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Garth Ennis - are you a fan and am i missing something?

10:34 / 25.07.07

i really tried to like preacher, i have a soft spot for southern gothic i suppose, but found after 4 trades or so i could appreciate the plotting, thought he had a way with dialogue but that the non-stop mysanthropy, crudeness, scatological fixations and overall lack of redeeming features ni anyone in it just put me off. and left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

i tried his short authority run today and felt pretty much the same, tho the fact he could work out a plot that lowered the authority to that level was demonstrative of some talent i suppose.

i just wondered though, am i missing something here?

10:41 / 25.07.07

He is very good at adult , gritty stories , just about your averagre joe . Very good at expressing a darker side of people (soemtimes with redemption and hope mind ).

But give him fantastic or Super hero , nah (his one of those thats hates Super heros ive i remember ?)

11:06 / 25.07.07

he's one of those that hates Super heroes

Certainly seems that way: see 'The Authority: Kev' series, 'Hitman' and his latest, 'The Boys.'

The line from Preacher to The Boys is a pretty straight one; I'm not sure Ennis does 'growth' particularly well, or even tries. "Sod it, Garth, old son. Fight the battles you can win. Stick to what you know."

And what he knows is Guns, More Guns, the Glory Of War, The Lack Of Glory In War, Men, Real Men and The IRA.

It's not all bad, mind - Preacher itself is entertaining as hell and his Punisher run, although entirely ridiculous is a total guilty pleasure of mine.

11:13 / 25.07.07

Oh, and what was I thinking - his early Hellblazer stuff is absolutely cracking and while there's definitely crossover with Preacher, I think it stands out as his smartest, least B-movie-type work. Ignoring 'Son Of Man'. Which is balls.

And, a quick bit of research shows he also wrote Chopper for 2000AD. Well I never. I loved that as a kid. Injects real fun (but not too much silliness) into Dredd's world.

12:14 / 25.07.07

he wrote chopper? my goodness, that was life afirming and lovely if i remember right

hhhm unless it was the later chopper stuff where they dug up aboriginal lands to mine uranium.

but the stuff i've read has been marred by the scatology and general air of weariness with humanity. should i read his Punisher? does it have a lot of stuff about pooing and body fluids that might put me off? i don't think frank castle would like that either.

12:50 / 25.07.07

A lot of Ennis' work, especially PREACHER and the first volume of his Punisher stuff, has the poo-poo humor and such.

HOWEVER, his WAR STORIES and the new MAX Punisher are really quality stuff.... intelligent, dramatic, serious tales without the 'shock value' goofy/crazy stuff. See the Punisher thread somewhere around here for more detail on this. I believe he's a very solid writer when he's not indulging the wacky/shock value/grossout stuff.

12:52 / 25.07.07

the first volume of Punisher is terrific fun, but every once in a while has the wacky/grotesque villains and gross-out stuff that Preacher is so famous for. However, this first volume of Ennis' PUNISHER (which began with WELCOME BACK, FRANK) marked a return to Quality Stories for our favorite skull-shirt-wearing antihero... an era which has continued, as long as Ennis is writing the stories (and Ennis has been pretty much the sole writer doing Frank Castle stuff lately, other than random one-shots and miniseries).

13:07 / 25.07.07

should i read his Punisher? does it have a lot of stuff about pooing and body fluids that might put me off?

If you didn't like Preacher you may not jam with the "Welcome Back Frank" or "One Man Army" trades which are drawn by Dillon and have a very similar feel to Preacher (ie misanthropy, losers, freaks, ultraviolence). For my money though it's some of the best Punisher I've read.

You might like the MAX Punisher stuff better though, less with the comedy more with the grim.

His run on Midnighter was okay except he couldn't go for two pages without a villain making a crack about Midnighter's sexuality. That said Ennis has always been a tad purile when it comes to dealing with sexuality.

13:12 / 25.07.07

I know, seems quite out of character, doesn't it? I recently bought 'Chopper: Song Of The Surfer' on eBay and loved it. Genuinely tragic.

