenced titles with the free cover gift more important than the stories between the covers, and the days of true variety in British comics is a distant memory - The Spectator bemoaned the lack of a British comic book industry in this article HERE

Pat Mills can be found here

For a history of Warlord
For a history of Battle

World War Comic - Warlord and Battle Picture Weekly

Growing up comic books were of vital importance - They mattered to a young boy. There were just another of the essentials needed for any kind of  life. As every young boy knew the true necessities for a happy life were food, water, shelter, assorted candy and comic books.

It wasn't like today where you can grab a DVD

from a shelf, switch on a computer or fire up a video game. This was pre-home computer, pre cable television, even VHS video tapes were still some time in the future. We had three TV channels - two from the Beeb and one commercial station - entertainment, particularly for an imaginative young boy was thin on the ground. Sure we had our cartoons but they only played at certain times of the day, the rest of the time the small screen seemed obsessed with soap operas, game shows and current affairs. Hardly the material designed to stimulate young minds.

All in all you'd think we were starved of exciting adventure stories designed to stir the blood, but there was one avenue open to us. There was one medium offering wildly entertaining stories whenever the fancy took us. That was the comic book - the newsagents shelves were stuffed full of books with titles like Tiger, Warlord, Battle, Victor, Action - they cost pennies (I think the average price of a comic book when I started buying on a regular basis was around 5p) and yet provided entertainment worth many times that paltry sum.

In the far off United States (a country that seemed so exciting to any British kid) the comic book industry was dominated by colourful stories of super heroes, but in the UK super heroes, with very few exceptions, failed to take off. If Superman's capsule had crashed down in Clacton instead of the Mid-West, then Kal-Ell would have been grounded from the off. It wasn't that British comic books were any less fantastic, but  by and large the settings for our tales were far more grounded in reality. Of course we had our science fiction strips, Dan Dare and so forth but for pulse pounding adventure it was the war comics to which we turned.

War comics were always popular in the UK - And for decades after the guns of the second world war fell silent, British kids celebrated our victory over the Nazis in wonderfully drawn, black and white comic books. Characters like Lord Peter Flint kept a stiff upper lip while besting evil Nazi spies, Union Jack Jackson fought alongside the Americans and usually got them out of some tough spots, and the Rat Pack were too good at Hun killing to leave rotting in a high security prison. In skilfully drawn pages scores of humble Tommies stood up to the might of the enemy and gained victories against incredible odds.

By the time I started reading comics in the early 1970's there was already a rich history of boy's adventure comics - Victor, Valiant, Lion were the hot titles but these belonged to the previous generation and it was newer titles like Warlord from DC Thompson and Battle Picture Weekly from IPC that caught my imagination.

Warlord first hit the stands in 1974 and was far grittier than the usual war comics for sale during that period - so successful was it that rival publisher, IPC launched Battle Picture Weekly in order to snare some of the readers eager for this new kind of comic book reader.

Warlord was the first UK title to be dedicated solely to war stories, other comics usually contained several genres. And right from the start it set the bar very high in terms of artwork and storytelling.

Battle Picture Weekly, first published in 1975, was launched directly as a result of the success that rival publisher, D C Thomson were scoring with Warlord, and to my mind became far the superior title. With a creative team that included Pat Mills and John Wagner how could it not be! This was the comic that would one day feature a truly groundbreaking first world war strip by Pat Mills, called Charley's War which remains arguably the best war strip ever produced.

“Pat (Mills)  and John ( Wagner) wrote the initial episodes and then farmed them out to other writers. GFD ( Gerry Finley Day) was the author of D-Day Dawson. Lofty’s One-Man Luftwaffe – that was John and Pat. Their brief was not only to create a new title but bring new talent into the industry. We’d worked with a bed-rock of people. When you launched a new title, you rang up Tom Tully, he would do four of the new strips, Ted Cowan – people of that era – Ken Mennall. A lot of the people in Battle #1 were new to me."  Original Battle Staff Editor, Dave Hunt.

