Battle Picture Weekly

In 1974, in response to the success of the D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd war comic Warlord, IPC hired freelance writers Pat Mills and John Wagner to develop a rival title. Mills and Wagner brought in fellow freelancer Gerry Finley-Day to help develop stories. Dave Hunt was made editor. Doug Church also was very involved as a 'Creative Editor' on covers, layouts, features. When the title proved a success, Mills went on to create Action and 2000 AD, while Wagner was asked to revive Valiant. The attempts to breathe new life into Valiant were unsuccessful, and it was merged with Battle on 23 October 1976.[2] For some time afterwards the merged comic was entitled Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant. Action also merged with Battle on 19 November 1977, the resulting comic being named Battle Action. In 1979, Terry Magee was appointed editor while Dave Hunt became editor of the new "Eagle". Barrie Tomlinson was the Group Editor and Gil Page was the Managing Editor. The Director of the Youth Group was John Sanders. In 1982 the comic was retitled again, to Battle.

• Assistant Editor (for most of Battle comic's life): Jim Storrie
• Art Editors included Roy Stedall-Humphrys and Peter Downer
• Editorial assistants included Barrie Clements, Roy Preston, Richard Burton
• Art assistants: Tim Skomski, Martin Goldring

The details of title changes are:[3]

• Battle Picture Weekly (8 March 1975 [issue #1] – 16 October 1976 [issue #85])
• Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant (23 October 1976 [issue #86] – 1 October 1977 [issue #135])
• Battle Picture Weekly (8 October 1977 [issue #136] – 11 November 1977 [issue #141])
• Battle-Action (19 November 1977 [issue #142] – 1 July 1978 [issue #175])
• Battle Action (8 July 1978 [issue #176] – 4 October 1980 [issue #283]) : indicia still reads Battle-Action
• Battle Action (11 October 1980 [issue #284] – 25 July 1981 [issue #325]) : indicia now reads Battle Action
• Battle (1 August 1981 [issue #326] – 1 October 1983 [issue #439])
• Battle Action Force (8 October 1983 [issue #440] – 29 November 1986 [issue #604])
• Battle (6 December 1986 [issue #605] – 17 January 1987 [issue #611])
• Battle Storm Force (24 January 1987 [issue #612] – 23 January 1988 [issue #664])

From 1983 through to 1986, the comic ran a series of stories relating to the Palitoy range of action figures, Action Force. The Action Force characters initially guest-featured in a comic strip serial in Battle for four weeks in July 1983. The strip proved to be so popular that a further five promotional mini-comics were included free with every IPC publication in the weeks to follow. On 8 October 1983, Action Force joined the pages of Battle full-time and the comic was retitled Battle Action Force.

Eventually, in line with the increasing popularity of the toys, the focus of the comic moved towards Action Force (at the expense of some of the longer-running and more traditional wartime stories) and providing the back-stories to the action figures in circulation at the time.

During 1984 to 1985, Palitoy increasingly used the comic as a promotional publication, running competitions, mail-in offers and fan-club elements of the Action Force toy range through its pages. As Action Force itself transmuted to its G.I. Joe equivalent (see Action Force – Third generation), the comic took on the role of providing continuity with regard to the diverging storylines and characters. By the end of 1986, Palitoy had lost the Action Force licence to Marvel UK and the comic was again re-titled first as Battle (1986) and then Battle with Storm Force (1987) prior to its eventual merger with Eagle (1988).

Notable stories included:

