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1927-1987
Pat
Mills' brilliant script and characters would not have been able to so fully come to life without the other
half of the team: Joe Colquhoun. Joe was born in Harrow in Middlesex in 1927. He had always wanted to be Comic artist,
but the Second World War loomed on the horizon and so he joined the Navy and served on various ships around the World,
Joe down played his part in Hitlers downfall, but the very fact he jumped to the call for the services says a great deal about
him. He said he never saw action and wasnt a hero, but who knows? I think all of the guys who fought the war were heros, whatever
capacity they served in. After the war when he was demobbed from the Naval life he had grown to love he landed a place
at Kingston school of Art and broke into the field of comic artist in the harsh financial climate of the 1940's.
His first published work was 'Carver of the Islands' which appeared in the comic 'Jungle Trails' in 1951. He then worked
for IPC magazines for 30 years starting on 'Lion' and two years later it's sister publication 'Tiger' He had been the
very first of many artists to draw 'Roy of the Rovers' (sometimes Joe took over writing the script as well when
the writer had a heavy workload) He drew the Footballing hero for six years, even though he openly admitted he hated football!.
He spent the rest of the Sixties working on shorter stories for 'Lion' and 'Tiger' and at the start of the Seventies
he began working on humourous Comics like 'Buster' and 'Cor!'
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| Sarah from Zarga |
Dez Skin, his
editor on Buster wrote this of him in response to this site "I had the wonderful opportunity of working with Joe in the mid-'70s.
I wouldn't call his Buster work 'humour' as he produced a fabulous 2-page weekly full colour strip 'Kid Chameleon.' This predated
his Battle work, but is one of those forgotten wonders of British comics. I remember driving out to visit him at his home
and he was as wonderful a person as he was an artist. I only regret his brilliance wasn't realised in his own lifetime and
that it's only now being appreciated."
He also drew
the story 'Zarga-Man of Mystery' from 1972-1973 for Buster until Dave Gibbons took over. 'Zarga' was co-written
by Scott Goodall who he was to work with again ten years later when Goodall took over the writing of 'Charley's
War' from Pat Mills.
At some point
in this period Joe's love of the sea would prove too much of a pull and he moved to Swanage in Dorset in a disused Lighthouse
Dave Hunt seems to remember, he joined a sailing club and spent most of his free time messing around in a small boat he had
brought himself.
Joe stayed
on Buster for about six years. He did a variety of strips which included 'The Goodies', 'Sammy Brewster's Ski-Board Squad'
(also co-written with Goodall) and 'Sam's City Jungle'
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| Colour Johnny Red Cover |
Joe started work
at Battle Picture Weekly in 1976. For a few months he drew a story called 'Soldier Sharp-the Rat of the Rifles' until
he started on Johnny Red-the story of the British pilot flying with the Russians in WW2 (script by Tom Tully). He
drew Johnny Red for two years before Dave Hunt (Battle's editor at the time) teamed him up with Pat Mills for Charley's
War in 1978. Battle editor Terry Magee said in 1986-"Joes pictorial interpretation shows an involvement of one hundred per
cent plus. Ive never before known such dedication. From his home in Dorset Joe spends five full working days to complete just
one episode of three pages. It is not financially rewarding in the same way when compared to other artists who produce three
times that amount but Joe cant help himself he says, preferring to apply his mind and brushes to putting all he can into each
frame, That's why its such superb stuff, with those incredibly detailed backgrounds"
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| Johnny Red's look was concieved by Joe |
In 1982 Joe suffered a heart attack and I can still remember being devastated and hardly reading
the comic while he was away recovering. (No other artist impressed me and no other story interested me im sad to say) I sent
him a get-well soon card with a drawing of Charley Bourne on it that Id done myself (he must of been quite sick of that character
sometimes)! He was soon back, however and I continued buying Battle until the war ended and Charley returned to a country
in financial ruin. I stopped getting it because adolescence had caught up with me and I thought myself far too hip to be buying
a 'kids' comic. CW continued ,however into the second war and finally came to an end on the 4th October 1986. Joe continued
to work right up to his death a year after, He produced ten one-off stories for 'Mask' in 1987. His last piece of work was
a story called mayhem's Column which appeared in Mask on the 25th september 1987.
Personal
Friend Derek Bate :"I met Joe in the early eighties at Swanage Sailig Club. We us to sail together in
his small Heron dingy and my rather larger boat. We dicussed many topics and I believe he was in the navy and must have have
been an inflluence in his drawings.
I visited his studio and saw him work and
how he approched his drawings. Pure genius! This overwelmed my son, who was only young then, but he has never forgotten the
experience to this day.A good man to know,quite reserved, and suprised to hear of his death."
