Two For Ennis Completists

Much like the first volume Jimmy’s Bastards vol. 2:  What Did You Just Say? is one of the writer’s better recent comedic efforts.  This doesn’t mean that it’s particularly funny, unless the sight of seeing an insane Sean Connery-alike humping someones leg or men walking around with ginormous breasts sends you into irrepressible giggle fits.  That last bit is actually pertinent to the plot of the volume which has MI-6 agent Nancy trying to reverse the “gender fluid” epidemic which has swapped the genders of everyone in the world. She’s going to have to do it without Jimmy’s help, however, as he’s still massively traumatized from finding out in the previous volume that he was tricked into having sex with all of his daughters.  Russ Braun’s art is still great, the story’s execution is surprisingly solid for how ridiculous it all is, there’s an actually amusing bit of comedic ultraviolence in the final issue, and we’ve got the occasional moment where Ennis manages to make a decent point about modern-day standards. None of these change the fact that we really didn’t need a parody of James Bond’s worst excesses in this day and age, let alone one that can’t manage to be consistently funny.

Despite this coming as a follow-up to the original “World of Tanks” miniseries, World of Tanks vol. 2:  Citadel is actually a prequel.  We get to see what Karl and Freddie, two of the German tank operators from the previous mini, were up to during the Battle of Kursk while also getting a look at a Russian tank squad and how they have to deal with the awful British tanks they’ve been given.  If I’m being generous then the book’s all-over-the-place focus is an attempt by Ennis and artist P.J. Holden, who does his level best with the setting and characters, to mimic the chaos and uncertainty inherent in war. The good news is that whichever way you wind up feeling about that, Ennis’ traditional focus on ordinary people trying to do their best to survive the horrors of combat hasn’t lost its appeal.  Even if the characters here are a bit less defined than in his other war stories. Of which “Citadel” finds itself being in the middle of that particular road, yet still quite readable nonetheless.