Heading Into ‘Battle Action’ With Garth Ennis & Brian K Vaughan

More Battle Action coming your way in 2024 – classic Brit characters, modern takes…

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After two previous anthology series bringing the classic characters from two pivotal series in Brit comics history – Battle and Action – we’re going to be treated to another run, 10 issues this time – More Battle, more Action, more Battle Action with more real great creatives onboard for the whole thing, including Garth Ennis and Brian K Vaughan.

Yep, the writers of Preacher and Saga are all in here for a new 10-issue, magazine-format title that also features the work of writers John Wagner, Torunn Grønbekk, Rob Williams, Dan Abnett, and Steve White. Artists bringing the strips to life this time round are Chris Burnham, Henry Flint, John McCrea, Tom Foster, PJ Holden, Dan Cornwell, Mike Dorey, Patrick Goddard, and John Higgins.

The two headliners here in Ennis and Vaughan take on two great Brit strips, with Vaughan and Chris Burnham giving us another look at the controversial Kids Rule OK strip from Action – the one that led to questions in Parliament and the comic being pulled from newsagents across Britain – whilst Ennis and Keith Burns give us what’s being trailed as the final story of WWII aerial ace Johnny Red.

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Johnny Red: A Couple Of Heroes by Ennis and Burns will run in one multi-parter across all 10 issues of Battle Action and finds Johnny facing his fate high above the Arctic Ocean in the dying days of World War II, with Ennis having this to say about the series…

A Couple Of Heroes’ sees Johnny and the Falcons battling the retreating Germans at the beginning of 1945. The war has a way to go yet, but for Johnny it can’t end too soon – his friends are nearly all dead, the woman he loves is missing in action, he’s not far off approaching burnout. But a figure from the very beginnings of the strip reappears with an offer of work, one that sees our hero flung back into the maelstrom on the deadliest mission of his life…
GARTH ENNIS

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Joining Johnny will be a guest feature in each of the 10 issues, including Dredger, Hellman of Hammer Force, HMS Nightshade, Hellman, Nina Petrova and Major Eazy – plus new takes on killer shark Hookjaw, former-enslaved-man-turned-outlaw El Mestizo, violent future sports series Death Game, and the aforementioned and always controversial Kids Rule OK. All of which means that there’s definitely more Action in Battle Action this time…

This time we’ve got more stories, more brilliant writers and artists – some from last time, some new – and more of an emphasis on Action, with half the ten stories featuring its characters.
GARTH ENNIS

Yep, if you could throw a criticism at the last Battle Action series, great though it was, it was that there was a hell of a lot of Battle and not much Action (if you get what I mean).

This time they seem to be doing a much more balanced mix of things, all kicking off with the news that the writer of Saga will be bringing his take to one of the most controversial British comic strips of all time – Kids Rule OK. This was the violent tale of kids on a rampage that led to that particular issue of Action being pulled from the shelves. Vaughan and Burnham revisit it with a story of an American kid in a hostile future London on the run from a mob of xenophobic British Punks – but he has a secret weapon they aren’t expecting.

Here’s Ennis on the inclusion of Brian K Vaughan –

Getting Brian on ‘Kids Rule OK’ is a particular coup. I personally think he’s the best writer to get into the business in the last thirty years, and his love of British comics gives this a nice sense of things coming full circle. I secured his involvement at great personal cost, namely a cheeseburger. I think it may have cost Rebellion a bit more.
GARTH ENNIS

Issue 1 will be released on the 28th August 2024, and subsequent issues will be released on the last Wednesday of each month through to May 2025.

Now, a look at the complete Johnny Red pages… from Johnny Red: A Couple Of Heroes by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns…