Garth Ennis has a reputation for shock, and it is earned. What the reputation leaves out is that the shock is usually in service of the least fashionable thing a comics writer can be interested in: ordinary decency between men who have seen terrible things.
Both halves are on this shelf, often in the same book. Knowing that before you buy saves a lot of disappointment in either direction.
What defines his writing
Violence written as consequence, not choreography. His action is short, ugly and final. Nobody in an Ennis comic gets an impressive fight. They get an outcome, and then they live with it.
Contempt for the superhero costume. He is openly uninterested in capes and frequently hostile to them. When one of his books contains superheroes, the book is usually arguing with them.
Genuine sentiment about soldiers and friends. Underneath the transgression is a writer who takes military service, loyalty and grief seriously and writes them without irony. This is the part people miss and it is the reason his best books last.
Comedy that goes too far on purpose. The humour is deliberately excessive, and he uses it to disarm you before the serious material arrives. It also means some pages have aged badly, which is worth saying plainly.
The Punisher shelf
Punisher Max by Garth Ennis Omnibus Vol. 1 and its second volume are the definitive version of the character and the best crime comics he has written.
Stripped of the Marvel universe, Frank Castle becomes what he always logically was: an old man conducting a private war with no ending, in stories about arms dealers, human trafficking and the machinery that produces them. It is bleak, it is meticulously researched, and it is not entertainment in the usual sense.
Punisher by Garth Ennis Omnibus at 1,136 pages collects the earlier Marvel-universe run, which is far more comedic and where the tonal warning applies most: it is the funny Punisher, and the jokes are of their time.
The DC and Wildstorm work
Hellblazer by Garth Ennis Omnibus at 1,000 pages is the run that fixed John Constantine as the character everyone now recognises: a working-class Liverpudlian con man whose friends die because they know him. The Dangerous Habits story inside it is the single best thing on this shelf.
Hitman by Garth Ennis and John McCrea Omnibus Vol. 1 at 1,136 pages is the most complete demonstration of the whole method: a comedy about a contract killer in Gotham that turns, without warning, into the most affecting writing about friendship in his career.
The Authority Omnibus Vol. 2 at 1,600 pages holds his Wildstorm material, which follows the era described in the Bryan Hitch guide.
Spider-Man's Tangled Web Omnibus at 560 pages is a shared-credit anthology where he is one of several writers.
For the current state of the shelf rather than this article, look at the Garth Ennis page.
Where to start
One recommendation: Hitman Vol. 1. It is funny enough to carry you through, it needs no continuity, and it contains both sides of him — the excess and the sincerity — inside one book. If you finish it and only remember the jokes, the rest of the shelf is not for you.
If you want the crime writing directly, go to Punisher MAX Vol. 1 and expect no comfort at all.
Who should skip this shelf
This is the shelf where the warning matters most. The MAX material contains sexual violence, torture and atrocity described in detail, and it is not softened. The earlier comedic work contains jokes about race, sexuality and disability that were tolerated in the 1990s and read badly now. None of that is incidental — it is how he writes — so if any of it is a problem for you, it will be a problem on almost every book here, and there are plenty of other shelves.
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