One of my favorite web-sites is Bear Alley, the blog of Steve Holland, editor of some great recent books on British Comics.  Steve's site is filled with information and illustrations and news on the British Comics scene past and present.

Starting today its even better.   Steve has started to reprint, two episodes at a time, a comic strip I had been searching out for many years - Eagles Over the Western Front.  The strip ran between 1971 and 1973 and vied with The Trigan Empire as my favorite part of the educational comic/magazine Look and Learn.   Indeed when the strip ended I stopped buying Look and Learn.   Two pages of Trigan Empire not being enough to overcome the temptation of the NME and other Rock music papers at the time.

Printed in black and white, 'Eagles', told the story of the Royal Flying Corps, and in my, often quite faulty memory, was grittier and more realistic than war stories in Victor or other british comics.  Characters lived and died and because of the non-combat sequences where we got to know them, were more than simply soldier or airman number one, so their deaths meant that much more.  It had quite an impact on me at the time and I had been trying to find out more about the strip and remember exactly when it had been published.  A task made more difficult by the fact that I had forgotten the damn title. 

Art is by Bill Lacey, whose work you will have seen if you bought the recent Rick Random reprint book, which features his artwork on the first adventure of the great space detective.  This is a real treat and not one to be missed. 

Link below.

bearalley.blogspot.com/