The British war comics I recommend are:

1. Charley’s War, for all that I am becoming a bit tired of how reverential everyone is towards this grim first world war story.

2. Darkie’s Mob - hard to get hold of tale of doomed unit fighting insane commander’s private war against the Jap (er, the Japanese… these were different times)

3. Johnny Red- Russian front air strip which managed to achieve a certain epic quality that countered its otherwise “that showed the krauts!” approach.

4. Some off the as yet unreprinted Battle Picture Library strips by That Artist Whose Name I Don’t Know. He is way better at drawing tanks and soldiers than the people whose work they keep reprinting.

5. An exception to my Commando hate are some recent stories about a British soldier who finds himself fighting for the Paris Commune and against the Boxer Rebellion.

And so on.

I’m unsure whether you’re missing out on Commando or not. There’s some truly astonishing stuff there (inluding early work from lots of IPC greats like John Ridgway) but there’s a lot of dross. It did teach me a fair bit of German when I was in primary school though, even if it was only “hande hoch”, “achtung schweinhund” and “AIIEEEEEEEE!”. Garth Ennis’ serious books like War Story are a great continuation of the Commando tradition.

The cheapest way to get the EC war books is probably through the Gemstone reprints? You can generally get the full set for about the cost of one volume of the hardcover.

A lot of people really like Russ Heath, the main Haunted Tank artist. Serious fans of the genre, because he apparently puts every rivet in the right place, and some comic fans because his line is very nice. I find him dull - he so rarely bothers to try hard on anything like body language and facial expression.

And yes, all that ‘South is best’ stuff always bugs me, in all media. I can take it from Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies because she is a mad old bat, but it’s far too pervasive, and often smacks of a nostalgia for the horrors of the South, or at least a willingness to ignore them.

I found it fun in places, confounding in others - the panel where one of Jeb’s crew says that he’s talking to himself again and the other one says that it’s because he’s been on a bullseye too long, that gets repeated verbatim in every single story, for example. Or the endless tales of Jeb having to prove himself to a Southerner because he’s a GOD-DAMNED YANKEE - bizarrely, Jeb’s response is always ‘I am too as good as a Southerner despite my inferior birthplace’ rather than ‘New York City, motherfucker’.

Very interesting that according to the reworked origin story in Vol. 2, Jeb starts seeing The General after he’s received massive head trauma from all three of his tank crew. (For being a filthy Northerner.) It’s often a story point that people think Jeb’s a nutter, but it’s never suggested that he actually is and his delusions are what makes him a master strategist, which is a shame as it’d add an extra frisson to things…