Aarrgghh!! It's War: The Best War Comic Cover Art from War, Battle, Air Ace and War at Sea Picture Libraries

by David Roach

For nearly 20 years, Fleetway—and later its successor IPC—was the world's biggest comic-book publisher, and its line of digest-sized Picture Libraries was the jewel in their crown. The publisher’s most popular and longest lasting series were War, Battle, Air Ace, and War at Sea, which ran for a combined total of more than 45,000 issues. Fleetway scoured the world for the finest creators and employed top artists from Spain, Italy, and South America as well as the cream of British talent. Painters such as Graham Coton, Giorgio DeGaspari, Allesandro Biffignandi, and Jordi Penalva created a succession of stunning front covers that have thrilled generations of readers. This stunning collection gathers together 500 of the finest War, Battle, Air Ace, and War at Sea covers, each digitally remastered from the original archived artwork and presented in a lavish oversized format.

Genres: Art

400 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

David Roach is an extremely prolific inker for Doctor Who Magazine comic strips. He continued to be arguably DWM's "house inker" into 2011, having been active with DWM since his first story, 2002's Oblivion. Though prolific with DWM, he hasn't worked on any other DWU publication, save for the story Sunscreen in Panini's 2007 Storybook.

He has never pencilled any story for Doctor Who, though he has a fairly extensive list of pencil jobs outside the DWU. Within the pages of DWM, he has perhaps partnered with penciller Mike Collins most often, but has also significantly paired with DWM's other long-term penciller, Martin Geraghty.

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

This is a thick 400-page paperback book. It collects the war comics cover art from mainly the 1960s. These archives are from the Air-Ace, Battle, War and War at Sea Picture Libraries. These comics ran over four and a half thousand issues.

The paintings are all traditionally created. They are wonderful and captures the intensity of the war. The choice of colours and composition are great. It's also interesting to see the titles of these covers like "Night of the Devil", "Snarl of Battle", "The Jungle Has Eyes", "Courage Beyond Price", etc.

The subjects are mainly the soldiers, of course. There's a huge section on fighter planes and the navel warfare. There are very few tanks though. Every piece is properly credited to the artist.

For those into drawing war-related comics, this would be a very useful resource.