Battle Action #247 (1st December 1979) HMS Nightshade

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 soldier (or sailors) 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.

HMS Nightshade was the tragic epic of the British flower-class corvette (hence Nightshade) throughout WW2, from the channel to the battle of the Atlantic, to the arctic convoys. Thrilling stuff!

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

Pen, ink and whiteout on thick cartridge paper.