Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant #29 January 1977 [100]
Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant #29 (cover-dated 29 January 1977, internal numbering [100]) is the centennial issue of IPC's flagship war anthology and functions as a deliberate mini-relaunch: it contains the debut of 'Johnny Red,' the strip that would go on to become the longest-running serial in the comic's entire thirteen-year history. The issue also premieres 'Joe Two Beans,' John Wagner and Eric Bradbury's story of a taciturn Native American soldier on the Pacific Front — a rare choice of protagonist for British boys' comics of the era — while simultaneously delivering the first crossover between two established Battle characters, when Major Eazy is paired with the Rat Pack in a single combined adventure. Together, these three story events in one weekly number represent an unusually dense moment of creative renewal for the title, arriving at a cultural sweet-spot when Action had been sanitised into irrelevance and 2000 AD had not yet launched, leaving Battle as virtually the only outlet in British comics for genuinely hard-edged serialised storytelling.
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Battle Picture Weekly was devised by freelancers Pat Mills and John Wagner in 1974 as IPC Magazines' direct answer to DC Thomson's successful Warlord, with editor Dave Hunt overseeing the launch in March 1975. Wagner subsequently moved to try to revive the ailing Valiant, but that attempt failed and Valiant was folded into Battle with the issue of 23 October 1976, retitling the merged comic Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant and adding strips including One-Eyed Jack. Issue [100] was a calculated editorial event: Hunt had identified that Battle lacked a durable aerial serial, commissioned writer Tom Tully — a veteran of Roy of the Rovers and The Steel Claw — to create 'Johnny Red,' and was deliberate in launching it alongside two other new features to signal a fresh chapter; he later acknowledged that the crossover pairing of Major Eazy with Rat Pack was partly a scheduling solution to free up page-space for the new debuts while keeping both popular characters visible.
Trivia · 8 facts
- This is the 100th issue of Battle Picture Weekly (internal numbering [100]), cover-dated 29 January 1977, published by IPC Magazines during the post-Valiant-merger period when the title was called Battle Picture Weekly and Valiant.
- First appearance of Johnny 'Red' Redburn: written by Tom Tully and drawn by Joe Colquhoun, the strip ran continuously until 17 January 1987, making it the longest-running serial in Battle's history.
- Johnny Red's premise — a disgraced British RAF cadet who commandeers a Hurricane from a doomed CAM ship and ends up leading the Soviet Falcon Squadron on the Eastern Front — was partly inspired by the real-life story of RAF pilot Arthur Burr, and was conceived to give Battle an enduring aerial strip and a rare sympathetic portrayal of Soviet characters in Cold War-era British comics.
- First appearance of 'Joe Two Beans,' written by John Wagner and drawn by Eric Bradbury, following a taciturn Native American soldier fighting in the US Pacific campaign — one of the few Battle strips to centre on a non-white protagonist.
- Issue [100] contains the first crossover in Battle Picture Weekly's history: Major Eazy (Alan Hebden, writer; Carlos Ezquerra, artist) is teamed with the Rat Pack (Alan Hebden, writer; Carlos Ezquerra, artist) in a combined arc retitled 'Major Eazy versus Rat Pack' — something editor Dave Hunt later confirmed was an unusual move for British anthology comics of the period.
- Continuing strips in this issue include 'Darkie's Mob' (John Wagner, writer; Mike Western, artist) — the brutal Burma-set serial featuring Captain Joe Darkie and his guerrilla unit, with supporting characters Ian 'Scarface' Rogan, Ronald Weasel, Kabul 'the Turk' Hasan, and Matthew Dancer belonging to the Rat Pack lineup — as well as Mike Nelson's 'Operation Black Death' (writer Chris Lowder, artist Pat Wright) and One-Eyed Jack (carried over from Valiant).
- The issue directly follows the death of D-Day Dawson in issue [99], meaning [100] served as both a memorial close to one era and an opening of a new one, a structural transition the blog 'Great News for All Readers' described as arriving in a period 'otherwise lacking in thrill-power' for British comics.
- Johnny Red was later reprinted by Titan Comics (as Johnny Red: Falcon's First Flight, 2010) and then by Rebellion Developments under their Treasury of British Comics imprint; Rebellion also published new Johnny Red stories written by Garth Ennis beginning in a 2022 Battle Action Special, continuing the character's life decades after his original debut issue.