War Story: Archangel (2003)

Wsaa Sometimes the snow comes down in June, and all that business because out of nowhere… Archangel is really good. It’s not the best of writer Garth Ennis’s War Story: Volume Two, which is only not a joke award because of that David Lloyd story, but Archangel definitely makes up for the previous couple entries. Now, I read Volume Two in the collection order, not the publication order, and I remain convinced they intentionally started with the superior Lloyd story. Archangel is the finale in both orders, so Ennis (and perhaps his Vertigo editors) saved the second-best for the last.

Archangel has Gary Erskine on the art, and it’s a nice fit. I’ve been dreading War Story: Volume Two, so I was hesitant to embrace Erskine’s art. Or even to acknowledge it was Erskine and, you know, it might actually be intentional, competent artwork. Then I saw one of Erskine’s weird little figures—there’s just something about how he draws people in long shots—it’s like a forced perspective thing; they all look Hobbit-y. Anyway. Some of Archangel’s story involves a visual pay-off, and—conditioned by the rest of the series—I assumed the comic would fail.

Now, first, the comic does not fail. Erskine does a phenomenal job with that sequence. Except then, Ennis abruptly changes the stakes of the story, requiring Erskine to pivot into a peculiar kind of war comic. It’s the action hero war comic, except Archangel doesn’t do the heroes thing, and the comic becomes this delicate balance of talking heads, World War II airplane action, and just plain countdown suspense. Erskine ably handles all three, and the potential of War Story suddenly shines again. Ennis and an artist who doesn’t just get how to draw the airplanes or do the busy, frantic dogfight scenes, but one who gets the emotional core of the story and can help Ennis get there.

The story’s about a snotty RAF officer who gets reassigned to CAM ship duty. What’s a CAM ship? The snotty RAF officer doesn’t know, which is part of the gag. Suffice it to say, the snotty officer is on a comeuppance personal growth arc, and it’s fantastic. Especially how the personal growth aspect shakes out.

Ennis never writes the character too likable, contributing to Archangel’s potentially shaky opening. Would it be potentially shaky if the two-thirds of the rest of the series wasn’t a fail? Maybe, maybe not. Ennis doesn’t make the protagonist remotely charming at the beginning, rather doing lengthy talking head sequences where the other characters explain to the hero why he’s a dipshit.

I just assumed it would be bad War Story: Volume Two writing, not an intentional character development device.

But Ennis is on it. Archangel is outstanding. It doesn’t save Volume Two, but it does give it some nice contextual cushioning.

They should just put out a collection with Archangel and that Lloyd one. Save the unsuspecting from the rest of Volume Two. Archangel’s a great save. I’m so happy this story’s good.

War Story: Condors (2003)

War Story Condors 1 After Condors, I’m even more decided on the idea—Garth Ennis wanted to write a play. I’m not sure if he wanted to be a playwright or just write a play, but Condors is a play. The entire comic takes place in a bomb crater with four different soldiers fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Only one of them is Spanish. There’s an IRA man fighting on the side of the fascists. There’s a British socialist. Finally, there’s a German flier.

At some point, Ennis—in a practically wall-breaking bit of exposition—explains many think the Spanish Civil War is just where Hitler’s testing out the Nazi war machine before unleashing it on France or England.

What’s so interesting about reading the War Story series twenty years after they released, after reading twenty years of Ennis war comics, which have consistently improved….

I get to see where Ennis went wrong and adjusted. Because there’s also the sophomore slump here, and on the wrong book to have one. War Story’s got so much against it already: it’s a war comic, which not even 9/11 made popular again, and it’s an anthology (has anyone checked to make sure the supposed one-time popularity of anthology series isn’t actually just historical gaslighting). And it’s Vertigo, so even if you were a super-duper mainstream fan of Preacher, your shop might not carry it.

So not the time for Ennis to be phoning in a script.

And it’s better than the last story. Condors is third in the collection, third released, so Ennis has at least halted the decline. Though coming after J for Jenny—the excellent first story in the collection, which I remain convinced got moved to start out on a solid footing—Condors would’ve been a disappointment.

