Garth Ennis, and A Walk Through Hell.
The prospect of starting a piece like this about one of my favorite comic writers of all time, Garth Ennis, is like being at Mount Everest base camp, and just looking up and going “fuuuuuck.”
Where do I start? Can I even talk about it all? The man has been so prolific and is known for so many brilliant titles that I’m tossing out the idea of checking every box before I even get started. The man is a legend, let’s just put it that way. North Irish by birth and currently in NYC, Ennis is primarily known for his game-changing runs on The Punisher from Marvel Comics, and of course his critically-lauded series Preacher, originally published by Vertigo/DC, which is now an AMC television show (and has been renewed for a 3rd season).
However I personally fell in love with him when I read a read the first trade paperback volume of a little series published by Avatar Press by the name of Crossed.
Take note; Crossed is not for the faint of heart. Essentially a story about how a zombie-esque “plague” breaks out and begins to infect everyone, thereby leading to the destruction of society as we know it and what uninfected survivors have to go through to carry on. However — these victims are not zombies at all. They transmit the sickness through bites and scratches, but they do not die and become undead. They simply lose all of their humanity and they start being driven by two base instincts; to rape and murder. That’s it. Normal people are bitten or somehow infected and they instantly turn into depraved killing/raping machines… and the survivors have to run for their lives.
This book is so well written (with amazing artwork, as always, by Jacen Burrows) that it scared me to my core. I was on the edge of my seat through the entire book. Boy, was it a roller coaster. It was then that I knew Garth Ennis was a master of his craft, and even better, a master of the genre of horror. Crossed is one of the most mature-themed and graphic books I’ve ever read, but it wasn’t gruesome for the sake of gruesome; it was an original and creative take on a theme we’re familiar with. Later installments of Crossed (some of which weren’t written by Ennis) became all-out gore, but Ennis’ Crossed stories have always been fascinating. Crossed became such a massive success that Avatar even got the legendary Alan Moore to write a series called Crossed +100, which was set a hundred years after the original outbreak.
Also put out by Avatar Press, Ennis once again jumped into the horror genre, but this time sci-fi/horror with the series called Caliban.
The atmosphere and tension that Ennis creates in Caliban will make you feel like you’re watching Alien or The Thing for the first time again. A story about a ship which ‘phases’ into the same space as an alien ship of some kind, the two spaceships get stuck together, and the crew have to figure out what the hell is going on, and how to save themselves from what’s in the alien ship… and from each other. This book had such a claustrophobic and suspenseful feel to it, and yet you didn’t want to put it down. Ennis truly loves his horror, and we love him for it.
Onto his new book which was just announced, called A Walk Through Hell, which will be published by Aftershock Comics in May. Now, Aftershock has been putting out some real quality stuff as of late, and a lot of people have been taking notice. I noticed them after they put out a small series called Shipwreck by Warren Ellis (you could publish Warren Ellis’ shopping lists and I would buy it), as well as Jimmy’s Bastards by Ennis as well, Animosity by Marguerite Bennett, and a handful of other titles that have impressed me. A Walk Through Hell is Garth’s return to the horror genre though, and I couldn’t be more excited.
We don’t know much about the plot right now except this; two FBI agents go missing inside of a warehouse, and two more agents go in to try to find them. Except this isn’t an ordinary warehouse, and nothing is going to be okay. I’m making an assumption there but I’m pretty sure it won’t be. If this title is anything like his others in regards to the claustrophobic tension (and gore) we are all in for quite a treat.
Here’s another little fact about Garth Ennis; he’s a WWII history buff. Big time. So much so that when the people behind the very popular World Of Tanks video game wanted to publish a comic about their title, guess who they called?
It’s probably his fascination of all things war that led him to write not one, but two ongoing titles about the WWII era; Battlefields, published by Dynamite Entertainment, and my favorite, War Stories published by Avatar Press. Both of these are worlds away from most of his other material, but are historically accurate and written from the heart. Some are heartfelt love stories in a time of war, some are just interesting tidbits about how a new plane or tank came to help turn the tide, but they’re all just great.
And if you want something that’s just purely Garth Ennis — check out all twelve volumes of one of his most popular series, The Boys, published by Dynamite Entertainment. This was recently picked up to be adapted for television by Amazon Studios, and the people behind it are the same people who adapted Preacher for AMC; Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
The Boys is pure Ennis. It’s sexually explicit, full of blood and gore, ridiculous and hilarious, all while making some brutally accurate social commentary. It’s about superheroes who have not been put in check by our society and run rampant, essentially doing whatever the hell they want. Because who would stop them? Well, The Boys. That’s about as brief of an explanation as I can give you of a series that has twelve volumes of material. But as with most of his work, it’s just downright enjoyable as hell.
So that’s it, me trying to encapsulate my favorite aspects of one of my favorite comic writers of all time, into a bite-size article for you to peruse. It’s kind of like writing two paragraphs about The Beatles. But yeah. If you didn’t know who Garth Ennis was you do now, and you should go out and buy every damn thing he’s ever written. Even the not so good stuff, because it’s still better than half the stuff out right now.
|DV.NWMN|
@dirtynouveau
