Celebrating 50 years of Battle in 2025, Pat Mills, the creator of 2000AD, has launched his successor to “Charley’s War”, “Ragtime Soldier”, drawn by Gary Welsh and Phillip Vaughan, which first appeared in an eleven-page story in the Great War Dundee anthology, published in 2019.
The crowdfunder continues the story, including the original tale (still available to download from Millsverse here), delivering a 48 page adventure in the style of “Charley’s War” the groundbreaking antiwar story first published in Battle.
The Kickstarter offers the best price for this book, which is curated by ComicScene.
“The Successor to ‘Charley’s War’ – At Last!” Pat enthuses. “There was a ruthless media black-out on any anti-war stories or films during the centenary of World War One. There was censorship like I have never seen before in my entire career, even within the comic community! The disastrous and tragic Battle of the Somme – featured so strongly in ‘Charley’s War’ – was proclaimed a ‘great victory’ by revisionist, military historians. These revisionists set out to excuse and justify the deliberate massacre of a generation.
“The reality of the conflict in my best-selling saga ‘Charley’s War’, that reached generations of young readers, and changed their minds about war, was obscured by a monstrous lie.
“So it became – for me – a matter of great importance, to pick up where ‘Charleys’ War’ left off and continue to show the truth of the Great War. It was not easy. Not least to find an artist who would have the same artistic talents as the great Joe Colquhoun, the artist-creator of ‘Charley’s War’. Finally, I hit gold with Gary Welsh and Phillip Vaughan. Their brilliant work has the same affection, authenticity, drama and, above all, emotion that we all remember from Joe’s ground-breaking and unique art.
“And so, at long last, I’m delighted to say we are working on our first 48-page volume of Ragtime Soldier to release as a Kickstarter, and for general publication, later this year.
“In it, we begin the saga of Robbie McTaggart, a young soldier in Dundee’s legendary Black Watch, and his comrades who laughingly called themselves ‘The Ragtime Infantry’: ‘We cannot fight, we cannot shoot, what earthly use are we?’, even as they fought heroically and suffered terrible casualties at the Battles of Loos and the Somme.
“I had discovered so much more since writing ‘Charley’s War’, “Pat reveals. “So in Ragtime Soldier we relate these new and darkest stories of World War One. Stories that no one has dared to tell before and will never be dramatized anywhere else. How our soldiers were given drugs to send them over the top, and how they became desperate addicts after the war. How there was provable trading between the British and the German enemy, in order to keep a conflict going that made millions in profits for the arms manufacturers.
“Ragtime Soldier has the same comedy, comradeship, heroism and tragedy as ‘Charley’, but it has exciting differences too,” Pat continues. “We now see the war from a heart-warming Scottish and Dundee perspective, the city where I started my writing career, and with a Scottish creative and publishing team behind it. And we also discover the sinister events that happened after the war on the Home Front.
“The adventures of Robbie McTaggart and his fellow Ragtime Soldiers, our forefathers, need celebrating before their endeavours fade and before people start believing that the military revisionists’ lies are actually the truth.
“Now is the perfect time to remember the Ragtime Soldiers.”
In addition to the story, rewards include Ballistic, an exclusive 32-page comic with behind the scenes features on the production of Ragtime Soldier, and a 32-page script and sketch book. Collectors signed bookplates, cover prints, sketches and signed pencil sketches are also available.
Add-ons include hardback books and deluxe hard book variants (with dust cover, end pieces, ribbon), and you can also order more copies of the softcover comic, but do note these are only available to UK backers.
• Back Ragtime Soldier here on Kickstarter
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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