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Creator / Garth Ennis

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The man who gave Frank Castle his balls back.

Garth Ennis (born 16 January 1970) is an American comic book writer originally from Holywood, Northern Ireland, known for his love of graphic violence and Black Comedy and his intense dislike of organized religion and the superhero genre. As you can imagine, he has developed quite the devoted amount of detractors among some people in the comics community, but at his best, Ennis writes with engaging intensity, fierce humanity and complete fearlessness.

While he is rather fond of author tracts, Ennis's excellent plotting and grasp of character voice can make them work (assuming you can stomach the subject matter). Many of his characters function as Badass Longcoats, but he is also very good at writing down-to-earth, mortal characters as well (Agent Clive in Unknown Soldier, Tommy in Hitman, Kev in The Authority).

There are actually exceptions to Ennis's well-known loathing of superheroes, too — the main one being none other than Superman himself, who he writes with complete and total respect, alongside an admitted soft spot for Spider-Man and Wonder Woman as well. He is also known for his love of war stories (practically a Dead Horse Genre in comics) which remind us of the sacrifices, bastardry and many awesome moments in World War II and other wars.

His most famous works are his four-year run on Marvel's adults-only MAX imprint version of The Punisher (a.k.a. The Punisher MAX) and Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Two of his works, Preacher and The Boys, have been adapted into TV series. His version of the Punisher has also been adapted to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with the second season of Daredevil (2015).

Works Ennis has written for:

Works Ennis created:

  • The Boys - Inglourious Basterds meets Marshal Law; a squad of Sociopathic Heroes causes all sorts of hell for the local Smug Supers with good publicity. Adapted into a television series in 2019.
  • The Pro - A foul-mouthed hooker gets superpowers, then gets inducted into an Expy Justice League.
  • Just a Pilgrim - A group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland encounter a tough gunslinger who leads them. He turns out to be a psychopathic cannibal and his leadership gets them enmeshed in a conflict that leaves them all dead.
  • Preacher - A preacher with a Dark and Troubled Past finds himself the Right Man in the Wrong Place, empowered with a Compelling Voice and makes a vow to use it to Call The Old Man Out - by the Old Man we mean God. Adapted into a television series in 2016.
  • Hitman - A series about Tommy Monaghan, a hitman with superpowers who operates in the mainstream DCU.
  • Crossed - 28 Days Later meets "The Screwfly Solution"; a mysterious plague turns numerous people into psychotic rapists with crosslike scars on their face. Quite possibly the most violent series of graphic novels in existence (outside of Japan, at least).
  • 303 - A Russian soldier discovers a well-kept secret about the American President and sets out to exact revenge, using an old Lee-Enfeld .303 rifle with one bullet left.
  • The Chronicles of Wormwood - Danny Wormwood, cable TV producer, is the Antichrist, and his best buddy Jay is the second coming of Christ. Many people want them to bring about the Apocalypse, but they aren't willing to play ball.
  • Jennifer Blood - A woman is a loving housewife by day, and a crusading vigilante by night.
  • Stitched - An American helicopter crew crash-lands in the mountains of Afghanistan. They and the SAS crew they're there to pick up must then contend with a particularly sadistic breed of zombie. A short film of the same name, written and directed by Ennis himself, was shown at a couple of comic conventions in 2011.
  • Red Team - A four-man squad of New York City cops, faced with a criminal they cannot seem to catch legally, instead opt to assassinate him. Things degenerate from there.
  • Rover Red Charlie - When a worldwide epidemic causes the human race to go extinct, three dogs team up to survive and to escape New York City.
  • Caliban - In the far future, the crew of a human spaceship discovers that humanity is not actually alone in the universe when they suddenly slam into an alien vessel.
  • Back to Brooklyn - The story of mobster Bob Saetta, and his journey to rescue his wife Penny and son Michael from his brother, mob boss Paul "The Wall" Saetta.
