Babs

by Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows (illustrator)

A savage sword-and-sorcery parody from the co-creators of Preacher, The Boys, and Marvel’s Get Fury! Meet Babs, a barbarian thief, and Barry, the world's worst enchanted sword. Together they travel a fantastic landscape of wizards, dragons, demons, and castles, looking to steal treasure. Their plans are interrupted by the arrival of a band of VERY white knights who exploit and divide the townsfolk. Babs wasn’t looking for a fight…but she’s never found a bad situation she couldn’t make 100 times worse!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

160 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2025

About the author

Ennis 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

Reviews

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of parodies of Conan, this one obviously being more of a Red Sonja parody. But I always think Conan is goofy enough as is, it's a bit too easy to parody. Garth Ennis does a pretty good job here, there's some fun humour, there's a giant penis, lots of slice n dicing - its more graphic than an actual Conan/Red Sonja book.

Ennis sticks in a lot of dialogue and it'll often be a large block of text. It doesn't really work well for me, I prefer when dialogue in comics feels natural and gets spread across multiple panels so we see more 'acting'.

Jacen Burrows is great. He seems to keep getting better.

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author really goes all out with these characters, from their goofy names, to their ridiculous lines. Even the horses speak in this fantasy tale of questing and adventuring. And drinking and fighting in bars. And, oh, the sarcasm is far from witty, but still hilarious and so very politically incorrect. I'm a sucker for good sarcasm and insults. This story delivers them by the bucketload.

Babs the barbarian is down on her luck again. Thankfully, a swift bar fight with Mork the Orc and his band called the Dudes finances her drinking ways. But what to do for the long term?

Mork sees an opportunity to befriend Tiberius Toledo of the Ivory Knights of Unblemished Virtue, though the latter is against non-humans like most of the Dudes. Tiberius begins to use Mork's extensive research on non-human heroes and villains to hunt them down, while the Dudes hope to gain protection and notoriety in exchange. They get a big fat nothing.

In her search for money, Babs stumbles upon her friend Izzy's horse. She suspects Izzy is in trouble, so she focuses on finding her. She is tricked into eating chips spiced with sleeping potion and wakes up enslaved in a mine. She is forced to work alongside other captives, including Izzy. So, actually, I guess Babs found her friend. Quest successful! Now to escape.

Sir Colin Culpepper distracts a guard by doing something unmentionable to it with his hands, which allows Babs to kill it. She and Izy free the other captives and bury the rest of the guards in the mine.

Babs threatens Tiberius with an army of ghosts she met a while back. It's that scene in Lord of the Rings with the spirit army. But since these guys are ghosts, they can't do any damage, which is pretty hilarious. Babs resorts to a nicely thought out, perfectly sound frontal assault on a force ten times in number. Facing Tiberius is more of a challenge though, until she feeds him a potion she stole in the first issue - a d!ck enlargement potion that surprisingly works like a charm.

With Tiberius defeated and his band crushed under his giant wong, the town is free again. Free to rebuild and, sadly, not afford to pay Babs anything. Off she goes, swearing into the sunset, toward her next adventure.

[Timo · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much fun, so many giggles. Best thing I have read awhile. Ennis at his best.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

It might be an overt commentary on comicsgate, which under lesser, boring, brainless, creators, would be an instant ‘no’ from me. But this made me laugh from the start of issue 1 to the end of issue 6.
Delighted that there is going to be another series.

Although, it could really do with being at a different publisher to reach a wider audience.

Ennis is the best writer still working in comics today, with only Brubaker coming even remotely close to him.
Paired with Burrows who can deliver on action, humour, drama and horror means anything they touch is gold.


You’d need a sense of humour bypass not to enjoy this, which sadly rules out both sides of the extremes on the ongoing culture wars that Ennis regularly pokes fun at.


Buy it.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, this was an interesting comic, to say the least. It’s not your typical kind of humor yeah. It's just Garth Ennis darkish humor. He can be really funny sometimes, but some of his humor is just straight-up gross. Still, I won't lie—this comic has a lot of genuinely funny moments.

From what I’ve seen, it’s basically a Red Sonja parody, yeah? It kind of plays in the same world as Conan the Barbarian, but it totally tones down the seriousness and leans way more into comedy. It feels like Garth Ennis is doing a full-on comedy sketch inside that Conan-type universe. He sneaks in a lot of his political views too, which honestly isn’t bad it gives the comic a kind of identity, if that makes sense.

Overall, I’d say it’s pretty good. If you're just looking for something light and funny to read not a super serious or deep story it’s got jokes, adventure, and that classic Ennis edge. If you've read any of his other work, you'd probably enjoy this one too. Just don’t expect elite level writing this one’s all about fun.

[Alex Sarll]

Garth Ennis approaches swords and sorcery with much the same reverence he brings to superheroes – think dragons who yell "Come back with my shit, bitch!" when their hoard gets nicked, and a magic sword whose powers only extend to obvious advice, bitching, and flipping its owner off with the hilt. Plus, obviously, lots of jokes about the stupidity of armoured bikinis. There's a degree of more contemporary satire in the gaggle of tavern incels who come for Babs because they don't approve of male barbarians being replaced with girls – and, once she makes mincemeat of them, blame their defeat on a conspiracy by the deep realm (a frustrating joke, in that it really ought to work as a fantasy riff on the deep state, yet always made me think of dwarves and other subterranean powers instead). But it's fundamentally puerile stuff, making it handy that Ennis is an expert in puerility, and Jacen Burrows has not dissimilar comic chops to his much-missed oppo Steve Dillon.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled on this at my local library. Pretty much because of the cover. But it's a very funny, loving parody (tribute?) to sword and sorcery stories. Think Robert E Howard if he were high on shrooms.

[Gabriel A · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a pleasure this was