It's easy for the latecomer to think that Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun's Charley's War isn't for them. A black and white boy's comic told in three and four page chapters which was published weekly for more than six years some three decades ago? If the setting, genre and format doesn't put the neophyte off, then the length of the whole project just might. Even the weight of expert opinion quite rightly raving about the strip's importance and quality can seem a touch off-putting. There's an air of received opinion and worthiness which can gather around Charley's War's reputation, and that can clash with what at first glance might appear to be little more than a boy's comic about the First World War. A superior boy's war comic, of course, but a boy's war comic all the same.
This week's post in The Year In Comics series - here - is an attempt to reassure anyone who's new to Charley's War that it really is one of the finest comic strips that there's ever been. I was a relative late-comer to the virtues of it myself, and it's something which I regret. Yet it can be hard to see what all the adulation and enthusiasm is about when faced with a single page, or even a chanced-upon chapter, of Charley's War taken at random. Heresy, perhaps, but I suspect that it's true all the same. I wish that I'd had somebody to explain not just that Charley's War is a brilliant comic strip, but also that it can be a challenging one to initially get to grips with.
Of course, I hope it's a piece which those folks who are familiar and passionate about the strip might enjoy too. I've certainly tried to make sure that that's so. But more than anything else, I was simply trying to find a way of speaking about Charley's War which didn't entirely retread what a great many others have already written, and written well. Charley's War is, after all, quite probably the greatest British comic strip there's ever been, and it deserves to be treated with the appropriate measure of respect. No nerves then. None at all.
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I remember reading Charley's War as a kid when it was reprinted in The Eagle in the late 80's/early 90's, found it really gripping then. I recall blatantly ripping off one episode which had Charlie stuck in the mud of the battlefield, slowly sinking alongside a German soldier for a school essay.
ReplyDeleteHave been meaning to get my hands on the collected volumes for years, so many comics, so little time and too little money.
At heart, Mills is a very humane writer who questions the systems that are built around people and has a desire for people, at the very least, to have the freedom to think for themselves.
I think the literal war documentation style of 'Charley's War' was a good base and grounding for his writing prior to the more fantastic and allegorical world of Nemesis the Warlock which similiarly dealt with human cruelty, brutality and prejudice.
The sometimes erratic output of Mills I think makes us forget that he is a great creative mind and a great, original writer of British comics.
Hello Alfie:- Couldn't agree more about Mills' importance, couldn't be more pleased to write a piece which was able to cheer from the cheap seats with as much energy as I could muster :)
DeleteI do envy you reading CW when you were a nipper. I just didn't have the wit to pay attention. Brit war comics were so wretched when I was growing up, and even Battle when it started up seemed to be pro-war and gung-ho. So I tuned out and four years later I wouldn't have dreamed of tuning back. A mistake. It would've been terrific to have had Charley's War as one of my formative experiences, as Nemesis Books 1 & 3 were. (And you're so right to suggest that there's a real kinship between the two strips. Just those two strips themselves make up a legacy which hardly anyone else can challenge.)
The Titan editions are very well done indeed. Had-backed, relatively inexpensive, good printing for the price; may some reasonably priced copies come your way :)
Kudos to you Colin for tackling the task of describing the true appeal and brillance of Charley's War.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate enough to read Charley's War as it appeared each week, and you describe very well that ever-expanding view of the war that slowly unfolded as the story continued. Unlike any of the other stories in Battle (except perhaps for Johnny Red and Darkie's War), Charley's War assumed that its readers were literate and intelligent and able to handle unpleasantnesses that other Battle stories (and other UK war comics of the time as well)would never directly face up to. There is also a sense too, that Charley's War grew with its audience - I read the strip between ages 12 to 18, and never at any time did I feel 'spoken-down' to, but the story after 5 years had an incredible back story and resonance. When Charley went to fight in Russia in November 1918 - after the reader is intensely wishing that Charley's suffering might finally be ended and he can go home - the politics became truly eye-opening.
I recall reading that Pat Mills' intention was to carry on through WW2 and up to the present-day but was refused any additional salary to do the research he regarded as necessary. If only there was a publisher today willing to continue the project with Pat Mills...I'd love see his portrayal of the UK's many wars since WW1.
"World War III" in Crisis Weekly could be seen as continuation of sorts though...
kiwijohn
Kiwijohn
Hello kiwijohn:- As a latecomer to Charley's War, I find it fascinating to hear from those who had the good fortune and common sense to read the strip as it was published. If I can't have experienced it first-hand, then by gawd I'll experience through the memories of good folks such as yourself!