  • A Train Called Love - An honest-to-God romantic comedy. A woman meets and instantly falls in love with an English hitman as he's executing her perverted neighbor. Meanwhile, a bunch of yuppies have a plan to get rich that requires them to deal with a notorious criminal named "Mister Monsta," who's also the hitman's employer. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Code Pru - a black-and-white horror comedy, and Ennis's contribution to Alan Moore's Kickstarter-funded Cinema Purgatorio project. A staunchly atheist woman becomes an FDNY paramedic and is assigned to their top-secret "monster unit," dealing with zombies, vampires, and Elder Gods.
  • Jimmy's Bastards - A slightly affectionate James Bond parody. A British super-spy is unknowingly targeted for assassination by his virtual legion of illegitimate children. Followed up by the 3-issue prestige-format miniseries Jimmy's Little Bastards in 2022.
  • The Darkness - A mob hitman is endowed with The Force on crack.
  • Goddess: A Magical Girl series. No, really. It focuses on a young woman from Ireland who discovers she is one of the spirits of the planets.
  • His war comics - a lifelong fan of the genre, Ennis's war comics are his real passion, and unlike the Black Comedy of much of his work, they are usually extremely serious.
    • Battlefields is set in World War II and afterwards, following some of the surviving protagonists well into the postwar period.
    • War Stories is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, various standalone stories set in different parts of World War 2.
    • Dreaming Eagles, a limited series from Aftershock Comics - on the eve of the march on Selma, one of the surviving Tuskegee Airmen tells his teenage son about his experiences in World War II.
    • Out Of The Blue, also at Aftershock, revisiting a character from War Stories who now flies Mosquitos.
    • Sara, about a Russian sniper on the Eastern Front.
    • The Stringbags, about pilots flying the Fairey Swordfish.
    • Adventures In The Rifle Brigade is an early work and a rather poorly-regarded black comedy set in WW2.
    • The Lion And The Eagle, an account of the Chindits, British special forces fighting in the Burma campaign during WW2.
  • Dastardly & Muttley - a Setting Update of the Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines cartoon series, with the two characters being US Air Force pilots affected by a mysterious substance that causes Toon Physics and cartoonish insanity.
  • A Walk Through Hell - A straight-up horror comic from Aftershock. In the aftermath of a mass shooting, two FBI agents pursue two other agents into the depths of an ordinary-looking warehouse, not knowing that there's something inside that drives men to suicide.
  • Marjorie Finnegan, Temporal Criminal - A limited comedy series from AWA, about a woman who makes a living by rampaging up and down the time-space continuum stealing whatever looks shiny.
  • Erf - A children's picture book about four organisms on a very young, then-unnamed Earth who encounter a monster who threatens to eat one of them. While very idealistic by Ennis's standards, the titular character still gets eaten, sacrificing himself for his friends, leading them to name the planet after him in respect.
  • The Ribbon Queen - An 8-issue horror series from AWA following NYPD detective Amy Sun as she works on a grisly murder case and discovers a unit within the department that is rotten to the core… and something even more terrifying that hunts them.
  • Babs - A limited Sword and Sorcery parody series from Ahoy Comics following the eponymous barbarian thief and her misadventures in a fabulous fantasy universe.

Tropes present in Ennis's work:

  • Action Girl: Tulip O'Hare, Kit Ryan, Deborah Tiegel, Kathryn O'Brien, the "Night Witches" in Battlefields, etc.
  • Adaptational Dumbass: Whenever superheroes from either of the Big Two (excluding Superman) appear in his stories, expect them to lose several levels of competence and intelligence so he can make his hatred of superheroes clear.
  • Adaptational Villainy: Whenever Biblical figures appear, expect this to happen. God is a narcissistic tyrant in Preacher and in Hellblazer, the Annunciation was actually Gabriel raping Mary to conceive Jesus.
  • Adaptational Wimp: Garth Ennis has a tendency to ignore and remove the powers of various characters for his own convenience, for example in The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, where he outright disregards how various characters’ powers work to allow the Punisher to kill them in a swift and humiliating fashion.
