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Making Charley unquestioning and patriotic ensured there was no polemic that might put off the more jingoistic reader, but there still needed to be a critical voice and that came in the form of his best mate Ginger, brilliantly rendered by Joe. Who was Ginger based on? I imagine partly on me. Note the narrative: in its handful of words, it covers the horrific use of high explosive as a weapon, the suddeness of death, and the grief and loss of a friend. It’s truly brilliantly handled and very moving. The narratives of the early comics changed in the 1970s when Mills became a leading light in the field – particularly when he wrote Charley’s War with artist Joe Colquhoun. Charley’s War was set in the first world war, and turned its unflinching gaze not on glory, but the horror of conflict. Charley’s War broke new ground and forged what were really the first steps toward a new direction in writing for Pat that still resonates in the genre today. (The writer Garth Ennis cites Charley’s War as his main inspiration) Charley's first platoon commander and easily the best officer he serves under during the war. Public-schooled but enlightened, brave but never blood-thirsty, Thomas is a decent man who represents the best of his class.
In 1980, Congressman Charlie Wilson is more interested in partying than legislating, frequently throwing huge galas and staffing his congressional office with attractive young women. His social life eventually brings about a federal investigation into allegations of his cocaine use, conducted by federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani as part of a larger investigation into congressional misconduct. The investigation results in no charge against Wilson. In Dunn’s The War the Infantry Knew this happened with the Jones’s in the regiment (a Welsh one)! so I think it’s probably how Smithy got his name. Charley’s War is something else entirely. An overtly anti war strip in the war comic Battle Picture Weekly, it was like nothing we’ve seen before or since. Written by Pat Mills (of 2000 AD fame) and drawn with excruciating realistic detail by Joe Colquhoun, the strip ran from January 1979 to October 1986. Pat’s partner on Charley’s War, the late Joe Colquhoun said this of him: “I think he’s about the best, most painstaking, erudite and factually accurate writer I’ve been associated with. Without his competent and detailed scripts I dont think such a difficult subject as World War One trench warfare could have succeeded.” Mills, as modest as ever, credits all of Charley’s War success down to Joe. Not so. Pat Mills stopped writing the story at this point ( see interview) but the idea of Charley fighting his War in the next conflict of the 20th Century was always his intention. After he left, the story died within a year and Joe Colquhoun passed away a year after that.Pat and Joe understood that and how to give you those heart-breaking scenes. They understood how to layer the humour and the violence. I just think they had a story they knew from the beginning and knew how to communicate it. A story they wanted and needed to tell. Up until two years ago, the Indian and Jamaican veterans had no Memorial anywhere in this Country to honour their dead. The British West Indies Regiment in the First World War consisted of 15,601 troops they saw action in France and Egypt and by the end of the War they had won 37 Military Medals, eight Distinguished Conduct Medals and nine Military Crosses, and yet where is their mention in the official histories? These men were not press-ganged into the army – they volounteered to fight for the ‘mother’ country they had learned about in school. Some stowed away on ships to join the British Army and fight its enemies. We’re delighted to present some of it to the public for the very first timein this exhibition of war comics.” Charley’s transformation from idealistic recruit to battle-weary soldier was complete within the first ten episodes (the eleventh being the first of July 1916- the First day of the Battle of the Somme). After this he is changed. He becomes resigned to his fate, non-heroic (unless it’s to save the life of a mate) and sensitised to the horrors he sees around him, but more interestingly he appears much more intelligent than we ever gave him credit for before. In fact if you had joined the story a year or two after its beginning you would be surprised that this Character had ever been as unsophisticated.
In addition to Charley’s War, Simon Ward is the editor on Modesty Blaise and The James Bond Omnibus. His recent film books include Alien: The Archive, Planet of the Apes: The Evolution of the Legend, RoboCop: The Definitive History, Chappie: The Art of the Movie and the forthcoming The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road, out next month. Hartley, Matt (April 26, 2008). "Charlie Wilson's intellectual-property war". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved August 16, 2013. Snell always reminds me of Julian Grenfell, the aristocratic young officer who famously wrote of the War as “An absoulute bloody picnic, great fun” and recorded the thrill of “Killing Huns with rifle at 50 yards, great sport”.
