Charley's War was the greatest British war comic strip ever, written by Pat Mills and drawn by Joe Colquhoun. It was originally published in Battle Picture Weekly from January 1979 to October 1985.
Charley's War tells the story of an underage British soldier called Charley Bourne. Charley joins the British Army during World War I at the age of 16 (having lied about his age and told the recruiting officers that he was 18; they conveniently overlook the fact that Charley gives his date of birth on his application form as 1900), and is quickly thrust into the Battle of the Somme.
The strip follows Charley's life in the trenches and his experiences during the war. Colquhoun put a meticulous level of research in to the already well-researched scripts which Mills provided. The strip rarely flinched from providing an extremely frank portrayal of the horrors of war, so much so that in some later reprintings some of the artwork was censored. Mills added a political slant in the strip not seen in British war comics and avoided the standard heroics common in war comics generally.
The strip followed Charley through to the end of the war and through into the invasion of Russia in 1919. However Mills quit the strip before being able to complete the story (he intended the story to end in 1933, with Charley on the dole as Hitler is made Chancellor of Germany) due to a dispute over his research budget.
Mills was replaced by Scott Goodall and the story was moved to the Second World War and became a more conventional war adventure strip. However, the series ended in the early part of the Second World War after Charley is one of the lucky ones successfully evacuated from Dunkirk, realising he is too old for soldiering anymore. The story ends with him wondering how he came to become a soldier in the first place, leading into a re-run of the strip within Battle Picture Weekly until that comic folded.
In reality, the ending of Charley's War was down to the poor health of Joe Colquhoun, which had already caused the strip to be delayed several weeks. Because he was uniquely talented, there was no question of getting another artist to take over production, and it was felt best to simply draw it to a close.
Here is the complete saga in chronological order, scanned from Battle Picture Weekly, divided in 18 parts. My thanks go out to the artists and scanners!
http://uploading.com/files/584f4m99/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2001%20-%20The%20Somme.cbr
http://uploading.com/files/f43md78b/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2002%20-%20The%20Somme.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/2mc9821m/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2003%20-%20The%20Somme.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/em8c4169/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2004%20-%20The%20Somme.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/mc744c99/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2005%20-%20London.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/d7f69m32/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2006%20-%20Verdun.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/a273b177/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2007%20-%20Ypres.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/13md775c/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2008%20-%20Messines.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/da184m32/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2009%20-%20Etaples.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/85c5be92/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2010%20-%20Passchendaele.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/fdcce11e/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2011%20-%20No-Man%27s%20Land.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/7fm6beea/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2012%20-%20The%20Western%20Front.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/8e6545b9/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2013%20-%20The%20Falklands.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/m61a54mf/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2014%20-%20The%20Russian%20Front.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/am2aca5c/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2015%20-%20Belgium.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/f4a24748/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2016%20-%20Arras.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/4f68c7b3/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2017%20-%20Boulogne.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/975df5f3/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2018%20-%20Dunkirk.cbr/
Just to have all Charley's War stories complete here are the not very interesting extra short stories by other artists made for Battle Annuals and Battle Specials.
http://uploading.com/files/db663232/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2019%20-%20Annuals.cbr/
http://uploading.com/files/9a3bdc4d/Battle%20-%20Charley%27s%20War%2020%20-%20Specials.cbr/
