Battle Picture Weekly - Notable Stories

Notable Stories

Notable stories included:

  • Rat Pack, written by Finley-Day and initially drawn by Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra, about a group of convicts released from prison to carry out suicide missions, inspired by The Dirty Dozen.
  • Major Eazy, by Alan Hebden and Ezquerra, a laid back, cigar-smoking British officer who drove a Bentley, visually based on James Coburn. For a time Major Eazy became the commander of Rat Pack.
  • Darkie's Mob, by Wagner and Mike Western, a violent series set in the jungles of Burma, with the renegade Captain Joe Darkie leading a group of lost soldiers in a personal guerrilla war against the Japanese.
  • Johnny Red, written by Tom Tully and drawn initially by Joe Colquhoun, later by John Cooper, about a British fighter pilot Johnny 'Red' Redburn flying for the Russians. Later Redburn flies with the RAF and USAAF in England, before returning to the Eastern Front in a Hawker Typhoon nicknamed The Red Death.
  • El Mestizo, by Hebden and Ezquerra, about a former slave turned mercenary in the American Civil War.
  • Hellman of Hammer Force, written by Finley-Day, starring a German tank commander.
  • Charley's War, by Mills and Colquhoun, a First World War story set in the trenches of the Somme.

Garth Ennis has stated that Battle was "one of my favourites as a kid and a big influence on my own work. I used to enjoy Darkie's Mob, Crazy Keller, Hellman, Cooley's Gun, the later Rat Pack stories, Death Squad, The Sarge... the list is endless" and he wrote a letter to the comic pointing out an error in tank identification.

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