It’s a new War Stories story, this time on a gunboat patrolling the English Channel during World War II. Ennis doesn’t do a lot of boat stories, so it stands out for that reason. Very, very static art on the sea battles from Aira, which is too bad. It’s not a particularly compelling story and having visually jarring action doesn’t help anything.

Ennis opens the issue with a lot of exposition about the gunboats. It’s very interesting stuff and Aira’s accompanying panels make for a good informational comic. I’m learning something (or would be if I didn’t already have some familiarity with World War II history). But after the history lesson? Ennis hasn’t got anything else.

He plods through some talking heads scenes–he doesn’t like his characters, stuck-up British Navy officers and he doesn’t have any interest in them. So spending the last fourth or so of the comic with them hanging out and trying to pick up unsuspecting British gals?

It’s yawn-inducing, but academically interesting just to see how little Ennis’s putting into it.

I didn’t want to read this issue of War Stories. Not specifically. I mean, I didn’t really care about finishing up this stupid American flier arc where Ennis doesn’t want to tell the story of the action hero. It’s a weird version of a Technicolor fifties war movie, only without a love interest and the narrator doesn’t have a good story for himself. I just didn’t want to read an issue of War Stories where Ennis writes terrible narration.

And he does terrible narration for this issue. The doctor waxes poetic, like a trailer to The Thin Red Line or Saving Private Ryan even. Ennis’s narration sounds trite. The entire arc’s been a hurried mess, but it’s like there are whole missing pieces. The story of the actual flier, the subject of the arc, gets incomprehensibly muddled. Maybe because Aira’s faces are so bad. He draws people so ugly, you don’t even want to look at them (seriously, it’s like something out of Providence), so you rush through the talking heads. It’s fine, because it’s all historical exposition. Ennis could have thrown in some actual charts and had it be more dramatically authentic.

War Stories can be the low budget passion project of the otherwise successful brand (Garth Ennis). But not if Ennis, the writer, can’t muster the enthusiasm to care about it. He should have just alternated arcs with another writer (or writers). It would’ve been better for the brand and it would’ve been better for the book.

This issue is a combination of fighter action and talking heads. And Ennis doesn’t have much to say with either of them. He’s doing a history lesson about the U.S. bombing runs on Japan. Nothing else. His characters don’t matter; he doesn’t even try to keep them straight. All they say is exposition. They don’t need to be distinct.

Aira’s art is better, as far as detail, on the fighter battles. Not in terms of composition. In terms of composition, he’s doing all right with the talking heads. Just not on the detail. But the last third of the issue is an air battle full of intrigue and disaster and Aira can’t break any of it out.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about War Stories–when it isn’t good–is how much Ennis throws at Aira without any acknowledgement of the artist’s strengths and weaknesses. War Stories is into its second year. Aira’s been on the book for a long time. Ennis is completely checked out with the final air battle, which is incredibly important visually (and should’ve been the whole comic with flashback inserts), just so he can get to his history lesson in the closing narration.

War Stories, with a real editor, could be consistently spectacular. Instead, it’s just frequently exasperating.

Garth Ennis is on it for War Stories this arc. It’s Ennis doing American soldiers in World War II; if there’s a war movie genre standard, it’s the World War II setting, from the American perspective. At least as far as English language World War II movies go.

But I don’t think Ennis has ever done one of these stories. At least not one about American fliers–it’s almost like Ennis is doing populist. He’s doing accessible. There might even be a reference to Pearl Harbor assuming the reader is familiar with it due to the movie. Strange coming from Ennis, strange on War Stories.

It’s really good. Ennis does accessible really well. Ennis trying to invite new readers instead of put them off? He doesn’t do it often, frankly. So seeing him be so welcoming is strange. But excellent. Ennis might not have the enthusiasm for the subject–that searching exploration he sometimes does with War Stories–but he does have enthusiasm for his skills and his narrative authority. He likes being able to tell a good war story. As he should.

As for the art. Tomas Aira gets away with a bit because the setting–fliers doing attack runs from Iwo Jima to Tokyo–is so striking. He doesn’t do well with the faces, which just shows the skillfulness of Ennis’s dialogue, because the talking heads scenes in the issue are phenomenal.

It’s so good. Even though War Stories has its missteps, Ennis needs to have this outlet as a creator. The comic book medium needs him to have this outlet.

When I said this story should have been two issues instead of three, I was wrong. Our Wild Geese Go should’ve been a one shot. I don’t even have the energy to talk about Aira’s artwork, which is simultaneously too fine and too rough for the story. It’s talking heads again, with a couple of the lads in Dutch with the Nazis.

They get away though. It’s not much of a spoiler because their captivity isn’t particularly dramatic. Nothing in the issue’s dramatic. Ennis is just trying to get to the conclusion, which is about the Irish soldiers coming into their own in a way. In a way he could have done much better in one issue without a mildly ludicrous subplot.

All War Stories has got is Ennis. The book isn’t a collaboration between him and Aira. It’s Ennis. Would it be better as a collaboration? Maybe. He might have been able to get away with this story arc if he’d had an artist who could emote through the art, who could sway the reader. It’s not Aira.

The issue–and this story arc–just shows how desperately editors are needed in indie books.