  • Anti-Role Model: Ennis generally seems to have a very low opinion of role-models, considering them to be childish and unrealistic (which certainly explains his hatred of superheroes which generally fall under the Ideal and The Cape, among other archetypes like the Good Shepherd), preferring various forms and flavors of anti-heroes–Byronic, Nominal, Sociopathic, '90s, Classical, as well as Noble Demons and Vigilante Men–who aren't really interested in telling people how to live so much as not hurting people who don't deserve it.
  • Author Appeal:
  • Author Filibuster / Character Filibuster: Ennis' characters have the tendency to break into long, intense rants, which are often about his pet peeve subjects, often being hypocritical in a way that isn't acknowledged by the story.
  • Author Tract:
    • The pointlessness and stupidity of racism/homophobia.
    • The idiocy of The Troubles, and the evils of the IRA in particular.
    • The horrors wrought by misguided or blind faith, the Catholic church in general.
    • The flaws of living in the superhero genre. Specifically the inherent problem of untrained and undisciplined civilians having immense power and making decisions that should be made by soldiers and government agents instead of members of the public.
    • How morality can't be treated as a black and white concept. Many of Ennis's protagonists are barely better than his antagonists, with the difference that they're using their inner demons for "the right side."
  • Badass Normal: A theme with his protagonists is they are well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed characters who use their wits to overpower stronger adversaries. He also portrays them as either more heroic than the superheroes and/or better skilled due to relying on self-discipline and training. His portrayal of superheroes varies in animosity because he believes they are too venerated by the public and finds them disrespectful towards people who are trained to make the hardest decisions.
    • In The Boys, the main characters are government agents who are fighting superheroes because the Supes do more harm than good and should be punished for their many wrongdoings.
    • In Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, Frank Castle devotes himself to murdering every superhero in the Marvel Universe because they inadvertently killed his family during one of their battles. Frank also goes against them after he was introduced to other people who were disfigured and left brain-damaged because they were caught in the crossfire of superhero/supervillain battles.
    • Nick Fury has his own comic series and the character has no connections with superheroes in this continuity. Garth Ennis specifically wanted him to confront real-life dealings of soldiers and spies in historical situations during the United States' Cold War initiatives around the globe.
  • Big Applesauce: He moved to New York City in the 2000s and many of his subsequent stories are set there.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: Ennis' villains are among the most despicable in fiction, but his "heroes" often aren't that much better; regularly, Ennis points out that the only difference between the evils of the world and the "rough men" who protect us from them is an awareness of their darkness - and their endless inner battles to control it, a Discussed Trope in Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker.
    It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.
    Here's to them.
    - James Ellroy, American Tabloid
  • Black Comedy Rape: Despite usually potraying rape as utterly horrific and monstrous, he also frequently uses it as a humurous punishment for his male villains, usually by other men.
  • Blood Knight: He plays with this trope often in his works, especially in his The Punisher MAX run to chilling effect with Frank Castle, who isn't a vengeful, pissed off vigilante but is implied to be a psychotic nutjob who was so in love with war that he used his family's death as an excuse to wage a war forever.
  • Crapsack World: Due to the subject matter that his stories often deal with, many of Ennis' characters inhabit a world that has little or any hope for salvation or justice. Preacher is a story about God Himself having narcissistic personality disorder and it's one of the happiest things he's ever written.
  • Creator's Oddball: The last thing you would expect from a guy known for hyper-vulgar and hyper-violent works of darkest cynicism would be a colorful children's book. Yet, it exists. Say hello to Erf. There was also the issue of Hitman where Superman is treated with respect and adoration.
  • Crossover: Ennis doesn't do it a lot, but characters from his major works tend to wander back and forth between stories.
    • Cassidy from Preacher shows up in The Boys as the owner of a pub in New York (under his birth name, Proinsias).
    • Kathryn O'Brien from Punisher is the same CIA agent who appeared in the last arc of Hitman, then using her maiden name of McAllister.
