Preview: ‘Battle Action’ Vol. 3 #6 — Helmann Of Hammer Squadron Returns To Action

by Richard Bruton

More Battle, more Action, as we get a double Garth Ennis-written issue, with more of the final Johnny Red and a stunning yet brutal low-key return to Hellman of Hammer Squadron.

The sixth issue of this rather damn enjoyable volume of Battle Action brings us another excellent episode of Johnny Red from Ennis and Keith Burns in this 10-issue series. But the real draw this month has to be the back-up strip, where Ennis is joined by Mike Dorey, artist co-creator of Hellman of Hammer Squad, who provides some genuinely chilling artwork for the story ‘A Walk In The Woods‘, a tale that’s one of the best war stories I’ve read in a long, long time.

Johnny Red’s tale has the Brit air ace taking a back seat to go back in time for a little look at the other side in the war, a German air ace who’s also found himself cast out, Johnny’s mirror, whose wretched existence takes him from Nazi pin-up boy to mutilated exile.

Again, as we did with Nina’s story a few episodes back, this one’s a self-contained little thing of an alternative viewpoint, but this time you get the impression Ennis is setting things up for another shot at Johnny.

Johnny Red – by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns

Aside from this being a beautifully done war piece from Ennis, I don’t think I’ve talked quite enough about just what Burns brings to the party.

His aviation art is sublime, of course it is, he’s an aviation specialist after all. But it’s what he’s doing with the storytelling that’s the really good thing here, a fabulous mix of action and character, bringing so much more to Ennis’s story.

But, like I said, although Johnny Red is great, it’s the back-up that’s the draw here, a story you just shouldn’t miss, the best war tale I’ve read in years. There’s a perfection to it, both in Ennis giving us the moment this German fighting honorably for the Fatherland discovers the brutal, hideous truth behind the war, and the fact that original co-creator of Hellman, Dorey, is here in art duties, giving us beautiful black and white and greywash work that’s just perfect for the tone of this Hellman story, one that brings us the horrors of war, the particular horrors of the Holocaust, both to us the reader and to Hellman himself.

There’s no intro to this one, unlike every other back-up strip thus far. Because it just doesn’t need it. All you need is perfectly shown on the first few pages. You know instinctively the background here – the honourable German tank commander, beloved by his men, fighting for his country, not for Hitler, a man who finds Nazism an anathema, who’s fighting for his country, the Fatherland.

Hellman, A Walk In The Woods – by Garth Ennis and Mike Dorey

It takes just four pages before all that’s ripped from him, just three pages of a walk in the woods, as his men rest in a moments respite from the hell of the Russian offensive of 1941. First, he stumbles upon a drunk German soldier, but, with a turn of the page, everything goes horribly wrong with Hellman’s war, the pure war, the righteous war that he’d convinced himself he was fighting.

Hellman’s plunged into Hitler’s final solution and HIS war, the one he was fighting as an honourable man, is over, his idealism revealed as the sham we all knew it was. Soldiers stand over the mass grave, naked bodies of the innocents beneath them, and the horror is exposed for us all, him and us. Any thoughts of war comics being in some way an enjoyable thing destroyed for the reader, any idea of being an honourable soldier in this war gone for Hellman.

The impossible rears up, Hellman questioning, unbelieving, his realisation heartbreaking in its way, the plaintive words of ‘My men have been fighting for this. Dying for this,’ really powerful and illustrative of the man’s character.

His response to it all is obvious, more wish-fulfilment than reality. But it’s his return to his men that’s more telling, knowing what we and he know, his character’s forever changed, any hope he had of this being a just war gone, his entire existence and reason for fighting gone. It’s so powerful and affecting that I can only imagine Ennis wrote this as his final word on Hellman. After this, there’s no turning back, no possibility of an honest war.

As I said, it’s beautifully done, a take that rips any ideas of honourable war away. Brutal yet beautifully done.

Again, this series of Battle Action just gets better and better, each episode of Johnny Red building into something epic, each back-up done so well, but never so well as Ennis and Dorey do here. This is one you should really be picking up.