Garth Ennis Talks Sixpack and Dogwelder: Hard Travelin' Heroz

This week, DC fans welcomed Section Eight back to print -- or at least two of its members, team leader Sixpack and the -- ahh...enigmatic? Yeah, let's go with that -- Dogwelder, who hit the road in search of answers.

Garth Ennis, who created the characters during his legendary run on Hitman and then played with them again last year in All-Star Section Eight during the "DC You" publishing initiative, writes the miniseries, with art from Russ Braun.

Ennis joined ComicBook.com to discuss the series, the first issue of which you can pick up at your local comic shop today or get digitally on ComiXology.

Of all the members of Section Eight, what made THESE TWO the ones to do Hard Traveling Heroz with?

Sixpack's the team leader, and of course the greatest superhero in this or any other universe. He's a little concerned about some of Section Eight's less than stellar recent performances, and wants to try to move them up into the big leagues where they belong.

Dogwelder's got the most interesting power; he's really the most mysterious member of the team. It's his curiosity about his origins that get this one moving.

Also, none of the others really work in that context, do they? While it's true that Baytor's backstory does give him an interesting role in the series, Guts is just a pile of offal, and there's no way I'm writing Bueno's secret origin- not even with a gun to my head.


Is the whole thing about Dogwelder's "true nature" playing off of some of the Rebirth stuff, and the idea of playing around with history?

People keep mentioning that, but I don't actually know what it is, exactly. Some sort of relaunch, I'd imagine. I suppose I could google it, but where do you find the time?



Where this actually comes from is the old Swamp Thing epic, "American Gothic", and the notion of examining a character's mind-boggling true nature and origin story. I mentioned this to Alan Moore and he pointed out a couple of things about dogs and welding that I actually found very helpful.


Had you noticed -- and if so, what do you think about this? -- that the restaurant they use in the Supergirl TV show is Noonan's?

No, haven't seen it. Can't imagine it's anything like our Noonan's, though. Noonan's (and its owner) actually took its name from the Sean Penn crime flick State of Grace, which has to be the most criminally underrated gangster movie of all time.


Have you ever had pushback from DC on using the mainstream superheroes in these stories? There's at least one guy in this issue I haven't seen in a while.

Not so far. Dan DiDio told me that DC need to be able to laugh at themselves, and I was more than happy to help out. If you look at the first Section Eight series, the superhero humor is more incongruous than anything else: Batman gets a parking ticket, Green Lantern's calling his lawyer, etc.



I liked The Spectre's appearances in Swamp Thing, I always thought Alan used him well. John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake picked up the ball and ran with it to good effect in their '90s series.

The first issue is pretty contained. Will this live up to the Hard Travelin' name and be a road trip story eventually?

Oh yes, there's a road and some hardness, and traveling. The title was really too much to resist, especially when you consider the series we took it from.

Will we recognize who the trench coat wearing smoker is? I thnk a lot of people expected Constantine, but those don't look like his shoes.

It's been a long time since I wrote Constantine, but I understand he's undergone a few changes now that he's back in the DCU. I think I've managed to incorporate those elements and still come up with a figure that long-time fans will recognize.


Do you already ha​ve a next step to play with characters in the Section 8 family if these titles continue to sell?

Watch this space.