Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: John McCrea
Publisher: Avatar Press
Released: 11th June 2014
This is a very rare comic. Not only is it NOT set in fantasy land New York with cold war era Russian’s or some other dated villains, but it’s actually funny and it mentions real life stuff like the Ulster Volunteer Force and how they feel left out of Ireland in 2014. This is very unusual in contemporary comics where a depressingly large number of writers are still lost in the 1990’s. Sometimes they go past 1994 into the dangerous areas of the late 1990’s, but past 2001, or September 2001 to be more precise? That is about as rare as finding an informed young person coming out of one of the Rockefeller funded feminist liberal universities. It happens, but it’s bloody surprising when it does.
In this book you have Eastern European girls working in coffee shops and the protagonists are men in their mid forties who worry about their impending deaths and having nothing to show for their lives. When does this ever happen in comics? Comic book protagonists are usually American 1990’s clichés that bear no resemblance to real people living in 2014. This is amazing; a comic book that has people in it who actually read like they could exist. The main characters in this book feel lost in a new age of mass immigration, religious compromise and the (apparent) lack of anything to fight against. Wow, what an interesting new concept, comic book characters who have some basis in the real world.
Okay so you don’t get any mention of the EU imposed looming debt crisis, unemployment, the decimation of the middle-class and all of the other nightmares attached to the backs of Irish people by private banks operating out of the EU zone, but what you do get at least has some kind of resemblance to 2014 reality.
It’s recognisable, and it’s funny as Hell. It’s totally gross, so I wouldn’t want any kids reading this book, but when a comic book opens with a priest conducting a funeral and telling you what he really thinks about the person in the box, well then that really gets my attention. Here’s how the priest describes the corpse, and remember these words are spoken at the funeral service-
“A bigger waste o’space than that utter ballacks would be hard to conceive of. Indeed it is difficult to find words harsh enough to convey the sheer disdain I feel for Spence and his kind- The lurching, slabbering, twitching, spineless scum that shame our species with every worthless breath they draw, that must give the almighty pause when he gazes upon the very horrors he has wrought.’
Pretty funny, don’t you think? It’s a great way to start a book. I’m already laughing, and although my gradual understanding of the subtext of this book (Irish people over the age of forty are useless scum who need to go away and let the EU continue to rape Ireland), took off some of my enjoyment, it was still a fantastically amusing morning read that made me laugh.
And before anybody criticises me for thinking that the Northern Ireland peace process was a bad thing, I obviously don’t. It was a great thing, and what Garth Ennis is doing in this book by showing the redundancy of some of the old players is not only funny, but it rings true as well as an important piece of socio-political insight. I just wish he would talk about some of the issues plaguing Ireland today. Issues brought by their politician’s complete capitulation to the EU zone, and the private banks that control it.
Am I expecting too much? Probably, but I have to mention it here. I was looking for just one panel that mentioned the current day problems, and I didn’t find it. Is Ireland a paradise today? No, it’s not, so why not mention it? I’m fed up with comic books living in the past, and although this one does criticise the past, it doesn’t appear to be criticising the NOW, just the people of the past who can’t get into that now. Oh, the art’s suitably gross as well. Get the book, for a laugh, but remember the sub-text. This is a comic book written by a man who (and I’m assuming this from what he has written here) thinks that centralised, banker controlled globalism is a good thing, and that people over the age of forty are useless ‘Dicks.’ Anti New World Order comic, when will you come? Not here, but this was fun. Rating: 8/10
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