The following is an interview with award-winning writer Garth Ennis (Hitman, The Boys, Preacher) regarding the return of fan-favorite character Babs in the sequel comic book series, Babs: The Black Road South, with AHOY Comics. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Ennis about his enjoyment of digging into Babs’ character for this story arc, what may be ahead for the Babs series overall, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: You will soon be returning to the world of sword and sorcery with The Black Road South. What were you most excited to tackle when considering new adventures for Babs, Barry, and Izzy?
Garth Ennis: Probably the character of Babs herself. She’s very enjoyable to write because she’s such a nice mixture of lousy attitude and bad luck—she’s irreverent, largely fearless, takes no shit. But she isn’t much of a planner—her long-term goal is to get rich and live a life of unimaginable luxury, which seems reasonable enough, but she puts about as much thought into getting there as someone buying a lottery ticket. Any scheme she does get involved with is usually not terribly well thought out and results in disaster. One step forward, two back, that’s Babs. If she does the right thing, it’s normally by accident or at least incidental, which is another reason I find her so likable.
BD: Your continued partnership with artist and co-creator Jacen Burrows exudes a rhythm in the visual storytelling that is truly palpable for the reader. Having frequently worked together, do you find that you’re still able to surprise or challenge one another throughout the creative process?
GE: I think it’s very much a question of trust, something I find vital with any long-term collaborator. I won’t ask the impossible and he won’t cut corners. If I put some major battle scene or enormously complex vista in, I hope he’ll see it’s important to the story. From my perspective, the results are always enormously rewarding—any surprises, and there are many, are sheer delight.
BD: In a prior interview, you noted that you were cautious of talking about your work with satire, “because people like to think of satire as being absolutely devastating. Like, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ and can bring down governments, when all it usually ends up doing is pissing people off. Making a difference is another matter entirely.” In being able to continue with Babs into its second story arc, were there particular themes or concepts that you were eager to explore in the hopes of making an impact with the reader?
GE: I’m putting that on the back-burner this time around. I’ll probably come back to those ideas in series three. What I’m more interested in for this series is exploring the character and history of Babs herself, specifically seeing how far I can push the audience’s sympathy for her. We’re going to find out about some things she’s been up to that people might possibly see as being a tad dubious—that’s a notion I find intriguing, just because so many characters in adventure fiction seem so high-minded and unbelievable to me. We all like to think we’ll always do the right thing, but I’m interested in the idea of someone who (morally speaking) kinda-sorta-vaguely-maybe muddles through.
BD: Are there any other projects – past or current – that you would like to highlight for our readers?
GE: I have a new book out with Steve Epting from TKO, Partisan, which is a companion piece to Sara from a few years back. It’s about a young mother who finds herself caught up in the resistance to the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in the Second World War; I’d honestly say it’s among the very best things I’ve ever written. There’s a new Action special coming next year from Rebellion, celebrating the title’s 50th anniversary, for which I’ve written Hellman and Dredger. And I’ve just made my first foray into prose fiction in the Words Only anthology, something I found very rewarding creatively—that’s with a story called “Jamie,” featuring one of my favourite characters, Jamie McKenzie, from my war story, Out of the Blue.
Beyond that, there’ll be more Battle Action from Rebellion, another series from AHOY in a roughly similar vein to Babs, and collections of some of my recent efforts: The War, from Boom, one of my darkest stories ever with art by Becky Cloonan, and Johnny Red: A Couple of Heroes and Rogue Trooper: When a GI DIes, both published by Rebellion.
BD: Lastly, if given the opportunity, do you see yourself (and Jacen) continuing Babs’ world beyond The Black Road South?
GE: Definitely. As soon as I started writing Babs in her first series, I knew she was going to go a long way. I’d like to catch up with some of the characters from last time, see how they’ve been doing. But for now we’re headed south on, well, The Black Road South.
