- Charley's War
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Charley's War Author(s) Pat Mills (script)
Joe Colquhoun (art)Current status / schedule Concluded Launch date January 6, 1979 End date October 4, 1985 Publisher(s) IPC Publications Genre(s) Action / War Charley's War was British comic strip written by Pat Mills and drawn by Joe Colquhoun. It was originally published in Battle Picture Weekly from January 1979 to October 1985
Contents
Publishing history
Described by Andrew Harrison as "the greatest British comic strip ever created", Charley's War tells the story of an underage British soldier called Charley Bourne. Charley joins the British Army during World War I at the age of 16 (having lied about his age and told the recruiting officers that he was 18; they conveniently overlook the fact that Charley gives his date of birth on his application form as 1900), and is quickly thrust into the Battle of the Somme.
The strip follows Charley's life in the trenches and his experiences during the war. Colquhoun put a meticulous level of research in to the already well-researched scripts which Mills provided. The strip rarely flinched from providing an extremely frank portrayal of the horrors of war, so much so that in some later reprintings some of the artwork was censored. Mills added a political slant in the strip not seen in British war comics and avoided the standard heroics common in war comics generally.
The strip followed Charley through to the end of the war and through into the invasion of Russia in 1919. However in January 1985, Mills quit the strip before being able to complete the story (he intended the story to end in 1933, with Charley on the dole as Hitler is made Chancellor of Germany) due to a dispute over his research budget.
Mills was replaced by Scott Goodall and the story was moved to the Second World War and became a more conventional war adventure strip. However, the series ended in the early part of the Second World War after Charley is one of the lucky ones successfully evacuated from Dunkirk (along with his son), realising he is too old for soldiering anymore. The story ends with him wondering how he came to become a soldier in the first place, leading into a re-run of the strip within Battle Picture Weekly until that comic folded.
In reality, the ending of Charley's War was down to the poor health of Joe Colquhoun, which had already caused the strip to be delayed several weeks. Out of respect for Joe, there was no question of getting another artist to take over production, and it was felt best to simply draw it to a close.
It was featured in "Boys and Girls," the second programme of Comics Britannia on BBC Four.
Collected editions
Titan Books are reprinting Charley's War in 112-page hardcover anthologies. Eight collections have been published so far:
- Charley's War:
- 2 June - 1 August 1916 (collects episodes 1-29, November 2004, ISBN 1-84023-627-2)
- 1 August - 17 October 1916 (collects episodes 30-59, November 2005, ISBN 1-84023-929-8)
- 17 October 1916 - 21 February 1917 (collects episodes 60-83, October 2006, ISBN 1-84576-270-3)
- Blue's Story (October 2007, ISBN 1-84576-323-8)
- Return to the Front (October 2008, ISBN 1-84576-796-9)
- Underground and Over the Top (October 2009, ISBN 1-84576-797-7)
- The Great Mutiny (November 2010, ISBN 1-84856-741-3)
- Hitler's Youth (Oktober 2011, ISBN 9780857682994)
Awards
- 2006: Nominated for "Favourite Reprint Compilation" Eagle Award
See also
Other similar publications:
- Battler Britton, by Garth Ennis
- Commando Comics
External links
- Charley's War, new site run by John Freeman, editor of the Titan reprints
- Charley's War, old site archived after the webmaster died
- Charley's War and Battle Picture Weekly at BritishComics.com
Interviews
- BBC Interview with Pat Mills, BBC Cult, November 24, 2004
- Pat Mills talk at The Comic Museum recorded by Geek Syndicate, November 29, 2008
- Pat Mills The General in Charley's War, Comicon.com, December 9, 2008
Categories:- 1979 comic debuts
- British comics
- Defunct British comics
- World War I comics
- Comics by Pat Mills
- Charley's War:
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