The latest issue of Battling Britons Justin Marriot's professionally produced fanzine for those interested in old (and new) British war comics is now available from Amazon's print to order facility. This bumper 134 issue covers a lot of material in a bookshelf friendly format.
In his editorial Justin says that though orders for the first issue of the on-going edition of Battling Britons was lower than the original book there is enough interest to keep this publication going which is good news. Unlike Comics Unlimited the other British comics fanzine this journal is squarely aimed at one genre so would inevitably attract a more limited audience than a fanzine devoted to the wider or full field of comics.
That said I grew up really liking these tales of war and heroism and there are many like me a child of the sixties and those who latched on with Warlord and Battle's take in the seventies. We were after all closer to those who had actually lived and fought through the dark hours of the Second World War. Much of my own family disappeared in concentration camps with my own mother barely escaping from Prague after the German invasion in 1938.
We all had relatives who fought in the various theatres of the war or had friends whose family had done the same. The horror and the miracle of survival was very much more on peoples minds than today. The modern generation has not experienced any such hardship. Not even Covid comes close to what our fore- fathers went through.
As a result these comics appealed and though Commando is still going (and popular in Norway & Finland amongst other places) war stories have subsided. Science fiction (of which I am a fan) is the gebnre that dominates today.
This was a war that defined the world we live in today and as the stories that comics like Victor, Hotspur, War Picture Library and so many others demonstrate this really was a global conflict the outcome of which could have been so different if not for the plucky resistance of this small island, it's people along with the dominions and it's colonies.
Most war stories focus on British heroes though attempts by Marvel to push Sgt Fury were not that successful despite these being good stories drawn by Jack Kirby in their early days and he at least had been on the beaches on D-Day. Some of the later stories saw British writers tackle the war from the German point of view with Hellman.
Of course British comics, especially DC Thomson also published stories about other wars, not just the First World War but also the Napoleonic Wars, the Indian North West Frontier and more. All of these areas are tackled in war fiction and covered by this journal.
Rating: 5 Stars (Highly Recommended)
The original book and both issues of the "on-going" Battling Britons are Available via Amazon
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