But coming after Reivers? And having frequent Ennis collaborator Carlos Ezquerra on the art? Condors is all right. I mean, it’s a disappointment, but with some asterisks. It’s too bad it isn’t better; it’s just not a surprise it isn’t. Because Ennis doesn’t have the story here, either, he’s trying to talking heads his way into insightful, leaving it up to the reader to decide. But the reader’s deciding between a Nazi and a psychotic terrorist. The Spanish soldier knows what’s up, so he’s the history lesson. The comic makes a little fun of the socialist’s idealism, but even in 2003, Ennis wasn’t saying he’s wrong.

The four men sit around and tell their stories. No one’s got a weapon; everyone’s tired; let’s hang out until the shelling stops.

Ennis gives them all complicated, traumatic back stories—they all grew up in the shadow of the First World War, which irrevocably broke their respective childhoods—but they’re still caricatures in the present. Maybe it was a spec script? There are a bunch of flashbacks, including recent ones establishing how the men ended up in this particular bomb crater on this particular day, so there’s lots of war action. Ezquerra does an okay job contrasting the “glory” with the reality (the German’s father came home without arms or a face; alive) but the present-day battle stuff’s filler.

I’m glad I’m finally reading these original War Story comics, but I’m also really glad I know Ennis won’t be stuck in this mud forever. Or even much longer.

But I also know why there wasn’t a third Vertigo volume.

Condors is okay. But there’s better (and worse) Ennis and Ezquerra out there to read.

War Story: The Reivers (2003)

Reivers I think I figured out why The Reivers, the first issue of the second War Story volume, doesn’t start the collection. Because you might stop reading the collection. It’s kind of actually bad, but it’s also a slog. Writer Garth Ennis churns out dialogue to get through the comic. The artist is Cam Kennedy, who has the same expression for all of the talking heads. He’s slightly better at the action? But there’s minimal action. And it’s also very aggrandized.

Kennedy draws Reivers like it’s an exciting adventure outing about an elite squad of British troops in the North African campaign. They’re the ones you call when you need to the ultra-violence. Most of the comic is the commanding officer talking to his sidekick about how they’re descended from the Reivers of yore, a practically mythological band of vicious warriors. We have to sit through at least a page of the commanding officer blathering about how the Reiver blood has traveled the globe, which explains why their outfit is so good, even though the men are from different places.

The sidekick basically rolls his eyes but in dialogue. Like another half-page to disagree.

Did Vertigo stick Ennis with what they thought would be more popular artists in an effort to bring up sales? If so, did Ennis intentionally write such a tepid comic for Kennedy to draw? Or did Ennis write this talky, sophomoric outing, and then they assigned it to Kennedy to… spice it up? Or was it a loser script so they got an artist who wouldn’t suffer? Maybe it was Ennis’s attempt at writing a stage play, and he’s just bad at it. The story behind Reivers is potentially so much more interesting than the book itself.

Eventually, the men go back into battle, and they have a reckoning. It’s slightly absurdist—Reivers feels like a more serious spin-off of Adventures in the Rifle Brigade while also forecasting Punisher: Born. Some of the commanding officer’s descriptions of his blood thirst sound a lot like Born. In other words, Reivers is very much at home with Ennis’s most middling works.

It opens with a silent sequence long enough I wondered if they were doing the story without dialogue. Little did I know it’d be more dialogue than the rest of the books combined. Big kudos to letterer Clem Robins. He did the best work on this one. But I’m getting scared for the last two War Story entries. The quality of the second volume so far is great and tripe. No in-between.

War Story: J for Jenny (2003)

War Story J for Jenny I meant to read War Stories in order of publication. Unfortunately, I got out of order here with J For Jenny, the second issue in the second volume but the first story in the collection. Because it’s David Lloyd on art again and, unlike the first volume, which ends with its Lloyd-illustrated story, War Stories: Part Two is coming out swinging.

