Luke Williams brings us up to speed on the ongoing revival of Battle Action by Rebellion…
Rebellion seem to have spent a lot of time playing with old concepts that are a hard sell. Many of the strips picked up in the sales of Fleetway Intellectual Properties by Egmont and Time Warner are, frankly, dated and anachronistic. They are difficult to update to a 21st Century audience and are limited in appeal, other than to those readers who remember the characters the first time around. Even updates like The Vigilant, the superhero team made up of various IPC/ Fleetway characters, seem not to have gone very far.
For me, what would probably have made more sense would be to tap into an already established audience and the sensibilities of the ancestors of 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine. While 2000AD in particular is a very different publication to that as published in the late 1970s, there is a clear and well publicised and discussed lineage back to Battle and Action.
For those unaware, the two titles Battle and Action cleared the way for 2000AD in the mid to late seventies. British comics had become staid in the mid 1970s. Back then, DC Thomson launched Warlord to with great success and gave the British newsstand boys comic market a metaphorical kick up the backside.
London-based IPC’s response was to commission DCT freelancers John Wagner, Pat Mills and Gerry Finley-Day to create a rival publication, and introduce a slew of gritty, hard nosed characters in Battle, soon to become home to “Johnny Red”, “Charley’s War”, “Rat Pack”, and “Major Eazy”.
Following the success of Battle, Pat Mills began work on another new boys adventure title. Action became the enfant terrible of British comics, described by The Sun newspaper as “The Sevenpenny Nightmare”, the boys adventure strip comic that was exciting, violent, subversive with a range of strips, horror, sport, war, thrillers.
Sadly, the title attracted just a little bit too much attention from a British media that had too much time on its hands, and was looking for the next witch-hunt, at the same time that campaigner Mary Whitehouse was railing against violence on TV. Action’s publication was suspended. The title was neutered after it resumed publication, shorn of its appeal, sales plummeted and it was folded into Battle.
(The impact of the media outcry about Action impacted subsequent titles, such as Scream, too, the aspirations of creators and editorial on that title constrained by management concerns).
Pre-Rebellion Revivals
Arguably, the revival of Battle and Action as separate properties really started with Titan Publishing’s stab at collecting previous strips: four hardback volumes of Battle’s the “Johnny Red”, written by Tom Tully with art by Joe Colquhoun and John Cooper; and the entirety of “Charley’s War”, in a set of handsome hardback volumes, accompanying by background commentary from the series co-creator, Pat Mills.
(Titan had previously published two soft back album format collections in the mid 1980s, the weekly strip drawn throughout by Colquhoun).
Later, and endorsed by avowed fan Garth Ennis, they published Battle collections of “HMS Nightshade” and “Fighting Mann”, and other, lesser known but high quality stories, in two volumes, under the umbrella of “Garth Ennis Presents”.
Titan also launched two new series in the years prior to Rebellion’s purchase: a reimagining of “Hookjaw”, Action’s lead strip, on rereading a much underrated adventure by Simon Spurrier, Conor Boyle and Giulia Brusco, and the excellent “Johnny Red”, possibly Battle’s most popular character, written by lifelong fan Garth Ennis and drawn by noted aviation artist Keith Burns. Both strips have since been reprinted in Judge Dredd Megazine.
Rebellion takes over
After Rebellion began acquiring the rights to the IPC character, strip and titles from Egmont and Time Warner, they initially concentrated on offering collections of non Battle and Action material in its reprint programme, perhaps deciding to put some clear blue water between their efforts and Titan’s.
Under its new owners, Battle first reappeared in conjunction with a little company cross pollination in with Battle presents Sniper Elite Resistance, a three-part series by Karl Stock and the underrated Patrick Goddard. It’s a fun series, where the titular hero of the highly successful video game franchise teams up with “Rat Pack” from Battle.
2020’s Action Special offered an apposite cover that hid a mixed bag of interpretations of established Action strips. It featured beautiful art from established and up and coming stars, and writing contributions from Ram V writing “Kids Rule Okay”, Garth Ennis and Mike Dorey on “Hellman” and a suitably insane one-off strip from Henry Flint and Jake Lynch called “Hell Machine”.
The same year’s Battle of Britain Special was only partial success. Offering perhaps ill considered choices of strips, featuring lesser known Battle stars and curious mash ups (a formula Rebellion continue to repeat, with mixed success) it was filled out with feature and strip reprint. That said, Ennis and Burns’ work on “Rat Pack” and “War Child” by Dan Abnett and Jimmy Broxton were stand outs.
