Avatar is an odd publisher.  They used to specialise in bad-girl horror books.  Since Warren Ellis started working with them a few years ago, things have changed.  They now divide their output roughly 50-50 between side projects by cult writers, and tits.

Much of the time, Avatar ends up with the sort of material that other publishers wouldn't touch, not because it isn't good, but because it's just too violent, explicit or offensive.  That's how they ended up running Garth Ennis' Dicks.  303, however, is much more in Ennis' usual vein.  For the look of the first issue, you could easily imagine this as a Vertigo miniseries.

It's another war story.  Ennis loves war stories.  He seems to be keeping the genre alive almost singlehandedly.  Regular readers of Ennis' war stories will not be surprised to learn that our lead character is a military man, a manly man, an admirable man in all the ways that Ennis military heroes tend to be. 

The twist this time is that he's Russian, a hangover from the days when the Russian Army was pretty damned impressive.  Nowadays the Russian Army is a declining mess, as he's all too aware, and the sacrifices of his friends seem to have been a total waste of time.  But despite being jaded, he's still ploughing on with the job - and as a veteran who actually knows what's he's doing, the Russians are all too delighted to hold onto him.  The plot, strictly speaking, involves the Russians, Americans and British all looking for a downed aircraft in Afghanistan.  But really, it's about the Colonel trying to knock his tenth-rate squadron into something that isn't such an embarrassment to Russian military history.

Art comes from Jacen Burrows, Avatar's usual first choice of collaborator for top name writers.  He's a solid artist - the supporting cast aren't very distinctive, but it's still a good looking book, and Greg Waller does an impressive job on the colouring.

If you've read many Garth Ennis war stories before, you'll have the general idea of what to expect here.  If you haven't, to be honest, some of the Vertigo stories are probably a better first choice.  But he does it very well, and there's always room for another one.

Rating: B+

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