Preview: ‘Battle Action’ Vol. 3 #4 — El Mestizo Enters The Fray And The Battle Action Gets Even Better

by Richard Bruton

More Battle, More Action, as Johnny Red takes to the skies for a final time and we venture into the American Civil War with El Mestizo…

The 10-issue series bringing back all the thrills of two classic Brit comics of the 1970s continues. Each issue features Garth Ennis and Keith Burns spinning us the tale of legendary airman Johnny Red, perhaps the last tale.

After that, each issue has a rotating back-up strip featuring more classic characters from both Battle and Action, with Rob Williams and Henry Flint taking us back to the American Civil War and a man who owes no allegiance to either side… El Mestizo, another of the late, great Carlos Ezquerra.

Johnny Red: A Couple of Heroes is promised as the finale to the adventure of Johnny Red, a disgraced RAF flyer who found fame fighting and flying for the Russians against the Nazis.

A face from Johnny’s past has brought him a new mission, one that could end with reinstatement and redemption, if he can survive it. has brought Johnny face to face with the man who saw him forced out of the RAF in disgrace and sent him east to spend his war fighting and flying for the Russians. And there’s even the promise of finding his lover, the legendary Angel of Death, heroine of the Soviet Union, Nina Petrova.

But whilst Johnny’s headed off on that mission to stop the Germans unleashing cholera on Moscow and planning a stop-off on the way, we spend the whole of this episode in the company of Nina Petrova, under interrogation in a Russian correctional Labour camp, a far cry from the heroine of the Soviet Union she once was.

Her interrogator wants a confession, and she gives her one, going back to a time where she flew, when she met her red devil, and how she fought for her country, only to discover that her country failed her, failed its people.

This one’s an excellent episode, just the sort of great comic writing that Ennis can do, distilling hope, horrors, betrayal, and lost idealism into just 14 pages.

It’s concise, tight storytelling at its finest, complete with Burns’s artwork that really does a superb job here, never better than when showing us the interrogation scenes, playing with angles and shadows so beautifully.

The back-up this month is a classic, with Rob Williams and Henry Flint bringing us a new adventure for the Alan Hebdon and Carlos Ezquerra-created El Mestizo. As Williams says in his intro to the strip, no one, absolutely no one, drew like Ezquerra, creating so many iconic characters – never heroes, Ezquerra’s art was always too nasty for that – including this one.

El Mestizo, first black lead in British comics, an outsider, amoral, violent, fighting for whichever side in the Civil War suited him.

But if no one drew like Ezquerra, Henry Flint’s a damn fine substitute for the great man on this one. He gets the dirty and nasty vibe just right, alongside a Williams story of greed and surprises, with El Mestizo paid by the Confederates time to track down a double agent who slaughters all who see his face. El Mestizo finds him comandeering ‘The General’ and follows the path of the stolen train, determined to bring ‘Mr Saul’ in and make himself rich from the plentiful bounty.

In this one we have another great strip, short, self-contained, never trying to do too much but managing, nonetheless, to get so much in here. The mystery over Mr Saul, the chase, the madness of a railwayman, El Mestizo’s brutality that changes, by the end, to something else… plenty of story, glorious artwork from Flint.

We’ve had four issues of Battle Action and it’s really turning into something rather special. The mix of the serialised Johnny Red and the one-off back-up strips works very well, with an excellent rotating list of creatives having their way with classic Brit comics characters. And in the front, Ennis and Burns are quietly crafting an epic tale to finish their work with Johnny Red, full of action sure but also, as this episode amply shows, capable of going deeper into the whole horrors of war thing as well.

Battle Action #4

Published by the Treasury of British Comics and out now in the UK

Johnny Red: A Couple of Heroes – by Garth Ennis, Keith Burns, with colours by Jason Wordie, letters by Rob Steen

El Mestizo: The General – by Rob Williams and Henry Flint, letters by Rob Steen