{PDF EPUB} Battler Britton by Garth Ennis Battler Britton
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Battler Britton by Garth Ennis Battler Britton. WildStorm celebrates Battler Britton''s 50th anniversary with this rollicking 5- issue miniseries from the hallowed halls of IPC, the legendary home of England''s greatest comics creations! As the Nazis rain terror throughout Europe, Allied forces are on the run in North Africa. It''s October 1942 and Rommel''s Panzers are unrelenting in their pursuit. Wing Commander Robert Battler Britton of the RAF and his squadron have been dispatched to an American airstrip to spearhead a joint action against Hitler''s war machine. Now they must survive taunts, threats, and assaults. and that''s just from the Yanks! Garth Ennis. Garth Ennis (b. 16 January 1970) grew up in Holywood, County Down, reading Battle Picture Weekly and 2000AD . He attended Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, an outspoken atheist in a school dominated by evangelical Christianity, where he first experimented with creating his own comics, drawing the violent, blackly humorous strip "Sith Ifrica" and sharing it with friends. He studied English Literature at Queen's University, Belfast, but dropped out during his first year to write comics for Fleetway's politically-aware, mature readers' anthology Crisis . His first series was "Troubled Souls" in 1989, examining Northern Ireland's "troubles", with painted art by John McCrea. A comedy sequel, "For a Few Troubles More", followed, as did "True Faith", which satirised Christianity and his schooldays, including a character looking to hold God to account and references to popular movie tough-guys, themes he would later return to. In 1990 he began writing for 2000AD , starting with time travel comedy "Time Flies", and taking over as regular writer on Judge Dredd for three years. The following year he broke into American comics, writing DC's horror title Hellblazer for four years, and their comedy-horror title The Demon for three. On the former he established a creative partnership with artist Steve Dillon, which continued into their original series Preacher , a riotous contemporary western about a disillusioned Texan minister, possessed by the offspring of an angel and a demon, hunting down God to hold him to account for abandoning his creation, and advised by the ghost of John Wayne. On The Demon , Ennis and artist John McCrea created Hitman , a super-powered Irish-American contract killer, who got his own series from 1996 to 2001. Starting in 2001, Ennis became the regular writer on Marvel's vigilante character The Punisher , which he wrote on and off in various formats until 2009. Inspired by the comics of his childhood, he has written a number of war comics, including revivals of aviators Enemy Ace , Battler Britton and The Phantom Eagle and sci-fi aviator Dan Dare , and his original series War Story and Battlefields . His character Kev Hawkins, a hapless former SAS corporal, has stumbled through several spin-offs of The Authority . In 2006 he launched The Boys , an ongoing satirical series about a team of US government agents who control and, if necessary, eliminate super- heroes. His most recent creations are the housewife-cum-vigilante Jennifer Blood , and Stitched , a horror story set in Afghanistan, which he directed as a short film and wrote as a comic drawn by Mike Wolfer. His comics are characterised by black humour, violence, profanity, macho sentimentality and a fascinated scepticism towards religion, and are strongly influenced by action cinema, from John Wayne and Clint Eastwood to Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, as well as the laconic style of comics writer John Wagner. He lives in New York. Battler Britton. Garth Ennis is probably best known for two styles of writing: the extremely violent sensationalism of graphic novels like Preacher ; and more recently, his hard-hitting but historically accurate and empathetic War Stories . Battler Britton follows in the latter vein, fictionalising the heroics of World War II without shying too far away from the immense destructive force of modern warfare. If the book’s name sounds familiar, you may have come across Britton before, though not for a long time. The character is another of the classic characters from IPC’s archives which, along with Albion and a handful of others, have been resurrected for a modern audience. Robert “Battler” Britton is a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force. Commanding his own squadron of trusted veterans, he’s one of Britain’s most successful pilots, thanks to his superior strategic thinking, his courage, and his survivalist instinct that always seems able to get him back home if he has to ditch his aircraft. Ennis’s take on the