Charley's War Omnibus

It’s Remembrance Day again, and it’s a suitably appropriate time to commemorate for the 100th Anniversary of the end of the War to end all Wars.

In years past, I would’ve posted a link to the first major story arc of Charley’s War in the Somme, but the Mediafire account I used got shut down, probably from lack of activity.  It wouldn’t be much use, since there’s now a much better format for seeing all of Charley’s War anyways.  The entire series has been collected in three bulky volumes, from Rebellion press.

In place of the photorealistic stock images of the early Titan editions, they have appropriate cover art, showing the glory that is Joe Colquhoun's art, which is on par having Bill Maudlin’s wonderfully weary army veterans told in story form.  In political terms, that’s the highest praise that can be garnered.

The larger collections also have the benefit of having large sections of the story available all at once, and helps reduce the annoyance of having storylines suddenly stop midway, just as things were getting good (which, given the nature of cliffhangers, were pretty much all of them) The only volume that didn’t end on a cliffhanger was the 4th volume, Blue’s Story, and appropriately enough, it’s the only story that doesn’t show up in the first omnibus.  Rather, it's the first story in the second omnibus.

The newer editions also have the benefit of having colour art, though there's a few pages that the author Pat Mills thought would work more effectively in Black and White.  As a period piece, I can't disagree with his assertment.  The omnibuses also have the complete storyarc of The Great Mutiny, that for some reason, was missing six crucial pages of the controversial incident.  It was so outrageous that there's a media blackout even now, and the British higher-ups have constantly denied it ever happened.  The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the cover for the 3rd book, which while well-drawn, is bereft of any identifiable faces.  But for a list of potential complaints, such as the paper stock being too shiny, that's extremely low on the disagreement department.

There's no better way to pay your respects to the thousands of people who died than to read the best dramatization of WWI guised up in a boy's weekly action magazine format.  Well, maybe other than making a donation to veterans for their service, but that goes without saying.

Fridged and a Closed Door

So, after the rather uneventual breather episode of last month, we get a return to normalcy with a state of hibernating away from hunters.


Picking up on the theme of broadening expectations, this is just a serene prelude to the next big serious issue.


Yup.  Eugene gets shot and doesn't walk (Float? Crawl?) away from the incident unscathed.

As if this incident wasn't disturbing enough, it occurred just around the time of the Polytechnique Massacre on December 6, 1989, a horrific attack against women, leading to 14 deaths, and was the prime motivation for gun control in Canada.  This goes far beyond the special message that happened not that long ago.

Around this entire remaining story arc, we never get to see Noodle's face, let alone Eugene's reactions.  Sensing a certain uneasiness around current events, Gambioli possibly tried to soften the blow.

 It's also the only time that the Word of the Week feature is left suitably blank.


And yet, despite these hopeful words, we never get to see Eugene ever again.

You could be forgiven for not noticing the floating piece of fuzz outside the cave if it wasn't mentioned in the feature index on the top of the sectioned page.


And thus, we've come full circle to the beginning of my first entry of the last three months of The Fridge Door, where I mentioned that this hunting accident.  Though it was most likely overlooked or forgotten by people who didn't notice it in the first place.  In the absence of Eugene's presence, something was lost.  The cartoon section of The Fridge Door tried to continue in a new format based on reader input, but the rambling format and loss of control wasn't enough, and it was promptly retired with nary a response.

Still, how many children's newspaper features can you name that had a gun-related death in them?