Battlefields By Garth Ennis

As regular readers will know I’m a bit of a (thankfully lapsed) comic collector and that I was recently bitten by the retro war comic bug.  I’ve been buying the fortnightly editions of Commando and some reprints of 1980s Battle (so not so lapsed after all).

However, thanks to the downthetubes.net blog I noticed a new series of WWII comics for Dynamite Entertainment written by Garth Ennis that had otherwise passed me by. There are three stories from 2008/9:



They are excellent and come highly recommended. I read all three in one sitting as they fairly rip along.  Having said that all three have plots that take a while to develop and finish with a surprise twist.  Because of this I won’t say any more about the plots.  They are however full bloodied adult comics in every sense and the artwork is excellent throughout.  I especially liked the work of Carlos Ezquerra (Strontium Dog and Judge Dredd) on Tankies.

Given that they were primarily for the American market I found the Geordie Tankie’s clash with the Southern driver most realistic, especially as it was written in dense dialect.  Very brave.

There are more in the pipeline.  “Happy Valley” is available now and “Firefly And His Majesty” can be pre-ordered:



Looks like I’m hooked again.

To finish this post I also came across this documentary from the BBC about the Night Witches which you can download the program as an mp3.