2 out of 5

Well, there had to be one typical Garth Ennis story in the mix.  Let’s get something straight: I’m no huge supporter or big business, or management training seminars, or sacrificing the little people for the greater good.  I’m not political and I generally don’t care about much of anything but getting to work on time and buying comics; I can’t stand firmly behind socialism or capitalism or democracy or anything that has any kind of ‘idea’ behind it, because to me, all is in flux, the grass is always greener, and so many things we want to hassle over are just words.  Is there a point when these things can and will affect me, and will I regret not being more vocal when that time comes?  Perhaps, but I won’t be able to REALLY learn that lesson until such a thing happens, or until whatever events or non-events lead my brain to an understanding of something to get behind and push.

‘Kay?

So: having worked in retail for a good junk of years, and then, on a grander scale, having worked for businesses where decisions that seem questionable are made in offices you’ll never be invited to, by people who will get fired or promoted before you ever shake their hand, I grasp the animosity that can be felt toward the seeming blindness of authority.  Now while I haven’t had the desire to climb to such great heights, I’ve gotten to high enough rungs in the ladder, at various points, to be able to look down and see that sometimes you have to make decisions which affect those below you, those just starting their climb who you may never meet.  From that same vantage, I can look up and realize that people two or three or four levels above might be considering the same about me.

When decisions are one-to-one, often enough, we are all human.  And this balance can shift greatly, so its one-to-#, and that person leads effectively, and thoughtfully, knows every person’s name, etc.  Maybe at this point some shitty decisions are made, but there’s a sense of communication and visibility.  But overall, let’s say some greater good is accomplished.  So someone says that this “one” should be leading several #’s, to the point where physically you can no longer truly see and guide all of these people at once, maybe only one pack at a time.  So in your stead, you task a trusted #2 from each group, and you (#1, we’re switched p.o.v’.s here) will circulate around each group, still eventually saying hello to one and all, but listening to the updates of your #2’s to get up to speed.  This process goes well and continues, and soon you have as many #2’s as were in your original one-to-# crowd.  Meaning it’s more effective, time-wise, to just meet with your group of 2’s, and maybe video-conference to all of the underlings on occasion, but you’ll rarely meet them at this point.  Continue to extrapolate this and you’ll have the ‘how did this happen’ of almost any business structure, or… say, military structure.

Screaming Eagles is, I’m sure, accurate.  A group of troops near the end of WWII are tasked with scouting out a place for a visiting general to bed down.  The place is behind enemy lines, but our ignorant leaders just shrug and figure the war’s almost over, so screw anything else, just go check it out.  Our lead characters go to the assigned region and find a German townhouse stuffed with goodies – wine, food, women – and concoct a tale to say they got stuck on their travels, figuring to get some deserved R&R at the house before returning to their spat-upon existence as soldiers.  Dave Gibbons draws the whole thing with old-school gusto, nice square panels, good sense of paneling, and Ennis shades each character on slightly different sides of the manly soldier – the fighter, the thinker, the nervy one, etc.  35 pages or so of gallivanting, intercut with one-page splashes of war atrocities where friends of these soldiers were lost.  It’s understandable why they’re bitter, and understandable why the only real dialogue beyond the setup is to complain about authority mindlessly tossing soldiers into the fire.  Accurate mindset, believable story-telling.

And yes, now that the process is established, some people are born never knowing that these small groups exist.  Power corrupts, people DO look at the big picture over the little picture.  Authority generally does suck.  But any black and white opinion is ignorant, in my eyes, and though Ennis tries to give some balance to his character’s outright dislike of their leaders, it’s obvious what side we’re supposed to be on, down to the final “fuck you”ish panel.  In “Nightingale,” Garth does an excellent job of plodding us through the weight of decisions that are made.  Here we’re rabble-rousers, giving the finger to our leaders.  It’s a good story, well done, but such a basic tale in comparison to the other War Storys, and one that doesn’t push us too far outta the easy box for thinkin’.  I mean, you can buy anarchy t-shirts at Target, right?