Death or Glory!

[philcom55]

It's good to see that Death or Glory (a collection of classic stories from Fleetway's Battle Picture Library) has finally arrived in the bookshops alongside its companion Unleash Hell. This latest volume is particularly interesting in that it includes the only known British strip by the famous American artist John Severin (currently working on a new Bat Lash book for DC alongside series creator Sergio Aragones).

- Phil Rushton

[Raven]

Has anyone read both the Fleetway *and* DCT war story collections? I'd be interested to hear how you feel the war story output of the two companies compare and which you consider the best and most readable.

[Captain Storm]

From memory,Fleetway was more gritty while DC Thomson was stiff upper lip and cups of tea all the way.But that's just my opinion

[Raven]

From memory,Fleetway was more gritty while DC Thomson was stiff upper lip and cups of tea all the way.But that's just my opinion :lol:

Well, that's what I was suspecting ...

[Lew Stringer]

From memory,Fleetway was more gritty while DC Thomson was stiff upper lip and cups of tea all the way.But that's just my opinion

Not a fan of war comics but of the two styles I preferred the Fleetway war artists. Haven't seen Death or Glory yet, but Unleash Hell didn't have the best reproduction from copies I saw. I assume it was shot from old comics, rather than film or original artwork?

Lew

[felneymike]

Yeah compared to the Commando collections Unleash Hell looked pretty awful, all blurry. Can tell the art would have looked great in it's original form though... specially the moody shots of Dakotas towing gliders into the dawn sky. Death or Glory seems to have marginally better reproduction, probably still shot from old comics but tided up better. Also the book of war library covers is out now, seems to be mostly/entirely IPC stuff, but still good. Some pages have a series of covers reproduced, and then the opposite page is the original unmolested art of one of those covers (often zoomed a bit, but that might be because i once saw an Air Ace cover at Bristol and it had the titles pasted directly onto the art.)

[Kashgar]

Slightly off topic but mention of the DC western character Bat Lash made his 1970 byline pop into my head after years of laying dormant 'Will he save the West, or ruin it?' It's really weird what your memory chooses to log away.

[philcom55]

I know it's not really British but I couldn't resist digging this out:
[img:508:388]http://uk.geocities.com/philcom55/blash.jpg[/img]
- Artwork by Joe Orlando, probably from a Carmine Infantino layout; Infantino commissioned a whole range of eye-catching house-ads like this during his early days in charge at DC. In retrospect the odd thing about this one is that it now seems rather more appropriate for the later - and much more successful - Jonah Hex than Bat Lash himself.

- Phil Rushton

[Richard S.]

The DCT ones can be shot from the artwork as DCT still own the artwork, the Fleetway ones have to be shot from the comics as Fleetway only own the comics, the artwork having long since been disposed of.

At a recent talk by Steve Holland and David Roach at the ICA, David Roach said that when going through the Fleetway archive they found the original artwork to precisely one picture library, the rest having been disposed of.

[Peter Gray]

I've noticed that DC Thomson have a lot of original artwork...
The reprints in the Beano...BeanoMax and Dandy have different speech bubbles...sometimes with old fashioned stuff removed from text...
Like Ivy talking about her CD portable when you can see tapes scattered around it Or Roger the Dodger mentioning Global warming to explain the snow...

Nice that DC had the good idea of keeping a lot of this....
They are a bit like Disney...with there vault...

[Cap Haggis]

Peter (sorry to interupt this thread this isn't related) but can you look at your PMs I need your address if you want those books we discussed - I'm in process of doing a winter/spring clean so they may be for the charity shop soon - cheers

[Lew Stringer]

The DCT ones can be shot from the artwork as DCT still own the artwork, the Fleetway ones have to be shot from the comics as Fleetway only own the comics, the artwork having long since been disposed of.

At a recent talk by Steve Holland and David Roach at the ICA, David Roach said that when going through the Fleetway archive they found the original artwork to precisely one picture library, the rest having been disposed of.

It's a great shame the books couldn't be shot from originals. Not being a war comics fan the only attraction for me of Death or Glory would have been the artwork. However, having just browsed through it in Waterstones so much of the linework has either dropped out or muddied up that I couldn't find the enthusiasm to buy it.

Lew