character sees him teaming up with an American squadron, camped behind enemy lines in the heart of the Sahara desert. Although the two squadrons take a bit of time to get over their cultural differences, Britton’s leadership pulls the group together to take on some serious German opposition. If it sounds a bit gung-ho and Boy’s Own then, to a certain extent it is. But Ennis and Wilson have managed to cut through the worst aspects of such stories and bring out an action-packed tale with more than its fair share of heroics, without descending into glibly nationalistic nonsense. With as much of the story occurring on the ground, building the characters and conflicts between the allies, as there is following grand dog-fights against German Messerschmitts, this is a racy, evocative and impressive piece of war fiction. Related. RATINGS. Story 5 Art 4 Overall 4. Written by Garth Ennis Art by Colin Wilson Published by WildStorm (US), Titan Books (UK) First published in 2007 Originally published as Battler Britton 1-5. Written by Andy Shaw. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Battler Britton. Wing Commander Robert Hereward "Battler" Britton , a World War II Spitfire pilot billed as "the fighting ace of land, sea and air", was created by writer Mike Butterworth and artist Geoff Campion, although editor Leonard Matthews supplied his name, and first appeared in The Sun in January 1956. He became the front cover star in 1958, and in 1959 The Sun was briefly renamed Battler Britton's Own Weekly , before merging into Lion . The character next appeared in Knock-Out in 1960-61, again on the cover. After that he became one of the mainstays of Thriller Picture Library , Air Ace Picture Library and War Picture Library , drawn by numerous artists, including Hugo Pratt, Francisco Solano Lopez, Ian Kennedy, Pat Nicolle and Graham Coton. He was one of the characters acquired from Egmont by DC Comics, and in 2006 they published a 5-part Battler Britton miniseries through their Wildstorm imprint, written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Colin Wilson. Battler Britton by Garth Ennis. Garth Ennis clearly has a soft spot for the old war stories contained in British anthology titles like the now defunct Battle . In his opening foreword he points out that the British comics have been woefully neglected and un-curated. As a result, a number of classic stories dwell only in nostalgia. Nostalgia is often a deceptive lover and while some stories are really good and culturally important to the history of the British Isles ( Charley’s War please stand up!), others were only ever popular because they were products of the time and era they were written in. We have fond memories of reading them ergo they are good. Obviously not always the case, and Ennis’s affection for the old Battler Britton material proves that. World War II Air Force Wing Commander Robert Hereward ‘Battler’ Britton first appeared in 1956 courtesy of Mike Butterworth and Geoff Campion, appearing in various anthologies until finally fading away. At some point DC purchased the rights for old Battler, and in 2006 Garth Ennis was handed the assignment that allowed Battler to take to the skies again. The premise for Battler Britton is straight forward. Battler takes to the skies, pummels Nazi pilots, runs into a bit of a tight spot, rallies, then gives the Jerries another beating. Over the years the stories became more hard-edged and less puffed up with the bravado of the victors, Ennis and artist Colin Wilson honouring the latter with more or less exactly the same format. As part of an Allied operation Battler leads his 399 squadron into the deserts of North Africa to join US squadron the 107th and whip them into shape, before Rommel runs rough-shod over everyone to join Hitler’s armies in Europe. Sounds simple enough, but first Britton has to stop the Brits and Yanks from generally fighting and undermining each other and get them pointed at the Nazis. As far as plot goes, that’s it. Ennis wanted to introduce Battler to a generation before the old flying ace was forgotten and that’s exactly what he’s done. His writing and Colin Wilson’s artwork capture the essence of Battler Britton in every way, and by the standard of previous Battler Britton stories it’s quite good. Unfortunately that’s where the problem lies. Battler Britton , even with talents like Ennis and Wilson, is now completely out of its time in every way. The narrative suited the years after the war because it was still relatively fresh in people’s minds. It’s also what the strict regulating bodies permitted – an indefatigably British hero. The style of writing is clunky and Ennis is far too skilled to get away with that. Wilson’s artwork is classic, but it is hard to follow the highly detailed aircraft even in colour.