I got in the post , the new Rebellion & Treasury of British Comics special.
The Battle of Britain Special 2020
yesterday - and it really was a big treat ( I read the original from issue 1 )
The first story was a real joy - The Tough Way Out, a Rat Pack tale by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns .
This was really well-done and very enjoyable . I would give it 5 stars
next -
LOFTY AND THE EAGLE - and not bad at all - a bit far-fetched - but okay ( 4/5 )
THE FACE OF THE ENEMY - a old man having a flashback of 1940 whilst chatting to a classroom of kids ( the sad reality is the vast majority would have no clue what a Hawker Hurricane was , but i digress ) 3.5
WAR CHILD - for me one of the weakest strips - basically War is Hell for Kids with little action
( art was great ) 1/5 - bit woke for me , sorry
DESTROYER - Strip about 3 new recruits for HMS Campbeltown - and its subsequent use at St :-*- set in Stalingrad - and the artwork was fabulous from Simon Coleby PJ Holden ( 5/5 )
SNIPER ELITE - set in Stalingrad , artwork by Simon Coleby ( like Jaegir ) its fab , 5 out of 5 for me
THE VULTURES - an old story in Battle reprinted - art by Carlos Ezquerra ( 5/ 5 )
bravo - black lion - set in Vietnam ( 4/5 ) not bad
DOUBLE HERO - Raf Story - reprint from Battle ( one I remembered !! ) 5/5
SCOURGE OF THE SKIES - very nice art and good story ( 4/5 )
el mestizo - Western epic - new story and art ( 4/5 ) not bad at all
GUSTAV OF THE BEARMACHT - good art - good story ( 5/5 )
and a dreadful 2 page cartoon COCKNEY COMMANDOS - so dire , its a 0/5 for me
total waste of 2 precious pages
so overall 4 out of 5 for me , Highlights was RAT PACK , SNIPER ELITE and DESTROYER for me
those 3 were worth it for the price alone - I am glad BATTLE got some love in 2020
thanks Rebellion !!
2000AD runniing a WOKE tale!? :o
Say it aint so from the comic that gave us the Crisis Amnesty International Special....
(they missed a trick not having Shako in that bear story...)
Fantastic cover (the orange and yellow subscriber one) and a nice nod to the humor strips of the IPC Fleetway era breaking up what is otherwise just two pages listing the contents, AKA filler.
Rat Pack was an entertaining diversion, but not Ennis on top form. Tonally, it's much more crude and slapstick than the Rat pack I remember, but it looks nice even if there's no replacing Ezquerra or Bradbury.
Lofty was borderline incomprehensible in places. I am going to be charitable and assume the intent was to recreate the often-arbitrary storytelling of a 3-page weekly comic, but I don't feel it comes off well if that's the intent. There are some scene transitions and story moments that just don't work. Looks nice, though I'm not fond of some of the aesthetics of the lettering.
The Face Of The Enemy was a slight read, but clearly well-intentioned, despite Alan Grant making no secret of the fact that he - along with John Wagner and others - used their space in these comics to tell blackly comic tales that amused themselves first and foremost - weirdly enough, if you ever watch interviews with the publishers of VIZ, they approach their comic with much the same sensibility. Anyway, this looks nice, though the colours are very shiny.
Worthy as it is, the War Child story was pretty weak, as there are two pages early on that are just a wall of text, comprising two narratives going on at the same time: one in the narrative captions, and the other in the visuals and spoken dialogue. It comes off as really amateurish and not at all what I'd expect of a reliable writer of Abnett's experience. Perhaps the hard left left SJW liberal feminist human rights wokeness is somewhat undermined by appearing alongside a comic (Sniper Elite) which rather graphically revels in violence in a wartime setting? Although the comic itself is also profiting off war, sooooo... next time they should put a white poppy on the cover? It looks nice, though.
Destroyer makes a great fist at evoking the look and feel of the old Battle one-offs, complete with unexpected emotional sea changes one should have seen coming in a story about the last war that could deliver the British genuine martyrs. Effortlessly swings between farce and melancholy. No complaints.
