Previewing ‘Battle Action’ #4: More War Tales, Classic Characters And Great Creative Teams

The Battle Action continues with new stories from classic Brit comics Battle Picture Weekly, including work by Garth Ennis & Staz Johnson, and Rob Williams & PJ Holden – it’s the return of Cooley’s Gun and Death Squad!

 

Garth Ennis continues to lead off each issue of the volume, this time paired with Staz Johnson on Cooley’s Gun, a classic tale of the raw, young Private and his troubles finding his way in the war.

The second tale this time sees the return of Rob Williams, this time with PJ Holden for a tale of Death Squad, the deadliest band of fighters on the Eastern Front, members of one of the infamous German Punishment Battalions expected to fight hard and die hard.

Both of them are cracking little war tales and proof, yet again, that there’s so much potential for future tales from the vast war archives held by Rebellion and the Treasury of British Comics.

 

COOLEY’S GUN – by Garth Ennis and Staz Johnson, colours by Len O’Grady, letters by Rob Steen. Cooley’s Gun created by Gerry Findley-Day and Geoff Campion.

Cooley’s Gun was created by Gerry Finley-Day and Geoff Campion, it may have only run two dozen episodes, but Ennis rates it highly, thanks to the skill of its creators.

Young recruit Private Jimmy Miller finds himself in the Anzio campaign (or “still stuck in the arsehole of Italy,” as he puts it), under Lance Corporal Cooley, and Lance Corporal Cooley’s Vickers medium machine gun. Cooley’s no fan of Miller, blaming him for the loss of a friend, who died saving young Miller’s life.

Through the reflections in Miller’s diaries, we see just how Cooley’s kept Miller alive through it all, even as he treats him like the dirt on his boots. Not that Miller’s the only thing Cooley hates in this world, pretty much the only thing he has any warmth for is the gun, that bloody gun.

 

The entire thing here takes place over a few short hours, as Miller, Cooley and the rest of the poor bastards entrenched in Italian mud have to fend off an attack by German paratroopers. And it’s the tight confines of the setting that mean Ennis and Johnson get to do something remarkably good, so tight, so simple, just a soldier’s survival at all costs. It’s brutal and it’s quite frankly rather brilliant work from Ennis and Johnson. They’ve embraced the spirit of what made the original work, that sense of ‘a nice portrait of two men whose survival depends on the weapon they serve,’ as Ennis puts it in the text piece following the strip. And like the Finley-Day and Campion Cooley’s Gun, Ennis and Johnson should be pleased that they’ve really given us a story to remember here.

 

DEATH SQUAD – by Rob Williams and PJ Holden, letters by Rob Steen. Death Squad created by Alan Hebden and Eric Bradbury.

And making it two for two of strips that just work so well, we have Rob Williams and Holden going all out on the Death Squad concept.

Another strange choice for Battle Picture Weekly in so many ways, after all this was just a few decades after the war and putting a strip out there where you were rooting for the strange band of German Punishment Battalion soldiers was still something controversial.

But Hebden and Bradbury sold it to readers with style and all-out action and brutality, something that marked out much of Battle during the years.

Death Squad is, as I said, a German Punishment Battalion forced to fight and die out on the Eastern Front, a nightmarish existence where only the very strongest survived. As Williams has said in the past when talking about Death Squad, “it’s The Dirty Dozen but with the worst soldiers in the German army.”

We’re in Russia, south of Leningrad, 1942, the Demyansk Pocket, with 100,000 Germans surrounded by Russians, where only the insane would attempt to break in. Cue the Death Squad. Field Marshal Kiesel has a job for them… rescue his son in the 30th Infantry, one of the 100,000 trapped. They don’t really have a choice…

They fly in. It doesn’t go well. They luck out by finding the 30th Infantry. But this is the Death Squad, their luck lasts about a second. Captain Kiesel’s squad were taken prisoner a few days back.

 

And then there’s the twist. Leaving the Death Squad with a seemingly impossible choice.

Again, like Ennis and Johnsons’ Cooley’s Gun, Death Squad doesn’t try to do too much, it’s a simple mission, and it’s a damn good exercise in doing simple really damn good.

So, there you go, another issue of Battle Action and another issue that really does prove how great these characters and these strips are and what potential there still is for some cracking war stories when you hand them to great creators.

 

 

BATTLE ACTION #4, published by Rebellion and The Treasury of British Comics on 30th August 2023

COOLEY’S GUN – by Garth Ennis and Staz Johnson, colours by Len O’Grady, letters by Rob Steen. Cooley’s Gun created by Gerry Findley-Day and Geoff Campion.

DEATH SQUAD – by Rob Williams and PJ Holden, letters by Rob Steen. Death Squad created by Alan Hebden and Eric Bradbury.

Now, preview time…