Reviews for Charley's War: 2 June- 1 August 1916

The average rating for Charley's War: 2 June- 1 August 1916 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-08-14 00:00:00 Jeffrey Jones July 1 addition: It's the 100 year anniversary of one of the most horrific military disasters of WWI, The Battle of the Somme, so I re-post my reviews of 2-3 of the best: I've now read at least three comics greats in the last year on the Battle of Somme, in WWI, 1916, the greatest disaster in British military history, where the real villains depicted are less the Germans than the British military aristocracy, the generals, the commanders on the field that insisted on going ahead with a misguided and suicidal battle plan that cost them 60,000 deaths in the first DAY of the battle. Over the course of that single battle there were over a million deaths and wounded. Of the three classics I 'd count this one. The other two I would recommend to check out to help you see this battle as emblematic of the horrors and idiocy of war and war strategy on behalf of the rich and powerful are Jacques Tardi's masterpiece It Was the War of the Trenches, and Joe Sacco's The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme, which is really a silent 24 foot panorama of one day in that battle. In non-comics fiction about WWI there's Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms., Pat Barker's brilliant Regeneration trilogy and Mills tells us that Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front was an inspiration. There's also the poetry of Sassoon and Owens. I defer to historians on the best historical records of WWI and Somme in particular, but I loved the essay on the war and the battle in particular excerpted from the famed historian Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion. Here's a short essay on WWI Hochschild published in the NY Times, if you want a way in, some quick background: What do I know about soldiering from the comics of yesteryear? I used to read some in middle school before I became a war resister myself against the Vietnam War. It was fun to read about war adventures and heroes and great battles where Americans waved the flag in victory. I read some of Captain America. Sgt.Rock. Sgt.Fury. G.I. Joe, of course. In Britain Battle Picture Weekly was a favorite, I am told, and from 1979-1985 it featured the greatest British war comic ever, Charley's War, about a kid of 16 who lies to get into the war and heads straight to the Battle of the Somme. Contrasting the intimate tales of a small group of British soldiers sent straight to the front are sadly ironic excerpts from letters exchanged by Charley and his mother, based on meticulous research Mills did into actual war letters. Too obviously didactic,this version of the war? A polemic, dated, in the stye of war comics 35 years ago? Maybe, but I agree with him, and his work is consistent with Tardi and Sacco on that battle, and was moved in places by the contrast between the letters Charley sends to set his mom at ease, lessen her fears, lie to her about how bad it is as we see how bad it is. And he doesn't shy from the horrors of the bloodbath. He humanizes, or rather why humanize the battle. In the way of fiction with an historical axe to grind, we get to know the characters, ones driven literally mad, ones happy to have lost a leg so they can go home as the heroes the war machine makes of the war wounded. Mills, in his introduction to the reprint of his work 35 years later, pays tribute to the illustration work of Joe Colquhoun, and he's right, it is good stuff, brings the horror to life in painful detail. But Mills spends most of his time in his essay angry and almost bitter about why his impassioned comic did not create a greater impact to encourage many other anti-war comics to follow it. He blames the comics industry itself for glorifying macho men, for glorifying war itself (as you may know, several in the comics industry were hired by the government as propagandists), as well as his own vigilant antiwar stance itself which he admits might be seen as too strident, not nuanced enough. And he's not subtle in this comic, he's downright blunt, and the dialogue feels pretty clunky at times, partly because of Mills' faithfulness to the colloquial working class language of the period, though I got used to it as I came to care for Charley and his compadres. The art feels like a lot of army comics, black and white, starkly detailed, journalistic, and I didn't look forward to what looked at first like slogging through all the wars scenes done in that old school style, but it never shies away from the brutality, which as a pacifist I am grateful for. Army comics, war comics, like a lot of war movies, as Mills sees it, in various ways glorify war, even when they say and show War is Hell Mills doesn't think ANY war is just; he sees them as primarily as class wars that pit poor boys against poor boys for the benefit of the rich. And I'd agree with him there. I ain't no senator's son, as Creedence Clearwater sang. Mills, in this neglected classic, sides with Willard Owens, the WWI vet and poet: DULCE ET DECORUM EST Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound\'ring like a man in fire or lime.-- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil\'s sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, **The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori**. {It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country'Horace]. Mills calls bullshit, and I agree.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-18 00:00:00 Danny Narsaur One of the best comics about war there is.