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Dicks #1
Dicks, Volume 1
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
96 people want to read
About the author
Garth Ennis
2,629 books3,191 followersEnnis began his comic-writing career in 1989 with the series Troubled Souls. Appearing in the short-lived but critically-acclaimed British anthology Crisis and illustrated by McCrea, it told the story of a young, apolitical Protestant man caught up by fate in the violence of the Irish 'Troubles'. It spawned a sequel, For a Few Troubles More, a broad Belfast-based comedy featuring two supporting characters from Troubled Souls, Dougie and Ivor, who would later get their own American comics series, Dicks, from Caliber in 1997, and several follow-ups from Avatar.
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 25, 2021
#ThrowbackThursday - Back in the '90s, I used to write comic book reviews for the website of a now-defunct comic book retailer called Rockem Sockem Comics. (Collect them all!)
From the February 1998 edition with a theme of "A Tenuous Konnection":
INTRODUCTION
Most months the theme for this kolumn is so obvious it just kind of kicks me in the kranium. I've apparently taken a few too many kicks to the kranium, however, bekause this month it took a shoe horn, aksle grease, and dukt tape to kram a tenuous konnection into the following komik book reviews. Kan you guess it? Kan you forgive me?
FROM THE BACKLIST
DICKS #1-4 (Caliber Comics)
The title of DICKS ostensibly refers to the occupation of its Northern Ireland protagonists, Ivor Thompson and Dougie Patterson. In the hard-boiled parlance of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, "dicks" are private detectives. In the case of DICKS, however, the secondary meaning of "dicks" also applies, providing an accurate description of the duo's bad attitudes. Ivor and Dougie's ideas of practical jokes usually involve laxatives, sexual humiliation or bloodshed . . . and those are just the ones they play on each other.
Right from the get go, let me tell you that DICKS is a major disappointment. Garth Ennis and John McCrea are, respectively, the writer and artist of DC Comics' extremely funny HITMAN series (Grade: B+, see the December 1997 LWYBM for details). Ennis is also the writer of the incredibly wonderful PREACHER series (DC Comics, Grade: A+). That such talented fellas could create such a foul, mediocre mess as DICKS is baffling to me. The only possible explanation occurs in the fourth and final issue of the DICKS limited series, where Ennis mentions in an afterword that he originally wrote the script back in 1991. He has obviously come a long way as a writer in the meantime.
So what's wrong with DICKS? Nothing, really, if you believe bathroom humor to be the highest form of comedy. Ennis manages to work every possible human excretion into a gag in the course of the book. (The secondary meaning of "gag" also applies in this case.) It's to Ennis' credit, that some of these gags are actually clever and original, but how much demand is there, really, for clever and original jokes about excrement? Wait, upon considering the success of the films of Jim Carrey, I retract that question. Anyhow, the questionable gags are strung on a whisper thin plot involving Ivor and Dougie getting on the bad sides of the town bully, a local mobster, and the ghost of Ivor's dead uncle. Carnage and gore top off the sickness regularly perpetrated throughout the book.
DICKS also suffers from McCrea's worst artwork ever. Unlike the fine work he contributes to HITMAN, DICKS is full of fast, frantic and sloppy drawings. The best that can be said of McCrea's art on DICKS is that it complements the story perfectly.
Where does DICKS succeed? The sheer audacity of the book is its major strength. Every other word is obscene; I don't think I've ever been subjected to such a plethora of profanity outside of a Quentin Tarantino movie. The dialogue, by the way, is written in a heavy Irish brogue. On the down side, that means word balloons can take several minutes to decipher, but on the up side, that means the reader can learn a whole new vocabulary of Irish obscenities. It's refreshing that the lead characters are unrepentantly evil and stupid, learning nothing in the course of their adventures and having not a single warm-and-fuzzy moment. Finally, I have to admire the coup pulled off by Caliber Comics of luring Ennis to their small company when he's one of the hottest writers in the entire comic book industry. (And right before Ennis signed an exclusivity deal with DC Comics last week.)
Despite the "Mature Readers" warning label on the cover, DICKS is most assuredly aimed at immature readers -- or die-hard Garth Ennis completists who must have every syllable he's ever typed included their collection. Y'know, like me.
Grade: D+
From the February 1998 edition with a theme of "A Tenuous Konnection":
INTRODUCTION
Most months the theme for this kolumn is so obvious it just kind of kicks me in the kranium. I've apparently taken a few too many kicks to the kranium, however, bekause this month it took a shoe horn, aksle grease, and dukt tape to kram a tenuous konnection into the following komik book reviews. Kan you guess it? Kan you forgive me?
