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Johnny Red

Started by Moose, 13 July, 2004, 06:32:07 AM

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Moose

does anybody know the date that johnny red finished its original run in battle? i know it lasted about 6 years like most stuff that tom tully wrote, but when did he get the order of lenin or whatever it was that happened? i'm trying to locate the entire strip, but don't want to buy reprints if i can avoid it.

maryanddavid

the last original johnny red appeared in battle 17th jan 1987,by tom tully and carlos pino.all johnny red stories after that are john cooper reprints
david

Moose

thanks for that david....

jesus, so tom tully got 10 years out of it, almost to the day......i knew he could drag out a story, but that's ridiculous, the strip lated 4 years longer than the war.

maybe i won't try to buy the back issues i'm missing after all, cos its another 5 years worth.

maybe it's like m*a*s*h...korea lasted 2 years and m*a*s*h lasted 11....

maryanddavid

yeah no offence to pino as an artist,but i bought a collection a couple a=of years ago and when cooper was taken off art chores i lost interest,there was only so many bad commanders i could take,still even tho coopers red is the definitive,i still prefer coughlan,(sp?)original run
david

Moose

that'd be colquhoun of chas' war fame i think. definitely my fave johnny red artist. i was a bit pissed off when he got replaced, but i love john cooper's work anyway, whatever anybody else has to say about him. hey, if its good enough for garth ennis to comission a private piece from him then it'll do me. never saw any carlos pino work on the strip, as i'd stopped getting it by the time he arrived. must've had something to do with me getting older and not wanting to read about action figures and toys tied into comics, although i ditched battle after all the decent  stories from action had ended in mid 1979. now i've got this mid life 'i must find out how charley's war and johnny red ended' thing going on.....collection? what collection?

davidbishop

John Cooper replaced Joe Colquhoun as artist on Johnny Red with issue 200 of Battle (Jan 1979) and remain on the strip until September 1984 - drawing about 270 episodes. The plug for original Johnny Red stories was pulled in January 1987, when the writing was well on the wall for the weekly. It even outlasted Charley's War for length...

davidbishop

Moose

i'm surprised johnny red went on for so long, just how many times could the same hurricane be rebuilt? now somebody will tell me it got shot down in the last couple of years never to return. perhaps tom tully would have kept writing it if battle hadn't been heading for the toilet.

interesting point by DB above.....would JR have outlasted CW if pat mills had been given the research budget to continue the strip into WW2? certainly scott goodall would never have taken it on...so maybe CW would have extended itself by another few years.

ah, missed opportunities.....

maryanddavid

as great as i think charleys war was/is,mills ended his run just in time,i think.
he had cahrley out in russia fightin for the white russians after www1 ended, which started to get a bit dull,bit too much historical and not enough charley.

Moose

never got that far i'm afraid....chased down some later issues off ebay recently, but i'm trying to find the issues missing from neil emery's collection.

i could see pat mills getting on his high horse a bit over things like the russian campaign, but without him writing comics to rattle the cage, how many people would really know anything like that ever happened?

starscape

Just looked up 'Pat Mills' on Amazon and, hey, Charley's War is the most popular order despite it being months away from a release and contending with the recent Dr Who!

bloodforthebaron

Re: Mills's cage rattling.  Zigackly, reading Charley in Russia aged 8 made me the pacifist I am today.