Battle #183 (2 September 1978) The Sarge

With the purge of the IPC archives in the 1990s so many extraordinary British artists lost entire bodies their work. One of these was the incomparable Mike Western, and so I'm delighted to welcome his work into my collection. These pages are beyond rare.

What distinguished Battle (and subsequently Battle Action) from other British war comics was the sheer excellence of the artwork: artists who were able to imbue the weekly 4/5 pager of action and danger with a sense of pathos and realism for the soldiers involved. One these artists was Mike Western.

Mike's career spanned the entire gamut of British comics, but his work was never more important that the stories that he illustrated for John Wagner and Gerry Finley-Day for Battle.

The Sarge was a tale of a grizzled pipe-smoking Sargeant Jim Masters, a WW1 veteran, charged with leading his platoon from Dunkirk, across North Africa, Italy and into Germany. A direct homage to Sargent Rock, but absolutely resolutely British in outlook and execution.

This page was cut down for a reprint. I've chosen to remove the cut-outs.

Pen, ink and whiteout on thick cartridge paper.