Perhaps the main difference between Warlord and Battle were rooted in the British class system. Battle felt working class, while Warlord seemed to be establishment. No better is this illustrated than in the original flagship characters in each title. Warlord had Lord Peter Flint, a wartime secret agent who when not away saving the country, was living the life of a wealthy aristocrat, his pleasures no doubt funded by the tax payer. But Battle's answer to the character was Mike Nelson, a working class bruiser who was billed as Britain's deadliest secret agent. And where Lord Peter Flint believed in giving the enemy a fair shake, Mike Nelson had no such morals - in the very first frame of his first appearance in Battle he shoots a German soldier in the back.

The original Major Easy

Now back in the day I read both Warlord and Battle, but Battle soon became my publication of choice. Where Warlord's heroes would dispose of the enemy with ease and then return home for tea and cakes, Battle's heroes seemed to bleed. The Mike Nelson character would become less important to Battle as the title found its true identity. The first adventure would run until May 1975, and although the character returned from time to time, it was the other strips that became reader favourites. Strips like Rat Pack, about a group of convict soldiers, was a huge success with readers, as was D- Day Dawson and in 1976 Battle introduced a character that became so iconic that he has been re-invented as Cursed Earth Koburn in the pages of Judge Dredd Magazine. This character was Major Easy, created by Alan Hebden and Carlos Ezquerra, a laid back James Coburn lookalike who usually fought the war from a horizontal position.

MAJOR EASY LIVES ON AS CURSED EARTH COBURN

It was in 1979 that Battle finally came of age, with the strip Charley's War which was written by Pat Mills and drawn initially by Joe Colquhoun. This was a different kind of war story. For one thing it was set in the First World War, when most adventure strips tended to favour the second world conflict, and for another it was an anti-war strip. YEP, AN ANTI WAR STRIP IN A WAR COMIC!!!!

'I did not want Battle to glorify war, and Charley's War is an anti-war story," said Mills. "I think that in the 1970s and 80s it was legitimate, more so than it is today, to describe the Great War as a tragedy, a mistake and criticise the incompetence of generals. In 2014, revisionists have been trying to improve the image of the generals." Pat Mills.



Charley's War is a true work of literature - a harrowing, intricately drawn look at the Great War as seen through the eyes of working class, semi-literate Charley Bourne. Pat Mills took the inspired method of telling much of the story through young Charley's diary. The strip was truly groundbreaking, featuring not gung-ho adventure but a look at the war as it truly must have been.

'A combination of well-researched and heartfelt scriptwriting, Pat’s work is the antithesis of the ‘war is hell’ gung-ho Sergeant Rock-style story. While never doubting for a second the heroism of the brave men in the trenches, The Great War is shown to be the tragedy it was, a meat-grinder that took the lives of millions of soldiers and set the stage for the even greater horrors of World War Two. On a personal note, Charley’s War was the first comic I ever read to show the heroism of the many thousands of Irish soldiers who fought in The Great War. Hitherto we were portrayed, if at all, as ignorant savages, vilely insulting caricatures the likes of which even Punch would have hesitated to use (one notable earlier example in comics featured an Irish soldier who went into the fray with a pot of Irish stew). The artwork for Charley’s War was provided by Joe Colquhoun, one of comics’ great unsung heroes. The Gustave Doré of British comics, Colquhoun created beautiful expressive storytelling week-in week-out. Both Joe and Pat put their hearts into Charley’s War, and readers of all ages were drawn to the care evident in their work.' By Steve Earls click for full article

'We often imagine that Armageddon is a horror that awaits us sometime in the future. But Armageddon has already happened. It was World War One." Pat Mills




Charley's War are available as a series of handsome graphic novels from Titan Books.