DeleteYour memories of Pat Mills' intentions do match what has been written in the Titan Collections. It''s one of those great what-ifs in comic history, and a terrible shame, that an unwillingness to pay a man for the work he was doing ended PM's involvement in the strip. At least we've got the work we have, though there's worrying signs that chapter 9 of the series has been cancelled.
hmm interesting i might have to check this out at my book store.(hoping that its hasn't gone out of print)
ReplyDeleteHello H:- I've just popped over to Amazon.Co.UK and they say the first volume is still in print. So hopefully that means your local store can still order it too. Good luck if you do get a chance to check it out :)
Deletegood because i want to compare this to queen and country by Greg ruka.
DeleteHello H:- Now THAT'S a fascinating idea for an essay :) Really. Fascinating.
DeleteI used to read my brother's Battle ActionForce after my Bunty. Sometimes I had to wait until he'd finished and it was so infuriating.
ReplyDeleteCharley's War and Johnny red were my favourite strips from then. I think they had Charley's War on a constant repeat as I seem to remember getting to the far end and then starting again with the first World War which was such a jolt after seeing him as a mature man and father then this gawky young lad again.
I remember at first I thought it was just a 'boy's story' (and less emotional than the girl's) but as time went on Charley got more and more sophisticated. I have to admit that being a tiny girl I didn't really notice a lot of the other themes going through it such as the anti-establishmentism. I just noticed an increasing emotional weight.
It's only by getting the the reprints out of the library that I've started to appreciate the excellence of the strip and all the things I didn't notice first time round. Really I think all schools should have this in their libraries. The kids are forever doing projects on the Wars and when they're really young they are very flexible about the format of their entertainment.
Hello Staticgirl:- There was a time - and this shows how thick I was - when the thought of reading Battle Action Force after Bunty would have sounded like purgatory. But I've have been educated about the virtues of both genres, and I have to say that I was wrong-wrong-wrong. When I think how many comics there were that something could have taken from and which I ignored ... I am not impressed by myself.
DeleteI find the idea of that frustrating wait for Battle to be a smile-inducing idea. And I share your regard for Johnny Red too.
The Titan reprints do mention that when Mr Culquhoun became too ill to work on, the Charley's War strip did indeed get reprinted from its beginning. And that did have the virtue of getting the DNA of the strip into another generation of comic book readers.
I couldn't agree more with you about Charley's War's place in the curriculum. Schools as a whole as resistant to using comics for exam/"academic" subjects, though I know of several teachers who've used them very well indeed. (I used them too, when I could.) I've long thought that one way to pass on comics literacy would be to get comics into the curriculum on a mass scale. It would help replace the mass market that comics once had. I'm sure some bright-minded bods are working on that at the moment, and I know of some projects and indeed some books already out towards that purpose.
I recall one year just before I retired. A fellow teacher had a demanding class and the assigned text was War Of The Worlds. At that time, Dark Horse had the complete Ian Edginton/Disraeli adaptation on the their site. I recommended trying that and I was assured that it worked wonders. This was no sign of innovation or even intelligence on my part; it's really a no-brainer.
They ran this for years in Judge Dredd Megazine (up until the end of Vol.4) and it was eye-opening to see how quickly it changed from just a superior war comic into... well, what it was. Even by the fourth or so part, it becomes clear - the sinister, eeeevil German sniper is a bore that all the other Germans hate because of how cliched he is, and then he's finally killed falling down stairs. Then it starts getting really political as you watch, and willing to change the entire direction (back to Blighty and Blue's Story were unexpected).
ReplyDeleteThe big moment I will always remember is that the zepellin raid strips were reprinted in late July 2005. One of the panels has people running to the Underground to be, quote, "safe from the bombs there!". The editor, Alan Barnes IIRC, told everyone he almost didn't run it until he saw the sequence where the Londoners attack a Russian family thinking they're Germans, and Charley comes to their defence. He said that was something that he had to be seen and said, at that time. For me, that says everything about Charley's War - whatever the time is, there's some part of it that needs to be said.
- Charles RB
Hello Charles:- Well, that shows how long I was out of the 200AD loop before retuning in 2010, does it? That long a string of reprints and I knew nothing of it? Gosh.
DeleteRe-reading Charley's War has really brought home to me how little has changed in our culture when it comes to attitudes to war and difference. It's been a necessarily sobering business. The assumption of the late 60s and 70s was that the growing body of knowledge concerning the social sciences had given us all a foundation to move forward into a better future. And yet, if that knowledge isn't transmitted to the next generation and the next, and if they're not given the tools to question and debate, then culture just re-sets itself at a depressingly low level. Simple issues such as the situational corruption of war, the necessity for regulation of the marketplace, the necessity to retain government independence from the press; the most basic lessons of history have been ignored as if there never was a past at all. And the examples you give show how little has been learned on an everyday level. Charley's War SHOULDN'T be relevant today, but it really is, and it is because the powers-that-be haven't cared to make sure that the key lessons are passed down.
I wonder why that might be? Complacency, ignorance and selfishness. I bet Pat Mills could have predicted that decades ago.