Preview: ‘Major Eazy: The Italian Job’ – Unconventional, Insubordinate, 100% Cool

We brought you the news and a short preview of the reprinting of one of the greatest war comics from the pages of Battle – Major Eazy! But now that publication is less than a month away, time to take a closer look at Major Eazy: The Italian Campaign…

It’s July 1943, Sicily, and British troops have landed to take part in the invasion of Italy.

It’s going to be an unforgettable Italian Campaign for everyone, but for one group of soldiers this is going to be a very different experience, as they come face to face with their new commanding officer, Major Eazy!

He’s a scruffy, maverick with absolutely no respect for authority – but the top brass can overlook all that as when it comes to the art of war, he makes it look … easy!

Created by Alan Hebden and Carlos Ezquerra, Major Eazy was a magnificent war character, perfect for the times, this wonderfully laconic, laid-back Second World War officer with a very deliberate similarity to James Coburn, thanks to Ezquerra!

There’s a lovely bit in Alan Hebden‘s introduction about Carlos and the explanation of the visual of Major Eazy…

“Dave [Bishop] had an artist lined up, some Spanish guy called Carlos Ezquerra who’d been poached from D.C.Thomson. His take on Eazy seemed to border on insanity; an unkempt version of James Coburn on a bad day whose only nod to a uniform was an Afrika Korps forage cap and a leather flying jacket. He was also armed to the teeth and always smoking a cheroot, the most unlikely British officer you would ever hope to meet, but then so was Lawrence of Arabia.
It was love at first sight!”

Page after page of action, with episode after episode giving us more of the too cool to be true Major, disrespecting his superiors, chomping on the cigar, sleeping everywhere and anywhere, waltzing around in his Bentley sports tourer… just a super cool anti-hero you just can’t help but like.

Here, you’ll see Eazy delivering all the action you’d expect, on missions no-one else could survive, getting into seemingly court-martial worthy scrapes, whether that’s shooting up a group of Allied MPs (who turn out to be Germans of course), or shooting down a US Mustang who made the error of mistaking Eazy’s company for the Germans, or just whiling away his time in a battle stalemate playing cards with the Germans… Eazy is just always 100% cool.

This new 128-page collection comes complete with fully restored pages, including a stunning job restoring the original colour pages for each Major Eazy episode, perfect for showing off the brilliance of Carlos Ezquerra’s artwork.

Major Eazy: The Italian Campaign – written by Alan Hebden, art by Carlos Ezquerra, published by the Treasury of British Comics on 2nd March 2021.

Now… an extended preview of the first couple of Major Eazy episodes from Battle…