And we're back!

Yes, yes, I'm sure I'm about as thrilled about it as everyone else... This will probably be a bit of a catch-up week, since while I managed to scrape together enough posts to cover while I was gone, I did not put enough together to, um, cover today? Well, we'll still take a shot at it. Usually, when I'm on vacation, I do a ton of reading, but I didn't bring as many books with me this year. Instead, I went back through a bunch of Humble Bundles and read some that I'm not sure I had before. For instance, I would've thought I'd have flipped through this earlier, since it kind of answers the question, "What if Garth Ennis wrote a romantic comedy?" He would still be Garth Ennis, yeah. From 2015, A Train Called Love, written by Garth Ennis, art by Mark Dos Santos. Cover by Russ Braun.

What seems like it's going to be the main plot kind of isn't: Valerie, a headstrong young woman, realizes the obscene phone calls she keeps getting, are coming from across the street, so she stomps over there with a basebat bat to rectify the situation. A charming British hitman, Myles, had already taken care of that for her, and sparks fly; which leads to her being dragged into it when his employer's regular hitters show up, who are of course comic Nazis because again, Garth Ennis. It's only addressed in passing, but the big crime boss was a morbidly obese black man (think the Slug, not the Kingpin; there is a sex sequence involving scuba gear that will either be hilarious for you or miss completely) who seemingly didn't care as long as the hits got made. Again, Garth Ennis: rest assured the Nazis get theirs in amusingly gory fashion.

But, despite being needed for the plot, Valerie and Myles don't feel like the main one: Valerie's sister, Penny, has just made a horrible discovery in her boyfriend Marv's tastes in pornography; while being completely clueless that her songwriter friend Marcy was in love with her. Marv and his friends had recently stumbled into possession of a large quantity of drugs, and were trying to talk their one black friend Mike into helping out since their street credibility was somewhat lacking. Mike was a bit distracted, since he had been tutoring a young woman in math but then discovered her family were full-on Klansmen. (They're suburban/upper middle-class Klan and even in a group don't seem threatening at all; it's played for laughs.) Later, Penny and Marv recognize their friend Jev's new fiance; and you can probably guess from where; while their actor friend Dave meets his idol, who lets him in on what it took to get ahead in Hollywood--OK, I feel like you can probably guess there, too. Ennis is not above taking shots at actors, except of course for Clint Eastwood, 'cause come on.

Is it any good? It's a minor work, it's not Ennis's best, but it feels like he was trying to step out of his wheelhouse at least a little. Maybe very little, honestly Preacher is kind of more romantic than this. But it reads well? I do wonder how it sold; the cover for the last issue isn't even on the GCD, which might be a bad sign. This was in a Dynamite Humble Bundle, and I do think Dynamite does a Bundle every so often, so if you get it in one it's worth a read.