Sniper Elite: In All Good Videogame Stores Now is a perfectly competent house advertisement for one of The Parent Company's far more profitable ventures, and even though I'm a big commie myself, if I have a complaint about this it's that it doesn't take the opportunity to reinforce ideological opposition to the Russians like the stories in Battle often would, but that's more a complaint about being tonally and/or thematically inconsistent with BPW.
The Vultures is a good callback to when I mentioned "blackly comic tales" up above, and it's great that they managed to include Carlos in the special somehow. Short and sweet.
Bravo Black Lion is... meh. Feels like something the writer and/or artist had in a drawer after their shot at a Dark Horse anthology didn't pan out. It's perfectly fine, if unremarkable, but I would have thought tapping Nick Dwyer to draw a Fighting Mann strip would have been a better bet to fill the Vietnam War-shaped hole that was apparently gaping wide in the middle of a "Battle Of Britain Special".
Double Hero seems like an excuse to get Ian Kennedy in the special - as if one was needed. Looks fantastic, of course, but also has decent pacing for a historical infodump.
Young Cockney Commandos is a fun humor strip, and doesn't outstay its welcome. Quirky and very British in a way that you probably don't even notice if you grew up with it.
El Mestizo is a weird choice for inclusion in a special with a specific theme into which the character and strip just don't fit, but it's diverting enough.
The pun "Bearmacht" is not a sound basis for an entire story, and arguably takes away from the wartime service of Corporal Wojtek, the brown bear who served with distinction in the Polish army as a munitions engineer - no, REALLY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear)) - but god damn it I am only human and if there is any better way to utilise pages in a comic other than filling them full of images of a bear mauling gestapo scumbags, I remain unaware of it.
Lots of house ads and one-page fact-files pad out the rest of the pages. Good for verisimilitude, if nothing else.
I can take a guess why there's no Charley's War, and Ennis/Burns on Rat Pack gives me a notion why there's no Johnny Red, either, which is a shame as these were probably the standout Battle strips (apart from X-Changers: Cosmic Cowboys, of course), but overall it's pretty good. 8 quid's worth of good? Well, I got it as part of the subscriber bundle deal thing they did and I'm happy enough, but belts are tightening at the moment so others will have to judge for themselves.
3 out of 5.
(https://i.imgur.com/6zEODtk.jpg)
Forgot to add the Comc in its wrapper
regards to the Forum
73north
Quote from: 73north on 15 September, 2020, 07:18:04 PM
DESTROYER - Strip about 3 new recruits for HMS Campbeltown - and its subsequent use at St :-*- set in Stalingrad - and the artwork was fabulous from Simon Coleby ( 5/5 )
coughPaul J Holden
cough.
I've amended the opening post.
(not going to spend time sorting out the formatting on the rest, though)
A rather variable special - with some strips really doing a grand job, but others not hitting the Mark. I agree with the Prof that the Vietnam strip and El Mestizo had no real place in this edition, but it was a whopping page count so I'm not going to begrudge.
Think that whomever decided to let Oz letter those two strips needs to be reminded that crossbar 'I' is a no-no these days.
Think my strip of the issue goes to Destroyer, with the Bearmacht in very close second.
A cracking title overall and I think it proved itself as value for money.
I was always a fan of war stories thus I was quite happy when a Battle special was announced. The special was a solid and entertaining.
It was good again to see Ennis doing another British strip. I also found it interesting to see some reprints, but this was done by two masters Carlos Ezquerra and Ian Kennedy. Would have loved a John Cooper one as well since he is also synonym with Battle.
Story wise Rat Pack, Destroyer, Sniper Elite, El Mestizo, The Face of the Enemy and Gustav was my highlights.
The only story that did not grab me was Lofty and the Eagle. This was mostly due to the art which I did not enjoy and left me struggle to distinguish between characters.
Something else that I would have like to see differently is the art on Bravo, Black Lion. I would not change the artist Glen Fabry, but I would have kept his B/W art rather than colouring it. I saw a page from Alex's twitter feed before it was coloured which looked amazing.
