Earlier today I talked about how difficult it was for an author I love to publish something and get past me. I remember earlier this year finally having money again after not working since Jan. 3, so I went to get my comics from my guy. Garth Ennis is my favorite comics writer of all time. So I figured I'd have a few new books from him.
Nope. But I did have the new series about The Boys, which was called Dear Becky. It's fucking great. Read it, even if you're not into the Prime series. It's the perfect level of insanity and melancholy.
But here's the thing: Ennis had three other books that came out this year. It slipped past me and my guy. In total, we're talking about 15 single issues that none of us knew about. I picked up the trades, and on Wednesday, I'm going to tell my guy about them. He loves Ennis, but his brother really, really loves Ennis's war books. They're all great, but I suspect I know why no one knows about them.
They are not technically part of War Stories. But they are war stories. I want to talk about them, but there are spoilers. So don't read this unless you already read the three books in question: The Stringbags, Out of the Blue and Sara.
I didn't expect much from The Stringbags, but I think this one made me cry the most. I know a lot about WWII, but I never heard about these guys. The technical name for their planes were Swordfish. They were all UK pilots, navigators and rear gunners. The problem is, they were stuck with these antique planes that were made more from cloth than anything else. They were just heavy enough to haul whatever they had to haul. In this case, it was torpedoes. You had to be either very brave or very insane to fly these fucking things. And here we have Archie, Ollie and Pops, the crew of their Swordfish. Archie is very serious and very good at his job. Ollie is certifiably insane and brave and relies on humor to get through the overwhelming violence they have to deal with. Pops is the vet who is equal measures of courage and humor but is also the guy who tries to talk sense into everyone else, even when they are on the ground. (And yes, he usually buys the drinks.) While these guys are fictional, they have very real counterparts, and for some crazy reason, the UK threw these lunatics at the fucking Bismarck. For real. The fiction story is told here, but it essentially really happened.
And then there was their last mission. The UK, knowing fully that any Swordfish they sent against the Germans in this situation would absolutely 100% die, sent them against the Germans. And all of them except for 5 died. They literally flew into Nazi guns just to drop their torpedoes and die. The UK fighters that backed them up later talked about the horror of having to watch these men literally and horribly die slow fiery deaths. For nothing. Hitler's stupid plan of running his battleships through the English Channel to German ports actually succeeded. But fuck him. The real men of the German army were shocked by the sheer bravery of these Englishmen. And they would give them praise long after these Englishmen died at their hands.
The last scene of the book is when Archie suddenly wakes up after being brutally shot. He keeps talking to Ollie and Pops as he tries to finish his mission before he dies. He says, "Chaps, we're almost there." Having no idea that Ollie and Pops are riddled with bullets and dead behind him.
I have tears running down my cheeks right now.
Out of the Blue. While not a War Story, it takes a character from the Avatar War Story books. Coincidentally named Archie, he's a UK pilot who was shot down in Russia and told his mates that he would go through Hell because there is a woman back home. Now he is married to that woman, and he's coming back to the UK but because of some cock up, while landing he accidentally crashes into two other British fighters and kills them all. It is absolutely not his fault, but the CO (do the UK call their commanding officers COs?) 100% blames him and sticks him with the worst ship in the fleet, the Bitch with a T. No matter how well planned things are with this plane, it always fucks up at least something vital during a mission. No one's fault. Sometimes tech just does that to you. Archie is also stuck with this navigator who is supposed to suck, but it turns out that he's from India, and the CO doesn't like him because he's not white. Naturally, Archie and Ranjaram make good friends and good shipmates. But the CO still wants to make things difficult for Archie, so he does his level best to fuck Archie's wife. And Archie, not being confident in his social skills (but being a ruthless fucking captain when he's going after Nazis to the point where Ranjaram suggests he might be schizo) almost fucks his marriage up.
But because it's an Ennis story, and I highly suspect that Ennis is a secret not-so-secret romantic, he figures it out. Just in time, as it turns out, since she's "up the duff" with his child.
Don't get high hopes. Remember, Ennis is great at war tragedy stories. This ends no differently than you expect. There is some hope, but chances are, Archie might have survived. Ranjaram . . . maybe not so much. You'll have to look at that last panel and decide for yourself.
Of all three books, I felt I was most prepared for Sara. Ennis is a huge fan of the female Russian participation in WWII. If you doubt me, read his story about the Night Witches. It's more or less true, and it's a great fucking story. This time he highlights the great female Russian snipers. I love reading their stories. Look this shit up. Don't just trust me. If you don't read about this, you might not believe it.
Sara is about a group of Russian female snipers after a Nazi supersniper. Of all three, I thought I knew how this would go best. I was fucking wrong. This might be the most tragic, yet the most heroic of the bunch. Because Sara is the Russian version of the supersniper. And she goes off on her own to get this fucking guy, mostly to save her sisters from having to do it themselves.
And there's the tragic ending. She finds him, but she only gets his second. And the actual guy shoots her mortally. And as she's dying, she has this vision of her sisters getting old and having families and knowing it's all just bullshit. But! She knows this guy will want to see the Russian woman who bagged 300 of his Nazi brothers. So as she's dying, she turns over and puts a live grenade under her, knowing that this guy will turn her onto her back. And there he is, approaching in the background in the final panel of the book,
WWII stories have a special place in my heart. Everyone seems to believe that this was the one good war in the scope of the world. And obviously I hate Nazis almost as much as Indiana Jones. I look back on stories I wrote as a kid, some when I was as young as five years old, and some of them had Nazis as the worst villains ever, so this concept is nothing new to me.
But goddammit,. Garth Ennis writes the best war stories. Dear Billy is probably my favorite (it's a Battlefields arc), but he never fails to nail me through the fucking heart.
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