    • The vampires that Tommy Monaghan kills in the "Dead Man's Land" arc in Hitman are led by the new King of the Vampires, after the previous king was killed by John Constantine.
    • Constantine is also identified by name as one of the previous holders of the Ace of Winchesters, a magical rifle that appeared in Hitman.
    • The members of the British SAS unit in Stitched have gone drinking with Kevin Hawkins
    • Billy Butcher of The Boys has a fondness for "spacker porn" that originated with Spacker Dave from Ennis' Punisher run.
    • Nick Fury meets a man named Fuckface who is described as even uglier than Arseface.
    • While it might simply be a case of Ennis reusing a throwaway name, the title character of The Ribbon Queen is mentioned in passing during his Hellblazer run.
  • Depraved Bisexual: A lot of Ennis's villains will bang anything that doesn't run away fast enough. He frequently uses a particular brand of anything-goes, hedonistic bisexuality as a character trait for his villains, as further evidence of their utter amorality. Almost as if to balance this out, though, he's gone well out of his way in many stories, including The Punisher and The Boys, to depict gay people in dedicated, healthy relationships.
  • Eagle Land: An odd, yet intriguing form of it. He believes the United States is way too self-righteous and full of itself, but he also believes that when Americans choose to get over themselves they showcase what is best and brightest about humanity. The clearest expression of this is from (secret Nazi war criminal) Gunther Hahn in Preacher:
    The Myth of America: that simple, honest men, born of her great plains and woods and skies have made a nation of her, and will prove worthy of her when the time is right. Under harsh light, it is false. But a good myth to live up to, all the same.
    • He has similar attitudes towards the Russians; On one hand, he can't help but gush about their many, many awesome moments in World War II. On the other, he shows just as much work related to their inhuman behavior such as the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and their post-breakup transition to The Mafiya. This is best summed up in "Mother Russia" by the first Russian to appear in The Punisher MAX - Alexandr Baranovich Formichenko;
      Nothing left. Everything fucked. Once we are greatest peoples in world—now we sit in bars in Brighton Beach or Coney Island, drinking 'til vodka runs out. Look! Look at this animal! Leon Rastovich, how the fuck is he out of prison! Thanks to his kind, everyone looks at Russian peoples and sees only fucking gangsters! Scum like Rastovich and scum who follow him, who shame the name of Mother Russia! Mobster pigs who dare to call themselves soldiers! I was at Leningrad when the Nazis came in nineteen forty-one! Three years we held out! Three years before they could relieve us! We were soldiers! Fuck Leon Rastovich.
      • Notably, on his way to kill Rastovich, Frank holds a combat knife to a Mafiya bartender's eye and makes his position quite clear;
      Alexandr Baranovich Formichenko is protected. (Got a kind of a thing about respect for the elderly.)note 
  • Everyone Has Standards: Though his hatred of superheroes is well known (see Thor: Vikings and his treatment of Wolverine), even he treats Superman with nothing short of complete respect.
    • You'd think being both a costumed hero and a reverent Catholic would make Daredevil an instant target for Ennis, but he is depicted as the Hero Antagonist of The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe and is treated as a genuinely good man, if too idealistic for his own good.
    • While Ennis has come up with a great deal of unflattering parodies of various superheroes, most notoriously in The Boys and Hitman, he's more even-handed when he actually writes those characters than many fans give him credit for being. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are all depicted in his work as thoroughly competent. Similarly, Ennis' depiction of Spider-Man in Tangled Web #1-3 was extremely sympathetic and touching, showcasing Spidey's compassion and genuine heroism. Kyle Rayner was portrayed as naive, well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual, and Wally West was, well, really kind of a dick. Even Thor, despite his portrayal in Vikings, still gets some genuine moments of badassery. He's gone on record stating that he is more accepting of characters like Nick Fury or the Punisher. The only mainstream superhero that Ennis has consistently refused to write well is Wolverine, who is an idiotic collection of his own cliches every time he appears in Ennis' work. He also vocally really doesn't like Captain America.
