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| Major Eazy, art by Carlos Ezquerra |
Major Eazy epitomised the best aspects of Battle Picture Weekly. He was cool and unconventional. Created by Alan Hebden and Carlos Ezquerra as a laconic, irreverent, merciless Nazi-killing, sharp-shooting British officer who had learnt his trade with the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa. Battle picks up the story in Italy when Eazy takes command of a company of British soldiers and the strip follows their journey as they slog through the hard terrain of the Italian campaign.
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| Major Eazy, art by Carlos Ezquerra |
Alan Hebden based the character on Clint Eastwood's "man with no name" and Ezquerra based his interpretaion on James Coburn. Eazy certainly had more character traits of American action heroes rather than the British "John Mills" types but he never showed much fondness for "Yanks", even shooting a U.S. fighter down in one story due to a friendly fire incident!
Eazy used a sporting rifle and a Smith and Wesson magnum hand gun to kill as many Nazis as possible. When not shooting Nazis he travelled the battlefield in a Bentley driven by his Sergeant, Daly. Most of the time he slept. I doubt very much that Eazy ever attended Sandhurst and he often had a difficult time with superior officers, his men on the other hand loved him but thought him insane.
The strip ran weekly, 1976 -1978, in four page stories and quickly became the most popular series in Battle. Eazy's back story in North Africa was filled in, prior to him being given command of the Rat Pack, another very popular series following the adventures of a group of criminals seeking pardons by carrying out highly dangerous commando missions and killing lots of Nazis.
If you ever wondered what Carlos Ezquerra's later and more famous creation Judge Dredd looks like underneath his helmet look no further than Major Eazy.
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| Battle Picture Weekly, art by Carlos Ezquerra |
Based on James Cogburn? That's interesting as I always thought Ezquerra's "Stainless Steel Rat" reminded me of him.
ReplyDeletemajor eazy movie.there were rumours that patrick mcGoohan was to star as major eazy in a italian/british co-production way back in the seventies,co-staring bob todd as sergeant bert daly and bernard bresslaw as tewik.filming stopped after a few weeks due to financing.recent attempts with actors such as daniel craig,lee oakes,simon pegg have come to nothing.
DeleteThanks for the information, I did not know about that movie. Perhaps the Dredd movie will lead to something.
Deletethankyou for your reply.unfortunately battle picture weekly has not got any further than fans gossip and rumours.years after the actors telly savalas and yul brynner have passed away fans are still debating which star would have made the best captain joe darkie.one thing i know for sure charleys war was almost filmed in the eighties.i can only guess at the cast.gian sammarco was popular as adrian mole(charley?)lewis collins would have appoached,then ignored.to the disappointment of fans.bob hoskins would have been cast as sergeant bill tozer.new battle movie?lyndon ogbourne.cold steel?harry hill.captain hurricane?
ReplyDelete