There's Something About...

Garth Ennis.

So his comics resume includes:

Preacher
Hellblazer
Hitman
Crossed
The Boys
Punisher

And others. And he's written some pretty gruesome shit.

I mean.

I mean there was meat fucking in Preacher. That's not a euphemism, there really was a dude who had sex with large piles of raw meat. Little guy. Liked Nazis, I think.

And Crossed.

Every time I think about Crossed, all I can think about is that someone got bitchslapped with a dismembered horse's penis in that book.

That's mostly what you think about when you think about Garth Ennis' writing.

But then you keep reading his stuff, and you find little things. These tiny little things. He likes Christmas and Superman and women, and it all comes through in his writing.

More often than not, men are the victims in the stories he writes. Men suffer the fates that women often suffer in fiction; in comics, and in a lot of his writing, everyone winds up getting what they deserve in one way or another.

Look at Preacher. Look at Tulip! Look at Kit in Hellblazer! At Debbie in Hitman! Garth Ennis writes vulnerable women who sometimes make bad choices who can also love like crazy and beat the crap out of the men they love.

These are old books, I'll give you that. I don't remember much from the Boys aside from a few glaring things; Herogasm, and Wee Hughie getting sexually assaulted and Butcher being...well...Butcher. That story was more about politics and conspiracies than it was about people a lot of the time. And it does start out with Wee Hughie's girlfriend getting exploded pretty hard. And Crossed...horse's penis. That's...that's pretty much all I remember from Crossed.

But Punisher! Look at Ma Gnucci! She was a piece of shit, because women can be pieces of shit.

I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about all the one-off issues Ennis would write where John helped ghosts on Christmas and Tommy stood on a roof with Superman, and Jesse spent time with his long-lost mom (OMG JESSE'S MOM YOU GUYS).

I don't know.

I just can forgive Ennis pretty much anything because he writes so much horrible shit but at the same time, there's so much heart to his horrible shit.

Recommended Reading:

Hitman Tp's vol 1-7
Preacher tp's vol 1-whatever the heck the new printings go up to I can't remember
Punisher: Welcome Back Frank
Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, Bloodlines, Tainted Love