blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
And the Ezquerras are back for the finish. It’s an awesome finish for with the Super Nazi going down–though, really, Hughie getting queasy over them attacking a super-powered Nazi is a real problem. Maybe with a vaguely sympathetic superhero it’d be different, but not this guy. I assume Ennis knows what he’s doing with it. […]
MoreMy bad, the Female doesn’t die. I thought she did (and I took it, as a reader, in total stride). But she makes it. And then the Boys get into a big fight with a second-rate super team. Lots of violence, but with the Ezquerra art it’s all very digestible. A couple things stand out […]
MoreHoly crap. Ennis kills one of The Boys (or so it seems). It’s a strange occurrence for a few reasons. First, it doesn’t seem like a big change in the series. Ennis has already done a lot of jarring things, so killing off a lead doesn’t faze as much as it could. But it should, […]
MoreEnnis saves the big tank battle for the last issue of the arc; he also does away with most of the historical details. They’re an aside. The tank crew’s experience in the battle is the focus. In many ways the tank crew are bystanders in the issue. Ennis shows how they experience what’s happening to […]
MoreStiles and his sidekick spend the issue away from the rest of the crew, observing a famous historical battle. They participate, but Ennis mostly just uses Stiles to explain what’s going on. He does it in such a way, of course, it never feels like exposition. It should though–I mean, Stiles’s sidekick is a generic […]
MoreIt wouldn’t be Battlefields without the Tankies and Sergeant Stiles. But Ennis is also doing a Korean War story–and drawing attention to the lack of attention the Korean War gets–so Ennis is coming from a different place. He’s educating. A lot about Battlefields is different. Stiles is older and more self-reflective, for example. Te tank […]
MoreThe curse of the full page panels. Ezquerra has two in the last few pages and it hurts the reading experience. The tank battle needed more elucidation, not full page panels. I have no idea how this issue ends, but I’m assuming since Ennis is literal with Battlefields, it’s not ending with a ghost. It’s […]
MoreI’d like to call a foul on Ennis here for playing the reader but it’s not his fault. Maybe he knew the reader would get comfy, a little relaxed, laughing at the jokes… only to have the last couple pages of the issue knock the wind out of him or her. So instead of calling […]
MoreHey, it’s the sequel to Tankies. I didn’t even realize from the cover. Well, I’m not sure it’s exactly a sequel to Tankies, rather another adventure of that tank crew. If I remember the original correctly, the plotting’s basically the same. The issue opens and closes with a different group of characters, here it’s some […]
MoreThe 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, […]
MoreOh, 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 […]
MoreI’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 […]
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