• Rat Pack, written by Gerry Finley-Day and initially drawn by Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra, about a group of convicts released from prison to carry out suicide missions, inspired by The Dirty Dozen.
• Major Eazy, by Alan Hebden and Ezquerra, a laid back, cigar-smoking British officer who drove a Bentley, visually based on James Coburn. For a time Major Eazy became the commander of Rat Pack.
• Darkie's Mob, by Wagner and Mike Western, a violent series set in the jungles of Burma, with the renegade Captain Joe Darkie leading a group of lost soldiers in a personal guerrilla war against the Japanese.[4]
• Johnny Red, written by Tom Tully and drawn initially by Joe Colquhoun, later by John Cooper and finally by Carlos Pino, about a British fighter pilot Johnny "Red" Redburn flying for the Russians in a Hawker Hurricane fighter. Later Redburn flies with the RAF and United States Army Air Forces in England, before returning to the Eastern Front in a Hawker Typhoon nicknamed The Red Death. Johnny Red ran continuously for ten years and was Battle's longest-running series.[5]
• HMS Nightshade, by Wagner and Western, about the crew of a British Royal Navy Corvette at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, protecting Allied supply convoys against the German U-Boats.
• El Mestizo, by Hebden and Ezquerra, about a former slave turned mercenary in the American Civil War.
• Lofty's One-Man Luftwaffe, by Pat Mills, Wagner and Charlie Herring and drawn by Paolo Ongaro, about a British pilot, Dave 'Lofty' Banks, who speaks fluent German and is shot down over Occupied Europe in 1943. He escapes from a POW camp and to evade re-capture, he assumes the identify of a dead German pilot and ends up serving in the Luftwaffe. This series ran for 18 weeks and featured in the debut issue of Battle.
• D-Day Dawson, written by Finley-Day & Ron Carpenter and illustrated by Geoff Campion and Colin Page, about a British army Sergeant who is wounded on the D-Day beaches by a bullet that is lodged near his heart, sealing his eventual doom. However, the doctor that diagnoses the injury is then killed and Dawson rejoins his unit, no one else aware of his terminal condition, having decided to fight with his platoon until the end.
• The Bootneck Boy, written by Ian MacDonald and later by Wagner and illustrated by Joan Giralt Banus, about Danny Budd, a young orphan who, having been reluctantly raised by his unpleasant uncle, enlists in the Royal Marines where he is picked on because of his small physique but he remains determined to prove himself.
• Hellman of Hammer Force, written by Finley-Day, starring a German tank commander who fights throughout the Second World War from the invasion of Poland in 1939 to the fall of Berlin in 1945. This series was an intermittent one, drawn by several different artists, but the artist most associated with the series is Mike Dorey.
• Yellow Jack, by Terence Magee, about a cowardly British soldier Jack Loot hungering for gold in the North African desert war.
• Charley's War, by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, this series told the story of 16-year-old Charley Bourne who enlists in the British army during the First World War. He serves in the trenches on the Western Front 1916–1918 and later in the Russian Civil War in 1919. The series was continued for a short period into the Second World War under a new writer, Scott Goodall but the series was then ceased due to the ill health of artist Joe Colquhoun.
• Cooley's Gun by Gerry Finley-Day and Geoff Campion
• Kommando King by Gerry Finley-Day and Geoff Campion
• War Dog by Alan Hebden and Mike Western and later Cam Kennedy, a lost German Shepherd experiences world war 2 from different sides.
• Death Squad by Alan Hebden and Eric Bradbury, bunch of German no-hopers on the Eastern Front
• Fighting Mann by Alan Hebden and Cam Kennedy, a veteran US Marine Colonel embarks on an un-authorized mission in the Vietnam War to locate his son, a Navy pilot, who has gone missing and has been accused of desertion.
• The Commando They Didn't Want by Terence Magee (written under the pseudonym John Richard) and Carlos Pino
• The Nightmare by Terence Magee and Mario Capaldi and later Carlos Pino, boy of the Blitz pursued by Nazi assassin.
• Invasion 1984 by John Wagner and Eric Bradbury, a race of skeletal-like aliens invade Britain.
• Invasion! by Terence Magee and Jim Watson, Falklands war
• The Hunters by Terence Magee and Carlos Pino and later by Geoff Campion, secret agents
• One-Eyed Jack by John Wagner and John Cooper, a Dirty Harry like character. Originally a cop in Valiant, he became a spy when he came to Battle.
• Storm Force – a non-stop action strip about a squad of elite anti-terrorist warriors, inspired by Action Force
• Gaunt – set in World War II, about an unbalanced "hard man" given a superhumanly strong artificial hand to replace one lost during torture
• The General Dies at Dawn – by Gerry Finley-Day & John Cooper, a Wehrmacht General, due to be executed for treason, spends his final hours describing his wartime experiences to the sympathetic guard outside his cell.
• Hold Hill 109 – written by Steve MacManus and drawn by Jim Watson, a mini-series set in North Africa about a ragged group of 13 Eighth Army soldiers who have six days to hold a vital hill against a vastly superior force of Afrika Korps.
• Fighter from the Sky – by Gerry Finley-Day & Geoff Campion, in 1939 a German Paratrooper Paul Fallman is demoted back to private after his father is executed for treason, leaving his son determined to restore honour to his family name.
• Terror Behind the Bamboo Curtain- Charles Herring, Mills & Wagner (the latter two writers uncredited) and drawn by Giancarlo Alessandrini, British troops in a Japanese POW camp in Burma which is run by a sadistic commander who performs cruel punishments and experiments on his prisoners. This strip featured in Battle's debut issue.
• Panzer G-Man – by Gerry Finley-Day & Geoff Campion, a Panzer-Grenadier Kurt Slinger fights not only against the Allies but against deadly rivals among his own comrades.
• Joe Two Beans – by John Wagner & Eric Bradbury, a Blackfoot Native-American serves in the US Marine Corps in the bloody Pacific War.
• The Sarge – by Gerry Finley-Day/Scott Goodall & drawn by Mike Western/Phil Gascoigne, British Sergeant Jim Masters, a veteran of WW1, has to shepherd his rookie, over-confident platoon during the Second World War.
• Sailor Small – by Scott Goodall and Phil Gascoigne.
• The Flight of the Golden Hinde- by S.Conforth. Another strip that featured in the debut issue of Battle. This story featured a replica of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind that sets sail in 1937 aiming to circumnavigate the world to commemorate the 450th anniversary of Drake's 1577 voyage. The ship is still at sea when the war breaks out in 1939. The Captain, James Finch, disobeys an order to return to Britain and instead decides to complete the voyage.

