3 out of 5

This feels fairly phoned in for Ennis.

Stitched takes place something something middle East modern day wartime something something American / British humanitarians / soldiers on foreign soil who get stranded and have to trek across enemy territory, facing an ultimate evil in the form of ‘the stitched,’ seemingly soulless vessels of cloth and rags that are animated by the rattling of a can swung on the end of a chain.  As long as the rattling continues, The Stitched advance on their prey, any damage inflicted upon them doing nothing to halt their pursuit…

This is all conceptual feeling, Ennis coming up with the what and the how (how ‘The Stitched’ are created) and giving the reigns to artist Mike Wolfer for scripting, Wolfer completely taking over the series after Ennis’ initial run.  Ennis also wrote and directed a Stitched movie, which I’ve yet to see.  So: some things are apparent from the setup.  It’s modern day, set in reality, which gives Ennis the ability to splash some current views onto the template.  This is not preferred, as Ennis definitely slips into preachy too easily.  He mostly reigns it in here, sticking to his general stance on brotherhood and atrocities during wartime, but whether it was set in modern day for timeliness or whatever, it spins the whole story a little differently.  303 worked as modern day war because it was so general and nameless feeling that the emotions took over.  Not so much here.  And since he’s not handling the dialogue directly (past issue 1, I believe, after which he’s just listed as “story by”), the series has the Ennis touch in terms of never-ending horrors which stem not from monsters but from humans but lacks the deftness that he can bring to his words when he’s not focused on some agenda (which he seemed to have been for the entire run of The Boys, which made it oh-so word heavy and not as natural feeling as previous series…).

(Two conflicting arguments about the writing… Ennis says too much, boo hoo, Ennis isn’t writing it, boo hoo.  I KNOW.)

Crossed is now an ongoing, but Ennis felt focused on his contribution to that series.  I can’t say what started first with Stitched, the movie or the book, but this is the first time I’ve read an Ennis tale that just feels like a vehicle for something else… perhaps he was able to fund the film in part if he agreed to write the book, I don’t know.  But it just doesn’t stick.  I mention Crossed because similarly, that story doesn’t have a proper end and it’s now been handed off to other writers – as Stitched has apparently become an ongoing written by Wolfer.  The difference there is that Crossed was truly about its characters, and so took its principles’ tales from a beginning to an end, whereas Stitched is a bit faceless.  The sketch of a story is there, and it’s an interesting concept with some rewarding moments peppered through, but, on the whole, it’s not one of the more notable (or memorable) Ennis books.