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| The execution plot |
Joe
Colquhoun was an unknown Genius his talent was almost magical and this site is really a dedication to him. I was extremely saddened
on hearing this news, as now I will never be able to interview him for this site or tell him how important an influence he
was on me and simply shake his hand to thank him. His great artwork will live on though, and now Titan have listened to the
visiters to this site and chosen to release the strip in hardback form again that is guaranteed, anyway his influence on younger
artists such as myself will always re-enforce that. Some of Joe's art from Issues of Charley's War I don't own anymore
is still imprinted in my mind 22 years later, for instance I remember vividly the episode where the Germans took the trench
he was in and shouted down the dugout steps for the Tommies to come up one-by-one, shooting them when they reached the top.
Charley climbed up the ventilation shaft and saved the day, Lewis gun blazing. I can remember this as if it was yesterday-
frame for frame and yet I know for a fact it was 1980-when I was 9!
There are a lot of his images I can recall in
the same way. I could spot his work a mile off I had studied it so much, when I got some older issues from a jumble sale when
I was about eleven and CW wasn't in it, my disapointment was relieved when I saw Johnny Red, instantly i recognised the un-credited
art as Joe's. To me he was unequaled, and he remains so. I can remember the individual frames and colour covers, the expressions
and settings-the whole thing. Joe's art really did stick with you, and that, I think, has got to be one of the best epitaphs
for any artist.
In a recent e-mail regarding this site
Pat Mills said this of his old partner-
"Like you, I also, I feel very strongly
about Joe's death. He was a genius and the system did not give him the rewards he deserved. One of the reasons
I am so militant is that I saw what happened to nice guys like Joe and many others now half forgotten. Thank you for
changing that. Joe's work really does need to be remembered and you have helped to achieve that."
He goes on- "Joe wasn't
drawing it for the ego, for the fame, for the collected
edition (there wasn't one) and definitely
NOT for the money. There was far too
much painstaking detail for that. Look how many artists "pissed off" their work at that time .
So
I wondered why he was working so hard and I figured he must derive some satisfaction from inside himself.
He didn't seem to need fans or awards (although I'm told he was great with the CW readers who I think he
met once at a comic exhibition he went to)
Kevin O'Neill met him on another occasion and said he was "like
everyone's
favourite uncle"
Joe
never imagined his work would be collected; he never realised his original art could sell (and probably never
took it back) . Of course, it's also true to say that other artists
of his generation may have behaved
in a similar uncomplaining and professional manner - but most lacked his genius.
I was very aware of these
qualities as I worked on CW and decided to make him my role model. To work for myself first. To achieve creative
satisfaction within me - rather than through fandom, America etc . This will perhaps explain to some of your readers,
who know my other work , why I have always had a
rather edgy relationship with fans. It's one of the reasons
why I haven't followed the typical path most Brit writers have followed
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| The scene Joe shed a tear reading |
In my own way, I'm following in Joe's footsteps.
If fans like my work - great; if not - tough. Because I can write in a vacuum without their accolade. And that is the most
important thing Joe's example taught me I spoke to Joe, as I recall, a couple of times or so in the course of the story.
I was very intense and so was he and it
seemed to me there was nothing to be gained by talking the
story through over the phone and a risk we could lose the
magic. He always said he was happy to leave the
decisions to me.
Towards the end of Charley's War, I think I alerted him to artwork being returned — something
that has only happened since the late 1980's. I'm not sure he took advantage of the financial opportunity it
gave
him. But at that time CW readers were teenagers and wouldn't have had the buying power to purchase his artwork.
Don't
ask me what happened to all his original pages. I don't know the answer, but I suspect it is not good news.
And let
me make another aside here... Because I felt so angry at the way Joe was treated — he worked, he drew, he died —
with no acknowledgement of his great contribution British comics — it has made me very militant in my own dealings with
publishers.
For instance, neither I nor Joe's family received a reprint fee for the
comic CW reprints, despite
my protests to the publisher, John Davidge. (Although 2000AD reprints at the same time were treated differently. The
artists and writers there were paid)
Joe was a true gentleman who left it to publishers and editors to decide such
financial matters on trust. Sadly, much good did it do him and many of
his post-war generation of artists and writers. That hard lesson has not been lost on me. Now we come to the end of CW...
As I finished CW, I offered Joe Slaine,
but he was coming close to
retirement, and he said he'd rather carry on with Battle. I think he wanted to stay loyal
to the comic which I can admire.
He said he only needed to keep going for a little while to
reach retirement
and he was already ill. So I told him I was happy for him to carry on CW with another writer and that was the last
time we talked.
He was such a wonderful man, I
always found myself totally tongue-tied talking to him. And I think he seemed a little nervous of me, too. Maybe it
was a generational thing: we were from different generations and backgrounds and our story was the basis for our
communication, not the phone. When I heard he died, I was very upset, but-being fairly young - I really didn't know how to
deal with it. So I did nothing and I've always felt somewhat guilty about this.
It's perhaps another reason I feel so passionately
about Joe now.
I believe there was an obituary in a national, possibly the Guardian,
because of Roy of the Rovers -
but I wouldn't swear to it.
