Babs: The Black Road South #1
Remember last year when Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows gave us BABS, their absolutely unhinged sword-and-sorcery parody featuring a perpetually annoyed barbarian thief and her sarcastic enchanted sword named Barry? Well, the good news is they’re bringing her back. The bad news (for Babs, anyway) is she’s about to have another spectacularly terrible day.
BABS: The Black Road South is the six-issue follow-up series hitting stores in January 2026 from Syracuse-based AHOY Comics, and if the first series is any indication, we’re in for more bloodshed, more chaos, and more of Babs making every bad situation exponentially worse through sheer force of her personality.
Here’s the setup: Babs and her partner-in-crime Izzy have just crushed it in a gladiator arena. Like, really crushed it – blood, guts, over-the-top carnage, the whole nine yards. And for once, they actually get paid properly for their trouble. They have money. Real, actual treasure.
RELATED: Comixology Preview: THE WHISPER WAR #1
You’d think this would be a good thing, right? Financial stability, maybe a chance to relax, live the dream? Wrong. Dead wrong. Because having money means they’re about to get sucked into the kind of adventure that involves phrases like “devastated wasteland” and “dark, horrific road.” Specifically, they’re headed to a place called Mordynn, which… yeah, that name doesn’t exactly scream “vacation destination.”
As Ennis himself put it in the press release, with characteristic sarcasm:
“No way, not ever, not on your life. Not after what happened last time. She’d have to be out of her mind to go on another suicide run like – wait a minute, did somebody say treasure?”
That’s basically Babs in a nutshell. She knows better. She always knows better. But here we go again.
BABS: THE BLACK ROAD SOUTH #1
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Jacen Burrows
Colorist: Andy Troy
Letterer: Rob Steen
Cover A: Jacen Burrows
Cover B: John McCrea
Publisher: Ahoy Comics (January 14, 2026)
Preview Pages
The Dream Team Returns
If you’re not familiar with the creative team, let me bring you up to speed on why this is such a big deal. Garth Ennis is the guy who co-created Preacher and The Boys – you know, that show on Amazon where superheroes are absolute garbage people? He’s also written definitive runs on The Punisher for Marvel, created the cult-classic Hitman series for DC, and has basically spent his entire career gleefully demolishing sacred cows and genre conventions.
Ennis has this gift for creating characters who are simultaneously completely competent at their jobs and absolutely crap at life, which is exactly what Babs is. She’s a skilled warrior and thief, but she’s got a lousy attitude, terrible luck, and a supernatural talent for turning minor inconveniences into full-blown disasters. The first BABS series was essentially “what if Red Sonja had the personality of someone stuck in customer service hell,” and it was glorious.
Jacen Burrows, meanwhile, is the perfect artistic partner for Ennis’s particular brand of chaos. The Northern Irish artist has been working with Ennis for decades, starting with their controversial collaboration on Crossed (a zombie comic so brutal it makes The Walking Dead look like a children’s book), and continuing through projects like The Ribbon Queen, Marvel’s Get Fury, and various Punisher runs. Burrows has this ability to make both comedy and horror work on the same page, which is essential when you’re drawing a series where the protagonist might be decapitating goblins one panel and having a philosophical argument with her talking sword the next.
For BABS: The Black Road South, Burrows is clearly excited about expanding the world.
“I’m really excited to show people how much we’re expanding the world of Babs,” he said. “New locations, new monsters, new conflicts. Step into a much bigger world full of lore and wild new dangers!”
What Made the First BABS Series Work
When BABS launched in August 2024, it was basically Ennis taking aim at sword-and-sorcery tropes with the same gleeful disrespect he’d previously shown superheroes. The series featured Babs, her extremely unhelpful enchanted sword Barry (seriously, he’s the worst), and a supporting cast that included characters like Mork the Orc and his crew, the deeply suspicious Tiberius Toledo and his “White Knights of Unblemished Virtue” (yes, it’s exactly the kind of satire you’re thinking), and various other denizens of a fantasy world that felt like a dark comedy version of Middle-earth.
CBR called it “sharp, subversive, hilarious, and absolutely one of the best comics of 2024,” which is high praise but also completely accurate. The series worked because Ennis wasn’t just making fun of the sword-and-sorcery genre – he was using it as a vehicle to comment on contemporary issues while also telling a legitimately entertaining action-comedy story. Plus, watching Babs hack her way through problems while complaining about everything was just inherently satisfying.
The first series concluded in February 2025 with Babs locked in a final showdown against Lord Tiberius and his horde of White Knights, and apparently someone’s “janky nasty bits” played a decisive role in the outcome. (This is a Garth Ennis comic, so yes, that’s exactly the kind of detail that makes it into the final battle.)
The Covers Are Already Incredible
Issue #1 of Babs: The Black Road South will feature Burrows on the main A cover, but there’s also a B cover by John McCrea – and that’s a big deal. McCrea is another longtime Ennis collaborator who co-created Hitman with him back in the ’90s, that brilliant DC series about a super-powered assassin in Gotham City who just wanted to be left alone to drink beer and watch football. McCrea’s also drawn various Boys spinoffs like Herogasm and Highland Laddie, so he knows exactly how to capture Ennis’s particular mix of violence, humor, and character work.
