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GARTH ENNIS PLANES and BOYS

Started by Tiplodocus, 02 October, 2008, 10:21:19 PM

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Proudhuff

Got this TPB off Greenmetropolis.com for a fabby £3.75!



all books are that cost there and you can sell yer old paperbooks too.
DDT did a job on me

I, Cosh

Anyone else read the first part of the new Battlefields story, Dear Billy?

The opening page is extraordinarily unpleasant even by Ennis' standards. Good stuff though. With the amount of research he must have to do, Garth should probably be approached to teach some sort of Open University history module on the second world war.
We never really die.

Proudhuff

I've had a look in it the FP but had to put it back til payday  :(  It appeared to start as a sort of TENKO story, this the end of the previous Eastern Front story and a double whammy of DMZ are also awaiting payday, the bairns shoes will have to wait!
DDT did a job on me

Dandontdare

Just got my pre-order in for Boys vol.4.

Amazon, as it does, flagged up another Ennis title: The Pro - anyone read this? Opinions?

Sefton Disney

Dear Dan - I've got a copy of The Pro - about a New York hooker given superpowers by a bunch of meddling aliens - knocking around somewhere. If you like The Boys, it's well worth checking out. It's parctically a dress rehearsal, full of bodily fluids, swearing, savagely transparent parodies of all our "favourite" superheroes and pure malice. You'll laugh till your ribs ache and then the ending will put a lump in your throat. Great stuff.

Anyone who likes The Boys should probably give Ennis's Kev books a go, too. He's a little bit hampered by the constraints of working on an ongoing book - i.e. he isn't allowed to kill the Spandex bastards off - but the humour is still pretty savage and spot-on.

I'm totally down with Pete Wells about Preacher. I don't think I've ever cared about a fictional couple as much as I did for Jesse and Tulip (sorry, Nikolai and Jena). Anyone who complains about the ending has completely missed the point of the bloody comic. (Has anyone heard any more about the projected HBO TV version, BTW?)

I also thought War Stories was an exceptional piece of work that deserved a lot more praise and attention than it seemed to get. In particular, Condors, the Spanish Civil War story, is one of the best comics I've ever read, and is even more powerful and disturbing for having Carlos Ezquerra handling the art. The Guernica sequence will haunt your nightmares.

I haven't read that much of Garth Ennis's stuff for a while, but reading this thread has really re-kindled my interest in his work. I think I could well be adding The Boys and Battlefields to my shopping list.

A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four - Ooh, bears!  :lol:

Dandontdare

Quote from: "Sefton Disney"Anyone who likes The Boys should probably give Ennis's Kev books a go, too.
I agree - I borrowed "a Man called Kev" from the library a few weeks ago. At the same time, I borrowed Guy Ritchie's "The Gamekeeper" (yes that's right, the hack formerly known as Mr Madonna  is branching into comics). Now on the surface you might think these are similar books - tales of revenge starring lone heroes armed with shotguns and a taste for violence fighting against the odds - but there was absolutely no comparison. One was witty, moving and tense, the other a cliched nonsensical storyboard for a movie that we can only pray never gets made.

Sefton Disney

Bloody hell - Guy Ritchie at the pictures was bad enough. Now he's going to stench up comics as well?

Interesting comparison, Dan. I don't know if Ritchie knows Garth Ennis from a hole in the ground, but Ennis has certainly had a big influence on contemporary comics. Your comparison put me in mind of an oft-repeated comment about Watchmen: that all comics took from Watchmen was the sex and violence, but none of Moore's heart, wit and intelligence. I think something similar is true of Ennis. I think a lot of his imitators have simply lifted his extremity without noticing the storytelling, humanity and emotion that underpins even his darkest and most comedic work. And I think the hack-copyists have had a kind of blowback effect on Ennis, so that he's been lumped in with his imitators. (I think a very similar thing happened to Quentin Tarantino, one of Ennis's admitted influences.) Ennis's work can be extreme - and sometimes I think he does like to go for a gratuitous shock - but I think there's so much more to his best work than profanity, explicit violence and perverse sex. Although I dig all that stuff, too.

A random example: the bit in one of the Kev books where Kev's mate has become a celebrity SAS author. It starts of as a gag about "Breville Two-Zero" and then transforms into a serious, interesting and actually rather touching dissection of the public's fascination with warfare. To pull off a shift in tone like that takes a lot of intelligence and a lot of skill as a writer, especially in a book as overtly comedic as Kev.

BTW, I think the Legend is probably a broad satire on various disgruntled comics writers of a certain age, stitched
together from various sources. But I do see a lot of Eisner, Siegel and Lee in there! I'm amazed Ennis has a career Stateside at all, especially when you consider what Marshall Law did for Pat Mills' career in the USA!

Noncemancer, Reverend Swear and Busydick - priceless!  :lol:

Quality Alan Moore quote, too. But then they usually are, aren't they?

I, Cosh

Isn't it just Guy Ritchie's name slapped on the front in a weird, misguided attempt to get people to buy it? It's actually written by Andy Diggle.

The Mighty Kev books are hilarious.
We never really die.

Roger Godpleton

The thing I find with Ennis is that he goes from being a genius to a opportunistic hack every five minutes (this is in my mind BTW). I actually find though that he's often most offensive when he's being sentimental.
He's only trying to be what following how his dreams make you wanna be, man!

Sefton Disney

Fair comment, Godpleton.

I think that's probably why I drifted away from his stuff around the time Preacher ended - there was a hell of a lot of it and it was hard to tell which books were done for love rather than money.

That's why I've found this thread so useful and enjoyable, too!

Colin YNWA

...and tanks.

Has anybody picked up the first issue of Tankies with Carlos Ezquerra? Absolute class. Great characters and typical Ennis no holds barred war story. All draw by typical Ezquerra goodness. Not sure about Ezquerra inked by his son yet BUT I think thats as much to do with my need to get used to it as being so used to his own inking style as opposed there being anything wrong with Hector's inking itself.

Anyway Tankies is brillant.

I, Cosh

Thought it was okay, but a step back to a more generic Ennis story after Dear Billy, which I thought was superb.

Did somebody mention War Stories earlier? I've only just read the first collection and the stand-out there was the one about the Italian front: The D-Day Dodgers. Really powerful ending to that one and the book itself was enhanced by the bibliography and Ennis' afterword which sees him venting his not inconsiderable spleen on a target rather more deserving of his attentions than the idiocies of superhero comics.

The Battlefields series certainly seems to be a direct continuation of the War Stories idea. What War Stories seemed to be to me (and I mean this in a good way) was an updating both in terms of content and of attitude of the old Commando comics. I think I've only ever seen him write about WW1. Has he ever strayed outwith this era?
We never really die.

Ignatzmonster

Quote from: "The Cosh"Thought it was okay, but a step back to a more generic Ennis story after Dear Billy, which I thought was superb.

Did somebody mention War Stories earlier? I've only just read the first collection and the stand-out there was the one about the Italian front: The D-Day Dodgers. Really powerful ending to that one and the book itself was enhanced by the bibliography and Ennis' afterword which sees him venting his not inconsiderable spleen on a target rather more deserving of his attentions than the idiocies of superhero comics.

The Battlefields series certainly seems to be a direct continuation of the War Stories idea. What War Stories seemed to be to me (and I mean this in a good way) was an updating both in terms of content and of attitude of the old Commando comics. I think I've only ever seen him write about WW1. Has he ever strayed outwith this era?

Go get War Stories #2. Ennis' entire reputation could stand on those two volumes IMO. Punisher for me only started to become readible when Ennis decided to make it a war comic in Born. I'm curious about the Battlefield series but I get the impression he could have squeezed each series into 64 pages like he did for war stories. Damned decompressed comics!

I would like to see Ennis take on a war story that takes place prior to WW1. That and I wish he would take on something like Charlie's War: a war story with recurring characters that would tke place over several volumes.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: "Ignatzmonster"I would like to see Ennis take on a war story that takes place prior to WW1. That and I wish he would take on something like Charlie's War: a war story with recurring characters that would tke place over several volumes.

Yeah both things I'd like to see Ennis do. I wonder what the market for an ongoing WWII series by Ennis would be like? Kinda thing you'd think DC might one day like to give a whirl as they have a far more diversity in they're comics these days.

I thought all the Battlefield's stories were 3 issue minis making them around and about 64 pages each anyway?

Ignatzmonster

Quote from: "Colin_YNWA"I thought all the Battlefield's stories were 3 issue minis making them around and about 64 pages each anyway?

Crap, that's even more irritating. Why not just put each story in one package rather than milk the readers? Waiting for the trade for sure then.

I think a long series would sell well, if not better, than these self contained stories. He should revamp Johnny Red. I love that comic but there are so many possibilities it could not touch. I was reading it online at the same time I was reading Grossman's Life and Fate and it drove me nuts from the sense of potential story left untapped.