What The Papers Say

[Phoenix]

Sometimes it amazes me that we won the war at all!

It was a combination of our Captain Mainwaring spirit, and what our headmaster used to call Guts, pronounced like cats, and those blackout curtains that we religiously had to draw across all our windows behind the main curtains before we were allowed to switch any lights on.

we played on a huge bomb site in the sixties (Trident Street) but I don't think I once stopped to think how it came to be there.

As teenagers, we used to play in a network of tunnels inside a kind of hill within the grounds of our primary school, until they were bricked up. For some years, though, the main entrance to them, which was at ground floor level, was used as a changing room for local league football teams who played on our school field on Saturdays. Ah, those carefree days, where have they gone?

[stevezodiac]

I picked up some vintage newspapers on Saturday and in the London Evening Standard dated Thursday 15 November 1973 was this letter. I must confess I never knew of the existence of this organisation/club. I suspect Phoenix may know more. (But what on earth is a panegyric?

[Phoenix]

But what on earth is a panegyric?

It's just a speech or text in praise of someone, Steve. I am still technically a member of the Old Boys' Book Club (Northern section : based in Leeds). I haven't attended any meetings for a couple of years, but they always invited me once a year to give a talk on some aspect or other of Thomsons' output, and on a number of occasions latterly they would give me the whole evening. When they split the evening between two speakers, I met a number of interesting people, perhaps the best known generally would be Bill Lofts and Mary Cadogan. The club, as a national entity, produced a non-profit making A5 monthly magazine of about 32 pages called Story Paper Collectors' Digest between 1946 and 2005. I've had the odd thing published in it, but not as many as Ray Moore. As I write, I am having coffee out of my usual mug, The Old Boys' Book Club - Northern Section- Ruby Anniversary 1950 - 1990. And don't worry, if I ever drop it, I've got a pristine replacement in one of my kitchen cupboards.

[Tin Can Tommy]

This was on the BBC website today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-27142836

It's a nice little feature on Charley's War. A comic strip which I have always thought sounded interesting but I've never properly read it. I think I'll probably go and buy the first of the reprinted volumes of Charley's War now.

[Lew Stringer]

This was on the BBC website today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-27142836

It's a nice little feature on Charley's War. A comic strip which I have always thought sounded interesting but I've never properly read it. I think I'll probably go and buy the first of the reprinted volumes of Charley's War now.

Anyone interested in British comics would do well to read Charley's War. As an anti-war strip it's the perfect counterpoint to a lot of the more gung-ho war stories that have appeared over the years. In fact, with the current revisionism by politicians over WW1 it's an essential read.

Great artwork too, by Joe Colquhoun. One of the best artists ever to grace UK comics.

[Phoenix]

My uncle Willie Ashton, the husband of my mother's eldest sister, was blown up at Ypres by stepping on a land mine. His name appears on the Menin Gate. It may also be on the war memorial in Eaves Lane Congregational Church in Chorley, and although it is on my list of things to do, I haven't so far been over to check. I suspect that my deep antipathy towards war stories of any kind has its source at Ypres.

[Lew Stringer]

My uncle Willie Ashton, the husband of my mother's eldest sister, was blown up at Ypres by stepping on a land mine. His name appears on the Menin Gate. It may also be on the war memorial in Eaves Lane Congregational Church in Chorley, and although it is on my list of things to do, I haven't so far been over to check. I suspect that my deep antipathy towards war stories of any kind has its source at Ypres.

I've always disliked war stories too. Not for personal reasons like yours, but just that most of them clearly didn't reflect the reality of war. Even as a kid, and seeing the horrors of Viet Nam unfold on the evening news, it felt disrespectful and dishonest for comics to treat conflict as a big adventure without showing the full consequences.

Charley's War tried to redress the balance, showing the grim reality of trench warfare, - and the folly of various battles, or at least as far as it could go in a comic aimed at children.

