By Garth Ennis & John Higgins (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-803-7
Garth Ennis has a well deserved reputation for shocking, moving and wickedly funny storytelling, and is accomplished in blending genres for maximum effect, as his successes with Preacher, Hellblazer, True Faith and a dozen other tales will attest.
One of his least regarded – in my opinion unjustly so – is this saga of a painfully domestic world turned upside down by an unredeemed past. It is a story of dreadfully ordinary folk with none of the baroque or flamboyant characters that populate regular fiction.
There’s this guy called Jimmy Kavanagh. His wife is long-dead, his son Patrick is at that revolting sulky teen age, but at least his little daughter Rachel is still the most beautiful girl in the whole world. Life is hard: his own dad, a war-hero, has just passed on, but the family are doing okay…
That all changes when Jimmy’s stupid past resurfaces. In 1972 he and a couple of his idiot friends dreamed they were going to be big-time hoods when they agreed to rip-off a gang boss. The gig had been planned by the boss’ bodyguard, Stein, who promised them a million dollars… Unfortunately for everybody but Jimmy, his pals were real shmucks, and cocked up the caper. Cops arrived, busted Stein before he could kill them all and took him away for twenty-to-life.
Scared straight by the experience, Jimmy got on with his life – until now. One night he gets a call and his world starts to implode. Coming home to finds the babysitter gutted like a fish. Stein is out and he wants revenge…
Gathering his kids and linking up with his old “colleagues†they go on the run together, but the hunter can’t be shaken and innocent people keep dying. Unable to bond with his son during their entire life together Jimmy finally, tragically connects with Patrick as the sorry saga comes to a small and dirty close…
With chilling echoes of Cape Fear (the 1962 Gregory Peck/Robert Mitchum version) this tale seeks to examine how ordinary people cope with ordinary evil: a cheap thug with a knife is just as deadly as a horde of vampires. You and your family can only die once – painfully, horribly; but just once. Pride and Joy is a tale about dreams and heritage and shows how mediocre people cope, illustrated with perfect subtle understatement by John Higgins. Nothing about this story is big or bold or bombastic: but it could really happen. It’s That Scary…
© 1997, 2004 Garth Ennis and John Higgins. All Rights Reserved.