Talking of modern comics, last months Commando issues commerated the 90th anniversay of the ending of the first world war with exclusively WW1 stories, 3 of which were aviation related. All these special issues carried a special “Armistace 90” logo on the cover.
The best art (in my opinion) is in “Valley of death” & “Desert dogfight” both drawn by Jose Maria Jorge who is flying the flag for accurate military hardware art. (he did the covers too)

Nice scans Sage!

False Glory was a good read. What was the issue number and year of issue for the Air Ace Holiday Special please? I have got to get me one of these! Awesome artwork with the Whirlwind + 37 mm cannon!

Kind regards

Paul

Unfortunately none of the “Holiday specials” were numbered or dated on the covers, the only place a date can be found is on the spine side of the first page.
The Air ace specials were produced one a year for sixteen years between 1969 & 1984 and contained between four & six stories re-printed from the standard issues along with a small amount of new material.
The special in question is from 1974 making it number 6.
There were also seven “Battler Britton” specials issued between 1978 & 1984 in the same format but their stories were drawn from “War” & “Battle” as well as “Air ace” as old “Battler” got about a bit.
“Battler” was recently revived by the American comic company Wildstorm (part of DC comics, they now own the rights to a lot of the classic British comic characters from the old Fleetway stable) for a five issue story revolving around his Beau squadron co-operating with an American P40 unit in North Africa. It was a good read and retained the essential “britishness” of the character. The issues were collected and issued as a complete story and can be found in the graphic novel section of the larger branches of Waterstones, here’s the cover, I’m lucky enough to have the original art & its really quite impressive.

Another good modern read is Frenchman Romain Hugault’s graphic novel “The final flight”. Each chapter tells the story of the last mission flown by a German, Japanese & American fighter pilots, beautiful full colour artwork and very well written, this one is only available online or from the specialist comic shops such as the Forbidden Planet chain. Its in english but I could only find a page in French on the web ( i’m being lazy, it saved me scanning) His latest is about an He219 pilot called “The grand duke” but I havent picked this one up yet, enjoy

Cheers,
Brian

No, it was definitely a Horsa I remember. Was draw from the aft/port side and I think a Stuka was attacking it in the picture.:confused:

Try this site, it has all the Commando covers from issue 1 to current, they are a bit small but you might find the issue you refer to.
http://www.britishcomics.20m.com/pocket.htm

I was speaking to Steve Holland recently (he’s the gent who compiles the “War” & “Battle” compilations) & it is planned to do an “Air Ace” book next year, so another one for the purchase list.

Havent had a chance to scan the Whirlwind issues yet but will attempt to do so this evening.

Unfortunately there isnt currently any book published on Ian Kennedy’s art but I have made the suggestion to both Steve & the Book Palace people (specialist comic related publishers) and they have shown an interest but these things can take a long while to reach fruition. Being as they are a small publishing outfit they need to make a profit on previously published stuff before they can fund anything new. (such as their superb index to the Fleetway war digest titles, follow the link & scroll to the bottom) http://www.bookpalace.com/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?REFPAGE=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2ebookpalace%2ecom%2facatalog%2f&WD=libraries%20war&PN=British_Comics_and_Annuals_Reprints%2ehtml%23aWLI1#aWLI1
They have had a book about Commando on the boil for some time to be written by the person who published the excellent but now sadly defunct “Actung Commando !” fanzine. The last issue of which was devoted to Ian Kennedy’s work, an excellent read if you can find a copy but may cost you a bit as they were originally run off on his home printer so the costs were very high due to the high colour content & glossy covers, (£15.00 a pop).
Some of his Air Ace cover work can be found in the two recent books “Aarrgghh ! its war” & “The art of war” both can be found at the above link.
High quality prints of a couple of his Commando covers have recently been published & there is also a lot of his work on show in the 2009 Commando calendar, all available here.
http://www.uniquecomiccollectables.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=3

Saw it in my local Odeon in Southend in one of their “Digital screens”.
The picture quality was impressive apart from one of the flying shots with a bad scratch that must have been on the master negative as there isnt any film in a digital presentation.
No problems with the dogs name here either, screen was about two thirds full, mostly the middle to upper age bracket.

Dug out my photo’s of the scrapping of the Beverley on the site of the old Southend Historic Aircraft Museum. The date on the back of the prints says 1989, did’nt realise it was that long ago. The cockpit was saved and spent some time at Duxford as a walk through exhibit, not sure where it is now though. I also believe the engines were saved but dont know their ultimate disposition. (Sea Fury projects ?)