Garth Ennis on the 50th anniversary of Battle Picture Weekly: The very first issue of
Battle Picture Weekly went on sale fifty years ago this month, dated 8th March 1975. It continued under various titles, most notably
Battle Action, for roughly the next decade, before being merged to death some time in the late eighties. Which means the issue you hold in your hands is the latest incarnation of a comic that’s been around for half a century.
The phrase been around is doing some heavy lifting there. For fifteen years there was little beyond the occasional annual or special, or a run of reprints now and again. Then Titan Books acquired the license and started putting out nice hardcover editions of the classic strips, thus proving there was still an audience for
Battle. There followed some new material, then, when Rebellion bought the whole back catalogue, more collected volumes and new
Battle and
Action specials. At which point someone had a bright idea… which more or less brings us up to date.
By now the saga should be familiar enough: in the mid-seventies comic sales were slipping, so IPC publisher John Sanders brought in young hotshots Pat Mills and John Wagner to shake things up. The success of
Battle led to
Action, which led by a roundabout route to
2000 AD. At some point Alan Moore noticed. The Yanks noticed him, and others like him. And lo, there was
Watchmen,
Swamp Thing, the Vertigo imprint, all the rest.
Back in the day the editor was Dave Hunt, to whom Battle’s creators handed the reins. He employed writers like Tom Tully, Alan Hebden and Gerry Finley-Day, not to mention Mills and Wagner themselves; the art was by Joe Colquhoun, John Cooper, Mike Western, Eric Bradbury, Mike Dorey, Pat Wright, Carlos Ezquerra, Cam Kennedy, Geoff Campion, many more. Now you’ve got Oliver Pickles, Rob Williams, Dan Abnett, Torunn Gronbekk, Keith Burns, Chris Burnham, PJ Holden, John Higgins, Paddy Goddard, Dan Cornwell, Henry Flint, and- among others- Wagner and Dorey again.
In its classic era, Battle was smarter, grittier, livelier, that bit less well-behaved than the comics that came before it. Alan Grant described
2000 AD around the same time as being very obviously for kids, but with a clearly identifiable adult sensibility behind it. The same is true of its big brother. A war comic first and foremost, of course, and that was why we loved it, but in amongst all the shot and shell there was something else going on.
Charley’s War said that war is evil, not just hell, and that the establishment might just possibly not have our best interests at heart. In Darkie’s Mob we saw that the underdog could be every bit as bad, and that vengeance was a kind of madness, sometimes born of self-hatred. HMS Nightshade had men fighting on when hell froze over, with no choice but to forge on into the nightmare, while Hellman never flinched from the truth that behind the German war effort lay a thing beyond all horror. In my personal favourite, Johnny Red, we witnessed the sacrifice that the Russian people made for victory, in the service of a regime of monsters undeserving of such devotion. And we learned that women fought, too.
Such is
Battle’s legacy. Kept alive in fits and starts, often dormant, for a long time unknown to most and only half-remembered by many. But still the greatest war comic ever published, still the beginning of a genuine revolution in the medium. Something we who continue that legacy with
Battle Action will never forget. So fifty years, albeit kind of on-and-off: that’s not too bad.
That’s not too bad at all.
— Garth Ennis, Blighty, January 2025
Rebellion are celebrating the anniversary of
Battle Picture Library with
the release of brand new t-shirts and other merch. They have also published
a reading list of reprints that Rebellion have published over the past few years that gather some of the best stories that appeared in
Battle, including Charley's War, The Sarge, Major Eazy, Rat Pack, Hellman and others.
And now, this week's releases...
2000AD Prog 2023Cover: Tiernen Trevallion.
JUDGE DREDD // THE SHIFT by Ken Niemand (w) Nick Percival (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)
FULL TILT BOOGIE // BOOK THREE by Alex de Campi (w) Eduardo Ocana (a) Giulia Brusco (a) Simon Bowland (l)
PORTALS & BLACK GOO // A QUORUM OF FIENDS by John Tomlinson (w) Eoin Coveney (a) Jim Boswell (c) Simon Bowland (l)
FUTURE SHOCKS // LAST CHANCE TO SEE by Paul Goodenough (w) Luke Horsman (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)
FIENDS OF THE WESTERN FRONT // WILDE WEST by Ian Edginton (w) Tiernen Trevallion (a) Jim Campbell (l)
Judge Dredd: The Movie by Andrew Helfer, Ken Niemand (w) Carlos Ezquerra, Richard Elson (a) Michael Danza (c)
Rebellion ISBN 978-183786433-1, 12 March 2025, 80pp, £15.99.
Available via Amazon.
“I AM THE LAW!”In the Third Millenium, the world changed. Climate. Nations. All were in upheaval. Humanity itself turned as violent as the planet. Civilisation threatened to collapse. And then… a solution was found. The crumbling legal system was merged with the overburdened police, creating a powerful and efficient hybrid. These new guardians of society had the power to dispense both justice and punishment. They were police, jury, and executioner all in one. They were the Judges!
When Mega-City One erupts in violent block wars, there’s only one man Justice Department can rely on to suffocate the flames of rebellion. His name is Judge Dredd.
But when the city’s brightest beacon of justice is convicted of breaking the very law he’s been entrusted to uphold, he’s sentenced to spend the rest of his life rotting in the Aspen Penal Colony.
In order to clear his name, Dredd must escape captivity, make his way across the toxic Cursed Earth, break back into the city, and find the familiar foe that framed him. All in a day’s work for Judge Dredd.
Featuring art by legendary Judge Dredd co-creator Carlos Ezquerra (
Preacher) and a script by Andrew Helfer (
The Shadow), this is the official adaptation of
Judge Dredd, the 1995 movie written by William Wisher, Jr. (
Terminator 2: Judgement Day) and Steven E. de Souza (
Die Hard).
