A Man Called Kev #1 (of 5)

Story by Garth Ennis

Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Cover by Glenn Fabry

 

Another week, another new WildStorm series from Garth Ennis. Ennis may not have the over-used workhorse rep of the industry's more prolific writers like Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns, despite writing about a half-dozen series at the moment, but maybe that's just because Ennis never seems to phone anything in, no matter how many books with his name on them come out in a given month.

 

This one pairs him with his long-time collaborator Carlos Ezquerra (Just a Pilgrim, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, Bloody Mary) and revisits down-on-his-luck S.A.S. officer Kev Hawkins, the star of a trio of Authority spin-offs.

 

Each of Ennis' previous Kev stories has had less and less to do with the Authority, with the bulk of last year's miniseries The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin featuring only The Midnighter in a supporting role, and this time around there's not even any pretense of it being an Authority story (not even a "from the pages of The Authority" slug on the cover).

 

We find Kev as he's about to enter his new, post-S.A.S. life, having killed his boss and stumbled upon the British government's failed top secret program to breed its own superheroes.

 

Kev's former employers would prefer he begin his new life in some other country, and to force him to do so they resort to blackmailing him over a youthful indiscretion involving the German porn industry.

 

So his last living mate in the country, Bob—a military retiree who made a fortune on a tell-all book and then blew his fortune getting act-like-an-ape drunk at a publishing industry party—gives him the address of their fellow former S.A.S-mate Danny, who's relocated to San Francisco and taken his pet man-eating tiger with him.

 

It turns out that, in yet another example of Kev's extremely weird luck, he picked a pretty good time to get out of the U.K., as a hit-team including a ninja lady is looking to take out his former squad, and he's next on their list.

 

Ennis' Kev stories have all gone a long way toward recapturing the super hero-bashing, over-the-top violence and comedy feel of his old DC series Hitman and his Marvel Knights version of The Punisher, and it looks like this go-around will do the same just as easily.

 

Ennis revisits ground he loves to cover—the soul-crushing violence between Ireland and England, the S.A.S., drunkenness, the band-of-brothers loyalty that develops between fighting men, people exploding—and though there's little here that qualifies as fresh (unless you count the most disgusting thing to happen in one of his comics, even if it occurs off-panel), it's a predictably good read for those who appreciate Ennis at his "Mature Readers" best.

 

It should be interesting to see where he takes the character Kev now that he's freed from having to play off of any Authority characters. So far, the main discernable difference has been the lack of gay jokes made at Midnighter's expense.

 

Rating - 7