Writer Garth Ennis is back with a new comic set during World War II. Ennis, artists P.J. Holden and Kelly Fitzpatrick, and letterer Rob Steen have teamed for The Stringbags, a graphic novel telling the true tale of the Royal Navy’s Fairey Swordfish bombers. The Swordfish bomber, nicknamed ‘Stringbags,’ were some of the last biplanes used in a world of single-winged warplanes.
The graphic novel is being published by Dead Reckoning Books. Here’s how the publisher describes the book:
Writer Garth Ennis and artist PJ Holden present The Stringbags, an original graphic novel based on the true story of the Royal Navy’s Swordfish crews in early World War II.
A biplane torpedo bomber in an age of monoplanes, the Fairey Swordfish was underpowered and under-gunned; an obsolete museum piece, an embarrassment. Its crews fully expected to be shot from the skies. Instead, they flew the ancient “Stringbag” into legend. 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.
The Stringbags is an epic tale of young men facing death in an aircraft almost out of time. 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.
The Stringbags is the latest war comic by Garth Ennis, who’s previously written series like Dynamite’s Battlefields and TKO’s Sara. Holden and Ennis have previously collaborated on the “Happy Valley” storyline in Battlefields, as well as on multiple miniseries based on the World of Tanks mobile game.
Dead Reckoning Books is an imprint of the Naval Institute Press, the publishing arm of the U.S. Naval Institute. Dead Reckoning has published more than a dozen fiction and non-fiction graphic novels telling stories focused on military and naval history. Notable releases from the imprint include a graphic novel adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque‘s All Quiet on the Western Front, as well as a reprint collection of classic Atlas Comics war tales. The Stringbags is the second Garth Ennis title published by the imprint, the first being a collection of The Night Witches storyline illustrated by Russ Braun and originally featured in Battlefields.
Check out Holden’s cover to The Stringbags below. The 192-page hardcover graphic novel will retail for $29.99, with a scheduled release date of May 15th, 2020.