    • Generally, you can tell how Ennis feels about a superhero by how he portrays their expies:
      • In The Boys, the Superman expy (Homelander) was implied to have been a relatively decent person before being gaslit into insanity (and despite his many crimes, indirectly saves the day at the end), the Wonder Woman expy (Queen Maeve) was the only member of the team who actually wanted to help people before a massive tragedy caused her to cross the Despair Event Horizon and turn to alcohol to deal with her guilt, and the Supergirl expy (Starlight) manages to retain her good-hearted nature for the entire series despite all the trauma she endures.
      • The Batman/Iron-Man expy (Tek-Knight) ultimately possesses genuinely heroic attributes despite being an asshole (he sacrifices his life to save a mother and her child), and unlike the rest of the heroes his questionable tastes were due to having a genuine problem with his brain (in this case a tumor the size of a fist) rather than being a hedonistic asshole. The Wolverine expy is a psycho with two hammers in the place of his hands whose vocabulary is limited to "Gonna!". On the other hand, Hitman features a Batman expy (who exists in the DC Universe alongside the actual Batman) called Nightfist, who is little more than a costumed thug who goes around at night beating up homeless people. And the other Batman expy, Black Noir, is probably one of the most repugnant of the already abhorrent lot of Supes, considering he's the one who turned Homelander into who he is.
      • The Captain America expy is a pathetic twit who literally wets himself at the sight of battle, is sexually violated at Herogasm, and is brutally killed by the Boys.
      • The Green Lantern expy is an unrepentant child murderer who gets probably the most disgusting and agonizing fate in the comic.
  • Fetishes Are Weird: This is commonly used in his work to show that a character is evil or just wrong:
    • The Punisher MAX: One Trophy Wife says that her husband doesn't even have sex with her; he just tells her to bend over naked on the bed and then jerks off while looking inside her.
    • Preacher:
      • Odin Quincannon regularly has sex with what is revealed to be a pile of meats shaped like a Giant Woman. When Jesse shoots him in the head mid-thrust, he says that if this isn't a Mercy Kill nothing is.
      • Herr Starr has a thing for humiliating women, even asking how much it'd cost to piss in one's mouth (hinted to be Margaret Thatcher). When his series-spanning Humiliation Conga leaves him more and more mutilated (culminating in the loss of his genitals), he starts having it done to him.
    • The Boys: The first arc has the Boys taking pictures of Teenage Kix at a brothel to blackmail them. We're spared the visuals, but Gunpowder apparently likes having his gun shoved up his ass then licking it clean.
  • God Is Evil: Ennis is an atheist, and is very forthcoming about that fact. In his work that deals explicitly with the Judeo-Christian religion, God Himself is either a drooling imbecile (Hellblazer, Chronicles of Wormwood) or a complete asshole (Preacher). Summarized briefly, the world in Ennis's fiction is so deeply flawed that any God responsible for creating it is either insane or unthinkably cruel. God's servants, on the other hand, run the gamut from good to bad to indifferent.
    • One can make the argument his series Rover Red and Charlie is a case of Playing Against Type. The titular three are dogs in a human apocalypse, but are good and loyal servants who like having masters and cross the country searching for them, with only their faith to tell them it is where they should go. Said faith is ultimately rewarded. Whether or not this was Ennis's intention is unknown.
  • Gorn: Over the top gory scenes found in Preacher, The Boys, Hellblazer, Crossed, Thor: Vikings, and so on....
  • Groin Attack: Ennis is very fond of writing these - both Preacher and The Boys are littered with them, but his Hellblazer run is particularly notorious for them. It was a horror comic where the ultimate horror was always literal castration.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Some of Ennis' best work revolves around exploring deep male friendships, generally Ho Yay-free (even when one of them is gay).
  • Humans Are Bastards: A running theme through much of Ennis' work; regardless whether or not the story has non-human antagonists (demons, aliens, etc.), ordinary humans show themselves to be perfectly capable of committing cruel, vile and evil acts to each other. The darkest examples of this trope in action are Crossed, The Punisher MAX, A Walk Through Hell and The Ribbon Queen.
