Charley's War Vol. 1: Boy Soldier: The Definitive Collection: Volume 1

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Certainly comic book fans may want to consider picking up the issue of fair compensation on social media and across the community ( and it’s worth remembering that this happens just as egregiously with other comic book creators). Regardless of story or quality it is fair to say that the vast majority of strips followed a pattern of patriotic goodies and baddies. Without wanting to assume too much, war comics may be a hard sell to your average reader of The Social Review. Joins the BEF in France and participates in the heavy fighting against the German Blitzkrieg and in the long and confused retreat to Dunkirk.

Yet there are parts that backend the grimness: camaraderie and heroism, action as exciting as that you’d find in any conventional war strip, and even moments of comic relief. If you’re joining me for the first time, you can read the intro to the Secret History here , it’s available for everyone. There was an element of jingoism in certain strips and their glorification of war so effective that the British army saw fit to change its own recruitment tactics to appeal to war comic fans.Charley cannot bring himself to put the dying Scholar out of his agony but the deed is performed by newcomer Skin. The title fame below is the very true event of the stand off at the beginning of the Mutiny on the bridge over the river that led from the camp to the town at Etaples. Back in France, Charley finds his shell-shocked son Len at Dunkirk and they escape back to Britain together.

The four have various adventures during the retreat from Belgium until Wattsie is crippled by Panzer fire, and later Handy is killed and Charley wounded by German sniper Heinrich Horst. Let's talk about graphic novels – from action-packed adventures to intimate memoirs, from meticulous non-fiction to wild surrealism! I read that the cement for the German pillboxes originally came from Britain via neutral Holland, but couldn’t confirm it, so I left it out. Bandits at 12 O’clock’s tales of air combat are exciting enough that even the most ardent pacifist risks finding their heart pumping. The British publishers helped by acting as gatekeepers, blocking authors who dared to tell the truth about the war and General Haig.

The BBC, for instance, said they couldn’t show the anti-war series Monocled Mutineer because of contractual problems and costs. Back in the trenches, Charley accidentally shoots himself in the foot and is accused of cowardice by the Scholar. In 2018 Rebellion began another series of Charley's War reprints in its Treasury of British Comics imprint. This shifting of emphasis away from the crimes of the Germans and onto the more unpalatable conduct of one’s own side was unheard of in British comics, its peers and the period that Charley’s War comes from. From what I’ve observed, historians, authors, journalists and academics will just keep quiet, their mission to put the clock back a hundred years now successfully complete.

Charley's War was featured in "Boys and Girls", the second programme of Comics Britannia on BBC Four. There had been two proposed radio documentaries, a TV education programme, a Radio 4 drama pitch, plus it was optioned by a major film production company for a TV series to be shown during the anniversary years. 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. That the blockade of Germany, designed to starve the country into submission, was a charade, until after the armistice when it was savagely enforced to ensure German compliance with consequent mass civilian deaths by starvation.As a bemused Jim MacGregor asked me at the time, why doesn’t anyone ask that all important question? In fact, judging by the huge turn-outs for signings, I suspect Charley’s War actually sells in greater numbers in France than in Britain. He has nightmare visions and sees Ginger as ghost sitting on a cloud smoking a fag, demanding to know why he was killed and not the more ignorant Charley. The third viewpoint was unheard of until recent years and is still barely known today, not least because of the cognitive dissonance it causes in all of us.