Advance Preview – Into Battle With ‘Hellman Of Hammer Force: Downfall’

Another classic British comics anti-hero gets the Treasury of British Comics treatment as Hellman of Hammer Force: Downfall gets published March 2023.

Hellman was a ground-breaking series written by Gerry Finley-Day and drawn by Mike Dorey and others that appeared in the pages of the iconic Battle from 1977 to 1978.

Covering the invasion of Poland in 1939 through to the fall of Berlin in 1945, Hellman of Hammer Force follows the exploits of Major Kurt Hellman, commander of an armoured division, the Hammer Force, for the German Army. And that’s what made this strip different, taking the German point of view in a war comic, even a sympathetic point of view.

Hellman was no Nazi though, just a soldier who fights for his men and his country, actively hating the Nazis and what they stand for, particularly the SS and their SS adjutant who joins Hammer Force.

Hellman has a long history in Brit comics, first published in the notorious and influential title Action and later Battle between February 1976 and July 1978.

In more recent years, Hellman and his troops have featured in plenty of strips by current creators, most notably Garth Ennis, whose love of the strip is well known.

This new collection includes all the later stories published in Battle, including the never-before reprinted ‘Fall of Berlin’ storyline.

Hellman of Hammer Force: Downfall comes out on 28 March from The Treasury of British Comics in paperback and hardback.