[Michael Anden]

I think I can understand the reservations some may have around war comics. I don't have them myself, but I agree most adventure stories are essentially are a sanitisation of the true horrors of armed conflict. The ones that aren't, and show everything including the kitchen sink, I guess could better be suited for the 'horror' genre.

That said, I've never seen the appeal of comics that tell of 'actual' wars, when the breadth of entirely fictional adventures stories (and any other genre) is limitless. For reality stories, I've got... well... reality.

[philcom55]

War stories account for some of the best and the worst comic strips in my experience. The worst are the ones that Lew describes where the reality of human suffering is shamefully used as an excuse for glorified violence and blatantly racist jingoism. To my mind the best ones are those that do inject an element of reality - like Charley's War, Harvey Kurtzman's EC stories, Bob Kanigher's Enemy Ace and Sgt. Rock, Sam Glanzman's USS Stevens, Jacques Tardi's 'It Was The War Of The Trenches' and Frank Bellamy's 'Happy Warrior'.

- Phil Rushton

[colcool007]

Add Rayker and Kampgruffe Falken to that list. Both of those represent the cream of the crop of the DCT output from the war comics.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

To show the full Horror of War in it's worst excesses [atrocities at Nazi camps, the effects of radiation bombs, firebombing civilians, mutilation of Millions during WW1, etc, etc,] would clearly be too Horrific for journals aimed at children, and in fact would still likely be banned outright even in todays' 'enlightened times'. Probably rightly so.

Its harrowing enough just to read eyewitness accounts of a lot of these details in history books, but to transfer this to visual imagery is the equivalent of journalistic 'snuff movies' and will likely never be suitable for entertainment, even within todays' 'anything goes' media culture.

The sanitized version of War often depicted in comics is not really my cup of tea either, but the alternative I described above is infinitely worse.

[philcom55]

No doubt there's some truth in that Rab. Interestingly this gruesomely explicit 9-page story from an obscure 1950s publication called the Adventure Comic Annual is included in the current 'Comics Unmasked' exhibition at the British Library - along with a note that it gave the young Bryan Talbot nightmares when he read it as a child!





Leaving aside it's crude technique it's hard to shake the feeling that these horrific scenes might well have been based on personal experience by somebody who'd spent time in a genuine Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during WW2!

- Phil Rushton

[Phoenix]

an obscure 1950s publication called the Adventure Comic Annual

I think that last Friday I might have picked up a companion volume to yours, Phil. From a quality secondhand bookshop in the Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool City Centre I bought Wonder Comic Annual for a tenner after a reasonable discount. It was originally half a crown, and screams Fifties. It's nothing like as bloodthirsty as yours though but it does have its moments. I haven't read it all yet but it has stiff cardboard-type coloured covers and 96 pages, and the picture/text illustrations are not dissimilar to yours. There are eight stories in it. The titles are Rob Roy O' The Glen, ''Victory In The Skies'', The Skymaster's Revenge, Flashing Wonders (not about what you are thinking it's about!), Dick Hercules Of St. Markham's, Journey Into Space (not the radio serial), Pirate Gold, and Daredevils Over Niagara. The scanned page is from The Skymaster's Revenge.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Phil: the style of the Japanese Camp strip you helpfully added above reminds me of Art Spielgelmans' MAUS, which I'm sure you are familiar with......very startling imagery of the camps for a comic book [if aimed at adults] , but it's 'veiled' and distanced to a degree, making the humans into cartoon animals: Jews as mice, Sadistic camp guards are vicious dogs, etc......it was well handled, but very stark stuff indeed.

[colcool007]

Phil, that reminds me for some reason of Leo Rawlings' art and his book of his wartime experiences And the Dawn Came Up Like Thunder. Again, not for the faint hearted, but worthy of note in his art where he dealt with his experiences of being a POW in the Far East.

Rab, I see what you mean about Maus. That is a fantastic book. I have just finished re-reading it and can recommend the anthology to everyone.