FROM THE BACKLIST
DICKS #1-4 (Caliber Comics)
The title of DICKS ostensibly refers to the occupation of its Northern Ireland protagonists, Ivor Thompson and Dougie Patterson. In the hard-boiled parlance of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, "dicks" are private detectives. In the case of DICKS, however, the secondary meaning of "dicks" also applies, providing an accurate description of the duo's bad attitudes. Ivor and Dougie's ideas of practical jokes usually involve laxatives, sexual humiliation or bloodshed . . . and those are just the ones they play on each other.
Right from the get go, let me tell you that DICKS is a major disappointment. Garth Ennis and John McCrea are, respectively, the writer and artist of DC Comics' extremely funny HITMAN series (Grade: B+, see the December 1997 LWYBM for details). Ennis is also the writer of the incredibly wonderful PREACHER series (DC Comics, Grade: A+). That such talented fellas could create such a foul, mediocre mess as DICKS is baffling to me. The only possible explanation occurs in the fourth and final issue of the DICKS limited series, where Ennis mentions in an afterword that he originally wrote the script back in 1991. He has obviously come a long way as a writer in the meantime.
So what's wrong with DICKS? Nothing, really, if you believe bathroom humor to be the highest form of comedy. Ennis manages to work every possible human excretion into a gag in the course of the book. (The secondary meaning of "gag" also applies in this case.) It's to Ennis' credit, that some of these gags are actually clever and original, but how much demand is there, really, for clever and original jokes about excrement? Wait, upon considering the success of the films of Jim Carrey, I retract that question. Anyhow, the questionable gags are strung on a whisper thin plot involving Ivor and Dougie getting on the bad sides of the town bully, a local mobster, and the ghost of Ivor's dead uncle. Carnage and gore top off the sickness regularly perpetrated throughout the book.
DICKS also suffers from McCrea's worst artwork ever. Unlike the fine work he contributes to HITMAN, DICKS is full of fast, frantic and sloppy drawings. The best that can be said of McCrea's art on DICKS is that it complements the story perfectly.
Where does DICKS succeed? The sheer audacity of the book is its major strength. Every other word is obscene; I don't think I've ever been subjected to such a plethora of profanity outside of a Quentin Tarantino movie. The dialogue, by the way, is written in a heavy Irish brogue. On the down side, that means word balloons can take several minutes to decipher, but on the up side, that means the reader can learn a whole new vocabulary of Irish obscenities. It's refreshing that the lead characters are unrepentantly evil and stupid, learning nothing in the course of their adventures and having not a single warm-and-fuzzy moment. Finally, I have to admire the coup pulled off by Caliber Comics of luring Ennis to their small company when he's one of the hottest writers in the entire comic book industry. (And right before Ennis signed an exclusivity deal with DC Comics last week.)
Despite the "Mature Readers" warning label on the cover, DICKS is most assuredly aimed at immature readers -- or die-hard Garth Ennis completists who must have every syllable he's ever typed included their collection. Y'know, like me.
Grade: D+
December 30, 2013
This is what happens when you blind buy a book by an author whose previous works you've (mostly) enjoyed (Garth Ennis): you end up with a boring TPB full of pubescent humour which is desperately trying to be controversial. To make it worse, the entire comic is written in a kind of phonetic Irish English, which makes reading it even more laborious.
Oh well, you live and learn.
Oh well, you live and learn.
August 29, 2017
I enjoyed this book. It's exactly what you can expect from the title: fart jokes, penis jokes and more swearing than anyone can handle. Still, I can't remember the last time I laughed uncontrollably, so I can't help giving it the maximum rating. The story is weak, the artwork is mediocre, but the dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny and more than makes up for the first two. The author does a great job of suggesting dialects and speech defects via odd and almost unintelligible spelling. You have an odd mix of... stuff, from forced marriages, to drug dealing, to selling moonshine, to resurrections from the grave. It's a constantly-moving, violent and vulgar mess that doesn't get dull.
There is the Ennis feel to the whole thing, but it's obviously raw and greatly inferior to his popular series. It's nice to see where he evolved from, though.
There is the Ennis feel to the whole thing, but it's obviously raw and greatly inferior to his popular series. It's nice to see where he evolved from, though.
July 24, 2008
So wrong yet so funny.