My last tough is that it is a pity that we did not have a Johnny Red or a Charley's War story in the special.
I couldn't disagree more about War Child, I thought it was brilliant! As for "woke," people were writing anti-war stories long, long before political correctness. And if you can't oppose child soldiers, you have something wrong with you.
Quote from: Richard on 17 September, 2020, 09:21:43 PM
I couldn't disagree more about War Child, I thought it was brilliant! As for "woke," people were writing anti-war stories long, long before political correctness. And if you can't oppose child soldiers, you have something wrong with you.
Yeah I definitely agree. Pretty sad how we've gotten to the point that saying "child soldiers exist and that's bad" is considered woke marxist SJW propaganda.
Nothing better than reading about Nazis getting gunned dow but I feel it's important to have strips like this, especially for a comic aimed at adults, to step back and show war isn't just a "Boys Own Adventure", giving Jerry whatfor. I can imagine if Charley's War came out today it would be derided as PC garbage.
I thought my using "human rights" as a pejorative term might have been a hint as to my tone, but clearly I played my hand too well and my poker face was simply too inscrutable. Or I just shitpost so much no-one has a fucking clue when I try to make an actual point anymore. Same thing, really.
To be clear: I wasn't criticising the strip for being "woke", I was criticising the possible cynicism of having it appear alongside a strip that is an advertisement for a war-glorifying videogame which will be played by children, and will teach them (through immersion) military terms, tactics and SOP.
Quote from: Professor Bear on 18 September, 2020, 10:57:55 AM
I thought my using "human rights" as a pejorative term might have been a hint as to my tone, but clearly I played my hand too well and my poker face was simply too inscrutable. Or I just shitpost so much no-one has a fucking clue when I try to make an actual point anymore. Same thing, really.
To be clear: I wasn't criticising the strip for being "woke", I was criticising the possible cynicism of having it appear alongside a strip that is an advertisement for a war-glorifying videogame which will be played by children, and will teach them (through immersion) military terms, tactics and SOP.
Yeah I got yah, I was referring more to one of the posts above yours. I agree with the disconnect here of "war bad, donate to this charity" alongside "Sniper Elite 4: buy now on Switch!" but there was Sniper Elite miniseries last year published under the Battle label so maybe they now consider it part of the Battle "family" now?
It's an anthology, so I think it's fine to have different kinds of war stories, even polar opposites, appearing together.
The majority of the stories were anyway focus on WWII. For me there was enough variety.
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 17 September, 2020, 04:40:06 PM
A rather variable special - with some strips really doing a grand job, but others not hitting the Mark. I agree with the Prof that the Vietnam strip and El Mestizo had no real place in this edition, but it was a whopping page count so I'm not going to begrudge.
Think that whomever decided to let Oz letter those two strips needs to be reminded that crossbar 'I' is a no-no these days.
Think my strip of the issue goes to Destroyer, with the Bearmacht in very close second.
A cracking title overall and I think it proved itself as value for money.
Agree with all Bolt says, peaks and troughs, and a couple in there that really shouldn't be given the theme.
I ordered the fancy cover from the webshop and got the other one, which was disappointing but not enough to do more than make a passive-aggressive comment here about it.
I've recently been re-reading a whole load of musty old Battles from my younger days and I was surprised how brutal it was - not in terms of gore as on the whole things were pretty bloodless but in terms of the huge bodycount in almost every issue - as well as how the strips could be both dark, humorous and mainly lacking in the jingoism the uninitiated might expect from a war comic. The stuff in the special I found a bit more nuanced but I think decrying any of it as 'woke' is a bit shocking tbh: If you can't read a story about child soldiers in a comic without wondering if it's a bit objectionable then I'm not sure where we go from here really.
