Even More ‘Battle Action’ — HMS Nightshade And John Wagner Alongside The Final ‘Johnny Red’ Tale

The third volume of classic Brit comics characters from Battle and Action reimagined by Garth Ennis, Keith Burns, and pals.

Each issue of this 10-issue series sees Garth Ennis and Keith Burns give us the last Johnny Red tale with superstar pairings on the back-up strip, which this week means John Wagner and Dan Cornwell giving us more from Wagner’s classic seafaring tale, HMS Nightshade.

The Johnny Red storyline continues with Johnny coming face to face with the man who was his downfall in the RAF at the start of his aviation career and led him to his own private war in Russia.

Lots of typically Ennis sticking two fingers up at the ruling classes as we’ve come to expect. But this toffee-nosed bastard has a backstory, all in service to the tale, one that fills us in on just why he’s here offering Johnny a gig and a chance for redemption.

Yep, a whole episode of backstory. Luckily, with Ennis and Burns, you have two creators on top form, and it’s eminently readable, a set-up for what’s to come for sure, fleshing out a life that we’re, given that this is billed as the final Johnny Red tale, is about to reach a conclusion of one sort or another.

It’s all playing out very nicely indeed.

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As for the second strip, well, that’s got the master, John Wagner, returning to the strip he co-created for the 1970s Battle Picture Weekly with Mike Western. Now, I’m sure I read this somewhere that Ennis reckons HMS Nightshade was the best war story he’d ever read – but for the life of me I can’t find any evidence of that anywhere. But if he didn’t say it, he probably thinks it – HMS Nightshade is really just one of those must-read war story classics, the tale of a Corvette class ship tasked with protecting allied supply ships from the German U-boats.

And here, with Cornwell taking the artistic reins, we have another tale of its exploits protecting those supply convoys – loaded with a particularly great way that he’s doing the facial expressions and body language of the regular sailors here.

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After a bit of tense cat and mouse with a U-boat in really bloody awful conditions, Nightshade’s about to come into way too close a contact with the enemy far too big to give the little Corvette any chance.

But war’s a funny thing, and that’s just how this one plays out, a distinctly low-key tale of the everyday horrors of war, of men doing what must be done. There’s no triumphalism, no gung-ho we’re the good guys, they’re the baddies, here. Just a perfectly told tale of a minor skirmish amongst so many in a long, hard war. Quite brilliantly done by all concerned.

Battle Action #2, Featuring Johnny Red and HMS Nightshade by Garth Ennis, Keith Burns, John Wagner and Dan Cornwell. Colours by Jason Wordie and Matt Soffe. Letters by Rob Steen.

Published by the Treasury of British Comics on 2 October 2024

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Now, how about a couple of previews to show you just how good this one looks and reads…