Interview: Garth Ennis on Dynamite’s Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 cover by Dan Panosian

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 cover by Dan Panosian


Garth Ennis is the popular writer of Preacher, The Boys, The Punisher, Battlefields, and many other comics. Now he returns to his creation Red Team in Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass. Westfield’s Roger Ash contacted Ennis to learn more about this upcoming electrifying series from Dynamite.

Westfield: For those unfamiliar with Red Team, what should they know going in?

Garth Ennis: Red Team is the story of an NYPD narcotics/gang task force who take a less than legal approach to solving their more frustrating cases. They’re highly intelligent people and not at all corrupt in the traditional sense; they don’t act for their own personal gain in any way. But their actions led to a catastrophic showdown at the end of book one, and in the new story two of the team- Detectives Eddie Mellinger and Trudy Giroux- find themselves in the doghouse. Their fellow officers don’t trust them, and their commanders would frankly like to be rid of them.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 preview page 1. Art by Craig Cermak.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 preview page 1. Art by Craig Cermak.


Westfield: What is the appeal of Eddie Mellinger and Trudy Giroux for you?

Ennis: They’re tough and capable, and essentially decent but flawed people. Eddie’s a worrier, Trudy has a couple of insecurities that won’t go away. Partly because of that, partly because they’re more or less outcasts within the PD, they tend to act as each other’s refuge- there’s no one else who gets it, as one of them says at one point. Eddie can’t talk to his wife about the stresses of the situation and Trudy has no one, and this means they confide only in each other. Really they’re two of my all-time favorites, probably because they’re so human.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 preview page 2. Art by Craig Cermak.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 preview page 2. Art by Craig Cermak.


Westfield: What can you tell us about the new story and who are some of the characters they’ll meet?

Ennis: Quite by accident, Eddie and Trudy happen across an opportunity to come in from the cold, a big case that could put them back in the department’s good books. But this will entail a certain amount of risk, both to their careers and their lives- largely because they’re up against figures from both organized crime and, even worse, high society. A pair of gangsters known as Phat Man and Little Boi represent the first, spoilt rich kid Eric Nightingale and his oh-so-polite lawyer David Dershowitz appear for the second.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 preview page 3. Art by Craig Cermak.

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1 preview page 3. Art by Craig Cermak.


Westfield: You’re working again with artist Craig Cermak. What can you say about your collaboration with him?

Ennis: He’s an all-time favorite too. Great character work and storytelling, professional to a fault, carefully and intelligently thinks his way into the story. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more work with Craig.

Purchase

Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass #1

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