In conjunction with his up coming release, Johnny Red, with Titan Comics we recently caught up with Garth Ennis for a quick interview. We even asked him a little bit about the upcoming Preacher TV series for AMC.

SHS:. When you were a child growing up in Ireland, did you always want to be a writer?
GE: Not always. When I was very small I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but then I found out we hadn’t been at war with Germany for about thirty years and that took all the fun out of it. I suppose I realised I wanted to do something creative around my early teens.

SHS: Did you always work in comic books?
GE: Yep, only job I’ve ever had.

SHS: The book you are most well-known for creating, Preacher, is coming to TV next year. Are you excited for this?
GE: Very happy indeed.

SHS: How did it come about?
Seth Rogen and his writing partner, Evan Goldberg, read the book in their teenage years and loved it. Later on they got the opportunity to adapt it for AMC.

SHS: How involved with the project are you?
GE: I’ve given notes at each stage and I’m happy to say they’ve been addressed. But I don’t work directly on the show.

SHS: Do you feel that they can do justice to your work on AMC?
GE: So far I have no complaints.

SHS: Are there limits to what you can show on the TV that you feel might hinder the stories?
GE: Soon find out.

SHS: The next book you have coming out is Johnny Red, through Titan Comics, how did this book come about?
GE: I’d been writing the introductions for Titan Books’ reprints of the old Johnny Red series for some years, as well as some of their other Battle collections. I mentioned to Nick Landau that I’d love to do a new Johnny Red series, and he set about sorting out the rights. Not long after that artist Keith Burns showed up, and then we were off to the races.

SHS: Can you tell us a little bit about Johnny Red?
GE: Johnny Red tells the story of one Johnny Redburn, a working class lad from Liverpool who gets kicked out of the Royal Air Force in 1941 for punching an officer. Now disgraced, the only job he can get is as a crewman on a merchant ship bound for Murmansk, part of a supply convoy sent by the British to help the beleaguered Russians. The convoy comes under heavy German attack and Johnny takes to the air in his vessel’s Hurricane fighter. After combatting the Germans he makes for land and falls in with the survivors of Falcon Squadron- a Russian unit abandoned by their high command in the face of the enemy advance. Johnny gets the squadron back into action and flies with them against the Nazis- and so a legend is born.

SHS: What sets this apart from any of your previous work?
I read Johnny Red as a kid, from 1978 to about 1983, and the strip remains one of my all time favourites. Getting a chance to actually write the character is something of a dream come true, and Keith Burns’ amazing artwork only adds to that. It’s a little bit larger than life in comparison to my regular war comics, in that the basis of the strip is more or less politically impossible- a British pilot leading a Russian squadron would really have been out of the question. But the original strip brought home the horrific reality of warfare on the Eastern Front in a way that few others ever have, and that’s something I’ve tried to echo in this new Johnny Red series.

SHS: Is there any charter in comics that you haven’t worked on that you would like to work on?
Pretty much gotten through all the ones I really care about.

SHS: What advice do you have to young writers out there that want to break into comics?
In technical terms, try to get the dialogue right. If you can crack the way people speak to each other, your work will have a veracity that editors will respond to.

Beyond that, try to think in terms of survival. You want your book to last long enough to finish the story you want to tell. The Vertigo model, where you bask in critical acclaim while the book goes under inside a year and a half, is useless- because however well-intentioned you may have been, you didn’t finish the story. “Maybe next time” doesn’t really cut it. So be realistic about what size of an audience you have and whether they’ll support you for the time that you need.

If on the other hand you just want to write superhero comics, keep an eye not just on your sales but also on your editor- is he giving you work because you’re bringing something unique to the table, something reflected in sales, or just because you’re a competent place-holder for someone better? How secure is said editor at the company? Will he take you with him if he moves on to another department or company?

I’m hardly the first to say this, but use the companies to build an audience, and then take that audience with you when you go into independent creator-owned comics. If you’re sensible about it, you can maintain relationships with the mainstream outfits that’ll allow you to drop back in now and again whenever it suits you. I have a number of friends at both DC and Marvel, and I doubt any of them would quibble with the notion that the companies use us- so we may as well use them.

Thank you, Garth Ennis, for your time. We are are really looking forward to Preacher and Johnny Red!