These days the British comic industry seems to consist of 2000AD and a plethora of licenced titles with the free cover gift more important than the stories between the covers, and the days of true variety in British comics is a distant memory - The Spectator bemoaned the lack of a British comic book industry in this article HERE

Pat Mills can be found here

For a history of Warlord
For a history of Battle

Images from the front line -

The Sarge was another popular Battle character

Battle's Johnny Red

Major Easy: Heart of Stone (Titan Books hardcover collection of strips from Battle Picture Weekly)

Titan Books are doing the classic strips from Battle Picture Weekly proud with their handsome hardcover editions of collected strips. Heart of Stone bundles together the first run of strips featuring Major Easy, a character created by writer Alan Hebden and artist, Carlos Ezquerra. The character became a popular addition to Battle and was soon a reader favorite - So populart,and so fondly remembered in fact, that the character has been updated and reinvented for modern day 2000AD as Cursed Earth Koburn.

Back when I was a kid Easy was one of my favorite characters but reading these strips as an adult I realize that the strip doesn't contain as much nuance as say Charley's War or H.M.S. Knightshade both of which can be put up against the very best war novels,  but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. The Easy strips were standalone tales with only the slimmest of continuity between strips, and Easy is in reality a cartoon character - he is able to survive any attack and his bullets never miss their target. and the enemies he faces are cartoon versions of the stereotypes that served British war comics well for a great many years. The Germans are all vile Nazis, the Italians are cowards and the Americans are loud mouth and foolish, but none of that matters since it always comes down to Major Easy, the hard-arsed Brit who can defeat any enemy and always find time for forty winks amongst the chaos and carnage of total war.

Production wise the book is every bit as good as Titan's Charley's War collection. The strips are printed on high quality paper and bound between rigid boards. The books are a must for any serious collector of British comics as well as those wanting a trip down memory lane.

Garth Ennis presents Battle Classics

Physically Titan Books have thrown everything into producing a highly quality deluxe hardback book that will take pride of place on the shelves of anyone interested in not only 1970's UK comic culture but anyone who likes intelligently told war stories. When I first heard this book was coming out I'd assumed it would be another anthology like the recent Best of Battle and collect together several episodes from the best known Battle strips but this is not the case. It is an anthology but it collects together the complete runs of both HMS Nightshade and The General Dies at Dawn as well as a several one off stories.For that latter think Tharg's Future Shocks from 2000AD but in a war setting.

 This is a far better idea than the 2009 Best of Battle collection (which I felt was a missed opportunity) since by collecting together the complete runs of each story the book really does these classic tales justice.

There's an introduction by comic books superstar Garth Ennis and this is not the standard couple of hundred words liberally sprinkled with a few 'Greats' a lot of 'Cors' and several 'Wows', but a full scale in depth essay that looks at what the original writers and artists achieved with the story.

And Battle often achieved great things - personally I think that Battle is the best British comic of all time and

easily eclipses 2000AD, which came from the same publishing house and shared many creators, but war stories fell out of vogue while Sci-Fi continues to prosper. Hence 2000AD is still here while sadly Battle is not. To my mind Battle was better at telling stories and in their very best stories such as Charley's War, Hellman, HMS Nightshade, Johnny Red or even Major Easy the strips had characters that defied the conventional comic book stereotypes and were presented as very real people with very real concerns. 2000AD has been very much influenced by Battle and over the years has tried to retell Battle stories in a SF setting but I don't think they've ever been truly successful at this. Battle at its best seemed real...very real indeed.

HMS Nightshade then, the lead story in this collection, originally ran in Battle for about a year and told the story of the HMS Nightshade, a Corvette class (a small easily maneuverable warship) warship which is assigned to protect the convoys taking supplies across the U Boat infested seas.

The modern corvette appeared during World War II as an easily built patrol and convoy escort vessel. The British naval designer William Reed drew up a small ship based on the single-shaft Smiths Dock Company whale catcher Southern Pride, whose simple design and mercantile construction standards lent itself to rapid production in large numbers in small yards unused to naval work. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, later Prime Minister, had a hand in reviving the name "corvette". Wiki

The story uses a device similar to that used in Charley's War but where that classic World War 1 story was narrated largely by letters home from serving soldier Charley Bourne, Nightshade is told by aging George Dunn who is telling his grandson all about his adventures in the second world war as a member of the Nightshade's crew.

