The Best of "Battle": Vol 1 [Paperback]

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 have 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 Battle, which launched as Battle Picture Weekly on 8th March 1975, and through absorption, merger and rebranding (becoming Battle and Valiant, Battle Action Force, and Battle with Storm Force before itself being combined with Eagle on January 23rd 1988) 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 beginnings of some of the very best of those 13 odd years, produced by the winning blend of Young Turk writers such as Pat Mills, John Wagner, and Gerry Finley-Day and stalwarts of the old guard Tom Tully, Eric and Alan Hebden, with art from the likes of Carlos Ezquerra, Geoff Campion, Mike Western, Joe Colquhoun, Eric Bradbury, John Cooper and Cam Kennedy.

The featured strips (in chunks of about 10-20 pages each) are D-Day Dawson, Day of the Eagle, The Bootneck Boy, Rat Pack, Major Eazy, Fighter from the Sky, Hold Hill 109, Darkie's Mob, Panzer G-Man, Joe Two Beans, Johnny Red, The Sarge, Hellman of Hammer Force, Crazy Keller, The General Dies at Dawn, Charley's War, Fighting Mann and Death Squad!

This spectacular blend of action, tension and drama from both sides of World War II (many of Battle's best heroes, such as Hellman, or Panzer G-Man were German's fighting against our boys!) as well as a unique take on the American soldier in the Pacific and even Viet Nam 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 agitate for a second volume...

I'm always very wary about buying things for nostalgia value. I have spent a lot of money on DVD cartoons that I loved as a child only to discover that they bored the living daylights out of me as an adult. So I purchased this book with a few warning bulbs flashing overhead. But I didn't need to worry, this book is as good as I remember it. The stories are well crafted and the action is just how I pictured it while I was waiting for the book to arrive. It's amazing how many of the stories I remember, but not just that, certain pictures conjure up all kinds of memories. I remember being ill in bed when I was about ten years old reading Rat Pack. Seeing those stories again brought back all of those old feelings. But it's not just nostalgia, the stories and characters are still good and nearly all of them are films screaming out to be made. Pat Mills and John Wagner to name just two writers, have created something magical all those years ago. It's about time Hollywood came calling and gave us Rat Pack the movie. (Although I know Rat Pack was loosley based on The Dirty Dozen) But buy this book and enjoy. It's not just the great memories it will conjure up, it's great story telling shown through fantastic art work!

Kids these days. You don't know what you're missing. Back in the 70's, with no computers and mobile phones and only three tv channels that werent on 24 hours of the day, we had to make our own entertainment. And once such way was to go to the newsagents and spend a handful of pennies on a comic.

One of the most popular subjects for comics of the time was war, not least because world war II was just thirty years before and still strong in the national consciousness.

Comics prior to the mid 70's could be pretty tame, though. But with the launch of action and then battle, and later 2000ad, the whole landscape of the field changed. The stories that these three classic comics brought us were just so much more realistic and grown up. and action packed. so we loved them. even though the adults might not have been quite so keen.

Battle told war stories, and ran from 1975 - 1989 before fading away. This volume repeats selected strips from 18 different stories that ran in battle. Battle broke new ground also by having the occasional german lead character, always a decent type battling hard line nazis in addition to the allies, and a couple of those stories get a look in here.

The best known battle characters are represented. such as: D Day Dawson, a man who receives an injury on D Day that will kill him in less than a year so who now does amazingly dangerous things because he has nothing left to lose. Rst pack: four men recruited from a military stockade to undertake dangerous commando missions. major easy, a laconic officer in charge of a platoon in sicily. Johnny red, british pilot fighting with the russians. and the world war one story of an ordinary soldier called charley's war.

As a whole the ones that have ongoing stories are slightly stronger than the ones that are weekly adventures of the main character, but you have to admire the writers for managing to tell such stories in a mere three pages week in week out. Those are not great literature, the bulk of the dialogue being expository, but they're still entertaining. The ones with ongoing stories do feel like they have more depth to them, though.

Not quite a five star collection because this only reprints a handful of episodes for each character, which is bit frustrating in the case of the ones that are ongoing stories because it leaves you hanging. But it's great just to get to read these again. The back of the book does promise collected editions of individual stories, though. I have them on pre order already.

A couple of disclaimers from the front of the book:

'characters may have views and use language which some of todays readers may find offensive.'

'much of the material in this is exceedingly rare, as such we hope readers appreciate the quality of the reproduction achievable may vary.'

but the reproduction is fine all in all. some pages look a little different in terms of shading because they were originally published in colour and are presented here in black and white.

But then the only people likely to read this are those who read the original, so I don't think either of the above things will put you off