Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum exhibition showcases war comic art

Recent work by the artist Keith Burns is among the artwork on show at the Into Battle exhibition

An exhibition is showcasing the dynamic artwork of British war comics from over the decades.

Into Battle: The Art of British War Comics is running at Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum until 30 April.

The collaboration with publisher Rebellion, home of the 2000 AD comic, features art from titles such as War Picture Library and Battle Action.

Ben Smith of Rebellion said: "It's not just nostalgia, it's understanding how war was communicated culturally."

War comics have been produced in the UK for more than a century

The exhibition at the museum in Woodstock charts the development of war comics, starting from satirical comic strips and patriotic illustrated stories in the 19th Century.

They reached their peak in popularity with the gritty adventures of the 1960s and 1970s.

Included are examples from Battle Action, which was the result of two separate titles - Battle Picture Weekly and Action comics - merging in 1977.

The "visceral" Charley's War inspired historians such as Dan Snow

It featured the critically-acclaimed Charley's War by Pat Mills and Jo Colquhoun, which chronicled a soldier's journey through World War One.

Mr Smith, who is Rebellion's head of film, TV and publishing, told the BBC the strip was "probably the greatest war comic ever written".

The exhibition includes a Thriller Picture Library cover by Giorgio De Gaspari from 1959

He said: "It belies its roots as a short three or four page story in an anthology to stand head and shoulders above its contemporaries for capturing the visceral reality of the First World War.

"It's so convincing, so remarkable. It's been so many historians and laypeoples entrance into military history - Dan Snow was inspired by it."

Other art on show includes works from Giorgio de Gaspari (Spy 13, 1959), Jordi Penalva (Bulldog Breed, 1965), and Graham Cotton (Gun Duel, 1967).

Mr Smith said the "war comic boom" saw the genre take the place of Westerns as World War Two "slightly retreated into history", with its titles becoming "so definitive culturally".

Battle Action has been relaunched with characters such as Nina Petrova and The Angels of Death

But he said "captivating" and "boundary-pushing" comics such as Battle Action later lost ground as home video, video games, and the science fiction genre stole their thunder.

Battle Action was recently revived with creators such as Garth Ennis, writer of Preacher and The Boys, and Dan Abnett, author of Warhammer and Guardians of the Galaxy comics, picking up the baton.

Acclaimed writers such as Garth Ennis have penned stories for the retellings

Rebellion, based in Oxford, has the biggest catalogue of English language comic book properties in the world.

It bought the archives of Fleetway in 2016, and TI Media in 2018 with a view to preserving, reprinting, and in some cases rebooting them, and took over 2000 AD from Egmont in, aptly, the year 2000.

New issues include sequential art by Dan Cornwell

The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum was opened in 2014 by the Princess Royal as a home for the collections of Oxfordshire regiments from Waterloo to Afghanistan.

Rebellion has the biggest catalogue of English language comic book properties in the world

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