Finally got my act together and bought Volume 1. What a product!
This must be my third or fourth time through Charley's War, first being in Battle itself (though not from the start), and it has never looked better. I usually heartily dislike tampering with old comics for collected editions, I'd much rather see them as close to how they originally appeared as possible, "Next week!", half-page Weetabix adverts and all - but this refresh is a bonafide exception to the rule. I applaud our very-own Jim and everyone else involved - the lettering upgrade is completely seamless, retouched surrounding art or not, wonderfully legible and entirely appropriate. I don't know how these things work at a technical level, but the apparent variety within the font makes the whole thing feel hand-lettered, and it sits easily against Colquhoun's incredible inks.
The inclusion of full-colour covers in the back, the coloured action scene on the front, all situate the material correctly, as a serialised boys' war comic of the 70s, rather than some illustrated historical treatise, and as such it shows just how incredibly far Mills and Colquohon have taken the medium and the milieu.
As with every re-read, I seem to get punched in the gut every couple of pages: it's an impact that never ceases to surprise, and never seems to fade. The power of this comic to move and inform has been gently moved into the current decade, and I couldn't be more impressed.
