Day Of The Eagle was classic Boy's Own adventure stuff from Battle. In it, cold as ice secret agent Mike Nelson is assigned The Most Important Job Of The War: To terminate Hitler, with extreme prejudice.
Nelson is like the energizer bunny, never going more than a few panels with killing somebody or jumping out of a 2nd floor window, and the pacing rarely lets up.
In fact, Eagle is an archetypal British comic strip, the brief consisting of: Get away with a little characterization and plot as you can in three pages, as long as you fit in all the action. It's that 'don't bore us, get to the chorus' mentality that comics like 2000AD and Action made an artform of.
Main artist Patrick Wright's photo-style artwork takes a little bit of getting used to, as his line is quite thin, and works much better in colour, but it definitely works for the piece, as it's as all business as Nelson himself, and like Eric Hebden's script, doesn't pause for breath.
In fact, Day Of The Eagle would've made a great '70's movie, with say, Michael York as Nelson and Robert Duvall as the Nazi general trying to catch him. BBC2 would be showing it this Sunday afternoon, after Columbo.
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