Best Of Battle - Major Eazy - and Koburn

A delve back into this really rather neat collection and the next strip up is Major Eazy.
I've spoken before about this guy on this here Blog and i stand by it, but here we get a few tales collected together and they're just brilliant - a graphic novel collecting all the tales together would sure be a "buy on day of release" product. So we get the introductory tale, one with Eazy postponing a battle so he can have a shave and one where he overules his superiors, deeming their choices a folly.
Great stuff. Rather irreverant humour alongside a subtle anti-war message makes this one of my favourite strips from that era. And the Ezquerra art has vastly improved on his early work on "Rat Pack".
As an aside, i read these tales at the same time as the collected "Cursed Earth Koburn" tales collected in the Ezquerra GN, written by Gordon Rennie. And its odd - while everyone at the time praised the notion of transplanting the character from WW2 to Dredd's world (and that's certaily the case with Carlos' brilliant updating), the personalities are really quite different.
Koburn has his own way of doing things, but does what he's told. Eazy doesn't give a damn and does whatever he wants to do. Only occasionaly does that fit in with what the authorities want.

"AIEEEE!" WATCH:
Suprisingly, none.

Defoe

I know, i know, Defoe is current 2000AD and not in the 68-78 year range of this Blog.
But decided to say something here, not because its joint best strip in there for the last few years, but for the art by Leigh Gallagher.
In my book, Leigh is the natural successor to artists known for their stunning, moody b/w artwork such as Bunn, Font and Bradbury.
Leigh has gone on record as saying the artist that inspired him the most was Jose Ortiz on The Thirteenth Floor but, to my mind, his work on Defoe really recalls the work of Francisco Lopez on Janus Stark.
Both brilliantly use heavy black to convey mood, both use ultra-fine lines to detail a panel and, as seen in the examples here, both can create stunningly atmospheric city scenes, along with truly unique characters.
Thanks Leigh for keeping the spirit of the comics i grew up with alive.

My new Blog

Thought you might like to swing by and take a look at my new Blog - a bunch of rambles on what was important to the nipper me grwoing up in the sixties and seventies:

http://a60s-70schildhood.blogspot.com/