Category Archives: Battlefields

The curse of the full page panels. Ezquerra has two in the last few pages and it hurts the reading experience. The tank battle needed more elucidation, not full page panels.

I have no idea how this issue ends, but I’m assuming since Ennis is literal with Battlefields, it’s not ending with a ghost. It’s more Ezquerra’s fault, his panicked faces are all looking alike at the end of the issue. But it’s also Ennis’s fault for not leaving enough room.

The confusion leaves the arc a lot less steady than I thought possible for a Battlefields story. Sadly, Tankies is the strongest and its sequel is the weakest. In some ways, I think Ennis got too comfortable. It served him well in the first story, while here… it’s “just” a sequel. It’s horrifying and affecting, but mostly because of the familiar protagonist.

Worth a read, of course, just disappointing.

I’d like to call a foul on Ennis here for playing the reader but it’s not his fault. Maybe he knew the reader would get comfy, a little relaxed, laughing at the jokes… only to have the last couple pages of the issue knock the wind out of him or her.

So instead of calling foul, I’ll just say he makes a great turn at the end. I can’t imagine what this story would read like without Ezquerra. He does such a perfect job with the expressions. He manages the humor, the exhaustion, the anger and the horror in such a way he brings the whole issue to life.

This issue is rather full. Not a lot of time passes, but Ennis gives the reader a lot of information–there’s even backstory on the Sarge–whether about the tank crew or the Germans. The German scenes are scary.

Brilliant work.

Hey, it’s the sequel to Tankies. I didn’t even realize from the cover.

Well, I’m not sure it’s exactly a sequel to Tankies, rather another adventure of that tank crew. If I remember the original correctly, the plotting’s basically the same. The issue opens and closes with a different group of characters, here it’s some Nazis. Then we get to our crew.

The majority of the issue is talk, with the Sarge (he gets a last name here–Stiles–though he might have had it in the first series) talking to an American about an off-page tank attack (the Germans from the first scene hit a column of American tanks).

We get a brief introduction to the newest member of the tank crew and a flashback catching us up on their recent activities.

Ezquerra handles Ennis’s more humorous moments, as always, beautifully.

It’s a strong start for the arc.

The final issue of Tankies is even better than I remembered and maybe even imagined. I’m really glad I forgot the ending–Ennis gives it two finishes, one for the tank company, one for the colonel at command–and it’s just perfect. What the colonel’s ending does is a little different–Tankies is not just a standalone story, it’s Ennis’s story about the men in tank companies….

But packaging it in Tankies, with the humor, with the fourteen-hour present action for three issues, Ennis never gets sentimental (there’s no dedication, for example). Instead, he simply presents the situation of the tank companies and goes with it.

I haven’t mentioned Ennis’s use of Geordie for the corporal. I usually loathe the use of dialect in writing because it’s usually used for all the wrong reasons. Ennis uses it for all the right ones.

Tankies is an amazing piece of work.

Oh, it’s lovely.

Ennis has something of a narrative tree going here–he has his main story with the tankies, but then he’s got command’s story. Command’s story has a little to do with the tankies, but not much. It has it’s own subplot. I think maybe half the issue has nothing to do, immediately, with the story of the tank company.

So, instead, there’s the large picture of the situation and then this one tank moving through it, with Ennis moving back and forth.

Tank stories–the ones I’ve read or the films I’ve seen–are intimate, because it’s just a handful of guys in a tank. Ennis maintains that intimacy–sometimes for relieving humorous effect–while still having this wider picture. I’m not sure it’s important we remember anyone’s name, since they’re so memorable for appearance or behavior.

It’s Battlefields‘s most traditional war story so far–a so.

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.