Secret History: The Charley Bourne Legacy
I knew there had to be a follow-up. A new story that shed new light and new insights on the conflict. That story is MI7 Assassin.
Welcome to my Secret History of Comics: my new book serialised on Substack. The first section was on Marshal Law: now it’s all about Charley’s War.
If you’re joining me for the first time, you can read the intro to the Secret History here, it’s available for everyone, and so is the intro to Charley’s War.
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As this Secret History of Charley’s War concludes, it’s like finally saying goodbye to a dearly loved, old friend. I’m going to miss Charley Bourne greatly. And I’m going to miss singing the praises of my great artist co-creator Joe Colquhoun.
But it’s not entirely goodbye because, starting this winter, I’m finally writing my action thriller set in WW1. Entitled MI7 Assassin, it’s a direct descendant of Charley’s War.
Once upon a time, I had believed that Charley’s War was over and I happily moved onto other topics and other stories. After all, once upon a time, everybody knew the truth about the Great War; both during the conflict and all the way through to the 1980s and beyond. So what was there left to say?
Everybody knew the war was wrong. Everybody knew the war was a disaster. Everybody knew it was criminal incompetence, or a terrible mistake by upper class idiots, or an intelligent and malevolent act of mass-murder for profit and power.
In the words of the great Leonard Cohen, ‘That’s how it goes, everybody knows.’
But then, shortly after the millennium, the Revisionists – established military historians, usually with strong army and government connections – came along and they stole History.
They deliberately and provably lied about the Great War. To my surprise, they actually presented it like World War Two: as a just, noble and patriotic war. A war where the Generals actually knew what they were doing so that even the disaster of the Battle of the Somme was revised to be ‘a great victory’.
Any opposition, any criticism, any mocking of war criminals like General Haig – such as in Blackadder Goes Forth – was simply censored and removed from our screens with an enthusiasm and a diligence only equalled by the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984.
Even my comic book peers, to their shame, excluded Charley – universally regarded as the most hard-hitting and important story in British comics – from the British Library comics exhibition.
So, after the deceit of the centenary years, Charleys’ War was more important than it had ever been before. And I knew there had to be a follow-up. A new story that shed new light and new insights on the conflict. For a while, I had even wished someone else would pick up the baton and produce such a book. After all, Charley is an international best-selling series still continuously in print. And other writers have forensically studied and imitated my other creations, like Marshal Law, so why not Charley? Sadly, there were no takers and I realised that, in British comics, at this time at least, I am still a lone voice. Unlike in France where, alongside the great Tardi, there are numerous brilliant creators writing and illustrating truly excellent anti-war stories.
So it put pressure on me to say something new. I had the knowledge, but I couldn’t find a publisher. I realized, ultimately it would not be through comics. Not anymore. So I’ve found two other ways to get the truth out there and one of them is MI7 Assassin. More on that other way, another time.
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