Writer Garth Ennis has had some fantastic collaborations over the years, and even when he isn’t clicking with the artist, he can usually make something work. But he’s never clicked better with an artist than David Lloyd, at least not for a war comic. The visual pacing on Jenny’s extraordinary, even better than their collaboration in the first volume.

The story’s about a British bomber crew. The first officer hates the captain, who takes delight in the bombing runs, wanting payback against the Germans for killing his family in their bombings. The issue opens with a multiple-page monologue from the captain, setting the scene and his backstory. Ennis usually does single-page monologues for the rest of the crew throughout the issue. They inform backwards and forwards—the world still doesn’t know about the Holocaust—so when the first officer speaks up to defend the German people, it’s not the same as it would be later. One of the crewmen’s monologue is about how he wishes the Germans would be doing something really terrible to absolve him of the sins of the bombings. The issue doesn’t have an epilogue, but Ennis manages to bake in that character’s eventual regret at having the thought.

It’s excellent writing, including the “twist” ending and how character relationships build in the backgrounds. The spotlight is on the captain and the first officer, but the texture comes from the rest of the crew around them.

Lloyd illustrates the monologues as montage sequences, the art echoing the text, whether it’s backstory for the captain or daily life for one of the crewmen. Lloyd’s always got the perfect panel to accompany. It’s exquisite.

Since I’m out of order—how did Vertigo not want to get this one out first—I can’t really say War Stories: Volume Two is off to a good start, but Jenny’s the best from either series (so far, I guess, but Lloyd’s not back), so even if the rest of Volume Two’s middling, it’s still a significant bit of work.

It’s a spectacular comic, with Ennis focusing on the conflict between the two men, even as he resists humanizing either. The monologues give Jenny an almost intrusive feel, like we’re eavesdropping, which presents the characters from a deliberate angle. They’re not caricatures, but Ennis controls the reader’s perception of their depth. We only get to see so much before he or Lloyd cut away.

J For Jenny’s spectacular. Ennis and Lloyd are a singular team-up.

War Story: Nightingale (2002)

War Story Nightingale As a Garth Ennis war comic, I’m not sure Nightingale is the best War Story. As a War Story, it’s the best comic. Ennis’s script gets out of the way and lets David Lloyd’s art do its terrible magic. Because Nightingale is a nightmare, not just because it takes place on rough, cold waters in World War II, giving Lloyd all sorts of opportunities for literal stomach-churning art of the water. Ennis also digs in on it with the script, the words making the imagery all the more unsettling.

To get the clarification out of the way—it’s either the best or second best War Story (so far). Ennis’s script is so straightforward it’s almost loose. This story’s narrator is the first officer of a British warship, the Nightingale. She’s on convoy protection duty, and, until now, the ship’s had extraordinary luck. We know the luck will run out because the story opens with the ship at the bottom of the sea, the first officer narrating from beyond the grave.

Now, it’s never a horror comic. There’s never the slightest supernatural hint, but Lloyd’s dark, turgid panels create this disquieting effect, even as the first officer may be narrating a dream, not reality. Ennis doesn’t imply any hopefulness exactly, just potential for a metaphoric sinking. When the first officer returns home on leave, he has a nightmare, for instance. There’s a particularly phenomenal sequence of panels showing downed ship after downed ship cluttering the ocean floor. It is a nightmare, one Lloyd and Ennis do a stunning job conveying.

Things start going wrong for the ship when they’re ordered to abandon the commercial freighters during a mission. The admiralty has heard a German super-ship is out of port, and the protocol is scattering the convoy will make it harder on the Germans. Except that plan just leads to the Germans picking off the freighters and their civilian crews as the Nightingale’s crew just listens to the distress calls.

The crew then becomes convinced they’re cursed for their dereliction of duty despite it being ordered (and double-ordered) from on high.

