Posted By Garrett Steele on February 10, 2014

Garth Ennis Presents: Battle Classics is a fascinating snapshot of a different area of comics. It’s well-curated, well-restored, and, (most importantly) fantastic reading.

Battle was a British boys’ comic founded in 1975, which ran until 1988. Begun by Pat Mills and John Wagner to compete with a rival publisher’s WWII book, but it quickly became a force to reckon with on its own, partially through the strength of the creators behind it. (Pat Mills went on to found 2000 A.D, and John Wagner created some of its most enduring characters, including Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog).

Battle was an anthology book, each issue collecting small installments of stories that might die within a month or two, or could run on for years, depending on fan reaction. This format doesn’t lend itself to straight reprints, but what publisher Titan Books has done instead, is collect and restore a number of long-running Battle stories into a graphic novel format. Battle Classics is unique among these collections. Rather than collecting a single series, it’s a bit of an anthology, lovingly curated and commented on by Garth Ennis. Ennis does a wonderful job of collecting some great stories, and an equally wonderful job explaining what sets them apart.

The vast majority of the book is taken up by H.M.S. Nightshade, a year-long serial following the lives of a corvette crew from 1940 to 1944. Written by John Wagner with art by Mike Western, the story is framed through the reminiscing of George Dunn, who came on board as a new recruit with three of his friends. The story itself holds up beautiful, and the art is wonderfully done. The comic is highly episodic, and occasionally the recaps can get a bit excessive if you sit down to read the whole thing, but there’s also a lot of long-form storytelling taking place. As the ship is called in for support at Dunkirk, or assigned to the dreaded Arctic supply run, we see the heroes grow increasingly world-weary and hardened – which is greatly accentuated when even newer recruits arrive halfway through the tale. Great care is taken to emphasize the humanity of the sailors. We see them return home for leave, only to see the toll the war has taken on it. We go ashore for boxing matches and cockroach races. We see them crack the sort of sly, grim jokes that only the bleakest circumstances can render funny. It’s easy for any war story to get caught up in the giant, gleaming machines, but Nightshade is grounded firmly in its crew, and that’s a large part of what makes it so engaging. Even the framing story sees the aging George running errands with his grandson, or wandering off into diatribes about the labor movement that are quickly shut down by his son. These people are alive, and as Ennis points out, the fact that real people lived these experiences make the book that much more visceral.

It seems at first an odd choice to follow such a small ship, but it’s a beautiful creative decision. The crew of the Nightshade are often outgunned and overwhelmed, dwarfed by the sheer size and number of their enemies. The fear and fatigue are palpable as the ship is hammered by planes in the day and U-boats at night. The little ship seems to see most of the high notes of the war, but misses enough of them that it’s not completely conspicuous. Like any good war story, Nightshade is the whole war in miniature, big enough to be terrifying, but small enough to be relatable. Nightshade manages to span nearly all of World War II, while keeping a grounded focus on the overwhelmed men on one little boat.

The other major story in Battle Classics is Alan Hebden and John Cooper’s  The General Dies at Dawn. Facing execution by a Nazi war court for cowardice and treason, a highly-decorated Wermacht officer spends his last night on Earth telling his story to his jailer. A brilliant tank commander and tactician, the General crosses sabres once too often with the SS, and finds himself awaiting execution. Over 11 episodes, you come to root for him as he rises through the ranks, delivering the impossible and making the most of the  insane orders handed down by Hitler. The story is a great example of the “Good German” story. These were often based on the memoires of German soldiers – memoires which were written at the insistence of the Allied troops the suddenly found themselves thrown in with during the Cold War. These stories helped acknowledge to the popular culture that these were human beings instead of faceless cannon fodder or caricatured monsters. These stories showed the cunning warriors the Allies  were up against. They also served a practical propagandistic purpose. As alliances suddenly shifted, the notion of the good-natured soldier, who hated the Fuhrer but fought for his homeland, became a minor but notable figure on the landscape. Often these soldiers were largely ignorant of the horrors committed at home, and were men of honor, who detested the jackbooted tactics of the SS. (Ennis acknowledges that this is a little too convenient to be entirely true, but is more an enormous exaggeration than an utter fabrication.)

(from Sevenpenny Nightmare’s “Best of Battle” gallery, called out in the book’s afterword.)

                The book rounds out with three short stories by the legendary Cam Kennedy, who did character-defining work on many of John Wagner’s 2000 A.D. characters, and ushered in the Dark Horse era of Star Wars comics with Tom Veitch on Dark Empire. In just a tiny space – twenty pages or so – we see incredible depth and breadth. Kennedy handles gruesome stories of death in the Pacific islands as deftly as he does a tongue-in-cheek lark about the drivers on the Red Ball Express supply line. The art for the bulk of the book is great, but you can immediately tell, liner notes aside, when you reach Kennedy’s work. It’s sharper, more detailed, more visceral. The characters stand and slump and move more realistically than anywhere else, and the line work and shading is gorgeous, if grim. It’s a fantastic, incredibly economical showcase.

Before each section of the book, Garth Ennis provides notes that add a historical and cultural context as to what makes each of the stories work, as well as some personal experiences with the tales. For someone who hasn’t read a lot of war comics, and who isn’t a terrific historian, these notes are invaluable. The stories are great enough to stand on their own, but the background that Ennis provides gives the reader a complete picture. They’re comprehensive enough to be informative, but brief enough not to be boring. Ennis says in the afterword that putting his name on the cover was a concession to economic reality – the publisher told him that in order to ensure a market for the thing, they’d have to put his name on it if he wanted them to print it. He doesn’t feel he deserves the honor, but he acquits himself very well as an editor, and as an illuminator. As for the book itself, the restoration is beautifully done. The first page warns that the material is rare, and that the quality varied greatly, but honestly, the vast majority of the strips look great.

War comics aren’t an area of great interest for me, but I’m a sucker for a good anthology of vintage comics, and I found Battle Classics to be a great entry point into an unfamiliar world, with plenty to offer the enthusiast as well. Not all the material has aged perfectly, but on the whole it’s a formidable collection, ably assembled by a qualified enthusiast and a loving collector.

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