Writer: Pat Mills
Artist: Joe Colquhoun
Publisher: Titan Books
Price: £14.99
Release Date: 26th October
For those who aren’t familiar with Charley’s War (shame on you), all you need to know is that it is probably the greatest comic war series in existence. Based around the exploits of young Charley Bourne, a lad from the East End of London who lies about his age to sign up and fight for his country, Mills and Colquhoun’s run on the series is a phenomenal dissection of the horrors of the Great War (1914-1918). Volume 4 of Titan’s excellent hardback/Black & White reprinted series of Charley’s War widens the scope of the story to encapsulate the horror that was the Battle of Verdun as told to Charley by a French Foreign Legionnaire deserter going by the name of Blue.
Before Charley comes across Blue, the volume opens up where it finished in the third volume – Charley is back home in London after being wounded at the Battle of the Somme when a German Zeppelin conducts an aerial bombardment of the East End. Charley’s Mum is working in a munitions factory that gets bombed and Charley has to help her out. The artwork in these scenes is staggering, Colquhoun puts such an amazing amount of detail into the work he did, and sight of a flaming Zeppelin falling out of the London skyline looks incredible. Mills also fills the script with so many details from his hours of research, such as the ghoulish rush by the public to see the remains of the German airship and its dead crew. We also follow Charley’s younger brother Wilf, inspired by the propaganda surrounding the war, attempting to enlist as his older brother had once done.
Blue enters the story soon after, on the run from the Military Police as a deserter, Charley comes across him hiding in his parents house. Charley doesn’t believe that a soldier should ever run away from his duty, and so Blue tells Charley his story to let him judge if he was justified in deserting. What follows is a wonderful tale within a tale as Blue relates the horrors he has seen in the ancient French town of Verdun-sur-Meuse during 1916. The Battle of Verdun lasted for 10 months and by the time it was over the Germans had made not one single territorial or strategic gain except to contribute to the deaths of a quarter of a million men.
Blue’s story manages something very rare in First World War history by giving a voice from a French perspective, even though the French Foreign Legion (as its title suggests) was made up of non-French soldiers, indeed Blue himself is English. We see the first use of flamethrowers in a war, African soldiers attacking Germans with machetes, and the strict rules that soldiers lived by amongst themselves. What it also does is allow Mills to explore another diverse seam of anti-war sentiments. The utter futility of the conflict runs alongside the lengths the authorities went to in order to try and recapture deserters.
The extras in the book are of great interest. The introduction is by novelist Tariq Goddard who makes an interesting point that despite all the anti-war messages in Charley’s War, it could still be read purely without its subtext, in that it shows war as being necessary and the suffering of the men makes the victories that much more deserved. There is an in-depth look at the real Battle of Verdun and the now-perfunctory strip commentary by Pat Mills. All this combines to make another essential purchase, even if you haven’t read the preceding volumes, Blue’s Story can be easily read by itself.
James Dodsworth - Born and raised in Yorkshire, residing in London since 2000, James has a Law Degree and works for the Anti-Financial Crime Office of a International Asset Management Company. He is a writer and editor for FractalMatter.com.
But his main claim to fame is living next to the pub where Shaun of the Dead was conceived.