Ennis keeps the script very simple; he’s got far more unexplained jargon than usual, with the first officer’s narration at times hurried and erratic. The memories are too rapid, the narration in a race to keep up with Lloyd’s panels as they flash forward; beautiful pacing in the panels, just breathtaking work from Lloyd. He’s the reason Nightingale’s so spectacular; another artist, same script, it’d have been successful, though nowhere near as much. Lloyd’s rough, queasy art makes Ennis’s—not in a bad way—obvious narrative hit harder and, frankly, more viciously. Nightingale’s not mean exactly, but it’s definitely hostile.

And absolutely first-rate war comics. It’s easily the most formally ambitious of the War Story issues, making its success even more accomplished.

War Story: Screaming Eagles (2002)

War Story Screaming Eagles The cynic in me—combined with Dave Gibbons doing the art, the protagonist sergeant not getting a name until the finish, and the soldiers being in Easy Company—makes me wonder if Screaming Eagles didn’t start as a Sgt. Rock special. At least at some level. It’d be Sgt. Rock Gone Wild, so maybe it didn’t last long as one, but….

The issue’s the least of the three War Story entries so far, mostly because of Gibbons. Dave Gibbons can draw, of course, but he doesn’t bring any personality to the comic. There’s technical prowess but not achievement. And he seems to miss drawing a balled-up fist when he really needed to draw a balled-up fist. But I guess no one is going to tell Dave Gibbons to do the panel over again. Not in 2002, not for a Vertigo special.

Anyway.

Screaming Eagles is set in Europe’s last days of the war. Before V-E Day, but individual German units are surrendering, and the officers feel comfortable sunbathing and letting the enlisted men haul the proverbial water. The Easy Company sergeant gets the order to secure a country house—behind enemy lines—for a general’s visit. He requests fresh men. His lieutenant tells him to take the three other original remaining members of Easy Company who landed before D-Day. Four out of 140. The sergeant would rather not. The lieutenant tells him to stop being such a wimp and goes back to his sunbath.

On the way, the men have an accident with a surrendering German general, who initially refuses to surrender to an enlisted man. The sergeant convinces him otherwise.

When they arrive at the house, they find it full of loot. The German generals have been stocking it with stolen cash, art, cars, food, and wine. Lots of wine.

Assessing the situation, the sergeant decides when they report back—days late—it’ll be because the Jeep was damaged, the radio broken, and they had to walk back behind enemy lines. The men are surprised their hard-nosed sergeant’s got a scheme, but he insists—they’re the last four of Easy Company, and they’re going to get a couple actual vacation days.

So they get drunk and eat well, with things looking up even more when one of the men meets a German farm girl thrilled at the idea of a (consensual) Roman orgy. She even has three friends who are down.

The soldiers enjoy the briefest respite before they have to return to the bullshit, punctuated with the sergeant finally having enough downtime to be verbose and monologue about what’s wrong with the military. Not even what’s wrong with the war (the Nazis need killing), just the bullshit of the rules and regulations designed to hide those responsible from accountability and so on. It’s a great monologue. It might even be more powerful from Sgt. Rock, and it’s enough to get Screaming Eagles through.

Writer Garth Ennis opens and closes with text set in the present, talking about an unnamed WWII veteran and how he’s coped. It’s Unforgiven to the point I expected the sergeant to look like Clint Eastwood, not Joe Rock. Unfortunately, Ennis tries too hard with the text, which doesn’t really matter since nothing he can do compares to Gibbons’s lack of personality on the art.

Screaming Eagles gets an unenthusiastic pass; it ought to be a lot better. Though also maybe not; cut out the seriousness and the sergeant’s splash page flashbacks to his men dying, and it’s a sixties Army comedy. And no one was going to say (or maybe even realize) having Gibbons was working against the piece.

War Story: D-Day Dodgers (2001)

Dday D-Day Dodgers ends with a ten-page series of splash pages, with artist John Higgins moving through a battlefield, a poem accompanying the imagery. The poem, “The Ballad of the D-Day Dodgers,” is from an unknown author. Higgins’s pages tie the poem’s lines to the various characters we’ve met throughout the issue, which is a fairly standard war story until the “D-Day Dodgers” plot point arrives.