  • Humans Are Flawed: Despite being presented in an overly-cynical and aggressive way, Ennis's issue with superheroes is that humans are way too irresponsible and flawed to have superpowers and untrained civilians shouldn't be trusted to make major decisions in impossible situations. Ennis favors soldiers or Badass Normal heroes because although they are humanly flawed, they either learn to live with these flaws or they overcome them to do what's best in a bad situation.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Ennis really loves placing his characters in impossible situations, and feels that most mainstream comics are poor writing because they fail to do the same.
    In the end, it was a dilemma not unlike those faced by a number of good and bad men in our own history, and if I had to sum it up in one line, I’d say this: what are you prepared to do when there isn’t any easy way out?
    And that, I think, is why I’ve never been able to care about Batman, or Wolverine, or Iron Man… or any of them, really. Not because of what characters like that would or wouldn’t do, but because their publishers would never have the courage to have them written into such a situation.
  • Immigrant Patriotism: Ennis has lived in New York since the late '00s, after deciding to move there on his very first visit in the late 90s. He became a citizen in 2016. As evidenced by his love of various Eagleland tropes, he's generally a fan of the place.
  • Jesus Was Way Cool: Yes, really. Despite his unflattering portrayals of The Father, he does depict The Son relatively well. Jay in The Chronicles of Wormwood is Christ's second coming, but is one of the protagonists and friends with Wormwood, the Anti Anti Christ. In a Ghost Rider story he wrote, it's implied Jesus's teachings were noble, they were just perverted by Christianity
  • Lighter and Softer: A couple times.
    • He once wrote a children's picture book, of all things, called Erf. Though the title character still does get eaten by a monster at the end.
    • Adventures in the Rifle Brigade is a straight-up farce, a humorous satire of Indiana Jones and other Two-Fisted Tales of its kind.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Saint of Killers?
  • Only Sane Man: Another common theme (or criticism) of his works is most often the protagonist is the only person who's normal or has any sense of moral values, where as everyone else from side characters to the villains are varying shades of weird, idiotic, sexually depraved or utterly monstrous. It's a criticism because it's also tends to be the only reason why said protagonists are able to win.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: His three comic books featuring Zombie Apocalypse-type scenarios (Crossed, Stitched and Red Rover Charlie) feature Technically Living Zombies that break the traditional zombie mold. In the former two, the infected are extraordinarily sadists with a fondness for inflicting Body Horror (and in the Crossed's case have a fondness for perversion and rape as well). In Red Rover Charlie, the 'Feeders' all go insane and either try to kill each other and/or themselves. In all three cases, the infected display some level of pre-infection intelligence and are capable of doings things like using weapons against those who aren't infected.
  • Promoted Fanboy: He was a big fan of 2000 AD and especially Judge Dredd as a kid. He considers this to have been detrimental to his run on the strip, as he felt that he had too much respect for the character to make fun with many of his stories.
    • Played with on his run on Dan Dare; in an essay to the collected edition, he openly acknowledges that while he respects the character he has no particular sentimental attachment to him; he does, however, appreciate the values that Dare's creator imbued him with, which attracted him to the project.
  • Rated M for Manly: Ennis's work tends to emphasise traditionally "masculine" values, at the expense of more "feminine" values. As a result, many of his works (especially his earlier works) tend to feel somewhat sexist and conservative and occasionally mildly homophobic (probably as a result of growing up in Northern Ireland during the era of "Save Ulster From Sodomy" and the region's conservative nature even by Irish standards) At the same time, he got better about this as the years passed - in The Boys, for instance, where Rebecca successfully manages to talk Billy into breaking the cycle of violence that started with his father. Even early on, in Preacher, the climax involves Jesse learning that his self-defining masculinity is mostly bullshit and he's able to cry when he makes up with Tulip. Many of his more recent works also deal more seriously with both women and gay protagonists.
