3 out of 5

Yeah, this is what I was worried about.  This isn’t War Stories.  ‘War Stories’ was a series of 40 page one-shots Ennis did for Vertigo some years back.  We know Garth loves his war history, and we know he loves to have talking heads relate some painful story in the middle of the most random of tales, like ‘Thor.’  But generally he’s good at it, so we let it slide.  What made the original ‘War Stories’ generally effective was that it was the perfect amount of space for Ennis to develop some characters to tell a story, or to tell a joke, or to relate some history, with the forced cap at the end of the issue guiding the author to, well, a conclusion.  Not every issue was a win, but many were good, if not occasionally stunning.  Latter-day Ennis has become chattier and chattier, seemingly confident in his gift of gab to stuff his series with even more talking heads, only he’s advanced to sounding somewhat curmudgeonly as opposed to just morosely wistful.  ‘Battlefields’ happened, and it was sort of like ‘War Stories’ except Ennis was doing these things in 3 or 4 parts, and even picking up some stories in later issues.  ‘Fields’ wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as focused anymore.  That forced restriction just shaped those stories so well.

And the announcement that ‘War Stories’ was going to be an ongoing at Avatar.  But I was afraid this was actually going to be another ‘Battlefields.’  And that’s what it reads like.  Arc 1 – 3 parts.  About an American flying for the Brits, and features plenty of panels where you can’t really tell what’s going on because this is written and drawn by model plane enthusiasts who think we know what all of these models look like by defining nose shapes and gun positions and whatnot.  Are they poorly written?  Not at all.  Although Ennis’ hopping into the first person diary narrative doesn’t seem necessary, honestly, but I’m sure it’ll lead to some emotional revelation toward tail’s end.  And he’s keeping in chatty in check.  Still: it’s not ‘War Stories.’  It’s… the kind of faceless quality I expect from Ennis at this point, though his work on ‘Crossed’ and, recently, ‘Caliban’ show that he’s definitely still capable of being less verbose and more effective.

If you liked ‘Battlefields,’ this is the exact same thing.