It's for all the reasons I've enumerated
above, which must come as a surprise to many CW readers, as much as his artistic genius, why I think Joe is an artist worthy
of special commemoration; and why I'm so appreciative of this website. I believe Titan will reprint the whole
of CW, but any e-mail requests from CW readers will surely help and will bepassed on to them. I'm sure a collected edition
will mean a lot to Joe's family.
One footnote to all this which may also surprise
readers. I found
Joe's art so good, I often couldn't look at it. That must
sound bizarre, so let me
explain a little more. Like many of you, I
suspect, I would spend hours looking at certain scenes and totally lose myself
in Joe's art. But at that time, to make a living, you had to be like a hamster on a wheel. You couldn't daydream over
your work; you just had to keep going, writing day after day, week after week.
So often I wouldn't look at certain
issues, because I knew I would
'waste "a day just looking at the scenes over and over.
And certain scenes were painful,
too.
Like the First Day on the Somme.(see the full page above)
Joe told me he "shed a
tear or two" drawing the episode where
"the Best of British" went over the top for the first time. The most courageous, the healthiest of their generation,
the first to volunteer, keen to fight for their country and were machine-gunned because of the murderous, criminal
arrogance of the British generals.
I felt the same as Joe. I didn't want to look at those
scenes again. Writing and 'drawing them in my mind" once was enough. I can't imagine what it must
have been like for him.
Because, as a writer the CW script only took up a third of my available time. But, for an artist, drawing a
three page weekly script is a full time occupation. How was he able to draw scenes of mass slaughter with such consistent
passion, intensity and talent, year after year, with no distraction on other projects, and yet not be utterly overwhelmed
by the horror of it all?
It's another reason I rarely spoke to Joe on the phone. I'm not sure I
wanted to know
the answer to that question
Because we are talking about writing and
drawing scenes from
Hell. But the characters in this Hell were not figures from Breughel or
Hieronymous
Bosch, or remote figures from history books. They are people no different to your cousin, dad, brother or uncle today. They
were our grandfathers or great grandfathers. When I researched and read their letters, jokes, songs and anecdotes, I realised
— as obviously CW readers do — they were the kind of people you might meet down your local pub tomorrow,
talking and lamenting about the World Cup. Only they were slaughtered, gassed, maimed, and shell-shocked.
The Best
of British, Joe was the only artist capable of capturing that sadness and tragedy and make it work'
Joe Colquhoun was a legend in the British
Comics industry, but mention his name and few people have heard of him, that one thing rankles more than anything, i mean-Joe
started his career as the first Artist to draw Roy of the Rovers! the most famous Cartoon Character EVER!! and yet
he's virtually unknown it's time that that situation changed right now. Dave Hunt 'Charley's War gives me goosepimples when
i think about it' John Wagner- CW was the best strip in any British comic ever. Joe Colquhouns lovely drawing just captured
the first world war. He was also willing to do an awful lot of reaearch himself' Artist John Cooper ( who took over
johnny Red from Joe in 1979) 'You would sit and look at it for weeks, the amount of work and detail that went into it. He
was a good artist. It will go down as one of the greats' Gerry Finlay-Day 'Superb' Managing Editor Barrie Tomlinson
' Charley's War was the best in war comics if not the best in comics full stop. Brilliantly written by Pat Mills and brilliantly
drawn by Joe Colquhoun' Garth Ennis the biggest modern name in the comic field wrote to me and said I was delighted
to discover your website on what, for me, has to be the best comic strip ever to see print. Beautiful artwork by Joe Colqhoun,
brilliant scripts by Pat Mills at his very, very best. Reading Pat's thoughts on the story 20 (God help us) years on was downright
fascinating, as was the timeline- which sent me on a long old trip down memory lane'
Im so proud that since i started this site
a multitude of thirty-something fans of the story have written to me with their memories and thoughts, many of them have had
the strip steer the direction of their lives and careers, (a medical army Officer, and a Lecturer in Military History at the
Washington institute as well as numerous History teachers and a BBC researcher) All of the calls for a reprint finally paid
off this year when Titan did reissue in hardback the first of a series of books, hopefully the entire strip will
eventually follow. I am so pleased this work of genius is back on the shelves again where it belongs. Judging from the early
feedback it will repeat it's success a second time, it has certainly spanned decades and that is an incredible achievement
for both it's creators.
Im going to leave the last
line to Joe himself because although he's talking about about Charley's War i think it says a lot about the personality of
this quiet, unassuming genius. ' I think the reason Charley's War appeals to kids today is that it illustrates a period
that was already dying then-a time when words like honour and duty and patriotism actually meant something, i believe that
kids today when reading this epoch, will have a sneaking almost atavistic feeling that in this sick and rather selfish world
where violence and amorality seem to pay dividends, they might actually be missing out on something. It sounds very pretentious,
but just think about it.'
Thanks Joe, wherever you are,
Neil Emery 2002
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