Monday 23 June 2008

Battle & Valiant - "Wanted by readers who like their action DARING, DANGEROUS and DEADLY"



Postie's just delivered a few back issues of this title, so lets have a look at the earliest - 13 November 1976.

Strips that i don't bother with much: "The Bootneck Boy", "The Black Crow", "D-Day Dawson", "Panzer G-Men" and "One Eyed Jack".

"Darkies Mob" i'm gonna leave for another time and a section to itself.

That leaves two to peruse.

"Major Eazy". A welcome start of a 3-parter. SO much better than the self-contained 3-pager - by the time you've established the hook of the character, there's a limit what you can do in such a short amount of space. Here though its quite a nice set-up: Eazy and his unit lie in wait for a Panzer division that never arrives. Going to find it, they find whole unit wiped out. Eazy sets off alone to find the attackers, finds them to be arab bandits at a secret oasis and is abandoned in the desert to die. Odd that he doesn't take Tewfik with him, but guessing it'd keep it simple to not have an arab sidekick with him when he's going up against arabs. Aieeee! Count: just the derivitive "aaiee"


"Soldier Sharp". Love the fact that the "hero" of this strip is such a cowardly, treacherous weazel. And Joe Colquhoun's art is delight as usual, very very similar to "Charley's War" and the tone is too. This time, Arnie's going to be executed by the Russians. Tied to a cartwheel, his stomach is cut and a wooden cage of rats is tied to his belly. The idea being the rats'll knaw through the wood and into his entrails. Luvverly. "Aieeee!" Count: 0



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i would like to read fans opinions on a battle picture weekly fan movie.(sorry,i would be out of my depth to attempt one myself)i should imagine it would be easier to film than 2000ad.replica firearms and uniforms to hire,instead of makeing.working with horses on el mestizo would be asking for trouble.how can you film action scenes when you can not get a scratch on the tanks you are hireing.airfix and super glue i surppose?