Enter Garth Ennis
Previously as only a contributor to the Battle of Britain Special and the Action Special, Ennis took the reins for the next phase of publication of the revival of the titles. The Garth Ennis curated and written Battle Action hardback of 2022 was something of a refocus and reboot, and clearly a passion project. He and several artist co-creators had already revived war as a genre in US comics, Ennis writing, amongst many others, War Stories for DC Comics and Avatar, Dynamite’s Battlefields, and the revival of vintage IPC hero Battler Britton with artist Colin Wilson, for DC/Wildstorm. (Andrew Sumner, now at Titan, but who was instrumental in getting the latter project off the ground, is still proud of it to this day).
Ennis has made no secret of his love of Battle, and particularly for the period where Action had been folded into its older brother and “shared” the masthead. The 2022 collection is wonderful package, and a great introduction to the characters. It’s focussed, beautifully presented and wrapped up like a slimmed down Fleetway annual, but without the puzzles and inventory stories. The bulk of the strips were from Battle as the senior partner; “Johnny Red” and “Hellman” in mash ups with “Skreamer of the Stukas” and “Glory Rider” respectively, the “Johnny Red” spin off “Nina Petrova” and “The Sarge”, “Crazy Keller”; but alongside those we got a and very bloody take on Action’s “Dredger”, from Ennis and John Higgins, while Ennis and the late great Kevin O’Neill used “Kids Rule Okay” to tell the tale as to why Action was emasculated, with aplomb.
Following the success of the hardback, Rebellion published its first five-issue Battle Action miniseries. Each issue contained two stories, the lead strip by Ennis continuing some of the strips from the hardback, with the second strip handed over to different writers, including John Wagner, returning to his co-creation, “HMS Nightshade”.
The different writers’ voices also help to create a greater sense of variety in approach to the characters. The miniseries also used the larger page count to resurrect more Battle Action characters, such as “Major Eazy”, the aforementioned “HMS Nightshade”, “Death Squad”, and “D-Day Dawson”.
The success of the hardback, miniseries and with Rebellion’s taste for mash ups, led to the special 2000AD vs. Battle Action, but, for me, it proved a misfire – one step too far. Some elements worked (“Kids Rule Okay”), whereas others were just baffling, particularly in the Judge Dredd Megazine (“Lofty’s One Man Luftwaffe”), or the character combinations rather tenuous. However, it appears to have sold gangbusters, so Rebellion may revisit in the future.
Next, in a logical (although completely unnecessary) move Tharg choseto link “Judge Dredd” to “One Eyed Jack”, the police strip inspired by Dirty Harry and created by Dredd’s co-creator, John Wagner, and John Cooper, that originated in Valiant but continued after that comic folded into Battle. The result was a time-travel story written by Ken Niemand, with art by Ian Richardson, Kieran McKeown and Quinton Winter, in Judge Dredd Megazine 452 – 457. Tharg has never been a huge continuity fiend, and hopefully this will not be pursued beyond a means of launching “One Eyed Jack” as a strip in the Meg, otherwise where will it all end?
Rebellion have also begun their program of reprinting the classic Battle strips in earnest: Clash of the Guards, Death Squad, The Sarge, latter day Battle strip Invasion 1984 and Hellman, a second collection of that strip out soon, and of course, they have already reprinted the Pat Mills written Charley’s War, in three softback volumes.
Most recently, Rebellion have released a handsome hardback collection of the recent five-part mini series, with the “Rat Pack” and “Hellman” strips from the Battle of Britain and Action Specials of 2020, as bonus material.
As far as new material is concerned, Ennis has mentioned a 10-issue Battle Action series coming out at the end of the year, with more space given over to Action strips.
After some hesitancy, Rebellion have seen the advantage in publishing strips that have more in common with the tone of 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine, if not subject matter. The publisher’s editorial team and Garth Ennis have attracted top notch creative teams who clearly have an affection, or at least an interest in the characters that they are working on.
Aside from the recent Smash miniseries shepherded by Paul Grist, Rebellion’s relaunches of old titles as specials have come across as a mish-mash and have, unfortunately, faltered. In contrast, the company’s first few steps were a bit wobbly, but its Battle Action relaunch is far steadier on its feet. The miniseries and 2022 Special are beautifully produced, comics harking back to the glory days of the 1970s and 80s, but updated for today’s audiences but equally attractive to new readers.
Long may the revival continue.
Luke Williams
• Garth Ennis talks Battle Action with Forbidden Planet TV, third new series in the works
• Action: The Sevenpenny Nightmare Micro Site
• Charley’s War: A downthetubes Micro Site
Brought up on a diet of Commando, British Boys Annuals and Asterix, Lucas Williams’s day job limits his reading time. Luckily for everyone else this also restricts his writing time.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Collections, Comics, Creating Comics, Features
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