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While the film depicts Wilson as an immediate advocate for supplying the mujahideen with Stinger missiles, a former Reagan administration official recalls that he and Wilson, while advocates for the mujahideen, were actually initially "lukewarm" on the idea of supplying these missiles. Their opinion changed when they discovered that rebels were successful in downing Soviet gunships with them. [6] As such, they were actually not supplied until 1987, during the second Reagan term, and their provision was advocated mostly by Reagan defense officials and influential conservatives. [10] [11] Happy ending [ edit ] The mutiny happened just as the third battle of Ypres was beginning causing major concern to the British High Command. The official files on the Etaples mutiny and Percy Toplis are not released until 2017. When the BBC screened the excellent drama of Toplis’s life and death (monocled mutineer starring Paul Magann) there was outrage from the establishment and questions were raised in parliament. The programme has never been repeated for that reason. Information is still being surpressed, the public being deemed as not in need of the truth. Pat Mills says “Charley’s War was great because we slipped through the net, we got away with it, after all who would bother to look in a comic?, and that, of course, was always my intention.”. The toy-inspired series Action Force didn’t even make the cover of the final issue of Battle Acton Force in which they appeared, but “Charley’s War” did Charley’s War is one of the most important war stories to appear in comics. It is an anti-war story, which ran in a comic full of more traditional war time heroics and has been praised for being honest and realistic. Pat Mills, who created Charley, wanted to write a story that would counter the war comics that glorified war. Matthew: That must have been hard for Pat; to move away from something that he’d invested so much work in and hand it over to another writer. My understanding is that happened because of an argument over the strip’s research budget, although I might have got that wrong.
The Mental damage caused by war is demonstrated to the reader in the frame at the bottom of this section. Lonely, an early character, who is posted to Charley and Ginger’s platoon is haunted by the deaths of his original unit which he blames himself for after being the only one to survive. This scene is where he tries to go home on leave and relax after the event. Note the use of the child and the toy soldiers. Charley's younger brother, 'Wilf' enters the army under-age by assuming the identity of a deserter. Injured on the Western Front in 1917, Wilf transfers to the Royal Flying Corps and serves as an observer/gunner in a two-seater Bristol squadron.For the book and film pertaining to activities of US Congressman Charlie Wilson, see Charlie Wilson's War (disambiguation). Although shot in the head he survives, only to reappear more insane than he ever was in the hospital where Charley met Kate, his wife-to-be. He returned to duty in 1918 and was finally killed off on the last day of the war when Charley had a showdown with him. Needless to say Charley won and killed Snell with an acid sprayer (Nasty!), only to find out he had been ‘volunteered” by Snell to stay in the army to fight the Bolsheviks in Russia.
It’s important for me to depict realistic heroes, so Charley gets married to Nurse Wincer. And why my ship story wasn’t a hit with the readers. Here, we see a colour cover from 1981. (Many thanks to Richard Moyles for the image). The story concerned French Senegalese soldiers who were sent into the line at Verdun to test the German’s line. These troops had never seen a machine gun before and suffered huge losses. Everyone assumed that young readers were only interested in action. Charley’s War proved them wrong. It was the No 1 story in Battle for its entire run, which is amazing because it’s such an anti-war story.” Once the reader had related in this way to the character Mills could then explore his ideas about changing the way that they thought about heroics and War. Did the U.S. "Create" Osama bin Laden?". US Department of State. January 14, 2005. Archived from the original on March 10, 2005 . Retrieved March 28, 2007.If it hadn’t been for Charley’s War, I doubt many people today would even be aware of this unwarranted invasion of a sovereign nation.
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