The wider medium · 16 entries
For several decades the war comic was the backbone of British comics: pocket libraries you could fit in a blazer pocket, weeklies full of square-jawed Tommies shouting "Achtung!" back at the Germans, and, from the mid-1970s, a new wave of much darker stories that questioned whether war was quite the jolly adventure the older comics suggested. The creators who made that shift, Pat Mills, John Wagner and Gerry Finley-Day among them, went on to build 2000 AD. Rebellion's Treasury of British Comics has put much of it back in print, and the American and French entries show that the best war comics have always been anti-war.
While other war comics were full of heroic GIs mowing down faceless enemies, Harvey Kurtzman's war comics for EC were meticulously researched, honest about the horror of combat and deeply…
Start with The EC Archives: Two-Fisted Tales, Volume 1
Sergeant Frank Rock leads Easy Company, a platoon of American infantrymen, through the Second World War, from the beaches of Normandy to the forests of Germany.
Start with Sgt. Rock by Joe Kubert: Deluxe Edition
Commando is a pocket-sized comic book, sixty-odd pages long, that tells a complete war story in every issue, and it has been doing so since 1961.
Start with Commando Presents: The Tank Collection
Victor and Warlord were the weekly boys' comics that a generation of British readers grew up on, full of war stories, sports stories and adventure.
Start with The Best of The Victor
Hans von Hammer is a German fighter pilot in the First World War, the "Hammer of Hell", and he is also the hero of this story.
Start with Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace, Volume 1
Blazing Combat was a black-and-white war magazine from Warren, the publisher of Creepy and Eerie, and it lasted only four issues.
Start with Blazing Combat
In 1975 IPC asked Pat Mills and John Wagner to create a war comic that could compete with DC Thomson's popular titles.
Start with The Best of Battle, Volume 1
Major Eazy is a laid-back British officer who doesn't care for rules, uniforms or authority, and who is also very good at winning battles.
Start with Major Eazy, Volume One: The Italian Campaign
Action was the comic that the British press called "the sevenpenny nightmare".
Start with Action – Before the Ban 1: The Archival Collection
Major Kurt Hellman is a German tank commander in the Second World War, and he is the hero of the strip: a decent soldier who hates the Nazis and does his best to protect his men from both…
Start with Hellman of Hammer Force
In the Burmese jungle in the Second World War, a mysterious officer called Captain Joe Darkie takes command of a lost unit of British soldiers and leads them on a brutal, private war…
Start with Darkie's Mob: The Secret War of Joe Darkie
Johnny Redburn is a British merchant seaman who takes off in a Hurricane fighter from a convoy bound for Russia, and ends up flying for the Soviet air force against the Germans on the…
Start with Johnny Red, Volume 1: The Falcons
Charley Bourne is a sixteen-year-old boy from London who lies about his age to join the army in 1916, and finds himself on the Somme.
Start with Charley's War: The Definitive Collection, Volume 1
The 'Nam follows a young American soldier, Ed Marks, through a tour of duty in Vietnam, and it was told in near real time: each monthly issue covered a month of the war, so that the series…
Start with The 'Nam: 1966–1969 Omnibus
Jacques Tardi's grandfather fought in the First World War, and Tardi spent much of his career trying to understand it.
Start with It Was the War of the Trenches
Garth Ennis grew up reading Battle, and his War Stories are a tribute to it, with self-contained tales set mostly in the Second World War, drawn by some of the best artists in British…
Start with War Stories, Volume 1