There are some stunning secondary characters and all are capable of surprising us. Take for instance the character of Parsons - at first this bullish man who delights in making the lives of weaker crew members a misery seems to be the stereotypical school bully placed in a war situation, but he grows over the space of several issues and even dies a deeply touching and incredibly heroic death. This unexpected act of Parsons throws the reader a curve ball and is as powerful as anything ever seen in the best war movies. In fact I'm going to use a 1970's comic bookism here - WOW!

Other characters were equally well flushed out and by the time the reader reaches the last story he is left exhausted though all the better for it. This story really is a fitting tribute to the brave men who served on ships like the Nightshade.

The General Dies at Dawn in another classic story and unusual in that the protagonist is a German character. Battle did several stories from the German point of view, most notable Hellman but The General Dies at Dawn is easily the best. It originally ran for eleven issues, the complete run is collected here, and also uses the device of one character relating the story.

 This time the narrator is Otto Von Margen who has been condemmned to death for cowardice and treason. He is the holder of the Knight's Cross and as he relates his story to his jailer we learn how this great man has fallen so  low. Again Garth Ennis precedes the story with a detailed essay and here's another comic bookism - COR!


This book then is a must have for anyone who enjoys stortelling in a graphic medium, and comic book fans brought up on Superman, Batman and others could give this book a try and discover that there is far more to comic books than brightly coloured lycra and unusual muscle development.

Delta Rose and the beach-head landings

Where do you get your ideas from?

That question is asked of all writers at one time or another, and the answer is never really simple. Ideas come from anywhere and at any time, but with my July hardback, The Ballad of Delta Rose I can trace the genesis of the idea back more than thirty years. I'm not saying I've carried the idea around with me all this time (thought it could have been stewing at the back of my mind, alongside my desires for Angelina Jolie, all that time. Who can say?) but the thing that influenced the most important aspect of the novel was a story in a comic book I used to read as a kid. That story was called D-Day Dawson and it told of a character called Steve Dawson who was injured on the 6th June 1944 during the Normandy Beach Landings. Dawson survived the injury but was left with a bullet lodged too close to his heart to be removed and, knowing that one day the bullet will kill him, he vows to keep his injury secret and fight on.

And fight on he did, taking more and more outlandish risks to keep the men who fought alongside him safe. Dawson was forever getting dizzy turns or temporary paralysis as the bullet inside him shifted yet closer to the heart, but he always managed to pull himself together in order to save the day. In one story from October 1975 Dawson thinks, "I've had another warning today that I'm not coming out of this war alive." In another story Dawson, convinced that he only has moments to lives, storms a German machine gun nest single handily. He did however live to fight on for another few dozen or so issues.

There was something heroic about  this man who had nothing to lose that appealed to us schoolkids. He was the ultimate soldier since he didn't fear death and was in many ways already dead.

The story was a favourite of mine and it ran originally between March 1975 and May 1976 and then returned for a final series between August 1976 and January 1977. Dawson did eventually die but not from the actual bullet but by an extreme act of self sacrifice that saved his comrades. It was a bleak, downbeat ending to a reader favourite but then Battle Picture Weekly was always unpredicatable.

"He had to die,' said Eric Hebden, the writer who eventually killed Dawson. "It was a chronological story, we couldn't prolong it any further. Once he reached Berlin it had to end."

I remember being upset at the time, as were other Battle readers. In fact one reader,  Derek O'Byrne of Dublin even wrote a poem and had it printed in the Comic's 5th November 1977 issue. And if by some chance a grown up Derek does read this article, there is a scan of your tribute illustrating this article.

At the time schoolkids all across Britain went into mourning, for just as grown men where shocked into mourning when Sherlock Holmes supposedly died after his battle with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, we too were deeply affected by the loss of our hero.

Now I've a collection of Battle comics that I'd kept since I was a kid and a couple of years back when rereading some of these old issues, I suddenly thought the idea of a man doomed by a bullet lodged close to his heart had some mileage. And thus the idea for my third Black Horse Western, The Ballad of Delta Rose was born.