I thought this was a pretty little anthology overall, highlights being Ennis on Rat Pack, the glorious Ezquerra's reprint, Destroyer and the Bearmacht. I'd read the latter every week if it always ended with [spoiler]a bear wearing a nazi cap eating a blokes foot[/spoiler]. The Lofty story I found borderline incomprehensible sadly but I loved the guy saying "You'll be safe as houses with me" and then [spoiler]getting killed mere panels later.[/spoiler]
I'm reading this slowly because I want it to last. Anyway I've just read Alan Grant's story (I'm not reading them in order), and I think it's the best story he's written in ages. That artist is superb too.
Quote from: Richard on 22 September, 2020, 11:52:02 PM
I'm reading this slowly because I want it to last.
That's okay they were all written slowly ;)
Lol!
I must admit this one didnt do a whole lot for me. Was never a Battle reader, and while I do have a small stack of them- including #1-3 which were entertaining- I'm of the mind that basically the only thing of real note that came from it was Charley's War... which was missing from this one. I'm just not one for war comics, which is kind of why I started with 2000AD in the first place.
All that said, i appreciated getting it as part of the specials bundle, and i liked Dan Abnett's War Child. Anything that makes comic readers start frothing about "wokeness" is alright by me. If the rest if it had been similarly antiwar, I'd be frothing myself- for a regular monthly version. Too much though was exactly what I expected. Did like the bear story though. Cant beat a man-eating bear.
SBT
I really enjoyed this, a good chunky read, with the feel of old Battle and yet reading contemporary. As for the woke comment, its a bit of damned if you do etc, was Charleys War woke?
One of the real highlights of this and other specials is walking into the newsagents and picking up a new comic with new content.
Rebellion are doing these special now for two(?!) years in newsagents, it probably would have been easier to just release these into comic shops. It hopefully means there is a market out there for comics outside the narrow confines for the comic shop and that these specials become some form of a regular publication and continue with the new content.
Quote from: SmallBlueThing(Reborn) on 23 September, 2020, 09:12:23 PMAnything that makes comic readers start frothing about "wokeness" is alright by me.
To be fair, the complaints seem to be that it isn't woke
enough because of the capitalist opportunism of stories like
Sniper Elite negating War Child's message.
In that case roll on Snowflake Picture Weekly please! But keep the nazi-eating bear story in it.
Tbh Man-eating Bear Picture Weekly would also work for me, and would likely satisfy anyone who thinks woke is a derogative term into the bargain.
I don't like the newspeak woke - like if I say I'm woke, I'm too up myself, and if someone else says I'm woke it's usually followed by snowflake and other shit like that. It's just too loaded a word.
Words are fun, though: I liked that when Prince Harry said "it's vital that we reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity" he got called out for taking sides in the US election. The only way you can tell he's taking sides is if you admit that your side likes "hate speech, misinformation and online negativity".
Oh, wait - wrong thread...
Yay - man-eating bears are great!
Hard to seriously use "woke" to describe oneself when cons use the term derogatorily and lefties use it ironically. Tbh it's a vaguely confusing term as I'm not sure I've ever seen it used convincingly.
While I enjoyed that, it was definitely missing something. The tone seemed all over the place (not necessarily a bad thing in an anthology) and I was expecting more in the way of stories with beginning, middle and end and less fact stuff (but again, that makes it closer to what I recall of Battle).
Rat Pack, War Child and seeing vintage Ezquerra and Kennedy again were the highlights for me.
Can't say I was ever a big fan of Battle back in the day, although I did use to read my mates copy back on occasion.
As for this special though, I can't describe it as anything other than a success.
A nice mix of stories and art styles and the aircraft factoids took me back to those halcyon days of comics.
I'd certainly be up for an annual release of a Battle special.
Pat Mills could write a new episode of Charley's War for it. Who should be the artist?
Quote from: Richard on 04 October, 2020, 01:44:46 PM
Pat Mills could write a new episode of Charley's War for it. Who should be the artist?
Patrick Goddard. No contest.
Yeah - Patrick certainly has the artistic quality to deliver.
Major Easy by John McCrea:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjvTnoiXYAQHu6p?format=jpg&name=large)
(Colours by Jack Davies...)