Writer Garth Ennis’s opening text block informs the reader of the setting and situation—the Allied troops working their way (too slowly to be exciting news) through Italy, which has taken long enough they’re basically forgotten, even though they’re still very active. A new second lieutenant is arriving, a blue blood named Ross, whose never been in battle before. He falls for the enlisted men’s chicanery, he’s shocked at the captain’s disillusionment with the war, and he can’t believe the British military would sacrifice all these men to keep the Germans distracted.

Even with the captain, Lovatt, calmly explaining the situation—sometimes while taking potshots at the local destroyed church’s Jesus on the cross (he’s not an atheist, just a disappointed Catholic)—the comic’s about Ross waking up to the reality he’s found himself in. He’s thick enough he doesn’t realize when he’s learning things, like when the capable sergeant major takes him out on patrol, and Ross proves himself to his fellows but doesn’t know it.

Much of the comic’s talking heads, Ross is going overboard trying to prove himself to Lovatt, who can’t make the new officer understand the bleakness of their situation. Not even after they get their mission briefing, and Lovatt explains (both to the brass and Ross) what’s wrong with the plan.

It’s a good comic throughout. Ennis brings up some interesting ideas but can’t really bring them into focus well enough; they’re ground situation instead of foundation when they ought to be the latter. But the visual montage and how Lovatt and Ross’s last conversation leads into it put Dodgers over.

Oh, right. “D-Day Dodgers.” Right before the army sent these soldiers to their deaths, some lady (literally a lady) told Parliament they were all a bunch of lazy “D-Day Dodgers.” However, since Ross is from the same social class (which gets addressed) and new (which doesn’t), it doesn’t really resonate other than as an apt (and tragic) title.

Higgins’s art is excellent; he changes his line thickness based on emotional intensity, which is cool. Then his montage sequence is just one emotional gut punch after another. It’s a rending, rewarding read.

War Story: Johann’s Tiger (2001)

Ws1 I was a little curious whether writer Garth Ennis was going to be able to get away withJohann’s Tiger in 2023. The comic came out twenty years ago when Nazis and Nazi sympathizers weren’t (openly) part of the public discourse. Tiger is one of those “German army” stories, though. They’re not Nazis; they don’t like the Nazis; they’re just trying to survive with war and preserve the lives they can. Well, the lives on the same side, but still. They feel bad about the rest, but it’s war, after all.

It’s a tank story. Ennis would go on to more tank stories, but he very quickly gets to the heart of what makes a tank story so singular. It’s a group of guys living inside “burning coal.” Tiger’s cast is also different because they’re trying to escape the war, heading west hoping to find the Americans. They want to surrender and be done with it. Germany has lost, the Russians aren’t so much kicking ass as grinding it, and the commander—Johann—doesn’t want his men to die for Hitler’s war of aggression.

Johann narrates the comic. At times, I wondered what it sounded like in its native German, then realized Ennis wrote it in English. It’d be interesting to hear in German. He’s trapped with his memories of the war and his profound (and profoundly justified) self-loathing. See, Johann wasn’t ever a gung-ho Nazi; he was just utterly indifferent to the suffering they and he caused. Until all of a sudden, he wasn’t, and it’s breaking him, page after page. Getting his men to safety is all he can do to alleviate the damage. It’s not about amends; it’s about saving instead of killing.

At the same time, he’s an experienced tank commander and sees the world through those eyes, which Ennis does a phenomenal job with in the dialogue and narration.

There are several excellent battle scenes, which artists Chris Weston and Gary Erskine visualize superbly. Weston’s layouts remind of more lionizing war comics, but he and Erskine’s details are all the horrors.

It’s an excellent book.

Dan Dare (2007) #7

Dd7

I’m going to assume Dan Dare had a future-sword in the original comics or whatever, because otherwise, writer Garth Ennis has even more to answer for.