Like Dawson, Delta Rose has a bullet lodged inside him, one that can't be removed and will eventually kill him, but it is there that all similarity and debt to D Day Dawson ends. I approached fellow western writer, Dr Keith Souter and asked him about the effects a bullet lodged inside a human body, checking if it was feasible and indeed possible. I was told it was and was also give some documented evidence of this actually happening. And the novel grew from there. What's more I think it's the best thing I've ever written - the style is much more hardboiled than anything I've ever done and perhaps because I always had this beloved comic strip at the back of my mind, I managed to create something much larger than life, but at the same time keep it credible and grounded in a kind of fictional reality.

Delta Rose will be published on the 29th of June 2011 by Robert Hale LTD on its Black Horse Western imprint. The Black Horse Titles are primarily intended for the library trade and as such have limited print runs. My past titles have sold out quickly and Delta Rose is currently topping the pre-order western charts at Amazon and also at no 2 in the western charts proper. Pre-ordering means you are guaranteed a copy and no money will be taken from accounts until the book is ready to be shipped in July. Order it HERE

Below find an exclusive extract from The Ballad of Delta Rose

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd (29 July 2011)
• ISBN-10: 0709091885
• ISBN-13: 978-0709091882

It had been quite an evening, Delta thought as he stumbled towards the barn. Stumbled because he had maybe drunk too much, which wasn’t really saying anything. These days he wasn’t a regular drinker and the three glasses of beer he’d consumed during dinner had just about finished him off. He felt light headed but comfortable with it. It had been some time since he’d felt this good.

            In the distance an owl called out and Delta paused for a moment to look at the milky night sky, thin wispy clouds, illuminated by the moon, drifted across the vast expanse. Standing here, looking at all this, one could truly believe that God was in his heavens.

Delta took in a deep breath of the mountain air, hoping it would clear his head somewhat, and then continued towards the barn. It was a warm night, sultry, and he was suddenly very tired.

The thought of bunking down in the barn, while Etta was back in the ranch house didn’t bother him none. He was, after all, at this precise time closer to her than he had been for many a year. And that in itself was more than he felt he deserved.

            Delta went into the barn and threw the blankets onto a pile of straw to the left of the doorway. He guessed he would be out of any drafts and although he felt perfectly safe here, old habits died hard. If someone came in during the night, hoping to catch him unaware he’d spring up behind them. Not that he expected anything of  

the kind but the years of living by his wits had made him maybe a little over-cautious. He guessed he wouldn’t even curl up next to his own mother without a six-shooter beneath his pillow.

            Delta had expected an intimate dinner, just himself and Etta, but the ranch foreman, Steve had also been present. He’d sat there, giving Delta ill concealed looks of contempt. Apparently Steve had been working for Etta for over ten years, had spent more of his life with her than Delta ever had, and although Delta didn’t think there was anything other than business in their relationship, it was obvious they were friendly enough and also that Steve would have liked to have taken that friendship further. Delta showing up like this sure didn’t meet with the ranch foreman’s approval.

            And who was to blame him? Etta was still a good-looking woman and the fact that she owned so much land would make her more attractive still. She would offer not only the companionship of a good woman but also wealth and standing in the community. Land was highly sought after these days and its call could be as alluring as that of any woman.

            Delta mulled it all over as he set out his bed, making a pillow of one blanket and placing the other so he’d be able to wrap it around him. He removed his hat, boots and gun belt but placed both guns beneath the makeshift pillow. He lay down then and closed his eyes, knowing that as soon as he found sleep he would start to dream about the man who had killed him.

The Ballad of Delta Rose available for Pre-Order NOW

Yesterday's Papers - Battle Picture Weekly

To round off our current, "Yesterday's Papers" mini-series we will look at Battle Picture Weekly, which still holds an exalted position in my memory - in fact it is probably my favourite comic book ever. But besides that Battle displayed a stunning use of the medium over its run and of course gave us a genuine comic book masterpiece in Charley's War - but more on that seminal strip later.

Battle was launched in answer to rival D C Thompson's (see previous post) successful war strip title, Warlord and although born out of imitation Battle did better Warlord and is perhaps one of the, if not THE, most important British comic titles ever.

