Charley’s War is solidly an anti-war story. It doesn’t glorify combat, but also doesn’t shy away from the horrific brutality of the First World War. In this we see the Battle of the Somme, where poison gas, the first tanks, and trench rats are employed. Many of Charley’s fellow soldiers die, and Charley comes close many times. This story shows the messiness of armed conflict, especially in the trenches, where improvisation was key and you didn’t know when a bomb was going to go off beside you. I’m no expert in World War I history, but I have to believe Pat Mills captures it accurately. Well done. Matthew: It sounds like it probably appeals to a wide variety of different audiences, from historians to those who grew up reading it, to other comic fans who are discovering it for the first time. But, at its heart, it is an adventure comic, isn’t it

Lonely mounds of weed-covered clay crowned with wooden Greek crosses…the lonely graves of workmen who were butchered by the British because they might be sympathisers with Bolshevism” January–October 1919. Charley and Bill Tozer head to Russia where they fight alongside the 'Whites' - pro-Monarchist Russians - against the Bolshevik Reds who are defending their Revolution, with Tozer serving as company sergeant major. Charley soon becomes disillusioned at the incompetence and cowardice amongst the Whites, some of whom change sides and join the Reds. Charley prevents rogue Bolshevik Colonel Spirodonov from capturing a White armoured train loaded with refugees and royal gold. Smith 70 and young Albert where two characters who added some vital humour into the story, at times that it was very dark-although they appeared so infrequently that it never turned the story into parody. They cropped up usually with some mad scheme of Smithy’s like the ‘water listening device’ or the famous ‘killer rats’. Oily’s only motivation is money – he could never understand the morals and scruples that Charley has. For that alone he is typical of most people in any era! It’s also a highly class conscious strip. While there are nasty characters on the German side, there’s an equal number on the British. Frequently we see that the real victims of those vicious characters (often upper class officers) are first and foremost those they command. The villainous Lieutenant Snell (a man so heartless he’s willing to use Charley as a bullet shield) is perhaps the exemplar of this trope.Conducted in 1982 for Fantasy Expressby Stephen Oldman and reproduced here with the kind permission of Stephen Oldman and editor Lew Stringer The Great Depression and Charley is on the dole. News arrives that Adolf Hitler has seized power in Germany. At this point, writer Pat Mills ceased work on the comic and was replaced by Scott Goodall. Some people have accused him of using his writing as a vehicle for his political views – I don’t know about this because I’m unfamiliar with most of his other work (sorry Pat)!But it doesn’t really matter which side of the political fence you are on when it comes to Charley’s War. It’s my view that the storylines below are things that have been pointed out because they are simply wrong and needed to be exposed. Another of Mill’s play on words was Charley’s surname ‘a proper Charley born”(geddit?). All his family are here – his Mum, who worked in a munitions factory not far from their home in Silvertown in the east end of London, his Dad who was a special Policeman, his sister Dolly (who married Oliver), and troublesome younger brother Wilf. We’re delighted to present some of it to the public for the very first timein this exhibition of war comics.”

Note the narrative: in its handful of words, it covers the horrific use of high explosive as a weapon, the suddeness of death, and the grief and loss of a friend. It’s truly brilliantly handled and very moving.

Become a Member

Charley’s transformation from idealistic recruit to battle-weary soldier was complete within the first ten episodes (the eleventh being the first of July 1916- the First day of the Battle of the Somme). After this he is changed. He becomes resigned to his fate, non-heroic (unless it’s to save the life of a mate) and sensitised to the horrors he sees around him, but more interestingly he appears much more intelligent than we ever gave him credit for before. In fact if you had joined the story a year or two after its beginning you would be surprised that this Character had ever been as unsophisticated. Wilf's pilot and commander whose previous three observers have all been killed. Morgan is a tough, hard-bitten pilot who has no tolerance for shirkers nor for the chivalrous pretensions of his fellow officers. The narratives of the early comics changed in the 1970s when Mills became a leading light in the field – particularly when he wrote Charley’s War with artist Joe Colquhoun. Charley’s War was set in the first world war, and turned its unflinching gaze not on glory, but the horror of conflict.

Bolshevik officer in the Russian Civil War. A former soldier in the Czar's army, he suffered brutally in a penal battalion forced to build the so-called 'Death Railway' in Murmansk. Knowing the railway was commissioned and paid for by the British government, he has vowed revenge on all Englishmen. It’s for this reason that Charley’s War is one of the most effective anti war comics ever created. The vast majority of anti war art has aimed squarely at those already opposed to wars, or at least the war in question. From Oh What a Lovely War! to Crass this has been the general approach followed. It’s produced some great work, but I’d politely suggest that Charley’s War is likely to have been far more effective in putting off working class boys from joining the army. Smith 70 was a great eccentric character who was into all things ‘a bit technical’. His number two on his beloved machine gun was Young Albert who always wanted to ‘have a go’ but never had enough ‘experience’. How he got his name I don’t know (When I was a kid I used to think he was actually 70 years old and hence ‘young’ Albert!) but I think it’s simply that Smith is such a common name and therefore they had to be numbered.As to performances well Phillip Seymour Hoffman as usual steals every scene he's in. Hanks is OK but surprisingly to me anyway was Julia Roberts who is very good in the role of a rather eccentric Texas Oil Millionairess. Snell always reminds me of Julian Grenfell, the aristocratic young officer who famously wrote of the War as “An absoulute bloody picnic, great fun” and recorded the thrill of “Killing Huns with rifle at 50 yards, great sport”. In addition to its accuracy, Charley’s War is a very human story. War exists on the edges of human experience where people do horrible things, but it also gives way to bravery and emotion, which this comic has in spades. Several scenes stood out to me: a traumatized soldier, the only survivor of his platoon, digging his own grave; a German soldier pleading mercy and telling British troops about his family before being executed; Charley’s letters to his family, including a letter where he asks his mom to stop getting tears on her letters because he can’t read them. Without question, Charley’s War is about the characters. Charley's cousin and a sailor in the Royal Navy who fought at the Battle of the Falklands in 1914. He and Charley meet each other in a German POW camp in 1918.