Garth Ennis predominantly writes two very specific types of comic: war comics (War Stories, Battlefields, World of Tanks) and schoolboy-level humour/violent comics (the Kev books, Section Eight, Jimmy’s Bastards); Adventures in the Rifle Brigade combines the two!
In the first story, the Rifle Brigade stumble into a raid on a secret Nazi V2 rocket site; in the second (and final) story, they head to the Middle East to steal Hitler’s famous singular testicle that will grant them the power to win the war!
It’s intentionally extremely silly and over-the-top, and it gets to be a bit much at times, but I still thought the book was pretty decent - though one book is definitely enough!
The “characters” are determinedly underwritten. Most simply say one stereotypical thing only. Like Crumb (“Ey-oop!” - a Yorkshire thing), Geezer (“Yer aht of ordah!” - a London thing), Hank the Yank (“Gawd dammit!” - an American thing), while the Scottish Piper just plays his bagpipes (which of course induces profuse internal bleeding in the enemy).
I loved how Ennis wrote the squad leader, “Khyber” Darcy whose dialogue was always sparklingly raffish. This is an example - they’ve parachuted out of a plane and watched a bomb demolish a German building: “Trifle warm tonight! That’s what you get for playing with matches, Fritz! Terra firma coming up, you chaps! Keep an eye out for Brother Boche!” Nearly everything Khyber says is said with that kind of what-ho gusto which can’t have been easy for Ennis, so hats off for that.
“Doubtful” Milk though is a character that hasn’t aged well. He’s the effete member of the group and Ennis constantly uses him to do the long-outdated “queer fear” joke. Har har, he’s gay - isn’t that funny!? He’s GAY! That’s THE JOKE! He’s a man who wants to have sex with another man!!! HAHAHAHAHA… yeah. This comic came out in the mid-’00s and it wasn’t funny then, or ever really, and looks as dumb as it always was, but more so, in 2021.
And that’s the kind of humour that makes up most of this book: Viz/Andy Capp level. Which, if you don’t get that reference, just means a British crude, lewd paradox of childish adult humour. One Panzer Commander is a ladies’ man called Flaschmann (like George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman), while there’s an Indiana Jones parody called Maryland Smith (I did laugh when he accidentally whipped his own eye out!).
There’s a lot of tedious Carry On-esque sexual innuendo. The big-boobed SS lady is called Gasch, the Gestapo dickhead is called Wankshaft, and the fake Middle Eastern country they go to is Yemen with an “S” instead of a “Y” (though Ennis added a second “M” - I guess there is a line after all)! Some of it will hit or miss depending on the reader and that was the case for me as well.
The stories though aren’t that enthralling to read. The Rifle Brigade are never in “trouble” for long and get out of their scrapes as cartoonishly as they got into them. Still, the dialogue is aces, the scenes showing Khyber’s homelife were funny and the late great Carlos Ezquerra’s artwork is as strong as it ever was.
Adventures in the Rifle Brigade is a bit too OTT for its own good, and parts of it haven’t aged well, but it’s a fun outing with enough chuckles and imaginative nonsense in it to be worth checking out for Ennis fans. Particularly if you like his sober and meticulously-detailed war comics and want to see a different side of him!
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