The final issue of Tankies is even better than I remembered and maybe even imagined. I’m really glad I forgot the ending–Ennis gives it two finishes, one for the tank company, one for the colonel at command–and it’s just perfect. What the colonel’s ending does is a little different–Tankies is not just a standalone story, it’s Ennis’s story about the men in tank companies….

But packaging it in Tankies, with the humor, with the fourteen-hour present action for three issues, Ennis never gets sentimental (there’s no dedication, for example). Instead, he simply presents the situation of the tank companies and goes with it.

I haven’t mentioned Ennis’s use of Geordie for the corporal. I usually loathe the use of dialect in writing because it’s usually used for all the wrong reasons. Ennis uses it for all the right ones.

Tankies is an amazing piece of work.

Oh, it’s lovely.

Ennis has something of a narrative tree going here–he has his main story with the tankies, but then he’s got command’s story. Command’s story has a little to do with the tankies, but not much. It has it’s own subplot. I think maybe half the issue has nothing to do, immediately, with the story of the tank company.

So, instead, there’s the large picture of the situation and then this one tank moving through it, with Ennis moving back and forth.

Tank stories–the ones I’ve read or the films I’ve seen–are intimate, because it’s just a handful of guys in a tank. Ennis maintains that intimacy–sometimes for relieving humorous effect–while still having this wider picture. I’m not sure it’s important we remember anyone’s name, since they’re so memorable for appearance or behavior.

It’s Battlefields‘s most traditional war story so far–a so.

I’ve always claimed The Tankies as Ennis’s best of the Battlefields (first series, anyway). I didn’t really remember why.

Then I read the first issue again.

Ennis sets up the story as a mission story. Maybe not even a mission, maybe just a part of a mission story. The present action is continuous. He opens the comic with a page of text explaining the situation to the reader. The white text on black alone foreshadows dread.

However, Ezquerra’s art is funny. His character expressions–and Ennis is dealing with British stereotypes for the most part, so there are lots of them–are simply hilarious. But all those funny expressions are in a terrible situation.

Ennis doesn’t bother with a cliffhanger. Instead, the protagonists find out about what’s been going on in the rest of the issue, concurrent to their experience.

It’s somehow both a small story and an enormous one.