Johnny Red

Ah, Mr Colquhoun your pictures make love to my eyes... Ahem, sorry about that. This is interesting because it's a cover featuring Johnny Red by Joe Colquhoun. A strip that he drew before Charley's War. Yet, if you turn the page and inside there's an episode of Charley's War drawn by Joe Colquhoun. By this time John Cooper was drawing Johnny Red, so is this a cover that Colquhoun had drawn before he started Charley?

Tankbusters

From Warlord 10th May 1975. Art by Luis Collado Coch. It's a clear style and yet it's gritty and realistic. Good stuff!

The Sword of the Fighting Farchards

From The Hornet January 9th 1971 with art by Gerry Embleton. It's interesting to see his work amongst the typical DC Thomson style of art for adventure comics for this period. There's so much thought and detail put into the pages.

Charley's War

From Battle Action Force dated 16th March 1985. Art by the fabulous Joe Colquhoun. I have to admit I just love his work. The amount of research and detail put into Charley's War is fantastic. This particular episode is post Pat Mills and set during the early days of WW2 and Charley is back in uniform again. The script is by Scott Goodall. I quite like this second series, it doesn't have the moral indignation of Pat Mills' run, but it still rattles along and tells a good yarn about a period of time that you don't usually see documented in war comics. That time at the beginning of the war where everything was turning to custard for the allies as the Germans smashed their way across europe. Just look at the work that JC put into these pages.

I emailed Titan Books a while back and asked them whether the Charley's War reprints would carry on into the WW2 series. They said that (at that moment) they weren't too sure. I think it is a shame if they don't, because I feel that Charley's War stands as a testament to Joe Colquhoun and his career and it'd be nice to see the last proper series he worked on in print. Uh, that and Johnny Red which he worked on before Charley's War....

Wonder-Car.

This is a nice piece of original Ron Turner art. From Whizzer and Chips? Was just going through my old files and came across this image that I 'borrowed' from the Compalcomics site a while ago. Some of the word balloons have fallen off but you can see the stain from the glue on the pages. I love the way RT drew machinery. Go here to see more of his work. I'd love to see a Space Ace reprint. I'm assuming it's out of copyright now?

Thingumajig.

From Whizzer and Chips dated January 29th 1977. Art by the great Ron Turner, who was (in my opinion) a fantastic sc-fi artist. Seems to be a bit sad seeing him on this kind of earth-bound story. As far as I can remember most of his work appeared in black and white during the 70s. Gone were the days of Rick Random and full-colour Dalek strips. Have a look here for more examples of his work.

Alfredo the Great.

An episode from Victor, September 28th 1974. As I was going through my collection looking for interesting strips to scan it struck me how absolutely bonkers British comics are. I think the artist is C.D. Bagnall.