Garth Ennis Brings War Stories to Dynamite

Garth Ennis’ fans can sometimes lump themselves into a number of different groups - Preacher fans, Hitman fans, Hellblazer fans, Punisher fans, heck, even Judge Dredd fans. There’s one other criminally underappreciated chunk of Ennis work that can sometimes be overlooked, though – his war comics.

Over the years, Ennis produced eight standalone issues of War Stories for Vertigo, and has recently begun War is Hell at Marvel’s MAX imprint.

And now, there are more to come – from Dynamite Entertainment with Garth Ennis: Battlefields.

“I’m going to over-simplify this,” Dynamite President Nick Barucci said when asked what brought Ennis to Dynamite for the project. “But I think that it boils down to the fact that we both have ground rules that the other respects. While I can’t fully speak for Garth, I can say that we really appreciate (i.e.) love his writing, and are open to work on any project with him that we believe is viable for everyone and he wants to take to us.

“Garth is truly a thinking man’s writer. While there is shock value to much of his writing, he plans and thinks everything through. From what I can tell, he thinks it through, and what it will mean for the story 30, 40 issues from now, or even on the last page of the last issue. That takes discipline. We love working with Garth because before he starts a project, he will openly tell us the earliest he can get on it, and if we need him to push it back slightly for scheduling, he will accommodate. We truly just have an open and honest relationship with each other.

“I can also tell you, we probably hit Garth with a project every week or so that we feel is up his alley (ok, maybe not every week or so, but you get the idea). There were about four projects that we wanted to do with Garth, he said no to each of them. I then asked him what else he wanted to do, and he said ‘War stories, do you want to do then?’ He was concerned because sales on war stories are not as great as sales on other genres for him, and he didn’t want to take the chance and give us a genre that didn’t work. I can honestly say, that I looked at him for a second, and said we would be proud to do this series of series. He’s got great takes on all of his projects, and all we have to do is promote it well, and it will sell well. That’s part of the relationship. Garth does his job great, and even works with the artists he works with to get the best out of them he can, and we do our job. It’s nice.”

Battlefields will not be connected to any of Ennis’ previous war stories, Barucci said. The first issue is planned for October, with a cover by John Cassaday. Look for more soon on Newsarama.