I first saw this book on the old AWA website.
Hidden away in a corner, just a title, and this cover. There was no announcement, no news, no press. It just sat there, on that old iteration of a site that’s since been radically changed. And as I stared at it, I wondered:
What on Earth is this? And why the heck is Garth Ennis of all people writing it?!
I was baffled, and mildly confused. But at the same time, I was curious. Looking at the sort of beaten-up and time-worn magazine sensibility that the cover was trying to evoke, alongside the font, I was intrigued. It was clearly an attempt to pastiche and evoke old pulp magazines and stories. Even as the artwork of Dan Panosian was unmistakably modern, this temporal comic’s cover was trying to evoke a sense of past, to suit its image of a modern lead who robs people from the past.
Marjorie Finnegan: Temporal Criminal.
It’s a title that really laid it all out. There was little that needed explaining here, as it was all just right there.
So Garth Ennis and Goran Sudžuka’s take on The Pulps then?
I was curious, because while Ennis has obviously dabbled in that space, I hadn’t seen anything quite so blatant and obvious in its evocation and pastiche of The Pulps. And I was curious, what is the kid who grew up reading issues of Commando religiously, the man who is endlessly obsessed with soldiers and those who’ve seen war, going to do with that space? It was less about “good” or “bad,” as I expected “messy” and “problematic” going in, as this felt like an obvious deviation and diversion for Ennis from his beloved trade of writing copious amounts of War comics.
What is Ennis trying to do here? What is Ennis going to say about The Pulps? Is he going to, at all, or will he play it all straight?
All of the following ran through my head as I considered the book. All of which is to say, I had a lot of expectations going into this #1. And that begs the question: How were they met?
The final result, and the work itself, is very much classic “I’m takin’ the piss” Ennis, and reads like him making up something to have a laugh. Which is to say, yes, it is full of all the misogynistic men and language that no Garth Ennis comic can seemingly ever exist without.
And thus you get what is, effectively, something on a spectrum that includes Doctor Who and Valerian and Laureline, while being crasser and more openly horny and suggestive. It’s a comic wherein a lady dances in only a towel, whilst a horny Man-Who-Is-But-A-Head sweats in agony. It’s a comic that might as well come with a laugh track of Ennis just cackling in the background.
And as for the commentary or critical thought on The Pulps? That is perhaps a poorly placed expectation. Ennis does not wish to deal with the White western hero stealing from “exotic” cultures, and the undertones and implications of that. It is, if anything, reveling in those tenets of the space:
Ennis is just aiming for a raunchy escapade through them all. Clearly, he’s having fun.
But here’s the thing: I’m not.
There’s an inescapable feeling that I’m reading a rather openly trashy Dynamite comic, but it’s written by Ennis this time around. The cover might read AWA, but I had to keep mentally reminding myself every few pages that this wasn’t just another random Dynamite comic that I’ll forget all about in a week.
For all that it’s meant to be a comedic laugh, with outrageous over-the-top violence and sexual humor, it feels weirdly vapid and empty. When one reads his war comics work, flawed as it is, there is a near-religious devotion and commitment present. You can tell the creator behind this loves it, and has something to say. You can see the passion bleed from the pages. But even as Ennis dicks around with his River Song-esque protagonist, I don’t get the sense that he has ever particularly loved this realm. There’s a detachment here that the best Ennis work never has. Ennis, even at the height of his problems, always feels too close, like it’s personal. This is the opposite, and I find myself struggling to care.
There’s no real hook or draw here that a ton of other comics don’t already offer. But more than anything, this is a work that feels like a text that, had I not seen the name Ennis on it, I could easily mistake it for just about anyone. It feels like a work doomed to get lost in the crowd. “Generic” is what comes to mind, and it’s why the mind drifts to Dynamite.
Even Ennis’ trademark anger feels absent, and it lacks the personality that makes any kind of noise. Though there are clearly Ennisian characters in here, like our lead’s tough-as-nails sister, who is a Time-Sheriff, they feel like stock figures a dozen other imitators could do. On the whole, it feels like a bland 2000 AD strip you vaguely have a memory of from the 2000s.
And as for any sort of ambition? It’s not really there either. Ennis and Sudžuka’s work seems more interested and amused by its supposed resolution and answer to time paradoxes and the problems time-travel entails, than considering any of the genre trappings it’s really dealing with. Or even how race and cultural elements factor into that pulp genre storytelling. At the end of the day it’s a comic that wants me to laugh along with it, but it feels like a joke at the bar I’m not privy to, and even the parts that I’ve gathered? They feel terribly tired and dull.
Sudžuka’s work here, colored by Miroslav Mrva, is perfectly in spirit with the nature of the raunchy time-comedy that the work is designed to be. He can nail the scope on the perspective from overhead action shots to punchy splashes and even cosmic whirlpools of time. But it’s hard not to feel like both the artist and colorist, alongside Ennis, would be better served doing literally anything else.
Because here’s the thing: Ennis got all that lovely Hollywood money and has a hit TV show in The Boys (Spin-Off Soon To Come™). His legacy is secure, as are his funds. He can just focus and keep making comics. So you wonder: What will this firm security lead him to produce? What kind of comics will he craft, with all the time and freedom? Will he go someplace new, someplace beyond where he has gone before? Will he do anything notably interesting? What will come of all this?
And if the answer is Marjorie Finnegan: Temporal Criminal? That is truly disappointing, because while it isn’t a terrible comic necessarily, it is a kind of nothing comic. It’s one I was bored and exhausted by. It’s one I won’t even remember having read in a week, and that, folks, is what I call depressing. If I’m gonna read a bloody Garth Ennis comic published in the year of our lord 2021, then it better at least clear the bar of being memorable. And this certainly wasn’t.
That said, for those with a different palate, if you’re into Ennis’ brand of crass comedy intermingled with the tale of a time-hopping rogue, the kind that’s very much designed to be consumed with your brain turned off, that which is openly trashy, you might get something out of this one.
Ritesh Babu is a comics history nut who spends far too much time writing about weird stuff and cosmic nonsense.
