Are there any other superheroes that Garth Ennis respects as much as Superman?

Are there any other superheroes that Garth Ennis respects as much as Superman?

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>literally murders a guy right after Supes leaves, making him look like a chump
Ennis doesn't like any superheroes, not even Superman.

Nope.

He seems to hate everyone but the Big Blue Boyscout AFAIK.

What heros would Ennis like? Wolverine? Daredevil?

I don't think Ennis was trying to say anything there outside of, "Tommy (who is my self-insert in this instance) may really like and admire Superman, but he's not going to try to emulate him further than being a man of integrity."

>Wolverine

Ennis hates the very concept of the superhero.
Remember he's from Norn Iron, so he's seen what happens when a bunch of vigilantes run around killing anyone they arbitrarily deem to be evil.

No

Wolverine is Supes' polar opposite in a lot of ways. Logan had his powers forced on him, uses them out of self-interest and only acts on the motivation of other people under duress, or after a long period of time and character growth.

Superman naturally has his powers and needs no motivation to help other people other than that they need him and that he can do it.

So why does he like Frank?

GONNA

That's kind of a strange thing to use Superman in comparison to. He was raised in the US and had one of the best upbringings you could ask for, not to mention solid moral role models, and is accepted almost immediately because he's so pretty and non-threatening.

Frank is fun to write.

How can you not like Frank?

Murderous vigilante taking the law into his own hands and exacting horrible violence on the world seems like something he would link back to the terrorism in Ireland, though.

I have always found that odd about the man. He hates superheroes because they are like the IRA but then idolizes the one who acts like the IRA more than any of them.

He said in the letters page of Preacher that "Superman may be the only superhero I can muster up any genuine enthusiasm for".

Nope. See:

He wrote Spidey fairly well in Tangled Web.

you sure we're not confusing "idolizes" with "writes extensively because he's intimately familiar with that sort of character"?

We sure that Ennis writes frank as a hero, and not as maybe a complex asshole? Because Ennis writes a fantastic complex asshole.

I'll never understand why he doesn't do a run on Superman. I bet it would be marvelous.

I would say it is idolizing when he wrote a story where Punisher is able to kill every single powered person in Marvel.

That comic really seemed like Ennis was just having fun taking the piss out of Marvel in general. Less that Frank was awesome and more kind of asking "How fucking hard could it really be to kill these bastards if you really wanted to?"

Feh felt really lazy on his end since he basically made everybody else an idiot, but he tends to take only the surface elements of characters and amp them up to 11.

>That comic really seemed like Ennis was just having fun taking the piss out of Marvel in general.

It was, there was an old interview that's no longer up where he said the dialogue of the X-Men and X-villains was intentionally written that way to make fun of the dialogue style of the X-Men. But then editorial changed his dialogue for Captain America, Spider-Man, Venom, and some others that they ended up sounding the same as the X-Men, so the joke was lost.

I think it would've benefited by showing that the heroes of that universe were more incompetent than their 616 counterparts in scenes outside of the Punisher ones. And it might've helped if it had an artist like McCrea who would've made it look less serious.

He really, really doesn't care for Wolverine or the X-Men. Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe came up because he was first asked to do an X-Men alt universe story, and he thought that was ridiculous cause he couldn't get into the X-Men. Also thought the excess dialogue was absurd (which is what he's making fun of in those Punisher/Wolverine arcs).

Daredevil I'm not sure he likes that much. He's sort of sympathetic in Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, but he usually takes more shots at him elsewhere ("Blind Bastard" in Hitman 1 Million, the two characters referenced in The Boys, the scene in Welcome Back Frank)

Ennis also said in an interview that idolizing Frank is something that only idiots would do. He even elaborated that on Welcome Back Frank with that sub-plot involving the three vigilantes that modeled themselves after Punisher.

I always thought that Ennis made it clear that everything Frank does is pointless violence. Even Frank knows that all of his Franking is meaningless but he can't stop doing it because he's fucking insane. He's become a thing that does what it does because it can't stop.

This scene in Kitchen Irish I think pretty well sums up Ennis' opinion on Frank. Frank and Yorkie helped this kid kill one of the guys responsible for his dad's death. There are a lot of scenes and characters like this, where someone comes to the edge of becoming like Frank and then they realize it's a bottomless pit.

he likes the Midnighter but not the rest of the Authority

>Well, Wonder Woman is a character I think I could probably do because I have a certain amount of respect, if not for the character, than for the idea behind her. I don’t think much of the Superman books at the minute, but I like the idea of Superman. He’s in Hitman soon, and I’m sure people think he's going to be vomited on or ridiculed like Green Lantern. But no, not at all, it’s a respectful piece.

sequentialtart.com/archive/sept98/ennisdillon.html

That's how every blank blanks the blank universe story goes.

