A Fermanagh local has been nominated for the accolade of Best Writer (Non-Fiction) at the prestigious Irish Comic News Awards for his writing contribution for the Battle themed edition of popular comic book Journey Planet.

Paul Trimble from Enniskillen has read and collected comics all his life. He tells this newspaper: “Growing up in the early 1970's there were dozens of comics every week in the newsagents to pick from, everything from the Beano and the Dandy through to the Victor and Hotspur, and the Commando digests- unfortunately, by the early 90's there were only a couple of comics still being published. My favourite became Battle Picture Weekly, or Battle as it's known as, which featured characters such as Major Eazy, Johnny Red, Rat Pack and Charley's War, which is acclaimed as the greatest British comic strip ever created.”

In 2020 Battle celebrated its 45th Anniversary and the award-winning Enniskillen ComicFest was to have celebrated that event with a number of the writers, artists and editorial staff who had worked on the comic all in attendance. 2020 also saw the 80th Anniversary of VJ Day with commemorative events taking place all over the UK. Part of the celebration here in Enniskillen was to have taken place at the Enniskillen Royal Grammar School and Paul had been invited to take part with a display of his World War II comics. Unfortunately the worldwide pandemic put paid to all that but, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining.

With time off on furlough Paul set up a Battle Fans page on Facebook and, as well as other fans of the comic, he was able to get in touch with additional writers and artists who had worked on Battle. He was then approached by the editorial team of the award winning Journey Planet online magazine which has a different theme for every issue, to join as a guest editor for an issue which would focus on Battle for release in the summer. Paul explained that it was a great honour for him to be invited to take part and he was able to contribute several articles and interviews for that issue which went on to be one of the most popular issues to date.

As a result of running the Facebook group, and the issue of Journey Planet, Paul was invited to be a guest on one of a two part show on World War II comics on the popular WW2TV YouTube channel alongside some of the biggest names in war comics and military authors. During this programme it came to light that a great many of the current military authors had been inspired by the war comics of their youth. Paul was then asked to write a foreword for an upcoming volume of WW2 comic reviews which will be available on Amazon.

One of the biggest events in the comic calendar annually is the announcement of the nominees for the Irish Comic News Awards and this week Paul received a pleasant surprise to find that he has been nominated in the Best Writer (Non-Fiction) category. When asked about this Paul said: “I'm surprised and delighted to be nominated for this very prestigious award. It's a great honour to be listed alongside some very talented writers, all of whom deserve to win. This has really inspired me to continue with my writing. Voting ends on January 31 and the winner will be announced after that, so fingers crossed!”