British comics did a Survival series way before the Walking Dead.

Way before the legend that is the Walking Dead comic was even thought about British comics had already done a post apocalyptic zombie/mutant comic strip called Survival. Writern by Barrie Tomlinson under the pseudenym of D.Horton with artwork by Jose Ortiz the strip appared in The Eagle from issue 259 to 319 (61 issue in total) and was then re-printed in the Eagle Monthly in the early 1990's.

The story centers on a young boy called Mark Davies who survives a plague of killer virus that have either killed or mutated most of the population of the planet. Mark has survived only because he has a rare blood type which only a few people in the world had. Mark finds himself stumbling around London on his own till he finds another survivor another young boy called Karl.
The two of them escape the mutant dangers of the big city for what they think would be the saftey of the country and then envntually on to France.

I remmember the story from when I was a kid  I was probably a little to young to be reading them first time round as the subject was a bit dark for a under 10.

However I did find it very interesting when I read it from the reprints in the early 1990's the story was writtern and appeared in the Eagle at a time when the apocalypse could have been on most peoples minds be it from nuclear war or some scary biological experiment going wrong the apocalypse could have been a near future event.

Below is the frist episode taken from my copy of the Eagle Montly.

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Anyone remember Johnny Red???

  



Continuing from some of my past posts showing off some of the know finished British comics greats from my childhood next up we have..........

Johnny Red's first apperance was in the 100th issue of Battle Picture Weekly dated 29th January 1977 writern by Tom Tully who wrote the story for its full run with art work from the legend that was Joe Colquhoun before he left to do the art for Pat Mills Charleys War. The art was then taken on by John Copper till the stories end.

The Story revolvers around the central character of Johnny RED Rebourn a 19 year old RAF pilot cadet who is dishonourably discharged from the service after striking a senior officer.(in later parts of the story this changes to killing a senior office in an air crash?)

Cast out Johnny becomes a member of a merchent ship's crew taking part in the ocean going convoys from the UK to Russia.

On one convoy the ship is bombed and the pilot of there catapult Hurricane fighter is killed, With the ship doomed Johnny takes the pilots place and is launched off the ship in the Hurricane.

After a dog fight with a few Dorniers he finds himself over Russia where he meets up with a squadron of Russian fighters called the Falcon squadron.

Johnny then becomes part of the Falcons later becoming there leader.

The story is mainly about Johnny and the Falcon squadron taking part in the war on the eastern front with Johnny not only fighting the Germans but also having a fairly troubled time with the Soviot political officers or Commissars.

Later parts of the story see Johnny back in the UK flying for the RAF and the USSAF.

                                     

                               

The story can be quite dark at times and shows the grim state of warfare that took place both on the ground and in the air on the eastern front in the early 1940's.

The story ran for about 5 years and was reprinted in the battle again after the original had run had finished. The sorry ran for a 3rd time once the Battle comic had merged with the Eagle comic where it finially ended its print run in a weekly comic. 

Joe Colquhoun art work is as always great, filled with loads of detail and much better in black and white then in colour this also carried on when John Copper took over the art once Joe left to do Charley's War.

saddly I do not have any copies of the Joe Colquhoun issues which are part of my comic book wish list and as soon as i get a copy it will be added to the blog asap.

Below is a full episode taken from the reprints from the Eagle comics in the late 1980's to early 1990's and features art work by John Copper.

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Summer Specials

When I was a kid we never had a holiday overseas. Being a son of a housewife and a draftsman in the 1980's there was not a lot of money about. Don't get me wrong my childhood was not a time of doom and gloom in fact the summers of my childhood was a great times and smack in the middle of these summers was the annual two week holiday to the coast usually to Mablethorpe or Skegness where we would stay at one of my grandparents caravans. Every year during those two weeks I would stop off at the campsite shop and the among the inflatables and beach cricket sets was a rack of comic books. These were the now de-funcked summer specials.

Summer special comics where usually double sized issues of the regular comic with more colour pages and printed on glossy paper. A lot of the funny comics had stories of a seasonal nature taking character away from there usual setting and basing the story in a holiday town or settings. Some of the other comics would have little full stories specially done for these specials a lot of the time by artist and writers that didn't do the stripe in the regular issue's.

These comics were design as a treat for your summer holiday being sometimes double the size of a regular issue it would take longer to read or as something to do if the weather was not the best.

Now everyone has seen many pictures and lots of things writern about the funny books like the Beano and the Dandy but some of my favourite comic books from my youth are the war comics for boys. What can I say I love war stories when I was a kid. Two of my favourite comics were the Battle Picture weekly which sadly I don't have a copy of a summer special (now added to comic book want list) and the Warlord comic.

Below is a picture of the front cover of the 1990 Warlord summer special.

This comic features 8 full stories at the most 5 pages long with a mix of both full colour and black and white stories. I prefer the black and white war stories to the colour maybe something to do with watching all the famous old war films when I was a kid but to me they seem to have more detail in them to the colour ones.This comic also features many factual articles about spotting WWII fighter planes from there silhouettes, the roll of the long range desert group in the North African campaign,info about spitfire and mig fighter planes,the German battleship the Graf Spee and a brief history of the Battle of Brittan. 

This comic has an amazing full colour poster of a spitfire in action shooting down a Heinkel.

My favourite story form this issue is the Kampfgruppe Falken. The story centre on Kampfgruppe Haniz Falken an ex-panzer commander force to lead a rag tag mob of German troop of a penal battalion. Falken was forced in to the penal battalion for not carrying out a war crime during the 1940 Blizkrig.

Kampfgruppe Falkon was a serial story that ran in the regular weekly issues of the Warlord comic.

Sadly the Warlord is now out of print and gone are it's summer specials but not only that gone are all summer special comics the last being a Beano summer special from the early 2000's. It has been said that the time is right for the comic producing companies in the UK to bring them back and I for one would love to see this happen even if there was little or no new story content they would be cheep to produce and it could re-kindle interest in some of the now long gone great British comics.