About Battle

Battle

Battle was a British weekly boys' war comic published by IPC Magazines in London from 8 March 1975 to 23 January 1988. It began as Battle Picture Weekly, and under a succession of combined and shortened titles — Battle and Valiant, Battle Action, Battle Action Force and Battle with Storm Force among them — it became the defining British war comic of its generation. Most of its stories were set in the Second World War, some ranged to other conflicts, and factual features on warfare sat alongside the fiction.

The comic was devised by Pat Mills and John Wagner, two freelancers whose work on IPC girls' comics had brought a freshness that editorial director John Sanders wanted for boys' titles. Battle was an instant success, and many of its strips have since been reprinted and critically reappraised, above all Charley's War. Since 2016 the majority of its characters and material have been owned by Rebellion Developments, which has published revivals and reprints.

Origins in a Rivalry

Battle was IPC's answer to a rival's hit. In 1974 DC Thomson, the Dundee publisher that was IPC's great competitor in British comics, launched Warlord, the first ongoing British weekly devoted entirely to war stories. Warlord was a smash hit, and IPC had a standing policy of responding to a rival's success with a similar title of its own. Sanders, however, wanted more than a copy. Having been impressed by Mills and Wagner while they worked as freelancers on girls' titles such as Tammy and Jinty, he turned the new war comic over to them.

Neither man was initially eager to work in the war genre, but they brought a clear aim to it: their characters would have a more working-class make-up than the heroes of other boys' comics. Working to a tight lead-in of six to eight weeks, and placed in an office in the girls' department to keep friction with established staff to a minimum, they assembled the title with help from writer Gerry Finley-Day, sub-editor Steve MacManus, military veteran Eric Hebden as technical adviser, and art director Doug Church. The experienced staff editor Dave Hunt was assigned to guide the pair's perfectionism toward the launch date.

The Launch in March 1975

The first issue appeared in March 1975 — the cover was dated 8 March — carrying eight initial stories. D-Day Dawson followed a British soldier with a bullet lodged inoperably near his heart. Rat Pack, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra and acknowledged by Finley-Day as influenced by the film The Dirty Dozen, followed four convict soldiers sent on suicide missions. The Bootneck Boy charted an aspiring Royal Marine, Lofty's One-Man Luftwaffe an Allied pilot working inside the German air force, and Day of the Eagle introduced a Special Operations Executive agent whose first mission was to kill Adolf Hitler. Other launch stories included The Flight of the Golden Hinde and The Terror Behind the Bamboo Curtain, set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in occupied Burma.

Reader research — readers ranking the stories — soon reshaped the contents: the two least favoured launch stories were dropped in May 1975, and army stories proved far more popular than sea or air stories. In January 1976 Major Eazy arrived: a laconic, cheroot-smoking, Bentley-driving officer written by Alan Hebden and drawn by Ezquerra, modelled on James Coburn's character in The Magnificent Seven.

Editors and the Early Years

Dave Hunt edited the comic from 1975 to 1979, Terry Magee from 1979 to 1986, and Richard Burton from 1986 to the end. Under Hunt it grew tougher: in August 1976 Wagner contributed Darkie's Mob, about a rogue unit behind Japanese lines in Burma, while other new stories included Operation Shark, about boys resisting the German occupation of the Channel Islands.

In the hundredth issue, in January 1977, Johnny Red began. Written by Tom Tully and drawn by Joe Colquhoun, it followed pilot Johnny 'Red' Redburn flying a Hurricane in support of a Soviet Falcon squadron on the Eastern Front — a then-rare positive portrayal of Russian characters in a British comic. Joe Two Beans, about a taciturn Native American fighting for the United States in the Pacific, began in the same issue.

Mergers with Valiant and Action

Battle absorbed two famous IPC stablemates in quick succession. In October 1976 the flagging Valiant was merged into it, and the title became Battle and Valiant from 23 October 1976. Three Valiant strips continued, including the maverick policeman One-Eyed Jack, created by Wagner and in some respects a forerunner of Judge Dredd, while Valiant's flagship Captain Hurricane was reassigned as host of the letters page rather than as a strip. Hunt was not in favour of diluting the all-war content, but the merger considerably boosted sales.

A year later the controversial Action, which had been withdrawn in 1976 and returned in sanitised form, was folded into Battle in November 1977, producing Battle Action. Action's German tank commander strip Hellman of Hammer Force transferred naturally, the secret agent Dredger was reassigned to military intelligence, and the future-sport strip Death Game 1999 was reworked as Spinball Wars. The long-running Bootneck Boy was among the strips that made way for the newcomers.