Battle's answer to Warlord's main character, Lord Peter Flint was Mike Nelson codenamed The Eagle - however readers preferred the more gritty strips in Battle and Mike Nelson, although featuring in several series of adventures, was soon dropped. It is indeed telling that the character was not featured in the recent trade paperback, The Best of Battle.

Early stars of Battle Picture Weekly were D-Day Dawson, The Bootneck Boy and the truly exceptional Rat Pack which was based very much on the popular movie, The Dirty Dozen.

o well remebered are The Rat Pack that Titan Books have a trade paperback collection due shortly that collects together many of their most popular stories.

which one is Lee Marvin?

"We were looking to movies like Dirty Harry and the spaghetti westerns for inspiration," writer Pat Mills said in his introduction to the story in Titan's Best of Battle. "And with Rat Pack we got it from the movie, The Dirty Dozen. It's an archetype that will never go away."


Another early strip that was hugely popular was D D Dawson - it told of Sgt. Steve Dawson who took a bullet during the D-Day landings but survived. However the bullet moved closer to his heart with every adventure and he knows that it will inevitably kill him. And so he vows to fight on until his own personal D-Day finally arrives. And arrive it did in the issue dated 22 Jan 1977 when the character finally went down. The next two scans depict D Day Dawson's last adventure - click on the images for a bigger readable version.

                                                                                       The comic merged other titles into it during its long run and the details are:

• Battle Picture Weekly (8 March 1975 - 16 October 1976)
• Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant (23 October 1976 - 12 November 1977)
• Battle Action (19 November 1977 - 20 February 1982)
• Battle (27 February 1982 - 1 October 1983)
• Battle Action Force (8 October 1983 - 29 November 1986)
• Battle (6 December 1986 - 17 January 1987)
• Battle Storm Force (24 January 1987 - 23 January 1988)

When the Battle itself began to fail it was merged into the new relaunched Eagle but by then the glory days of British boy's comics was long over.

The world of Battle was a non-PC world where the Americans were Yanks, the Japanese were Japs, the Germans were Nazis and the British were Limeys, but it wasn't always as clear cut and one strip in particular, Charley's War  created by Pat Mills with almost photographic artwork from Joe Colquhoun, was an anti-war strip in a pro war comic and today stands as a true masterpiece of British comics. Titan have published several deluxe hardback volumes collecting the stories with still more to come.

True depth in the comic book medium

TITAN'S CHARLEY'S WAR COLLECTION

It's a bleak and terrible story, but despite the overwhelming cynicism and negativity that surrounds the trenches, there's just a grain of faith in the human spirit. Not enough to ever make this remarkably sad tale ever attractive to Hollywood, but there's something genuinely moving in Charley's letters to his parents and the real friendships forged among the men in the front line. Like most of the great comics Pat Mills created during his most vibrant period of, say, 1976-89, the power of humanity is greater than the power of the "authority" which commands it to do terrible things in the name of royalty, nation or planet.


                           Battle truly was an exceptional comic book and it's great that the legacy is still remembered and felt even today. It may have started off as a typical gung ho style comic book but the skill of the creators soon led it into avenues previously unexplored in the comic book medium. It was incredible reading for a young kid to be presented with war in a realistic fashion in strips such as Charley's War and Johnny Red. to be presented with the unglamorous truth and to discover that bullets really did hurt and that the glory of fighting for one's country soon becomes secondary to surviving when the reality of war is felt.

Oh you are awful but I do like you!

             On a lighter note Battle had the popular Airfix Modellers Club page which was presented by British comedian, Dick Emery. And the letter's page was supposedly edited by Captain Hurricane that hangover from the days of Valient Comic.

To fully cover the importance of Battle would take more than one, two or even several blog articles - indeed a full scale book would be called for, but the article here is merely a taster of a time when British Comics really were a formidable creative force.






 And thanks to the ongoing Titan Book trade paperback series the stories are still around for readers to enjoy today. And long may this continue to be the case.





Notable websites:
Best of Battle

 Blimey another blog about comics regularly looks at British comic books.


Comics UK