    Bruce Byfield: On the one hand, he is obsessed with machismo, and of how manly men interact with each other. On the other hand, he also views machismo as ultimately childish, and needing to give way to a less violent maturity that can only be won through the love of wife and family. The places where machismo operates may be the places where he finds stories, but he also considers those who remain there too long as immature.
  • Self-Deprecation: He isn't so caught up in his tracts that he can't see that his work can get grating for anyone just picking it up to read something they think is interesting. Someone with his name in The Boys is told to go fuck himself and Jesse Custer laughs that he needs to get laid when he realized how petulant and intrusive he's being when he goes on one of Ennis' rants.
  • Shout-Out: Especially to movies like Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: His works are very, very, very cynical, oftentimes veering disturbingly close to outright nihilism. The villains are probably among the most depraved in all of fiction, the "heroes" make morally reprehensible decisions, extreme violence is his characters' solutions to problems, and the human race is not depicted very pleasantly.
  • Slobs Versus Snobs: Of a sort; class conflicts form a central theme in a lot of Ennis' work, and while he's often willing to skewer the negative sides of both on the whole he comes across as being a lot more sympathetic to the working-class stiffs (as represented by ordinary soldiers, police officers, street criminals etc) than people who put themselves up as some kind of 'elite' (the wealthy, elite corporate types, politicians, superheroes, etc). Although he also insists that working-class characters are not necessarily good and that a nostalgia or class solidarity can often be used to sentimentally excuse bad behavior, as in The Boys where Butcher mocks how his father's friends toast him as a Working-Class Hero when he was deeply abusive to his wife and children.
  • Soldier Versus Warrior: Ennis heavily favors the "soldier" side, and the types of characters he prefers to write reflect that. Many of his favorite characters serve in the military or are otherwise members of professional fighting forces. His dislike of superheroes partly stems from this as well, and he often portrays them— and other "warrior" characters— as incompetent glory-seekers. He has a particular distaste for Captain America, who he sees as promoting a sanitized version of history that ignores the work of real soldiers.note . This was shown in a monologue by Greg Mallory in "The Boys", which is shown alongside images of dead soldiers, soldiers nobly fighting Nazis, and the story ends with Greg killing the wounded Soldier Boy, an expy of Captain America and the one who caused the death of Mallory's soldiers.
    But there some things you can always rely on and these were real men, don't forget. Real flesh and blood. Not multicolored shit dreamed up by overgrown kids. Who's going to tell the world about them? Who's going to make sure their stories live on? It's why I'll always be proud to be an American soldier.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Downplayed. Ennis doesn't throw actual jetpacks into his stories, but whenever he writes anything about World War II, he shows the Nazis as a terrifying juggernaut; disciplined, merciless, and always with more and better stuff than the Allies. According to Ennis's research (most of it now Dated History at best, unfortunately-believed revisionism at worst), the Allied victory was nothing short of the greatest miracle in history, and anyone who says otherwise is either determined to re-write history, a card-carrying idiot, or a Nazi collaborator who wants to sucker card-carrying idiotic Allies into a trap. Case in point, this conversation from Nick Fury: Peacemaker;
    Nick Fury: That's all we need, a King Tiger...
    Captain Kynaston: Really? Our chaps would call it a Royal Tiger. Typical of Jerry, isn't it? They've already got the best tank in the world by far, so what to they do?
    Fury: Build a better one.
    • ...Or this summary from The Boys;
      Mallory: The best German tanks could turn ours into mincemeat; head to head we couldn't even scratch theirs. I must have bailed out of more Shermans the previous Summer than... Well...
    • ...Or this gem from Battlefields: Tankies;
      Stiles: Ah, Jerry's always got a better tank, man. Tiger's just the most fookin' horrible one. Yer Mark Four's bad enough, so's all them self-propelled goons. Panther's a reet bastad, ye don't want to be friggin' aboot wi' them things. But yer Tiger...shite, man, the armor's foor fookin' inches thick, and the goon'll slice through 'owt' we'eve got. That Eighty-Eight, that's been Jerry's trump card since nineteen bloody forty.