Garth Ennis has stated that Battle was "one of my favourites as a kid and a big influence on my own work. I used to enjoy Darkie's Mob, Crazy Keller, Hellman, Cooley's Gun, the later Rat Pack stories, Death Squad, The Sarge... the list is endless" and he wrote a letter to the comic pointing out an error in tank identification.[6]

In November 2015, the character of Johnny Red was revived by writer Garth Ennis and illustrator Keith Burns for a new 8-part mini-series Johnny Red: Hurricane published by Titan Comics.[7]

In August 2018, Rebellion issued a new 3-part comic series Sniper Elite: Resistance by Keith Richardson and Patrick Goddard, a spin-off from the PS-4 game Sniper Elite. The story, set in German-occupied France in 1941, included an appearance by the Rat Pack, original characters from Battle Picture Weekly.[8]

Some of the stories were collected into trade paperbacks by Titan Books:

• The Best of Battle: Volume 1 (288 pages, June 2009, ISBN 1-84856-025-7)
• The Best of Land Battle – This edition was originally planned to be released in 2010 but was postponed and has yet to be published.

Charley's War has been reprinted in a collection of hardcover volumes by Titan. Then in 2010, they began making more hardcover collections available including:

• Rat Pack: Volume 1 (128 pages, September 2010, ISBN 1-84856-035-4)
• Major Eazy: Volume 1 (120 pages, November 2010, ISBN 1-84856-441-4)
• Johnny Red: Falcons' First Flight (128 pages, November 2010, ISBN 1-84856-033-8)
• Darkie's Mob (112 pages, April 2011, ISBN 1-84856-442-2)
• Johnny Red Volume 2: Red Devil Rising (96 pages, June 2012, ISBN 1-84856-034-6)
• Johnny Red Volume 3: Angels over Stalingrad (104 pages, February 2013, ISBN 1-84856-438-4)
• Garth Ennis Presents: Battle Classics (255 pages, January 2014, ISBN 1-78116-741-9)- Features the entire series of HMS Nightshade and The General Dies at Dawn.
• Garth Ennis Presents: Battle Classics-Volume 2 (240 pages, August 2016, ISBN 1-78276-794-0)- Features the entire series of Fighting Mann and War Dog.
• Johnny Red Volume 4: The Flying Gun (160 pages, September 2016, ISBN 1-84856-444-9)

From 1 April 2009, Egmont UK in conjunction with W H Smith announced 4 special reprint collections from their stable, including a collection of Battle strips.[9]

In 2018, Rebellion publishers began a new series Treasury of British Comics which featured reprinted collections of strips from various past British comics. So far, three titles featuring stories from Battle Picture Weekly have been released:

• Lofty's One-Man Luftwaffe- (June 2018, a reprint of the complete series issued as a bonus extra with Judge Dredd Magazine #397)
• El Mestizo (64 pages, November 2018, ISBN 1-78108-657-5)
• Invasion 1984! (128 pages, May 2019, ISBN 1-78108-675-3)

• British comics

• Battle Picture Weekly at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle Action at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle (1982) at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle Action Force at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle (1987) at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle Storm Force at the Grand Comics Database
• Battle Picture Weekly Comic – The Britishcomics.com view.
• Best Of Battle
• Battle Action Force comic scans
• Battle Picture Weekly at Comics UK
• Charley's War fansite
• First part of an interview with John Wagner by David Bishop