Ennis said in an interview that Frank is not a superhero. He's a death wish/taxi driver type vigilante.

Read JLA/Hitman. It ends with Superman paying a homage to Tommy.

Ennis is just an edgy fuck, that's why he wrote Crossed and The Boys. Look at the character of Butcher in the boys, he's essentially Ennis' self insert and even he's fucking crazy.

Butcher's just Ennis' Bill Savage.

Why doesn't Ennis kill Mark Waid?

Ennis is just a bitchy hypocryte

Butcher is a way more complex character than he lets on, though.

"Widowmaker" did one of those with a great simple ending. Frank asks the guy "Do you want to be like me?" and the next panel is the guy back at his home hugging his wife. The comics equivalent of a smash cut.

And then there was what you could call a "lady Punisher" in that story who is clearly broken, rapes Frank, and kills herself because she still can't feel anything.

Even before MAX there were bits in Marvel Knights Punisher where it's made abundantly clear that Frank no longer cares about protecting the innocent or avenging the deaths of his family, as he's so far gone that he just has nothing left but the killing.
Also, this fucking scene.

>Ennis writing the WW main series
Do it, DC. Be even more based than you were last year.

but he's literally a superhero. Ennis even writes him with superpowers (Blessing from the God of death, healing factor, etc).
he's also, you know, still a vigilante

One of these days I will read the Death Wish novel; I heard it was completely the opposite of what the movie was.

>Blessing from the God of death
That's an illusion in Frank's warped mind.
>healing factor
wut

He can't like Superman all that much judging from the Homelander

I love this scene, but I also wish people were more familiar with Dixon's almost thing in a Punisher comic he did. Just three panels of Frank wishing he could kill two cops that were harassing him,and you'd think Ennis wrote it. A little character moment in a plot driven yarn.

It's true, Ennis hates Wolverine and justly so.

A lot of the X-men stories are Logan-centric with plenty of gushing over him.

Under Ennis' run, Wolverine's been blasted in the nuts, run over with a fucking steamroller, electrocuted, shot with an RPG and Frank'd more times than I can count.
All of his dialogue is basically reduced to repeating "Bub" and "Canucklehead" over and over again.

It makes for a delicious contrast with a lot of schadenfreude moments.

Thing about Homelander (and The Boys in general to me) is that they're less of a critique of superheroes themselves and more towards the industry that creates them. Homelander isn't a wholesome to the point of naivety hyper parody of Superman, he's a narcissistic asshole with no regards whatsoever for human life. Neither is he a messianic madman who thinks he can make life better for everyone, since up until the pictures (which weren't even him) came up he couldn't care less about taking over the world. Any resemblance between Homelander and Superman is just surface stuff, to me.
The closest to a straightforward parody of Superman I can think of in an Ennis work would be The Saint in The Pro, but that was played more for laughs and jokes than as an actual, targeted critique of Superman as a character.

>mfw Wolverine was just lying on the ground with his fucking lungs hanging out screaming "Furtheluvva God, sumbody help me!"

>mfw Wolverine madly ranting at some randos in the train after getting kicked into another state by the Hulk
>"IT DON'T PAY TA MESS WITH TH' OL' CANUCKLEHEAD!"

Since he's doing parodies of all the characters, a Superman analogue being missing would be noticed. The difference is that he's written Superman four times before (Hitman #34, Hitman/JLA, the Sixpack story in Superman 80-page Special or whatever it was called, and the All Star Section 8 issue) and each time even though there was a bit of ribbing it generally showed Superman as a guy who tries his best to be a good person.

Batman usually gets more of the shit (though often times it's funny), though I admit I haven't read his Legends of the Dark Knight arc.

Oh, I'd forgotten about that

I'd rather they keep bringing him on for Section 8 miniseries.
Sixpack & Dogwelder is definitely in my top 5 of 2016.

He was for some reason also about the only hero who wasn't satirized in The Boys... I think.

A parody was briefly mentioned, named Web-Weaver. Butcher and Mallory got increased support after going after him, IIRC. But we never see him.

he seems to be OK with the Punnisher and John Constantine

>Constantine

Conman magicians are not superheroes.