Major Eazy & Rat Pack go Sci Fi?

Guess they must've been running out of ideas at this point.

Eazy and Rat Pack are up against a German scientist who's created a device that can turn any living thing into a vicious killer.

After surviving last weeks attack by wolves and deer they ended up having Turk turned against them. With yet another example of insane logic, rather than let Turk finish the job, the Germans turn off the device, take them all back to their base then turn it on Weasel to demonstrate how it works (huh??????).

Anyway, their plans come to nowt when Weazel pulls a Doctor Who stunt and "reverses the polarity" of the device so the animals turn on the Germans.

An odd and rather crappy story.

Johnny Red

Very pleased to get this 12th Feb 1977 issue.

Not only because its the proper start of Eazy being in charge of Rat Pack, but mainly Johnny Red.

"Aieee!" Count: 0

Now, i got all these issues when the first came out but only started keeping them from about '79 onwards. That means my strongest memories are of the John Cooper later episodes. While there was nothing wrong with the artwork, i did find the whole "paint the hurricane red and bung a skull on it to scare the Nazis" a bit silly.

So, nice to see again after 31 years some Coloquon-era action. And brilliant it is too. He was a master of the use of black and his hardware always looked spot on. Why can't we have a tribute book along the lines of the Brian Bolland one a coupla years back?

Also significant here is Johnny's introduction to The Falcons.

"Aieeee!" Count: Possible Russian alternative with "Haaaieeeeee!"

Major Eazy barminess

1 January 1977. the new year is seen in with this frankly mental bit of logic. Eazy's captured and refuses to talk. What does the Captain do? Shoot him? Torture?

Nope. He ties him upside down to the bonnet of his car and drives headlong towards a wall.

Haven't got the next issue and SO want to know how he gets out of it (monies on Tewfik blowing out the tyres).

"Aieeee!" count: 0

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

Major Eazy

I loved, loved, LOVED Major Eazy.

The killer combo of Carlos' Ezquerra's art and Alan Hebden's laid back sardonic scripts of a laid back sardonic hero who has no respect for the chain of command, doesn't seem to have any noticible uniform and taken to sleeping though battles, made him very quickly go to the top of my favourite Battle characters.

And for him to have a whole chunk of his tales as a prequel, along with crossing over to another strip and leading them (Rat Pack) sure made him unique.

Here's my earliest tale, from 28 Feb 1976, where he crosses the line to play cards with the Germans during a stalemate, then risks everything during a massive bombing raid to get back his pistol that was nicked.

Cooler than a very cool thing, he cries out for a Titan reprint. A few years back though, we were treated to another version of the character as 2000AD launched "Cursed Earth Koburn", moving him to Dredd's world. Brilliantly produced by Gordon Rennie and Carlos, it didn't last nowhere near long enough.