As for Ennis' Punisher; if I'm honest, it's a bit up and down. He's written the title on both the normal Marvel imprint - 'Welcome Back, Frank' is the first collection, collaborating with Steve Dillon again - and also for the Max 'mature readers' imprint, where he really gets to cut loose.

At its best, it's Frank as the utterly unstoppable, ruthless vengence machine, shades of Watchmen's Rorschach in his obsession and in part, Ennis' own 'Unknown Soldier.' He's all about the ends justifying the means and will live with being used as a pawn by 3rd parties - SHIELD, the media, the mob - if it gets hims one step closer to his goal: vengence / justice (alays a blurry line in any treatment of Castle). The best example sees him being manipulated into Cold War-style shenanigans in a Siberian nuclear bunker.

At its worst, though, it's Ennis at his worst, IMHO. Vicious for the sake of it, scatalogical as you say, war-porny, exploitative grindcore tosh. In recent arcs, there's been a lot of time devoted to a new character; a brutal Ving Rhames-a-like called Barracuda who's being set up as a new nemesis for The Punisher and the exposition surrounding him is frankly, a bit nasty. I'm no-one's idea of a shrinking violet but a lot of this is entirely gratuitous. You can't write the Punisher without violence but it warrants examination if you want Frank Castle to be interesting.

Actually, I think I've talked myself out of liking it, on reflection.

Female roles are, shall we say, poorly developed (it was ever thus in he Marvelverse) and at least one story arc is a direct rip of a recent Ennis standalone: '303.'

I stand by the notion that some of it is quite fun but suggest you pick and choose selectively...

13:18 / 25.07.07

cross-posted with Evil Scientist..

13:19 / 25.07.07

and FinderWolf.....

14:04 / 25.07.07

Chopper - Song of the Surfer was written by John Wagner. The stories that came after that (one extended tale a one parter, I think) were written by Garth.

14:09 / 25.07.07

His Demon run is often overlooked. It starts off boring as shit, regular old stupid comic series, then right when it's about to be cancelled it becomes a huge over the top WW2 type Batlle for Hell story, and you see the Garth we now know begin to emerge.

Dude seems to love Americana and war and stuff, and I think he's really good at writing comics. I like about 80% of his work until it gets too dickish/fartish, and even some of those are ok if I like the characters.

14:16 / 25.07.07

@DavidXBrunt

oh yeh, I knew that - more an offtopic post about Chopper than Ennis really.

Now Wagner = dude. But that's a whole other thread..

14:24 / 25.07.07

Well, apologies for the off-topicality and all, just thought that there was a misunderstanding afoot. Garths Marlon Shakespeare is pretty average, Wagners something special. But, yeah, whole other thread.

14:29 / 25.07.07

no no, you're absolutely right - sorry, wasn't being snarky. I should have communicated that much better..

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

15:52 / 25.07.07

His Demon run is often overlooked. It starts off boring as shit, regular old stupid comic series, then right when it's about to be cancelled it becomes a huge over the top WW2 type Batlle for Hell story, and you see the Garth we now know begin to emerge.

I actually loved most of his Demon run a lot more than I enjoyed his other work. I actually found I cared a lot more about Jason and Co than I usually do about Ennis characters and the absolute nightmare of a life Ennis gave him was probably how that title always should have been. Ennis managed to make Etrigan a properly evil fucker whilst not making the book to horrible or unpleasant to read. Also I think the final phyric victory of Jason over Etrigan remain probably the best thing that Ennis has done and the best thing that's been done with the character.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

15:59 / 25.07.07

Oh actually that's not quite true. I seem to remember one issue of Hitman that was absolutely beautiful - the one in which Tommy meets a depressed Superman on a roof, and it turns out Superman is upset because he just failed to save someone's life. I recall that being amazing stuff - I was unemployed at the time and consequently only read it the once on a Byrne steal, and I've always rather regretted not finding the two quid necessary to buy the thing.

16:13 / 25.07.07

Hitman deserves to be collected, for moments like that.

