The Stringbags
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
If you do the incredible often enough, they'll want you to do the impossible.
Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy began World War II with aircraft that could devastate enemy warships and merchantmen at will. Britain's Royal Navy squadrons went to war equipped with the Fairey Swordfish. A biplane torpedo bomber in an age of monoplanes, the Swordfish was underpowered and undergunned; an obsolete museum piece, an embarrassment. Its crews fully expected to be shot from the skies. Instead, they flew the ancient Stringbag into legend.
Writer Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys, War Stories) and artist PJ Holden (Battlefields, World of Tanks: Citadel) present the story of the men who crewed the Swordfish: from their triumphs against the Italian Fleet at Taranto and the mighty German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic, to the deadly challenge of the Channel Dash in the bleak winter waters of their homeland. They lived as they flew, without a second to lose--and the greatest tributes to their courage would come from the enemy who strove to kill them. Based on the true story of the Royal Navy's Swordfish crews, The Stringbags is an epic tale of young men facing death in an aircraft almost out of time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ennis again achieves what his best WWII comics, such as Johnny Red: The Hurricane and Night Witches, have done: illuminate a little-known corner of that sprawling conflict and highlight the humanity of those involved in pulse-pounding battles. Ennis showcases Britain's obsolete and widely mocked Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers (called Stringbags for their ability to carry just about anything), whose durability and slow speed proved advantageous in three real-life battles. Inventing a fictional three-man crew with something to prove as his through line, Ennis takes the chummy and smart-assed trio of Archie, Ollie, and Pops from Britain's surprise assault on the Italian fleet at Taranto in 1940 (whose stunning success inspired the Japanese plan for Pearl Harbor) to the desperate mission to sink Hitler's seemingly unkillable warship Bismarck, and a last-minute assault with little fighter cover on the German Navy's Channel Dash op. Each battle featuring this "small, peculiar force with a reputation for doing the impossible" is drawn in dynamic and detailed page layouts by Holden (the Judge Dredd series) that pair wide explosion-pocked action panels with tight inserts of pop-eyed characters. While realistic about the costs of war, Ennis still imbues his heroes with a hard-to-resist jaunty humor ("spot of aviation, then?"). A real corker of a war comic, this expertly balances research, amusement, and stirring emotion.