This final issue is oversized, which I’d been gleefully anticipating, but it turns out it’s too long. It’s fluffed up with lots of double-page spreads and it’s still too long. Worse, Ennis reuses entire bits from previous issues for that fluffing. The issue flops around quite a bit, with Ennis and artist Gary Erskine both at fault, but Ennis not having enough story is the real problem.

Erskine draws some repetitive space battle scenes—all the ships look alike, so while occasionally visually impressive, it’s not visually interesting. There are occasional fighter spaceship scenes, which end up being where Erskine comes through. It’s nice he’s got something he clicks with because—pretty much everything else—he doesn’t.

The issue’s split between Dan boarding the Mekon’s ship for the final showdown, which Erskine renders like Luke and the Emperor in Jedi because Ennis doesn’t give him anything else to do, Dan’s newest companion, Lieutenant Christian, commanding his flagship in the space battle, and Jocelyn back on Earth, getting drunk and waiting to hear whether humanity’s conquered.

The best subplot is Christian’s, which has her butting heads with an admiral who’s never been in a space battle but thinks he ought to be in command. The Dan plot, before it goes Jedi (without a Vader), is essentially a repeat of a couple issues ago, just with the same characters in different parts. Erskine utterly flubs the showdown between Dan and the Mekon, too, though—again—it’s not his fault Dan’s got a sword, and it’s not his fault Ennis doesn’t have a showdown.

Then Jocelyn’s whining is weird because it’s all about future history after the original Dan Dare and before this series when the newly formed British Neo-Nazis want his support with Brexit or something. It’s utterly superfluous world-building just when the comic’s closing up.

Ennis and Erskine still get in a few good scenes and moments, mainly when it’s a war comic, sometimes when it’s dealing with the “Dare as legend.” Most of the issue is just hoping it never gets too bad or too visually confusing. Erskine lacks continuity between panels, first occasionally, then all of them. It’s like the pages got lettered in the wrong order.

I’d forgotten how Dare ends—I do remember waiting forever for the final issue, which would’ve been one of Virgin Comics’s last publications—and I know why I’d much rather remember the series’s successes than its failures. It’s not a terrible last issue, but it’s not a good one, either.

Dan Dare (2007) #6

Dan Dare 6

As I feared, Gary Erskine continues to fall apart on the art this issue. As I assumed, it doesn’t really matter. Writer Garth Ennis is doing such a phenomenal job with the script, Erskine gets a pass. He’s got exceptional problems with depth—I don’t even know how to describe it but somehow, although Erskine’s figures are three-dimensional, they’re not three-dimensional in relation to one another. It’s actually disquieting, looking into Dan Dare’s now soulless eyes.

Which are better than busy eyes, which Erskine and colorist A. Thiruneelakandan give acting Prime Minister and former Dan Dare companion Jocelyn Peabody and then one of the admirals. Dan Dare: The Revival companion Christian escapes the busy eyes—you have to see them, it’s like the person’s supposed to be surprised, but Erskine draws it like they’re staring so hard their eyes are watering—but mostly because she’s not in the comic enough. And when she is in the comic, she’s background or conversation fodder. The aforementioned admiral talks smack about Dare putting her in charge.

Half the comic is resolving last issue’s cliffhanger—the Mekon’s got Dan and is going to torture him, then conquer Earth—then the other half is the final battle getting underway. Ennis works up a rather interesting juxtaposition for the two arch-enemies: they’re the only competent person on their respective side. Well, besides Christian and Peabody, but they’re just lassies, aren’t they? The Mekon’s army is at least genetically predisposed to being easily led (and distracted), while the British admiralty no longer trusts their sailors. Or whatever they’re called in space. Ennis gets in some good military culture digs.

There’s also a lot of sci-fi stuff as the humans figure out how the aliens have harassed a black hole and so on, along with some battle tactics. Ennis paces this issue beautifully; it feels double-sized, but it’s not. However, the next issue will be, and I imagine it’ll feel like at least three comics. Three great comics.

Can’t wait.