Battle Picture Weekly (at various times also known as Battle and Valiant, Battle Action, Battle Action Force, Battle and Battle with Storm Force) was a British weekly boys' war comic published by IPC Magazines from 8 March 1975 to 23 January 1988, when it merged with the new incarnation of Eagle after 644 issues. Most stories were set in World War II, with some based on other conflicts, while factual features also focused on warfare.
Devised by Pat Mills and John Wagner in response to rival DC Thomson's similarly-themed Warlord, the title was an instant success. Many of the stories printed in the comic have since received critical acclaim and been published in collected editions, notably "Charley's War". Since 2016 Rebellion Developments have owned the majority of Battle Picture Weekly'''s characters and material, and have published revival publications.
Creation
By the 1970s, IPC Magazines were one of the largest comics publishers in Britain, their portfolio centred around a stable of weekly anthologies that sold around a quarter of a million copies each. However, since being appointed Editorial Director, John Sanders became increasingly aware the market as a whole was shrinking, with television the main threat. He found many of his attempts frustrated by the structure of the company; many of the company's staff (including board members) had been with the company for decades since their days as Amalgamated Press and Fleetway Publications, and were strict traditionalists. IPC launched a slew of titles from 1969 to 1971, but few survived for long.
There was also an archaic internal structure where the company's titles were divided into various departments - boy's adventure, humour, girls and so forth - which rarely exchanged staff between each other. Having left staff jobs at IPC's largest rival DC Thomson, Pat Mills and John Wagner began working as freelancers and submitting scripts for the London company's girls comics. Their work for the likes of Tammy, Jinty and Princess Tina featured a degree of social realism and freshness that stood out to Sanders, who looked for an opportunity to work with the pair further. Mills interviewed for IPC's vacant position of Managing Editor, but his forthright criticism of the company's failings went down poorly with the board, but reaffirmed Sanders' belief that fresh blood was needed.
An opportunity to recruit Mills and Wagner came in 1974, when DC Thomson launched Warlord. While war comics had been a staple of British boys' titles since the fifties - both as features in anthologies and as a staple of picture library titles like Commando and War Picture Library - Warlord was the first ongoing weekly to centre on the genre entirely. The variety was instead provided by the stories being spread between different theatres and services; the result was a smash hit. IPC had a firm policy of responding to any new hit by DC Thomson or any other rival by launching a similar title of their own in response, even keeping an inventory of unpublished strips in various genres to speed up the process. However, Sanders wanted a different approach for IPC's answer to Warlord, turning to Mills and Wagner.
Despite initial reluctance to work in the genre, Mills and Wagner took the offer. One of their key aims was to provide a more working class makeup to the characters, something they felt was sorely lacking in other boys' comics. With a tight lead-in of between 6 to 8 weeks the pair started assembling the new title. To keep friction with other staff to a minimum the pair were placed in an office in the girls' department, and told any staffers who asked they were working on a comic for the blind. When word did get out the decision was not popular with the IPC staffers, not least because as freelancers Mills and Wagner were paid better. However, Sanders stuck to his guns.