Read
September 3, 2015I'm absolutely loving Ennis' and McCrea's current return to Section Eight, the superteam whose members include Dogwelder (he welds dogs to his enemies) and Bueno Excellente (who fights crime through the power of perversion). I even quite enjoyed the second volume of this. All of which I clarify to establish that I'm not a complete stick-in-the-mud before saying: this is really poor. It reminds me of all those sub-Viz rags called things like Zit! which clogged shelves for a year or two, never noticing that Viz had smarts behind all the turds and testicles. I'm sure the creators had enormous fun producing this; alas, I had a lot less reading it.
September 22, 2011
McCrea drew this in his underground-style-mode and Ennis let himself loose with all the very black humor he could find from the gutter. And I enjoyed.
September 18, 2014
Irreverent, disgusting but amusing nonetheless.
Underdog life in Belfast (I hope not).
The artwork is inspired by Basil Wolverton for sure.
Nothing sacred, no one spared.
Underdog life in Belfast (I hope not).
The artwork is inspired by Basil Wolverton for sure.
Nothing sacred, no one spared.
September 27, 2017
Per carità, di ridere si ride. Ma più che altro ci si stupisce dell'assoluta "mancanza di tatto" di questo fumetto sguaiato fino al midollo. La storia è un lurido pretesto per precipitare il lettore in situazioni paradossali e lercie. I personaggi muoiono o vengono mutilati senza pause, i protagonisti sono due poveri cristi al limite dell'idiozia. E poi ci sono i contenuti speciali, come "Trio, la troia schifosa". Su quelli un bel no comment ci starebbe benissimo.
January 26, 2019
DNF at 10%.
It's pretty unusual that I DNF a comics, even more that I DNF any book after so few pages but honestly it really was not for me. I felt the art was ugly as hell, and the story really did not interest me. I basically had to force myself to read the dozen pages I did. I tried to see if the rest was better but nope, it was not.
It's pretty unusual that I DNF a comics, even more that I DNF any book after so few pages but honestly it really was not for me. I felt the art was ugly as hell, and the story really did not interest me. I basically had to force myself to read the dozen pages I did. I tried to see if the rest was better but nope, it was not.
December 26, 2021
Culturally profane, socially unacceptable, and besotted with extreme "bathroom" humor. A perfect antidote for blah winter weather. Garth Ennis is devlishly funny, and the Irish slang used throughout had me turning to the back pages where the author(s) included a handy glossary.
September 22, 2024
Couldn't get through it. Outside of early Preacher, Ennis just isn't my cuppa.
March 19, 2018
Foul-mouthed, cynical, obscene, profane, scatological, disgusting, and generally guaranteed to offend anyone of a sensitive disposition.
I loved it.
I loved it.
February 6, 2016
Garth Ennis is no stranger to controversy,the man behind PREACHER/Hitman/Crossed/Wormwood & many other adult & to some overly "offensive" books worth checking out.While PREACHER,his most famous/infamous series had alot of dark humour in it & is considered one of the best graphic novel series it also was filled to the rafters with political.& anti organised religion(in that case the Catholic Church)content.Here there is none of that but it's all the funnier for it in my mind.This is "adult" humour at it's most crude & outragous & the the 2 main protaganists are loveable bums who you can't help but root for.The story contains some of the zaniest supernatural content I've ever seen(an alien who cones to earth in a toilet spaceship anybody?) & helps make it the classic it is.I know alot of people would have bought this off of Garth Enniss's name alone,I was one of them & I can see alot of people who done that thinking wheres the social commentary...THERE IS NONE & GARTH ENNIS HAS CREATED ONE OF HIS FUNNIEST & MOST ENDEARING BOOKS BECAUSE OF THAT.GR8 STUFF!
November 25, 2012
This dark humor book about two dimwits trying to be detectives, is a new reprint of material dating back to 1992. I'd nitpick that the Scottish dialogue done with phonetic spelling makes for a much more difficult reading experience. I used to enjoy trying to decipher dialogue done that way back in my high school days, nowadays not so much.
April 30, 2011
Nowhere near as vile and immoral as it's made out to be, but still quite entertaining. Was rather put off by the cramped black and white style of the art though...
January 10, 2013
Note to self, stop buying all Garth Ennis books, he veers between great and garbage.
January 8, 2017
Garbage.
March 4, 2019
Edición USA-UK de Avatar. Ejemplar con este mismo ISBN pero otra portada.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews