By Garth Ennis, Russ Braun, Peter Snejbjerg, Carlos Ezquerra, Hector Ezquerra & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-255-4
Garth Ennis is the best writer of war comics in America today. In fact, if you disregard the marvellous Commando Picture Library series published by DC Thomson (which you shouldn’t – but no one admits to reading them in my circle), he may well be the only creator regularly contributing to the genre in the entire English language.
After crafting an occasional sequence of superb War Stories with the industry’s top illustrative talent for DC’s mature reader Vertigo imprint, he then moved on to craft more of the same for Dynamite Entertainment through themed-anthology series Battlefields, which began publication in November 2008.
Here he continued to blend his unique viewpoint with his love of the British comics combat strips he read as a lad. This first Complete Edition (available in both hardback and softcover editions as well as a digital release) gathers the first nine issues – comprising three separate triptychs set in World War II – which all delve below the standardised Hollywood glitz of a conflict we all think we have a passing familiarity with to reveal the grimy guts of combat in self-contained arenas most of us never knew existed…
Illustrated by Russell Braun, the first offering is a tale told from two opposing viewpoints, with both inexorably destined to ultimately and finally clash. Kurt Graf is a young German soldier on the Eastern Front; clinging to life and increasingly appalled by the behaviour of his comrades as they strive to crush the dogged resistance of the Soviets defending their homeland.
Elsewhere, the Russians are about to unleash their latest counter-weapon… women pilots…
Despite being despised by their male counterparts and generally saddled with the worst equipment, these dedicated warriors – especially the night-bomber squadron to which diminutive Lieutenant Anna Kharkova belongs – quickly begin to take a toll on the war-weary invaders, earning the name Nachthexen… ‘The Night Witches’…
As the months pass we follow both narrators deeper into hell, where all passions are temporary but overwhelmingly ferocious. And then, as the continually mounting toll of atrocities seems more than any could possibly bear, the protagonists at last meet under the most inauspicious conditions and the inevitable happens…
The pulse-quickening pitched cinematic battles of the Russian Front are replaced with more sedate but no less sinister and horrifying scenes in ‘Dear Billy’ – limned by Peter Snejbjerg – which beguilingly examines other repercussions of love in wartime. Carrie Sutton is a British nurse who barely survived the wanton slaughter and worse which the Japanese inflicted following their conquering Singapore.
After a frankly miraculous escape Carrie is taken to hospital in Calcutta where, after her body has recuperated, she is pressed into service on the wards. Here, even if she cannot forget what was done to her, she can strike back by helping heal the soldiers, sailors and airmen who will eradicate the inhuman enemy.
Her dreary half-life changes after meeting pilot William Wedgewood. Despite the appalling injuries inflicted upon him by the oriental devils he remains upbeat, and upon recovery is eager to get back in the air and punish the enemy. Meanwhile, Carrie too has found an occasional yet deeply personal way to get back at the foe…
The torrid relationship lasts the length of the war; with each prosecuting the conflict in their own way, but when Hiroshima and Nagasaki end hostilities and it’s time to put away weapons and make friends again, one traumatised soul realises the vengeance-taking can never end…
Spectacularly uproarious and doused with Ennis’s signature coal-black humour, ‘The Tankies’ is drawn by venerable old collaborator Carlos Ezquerra and inked by his son Hector. Set in the days immediately after the Normandy Landings in June 1944, the saga follows the crew of a British Churchill Tank after their upper class commander is killed in a most grotesque manner.
The work-shy, callow Londoners are at a bit of an impasse until taken in hand by a battle-hardened tank-man Non-Com who has fought his way from Africa all the way up into Italy and now intends to kill a few more foes here.
If only he wasn’t a bloody Geordie, babbling his bizarre northern jibber-jabber wot no normal bloke could understand…
Still, with Corporal Stiles in charge, the unlikely lads are soon rumbling forward to support the rapidly-diminishing ranks of British and Canadian infantry. Everything will be fine just as long as they don’t meet any Panzers or Tiger Tanks…
Emphatically highlighting with gory attention to detail the idiocy of command and incredible bravery of the under-trained allied soldiers inexorably forcing back the entrenched German veterans, this is prime Ennis: ghastly, hilarious and unforgettable…
Also included are a fascinating and informative Afterword from the author, recommended further reading, covers and variants by John Cassaday & Garry Leach, plus extensive sketchbook sections featuring character designs, layouts, pencils and finished art from Braun, Snejbjerg and the Ezquerras.
These are not stories for children. Due to Ennis’s immense skill as a scripter and his innate understanding of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, the carefully constructed moments of tension, terror and relief strike home and strike hard; whether he is aiming for gallows humour, lambasting the Powers That Be always ready to send fodder to slaughter or, as seen most frequently here, examining in excoriating detail how the acts of war makes mortals into monsters.
These hyper-authentic yarns reek of grim veracity and are a tribute to the spirit of people at their very best and worst. This is war as I fear it actually is, and it makes bloody good reading.
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