Charley's War: The last Christmas

Charley's War, by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun is the greatest war comic ever produced, for so many reasons. It's because it has gorgeous art, where Colquhoun would squeeze every speck of WW1 battlefield mud into the frame, while impeccably depicting the horror and despair on the faces of the soldiers in the middle of it.

It's because it's massively dense in both plot and art, with the three-page chapters forcing everybody to get to the bloody point. It's because it was immaculately well-researched, building characters and storylines out of many real-life events. It's because it never flinches away from the brutality and pointlessness of it all, and darkly exposes the nastiness of the class structure that keeps the war machine turning.

And it's because it also manages to find moments of grace and beauty among the sucking mud and shrapnel in the air, and there one comes late in the day, when the guns fall silent on the last Christmas of the war.

It's hard to avoid getting too mawkish about the idea of the Christmas truce, and too easy to give into trite sentimentality (Steven Moffat has spoken of a similar problem depicting the event in his last Doctor Who story). The idea that for one day, the war stops before carrying on as usual the next day, can be cheapened and disrespectful to the poor bastards who lived through that actual horror.

There is nothing cheap and disrespectful to the men on the front line of Charley's War. The friendly exchange between a Fritz and a Tommy that kicks off the final truce comes right at one of the grimmest points of the vast, sprawling story. There has been so much death and tragedy, Charley has lost all his mates several times over, and it's not over yet.

Meanwhile, Mills is busy humanising the enemy by showing us life in the German trenches, but this just adds to the despair, because there is a young fanatic named Adolf Hitler on the other side of no mans land. And as fun as it is to see that young ruffian Bourne beat the crap out of Der Fuhrer, it's also a constant reminder that there is so much more blood coming in the future (Mills' run on the story will end on a panel revealing that Hitler has risen to power.)

But none of that matters in the shining, timeless moment when Charley and Big Bruno walk out of their trenches and say hello. When the massive Teutonic brute and the plucky young lad from the London terraces reach out and forget about killing each other for now, it's a massively powerful moment.

The young readers of Charley's War demanded more action in their weekly three pages, so the peace only lasts until the end of the next episode, with a terrible reminder that 1918 would be the last and most terrible yer of the war. Stark, clear captions reveal that many of those who laid down their arms for a few hours still won't survive the war. Even Big Bruno only has a few short weeks to live, killed after his leave in cancelled for starting the truce.

And the comic strip takes to the skies and oceans after this, with Mills turning to the experiences of Charley's cousin and brother, and when it comes back, the yuletide peace is forgotten as the war barrels to its end, and the forgotten Russian aftermath.

But for one moment, nobody dies and the war is settled with gentlemanly fisticuffs instead of mass slaughter. It's only the tiniest part of this massive story, and an while it doesn't last, it's a welcome break from the slaughter,

All of Mills and Colquhoun's epic story has been recently collected in three fat omnibus editions, so there really isn't any excuse not to follow Charley's story through the Somme and beyond. It gets a bit grim sometimes, but it also roars with utter humanity.