Charley's War

The comic's most celebrated strip arrived in January 1979. Charley's War, written by Pat Mills and drawn by Joe Colquhoun, began on 6 January 1979 and told the story of Charley Bourne, a sixteen-year-old who lied about his age to enlist in the First World War and was thrust into the Battle of the Somme. Mills researched the conflict extensively, drawing on large archives of soldiers' letters home, and set out deliberately to make an anti-war strip; Colquhoun matched the scripts with meticulous visual research. Hunt was so impressed that he vowed to keep the strip in the comic whether readers liked it or not.

The series followed Charley through the trenches from 1916 to 1918 and later into the Russian Civil War. Mills wrote it until 1985, when he quit after being refused a research budget for a planned move into the Second World War; Scott Goodall then wrote the concluding episodes, which took the story into the early Second World War, until October 1986, when Colquhoun's declining health ended the run. The strip has been repeatedly collected, described in one assessment quoted by later writers as the greatest British comic strip ever created, and its frank, politically critical view of war set it sharply apart from the gung-ho conventions of the genre.

Redesign, Reprints and the Falklands

In July 1980 the comic was redesigned and shortened its title to simply Battle, gaining a front-cover strip for the first time and, after lobbying by Mills and others, printed creator credits — a reversal of IPC policy. Sales nevertheless continued to fall. The title began using reprints, starting with Darkie's Mob in March 1981, and briefly broke its all-war rule with strips cashing in on the martial-arts and CB-radio trucking crazes and an unlicensed echo of the television series The Professionals.

When war broke out in the Falkland Islands in 1982, the editorial team debated how to respond and decided not to refer to the conflict until it was over. Wagner's Fight for the Falklands followed after the end of hostilities; Wagner later admitted embarrassment at the story, feeling he had been caught up in the jingoistic mood of the time and had followed initial government accounts too closely.

Battle Action Force

In October 1983 the comic was renamed Battle Action Force after a four-week strip based on Palitoy's Action Force toy line proved popular. Three strips were given over to the multinational Action Force — its Z Force infantry, SAS Force, Q-Force naval arm and Space Force — fighting Baron Ironblood and his Red Shadows. The licence divided the creators, some of whom disliked appealing to younger readers, and every Action Force page required the manufacturer's approval. But Palitoy underwrote the cost of the licensed material, effectively halving Battle's production costs at a time of declining sales across British comics, and sales rose.

The arrangement also showed the pitfalls of licensed publishing. In 1985 Palitoy began issuing Hasbro's American G.I. Joe figures under the Action Force brand, and the comic had to integrate many new characters and explain in fiction why Cobra had replaced the Red Shadows. When Hasbro bought Palitoy in 1987 and switched its backing to Marvel UK, Battle lost both the subsidy and half its contents at a stroke.

The Final Years

Richard Burton, editor from 1986, could not halt the slide in sales, though Battle outlived its old rival Warlord, which was cancelled in September 1986. The response to losing Action Force was a replacement anti-terrorist strip, Storm Force, and an increasing reliance on reprints; by May 1987 four of the comic's seven features were reprints. An attempt at another licensed strip, based on the X-Changers toy line, helped neither the toys nor the comic. In January 1988 Battle was merged into the new incarnation of Eagle, bequeathing it Storm Force and reprints of Johnny Red and Charley's War. The final issue was dated 23 January 1988.

Sources differ on the total issue count: 644 issues is widely cited for the run to the Eagle merger, while a titles listing following the numbered sequence through its name changes reaches issue 664 with the last Battle Storm Force issue.

Legacy and Revivals

Battle's influence outlasted its cancellation. Garth Ennis was a loyal reader who won a £2 prize in the issue of 20 January 1979 for pointing out an error in tank identification, and later credited Mills, Wagner and Battle as a major influence on his writing. Titan Comics published The Best of Battle in 2009 and collections of Charley's War, Rat Pack, Johnny Red and Darkie's Mob, and in 2015 Ennis revived Johnny Red in a new mini-series drawn by Keith Burns.

Rebellion bought the rights from Egmont in 2016 and has reprinted strips under its Treasury of British Comics imprint, including El Mestizo, Invasion 1984! and The Sarge. In September 2020 it published a 100-page Battle of Britain Special with ten new stories, and in June 2022 a hardcover Battle Action Special brought Battle and Action characters together. A five-issue Battle Action series followed from May 2023, with further issues announced for 2024 to 2025 — evidence that a comic launched as a quick reply to a rival had become one of the most durable properties in British comics.