  • Take That!:
    • Every time he writes superheroes —even the ones he does like— he puts them through utter hell, as he feels has hijacked an entire industry that used to be every bit as diverse as literature. Two particularly bloody swings he's taken are The Pro and The Boys, though it's also common in Hitman.
    • He hates religion, seeing it as bullshit that people use as an excuse for ignorance and cruelty. This is especially apparent in works such as Preacher and Just a Pilgrim.
    • He really does not like George W. Bush. So far, Ennis has written about Bush's assassination following the discovery of a conspiracy (303), his death by misadventure following an accident with a chainsaw (The Boys), unaware that ordering a nuclear strike on NYC would affect Washington, D.C. (Thor: Vikings), and how he was one of the first world leaders, if not the first, infected by the Crossed virus ("The Thin Red Line" arc in Crossed: Badlands).
    • One he brings up almost as often as religion is Political Overcorrectness, especially when it comes to the Melting Pot; in his view, a great percentage of humanity's problems is its refusal to let go of the past, especially when one has crossed oceans supposedly to do so, and a fresh start is freely offered time and time again. On the other hand, he doesn't apply nearly the same amount of vitriol to the kinds of identities he already admires (such as "true Irishmen", as opposed to American-Irishmen), and, in fact, is often quite positive toward them.
    For fuck's sake!! Ye stupid fuckin' bastards! Look at yerselves! Yez almost fuckin' had it and now ye're shittin' it all away! I mean what are we like anyway? All that misery an' bloodshed back home, an' we come back to the States an' the best we can do is just fuckin' carry on with it? Did yez not even hear what Maginty was sayin'? We don't have to slaughter each other! We can get what we want without that! We're free now...! In the name of fuckin' Jesus we're free of the friggin' past.
  • Tear Jerker invoked: As much as he's known for his love of splattery black comedy, he's also able to wring tears from the most stony-hearted reader when he wants to. See the fate of HMS Nightingale in War Story's "Nightingale" ("Gone to hell to fight the devil"), or the finale of Preacher where Jesse learns to cry again, then he and Tulip literally ride off into the sunset, or even Hitman ( "Drinks onna house fellas. There ain't no closing time. But you gotta leave your guns at the door.")
  • Vigilante Man: He really likes this archetype, and while he often makes these characters Tragic Hero and Tragic Villain and doesn't glorify their actions, it's about the one kind of character he never deconstructs or attacks in any way.
  • War Is Hell: If a Garth Ennis story involves a war (and most of them do), this trope is all but guaranteed to be at the center of it.
  • The War on Straw: Thanks to his willingness to (ab)use both Author Tract and Take That!, Ennis is willing to ignore or shove aside facts that contradict his preaching for the sake of giving his arguments more "weight", sometimes to the detriment of his works in the eyes of the reader. Both Crossed and Thor: Vikings have a particular infamy for this trait:
    • Crossed was intended as Take That! to the "Zombie Apocalypse survivalist fandom"... but replaces the "Romero Style" mindless shambling dead that said fandom actively bases its arguments on with an entirely different threat made of Ax-Crazy but otherwise perfectly functional humans. Which is kind of like arguing that a group of checkers players are "doing it wrong" and then trying to prove it by replacing all the checkers pieces and rules with those of chess. However, one could more charitably interpret it as saying that that so-called zombie apocalypse survivalists are narrow-minded in the kind of zombie apocalypse they are preparing for, and might very well find themselves woefully unprepared for a different kind of disaster.
  • Write Who You Know: A lot of his best-written characters are Irish. Although unusually for this trope, his actual opinion of "Irishness" is... extremely mixed, to say the least, especially in contrast with his high opinion of "Britishness" and "American-ness". Many of his Irish characters are also among his worst characters, as people. They often display the effects of Protestant-Catholic conflict in Ireland, and Ennis's writing tends to portray this as a toxic morass where neither side is in the right and there are no clear solutions. He also emigrated to America as soon as possible, and became a citizen in 2016.

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