That's Jack Davies, seen in FQP and coming soon to the new Zarjaz, too.
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 08 October, 2020, 06:16:33 PM
That's Jack Davies, seen in FQP and coming soon to the new Zarjaz, too.
WHOOOOOORRRRRREEEEE!
Quote from: broodblik on 08 October, 2020, 02:49:06 PM
Major Easy by John McCrea
...Although he
really needs to get that muzzle out of the dirt!
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 09 October, 2020, 09:24:17 AM
Quote from: broodblik on 08 October, 2020, 02:49:06 PM
Major Easy by John McCrea
...Although he really needs to get that muzzle out of the dirt!
Oh No !!! Do not let the corporal see that
Quote from: Barrington Boots on 21 September, 2020, 12:22:44 PM
I ordered the fancy cover from the webshop and got the other one, which was disappointing but not enough to do more than make a passive-aggressive comment here about it.
Same here. A little disappointing so I fired of an e-mail from my order receipt which of course bounced back a couple of days later (???) as its a 'No reply' e-mail. By which time I'd realised it was worth the fuss and didn''t feel fair to demand a replacement and so moved quickly on.
ANYWAY to the comic itself. I've heard some complaining about the price but JEZ at £7.99 this is a beast. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. With all the little text feature, many very good, it really did feel like an annual of old. At least in content. And while the anything with this much content is going to be a bit variable overall its a blast.
Lets get the bad out the way. Wasn't a big fan of the 'funny' strips. Feel out of context. Mind I'll come back to that. Also thought '
Lofty' was pretty weak. It lurched rather than rattled along.
The middle ground was owned by an okay resurrection of
El Mestizo and a
Snipper Elite story that looked great but really didn't do that much.
Before we get to the really good there's a great reprint in
Vultures which was superb old school stuff. Doiuble Hero with lovely Ian Kennedy art and a good true yarn and Scourge of the Skies a similar short history piece with lush Patrick Goddard art.
The rest is pretty damned good.
Bravo, Black Lion is solid and hard hitting.
Rat Pack is cheekly fun as is
Gustav of the Bearmacht , these two making nice thematic book ends.
The abolute highlights for me
Face of the Enemy a great little reflection on story and children's enduring engagement with lovely art by someone I'm not familar with Davide Fabbri.
War Child which made a good point well with lush atmospheric art to make it swell in dramatic intent. Finally
Destroyer which even putting aside PJ Holden's great art it manages in just a few pages to catch much of the power and impact of his glorious GN (with Garth Ennis) Stringbags. Its superb.
The thing that really strikes me is the tone of this really swings around. From the obviously comic. To the old school action yarns. To the more modern, apparently 'woke', I'd go thoughtful insightful pieces. Yet even for that it holds together and feels cohesive. Great stuff overall.
I think the variety you described in your last paragraph is one of its strengths. It's an anthology, it's supposed to be varied.
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 05 October, 2020, 10:10:08 AM
Yeah - Patrick certainly has the artistic quality to deliver.
By happy coincidence, Patrick's Inktober offering today certainly supports that. Find him on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and check it out.
I've worked out a list of all 'Battle' branded content that Rebellion have published...if you like that sort of thing then check it out :) cheers
https://boysadventurecomics.blogspot.com/2020/11/updated-battle-from-rebellion.html (https://boysadventurecomics.blogspot.com/2020/11/updated-battle-from-rebellion.html)
Quote from: broodblik on 09 October, 2020, 09:31:20 AM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 09 October, 2020, 09:24:17 AM
...Although he really needs to get that muzzle out of the dirt!
Oh No !!! Do not let the corporal see that
Blood, Aye. Mind you, not a problem with the SA80. Still miss the SLR.
Quote from: Richard on 04 October, 2020, 01:44:46 PM
Pat Mills could write a new episode of Charley's War for it. Who should be the artist?
Chris Weston would be amazing.
He certainly would! His black and white art on Slaine last year was fantastic.
Sorting the artist for new Charley's War stories is probably not going to be the hard part.