I’ve always claimed The Tankies as Ennis’s best of the Battlefields (first series, anyway). I didn’t really remember why.
Then I read the first issue again.
Ennis sets up the story as a mission story. Maybe not even a mission, maybe just a part of a mission story. The present action is continuous. He opens the comic with a page of text explaining the situation to the reader. The white text on black alone foreshadows dread.
However, Ezquerra’s art is funny. His character expressions–and Ennis is dealing with British stereotypes for the most part, so there are lots of them–are simply hilarious. But all those funny expressions are in a terrible situation.
Ennis doesn’t bother with a cliffhanger. Instead, the protagonists find out about what’s been going on in the rest of the issue, concurrent to their experience.
It’s somehow both a small story and an enormous one.