I really enjoyed, for all the bad reasons, Adventures of the Rifle Brigade and The War Stories contains some great stuff. I'm thinking of Condors with career best art from Carlos Ezquerra.

uncle retrospective

18:34 / 25.07.07

I have a real love/hate thing with Ennis. The man is brilliant, he makes writing comics so easy and at his best he makes you want to throw the book in the air and shout "fuck yea!" But bad Ennis is horrible, the puerile humor and pointless violence are too much to over look. I loved his Hellblazer but hated Preacher after issue 25, it just kept repeating itself for no point. Saying all that I only have the first 5 trades of Hitman (all that was collected) and it's brilliant. Down to earth, handles the frendship between the characters so well (one of his strengths) and is really fucking funny. The O'Baytor gag had me on the floor. His Unknown Soldier mini is also amazing, Cold War hell and full on spook show just nailed. The bit with the Unknown Solider in the concentration camp is one of my fav moments in comics. His Punisher Max is really good too but keep away from Welcome back Frank. It's really shit.
To conclude, when hit, brilliant, when miss.... Kev.

uncle retrospective

18:35 / 25.07.07

Oh I hear there is new Hitman on the way in the JLA of all places.

07:08 / 26.07.07

If you like War Stories, have you read Ennis' 'Enemy Ace'? Some of the narrative is excellent, melodramatic stuff: a lot of "Knights Of The Air", "A War In Heaven", "Make The Skies Bleed" lines.

And, like War Stores, it mines the Commando / Battle / Victor comics vein I was very into as a kid.

lord nuneaton savage

09:00 / 26.07.07

Seconding 'Adventures in the Rifle Brigade'. I get turned off by Ennis's puerility generally, but when it's framed in work that is so blatantly knob-gag-tastic that it can't be anything but funny then it hits the spot.

'Yer aht of order'

11:40 / 26.07.07

I, um, I too found 'Adventures in the Rifle Brigade' hilarious. For some reason the supporting characters just constantly repeating their single line of cliched catchphrase just got funnier the more it happened. I'm fully prepared to admit that finding that funny probably makes me completely wrong in the head if that helps?

lord nuneaton savage

12:01 / 26.07.07

I also heartily enjoyed the hoary retreading of second hand 'Only Fools and Horses' jokes. Smashing.

"Gawd Dammit..."

15:41 / 26.07.07

"Eh oop!"

16:46 / 26.07.07

Oh god. Suddenly I have the urge to say "Yer aht of order!" and somehow know that I'm paraphrasing (read: misquoting) slightly.

I really enjoyed The Rifle Brigade for it's puerility. I'm not proud. But then I got both volumes of War Stories as well, and was impressed, especially with the one set in the Spanish Civil War, wherein the only Spaniard of the four main characters has some beautiful lines and basically knocks the other three right off their pedestals, and concludes with the fact that "Until one man punches another and his own nose breaks can we know the pain we cause others" (again, paraphrasing - I don't have it to hand).

That and "Hoch O'Duffy!

I loved Hitman when it was first out. Were a person wanting to read the entire thing and was aware that they exist, somehow, electronically - and said person didn't want to pay a third party on ebay for the same material put on a disc - what would be the best way of getting the Hitman run?

lord nuneaton savage

18:55 / 26.07.07

"PIPER--McNAUGHTYRY'S ARSE!"

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

19:59 / 26.07.07

Unknown Solider is probably my favourite Ennis work, hands down. Preacher has some moments of real brilliance, but by and large falls apart thematically, sells short the female protagonist and has too much scatological humor for my tastes.

Hitman, on the other hand, has many of the same themes as Preacher (sans the "god's a wanker" stuff) is heartwrenching, hilarious and is probably the best DCU series in recent years that is not James Robinson's Starman. The characters feel real, especially when making human mistakes aganst the backdrop of the DCU and he never sells any of them out for easy humor or a quick punchline. Even the ever drunken Six Pack gets a chance at redemption. Hitman shows the Ennis that doesn't hate superheroes, just the world they're forced to operate in. Really brilliant, amazing, funny, tear-jerking stuff. (I always cry while reading "The Old Dog".) Hell, he even uses the backdrop of "No Man's Land" to write one of the best tributes to John Woo ever.

That said, his War Stories are pretty good and his MAX Punisher run has some really disturbing and chilling points. I wasn't that keen on "Barracuda", but "The Tyger", "The Cell", "Born" are also all fantastic.