Having McCrea do a variant cover is like getting the band back together – he and Ennis have been working together since the late ’80s on projects like Troubled Souls and The Demon, and their partnership produced some of the most memorable comedy-action comics of the past few decades. His art style – which can do both goofy humor and brutal action equally well – makes him perfect for capturing Babs’s whole vibe.
Why AHOY Comics Is the Perfect Home
For those unfamiliar, AHOY Comics is this wonderful Syracuse-based publisher that specializes in exactly the kind of smart, subversive, darkly funny comics that mainstream publishers sometimes get nervous about. Founded in 2018 by publisher Hart Seely (an award-winning reporter whose satire has appeared in The New York Times) and Editor-in-Chief Tom Peyer (a veteran comic writer and former DC/Vertigo editor), AHOY has built its reputation on titles that have a sense of humor about genre conventions.
Their catalog includes things like Second Coming (where Jesus Christ becomes roommates with a superhero), High Heaven (a religious satire), The Wrong Earth (superhero multiverse parody), and Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror (which is exactly what it sounds like). They also publish The Toxic Avenger Comics, because why not?
The point is, AHOY is all about comics that are smart, funny, well-made, and willing to take shots at sacred cows. They’re the perfect publisher for Ennis and Burrows to let loose with a barbarian who just wants to get rich and retire but keeps getting dragged into increasingly absurd adventures involving wizards, demons, and fascist knights.
Tom Peyer put it well when describing the series:
“I like sword and sorcery and I really like comedy, but what I love the most is comics. Garth’s command of narrative, character, and sheer entertainment; Jacen’s wit, visual appeal, and storytelling – they showcase this beautiful medium at its best.”
What Ennis Has Said About Creating Babs
In interviews about the first series, Ennis revealed that he came up with Babs while wandering through a tropical ravine on the paradise island of St. Lucia. (Apparently, the best ideas for blood-soaked barbarian comedies come to you in the most tranquil settings.) He’s been pretty open about the fact that he’s always loved sword-and-sorcery as a genre – The Hobbit was one of the first stories he ever read – but he found most of the stuff that followed Tolkien to be pretty derivative and boring.
What he wanted to do with BABS was create a character who exists in that fantasy world but has the sensibility of someone dealing with modern frustrations. Babs is good at her job (fighting, stealing, surviving), but she’s “crap at life” in Ennis’s words, and she has “a lousy attitude to boot.” The series was described as “deeply disrespectful humor” toward the genre, and Ennis specifically mentioned that “nobody’s going to be Making Middle Earth Great Again while she’s around,” which gives you a pretty clear sense of the satirical targets.
For the sequel, it sounds like Ennis is doubling down on everything that worked the first time while also expanding the scope. The mention of Mordynn as a “devastated wasteland” suggests we’re going to see more of this world’s darker corners, and Burrows’s comments about new monsters and dangers hint at some serious escalation.
The Supporting Cast
One thing worth noting is that Izzy – Babs’s “partner-in-barbarism” – is getting more prominence this time around. In the first series, she showed up as a competent fighter who could match Babs blow-for-blow, and their dynamic was fun to watch. Having both of them as the focus of this new series suggests we’ll get more of that buddy-comedy energy, except with way more dismemberment.
The press materials also mention they’re following “The Black Road South” to Mordynn, which sounds ominous as hell. Given that the first series involved undead people, orcs, dragons, demons, and those “VERY white knights,” it’ll be interesting to see what fresh horrors Ennis and Burrows have cooked up for the devastated wastelands.
When Can You Read It?
BABS: The Black Road South #1 drops on January 14, 2026. That’s right around the corner, which means if you haven’t read the first series yet, you’ve got some catching up to do. The original six-issue run was collected in a trade paperback that hit stores in March 2025, so you can grab that and get the full story of Babs, Barry, and their first catastrophic adventure.
The new series will be available through your local comic shop or digitally through the usual platforms. And honestly, if you’re into any of the following things, this is absolutely worth your time:
- Garth Ennis’s previous work (The Boys, Preacher, Hitman, Punisher)
- Sword-and-sorcery stories that don’t take themselves too seriously
- Dark comedy with genuinely good action sequences
- Characters who are competent but also complete disasters
- Fantasy worlds that feel lived-in and weird
- Comics that aren’t afraid to get messy (both literally and figuratively)
The Bigger Picture
What’s interesting about BABS is that it represents Ennis working in a genre he genuinely loves but hasn’t explored much in comics. He’s spent decades deconstructing superheroes and writing brutal war stories and creating horror-tinged crime narratives, but sword-and-sorcery has been mostly untapped territory for him. The first series proved he could bring the same sharp wit and character work to fantasy settings, and it sounds like the sequel is going to push things even further.
Plus, there’s something refreshing about a barbarian protagonist who isn’t stoic and noble and mythic – Babs is cranky, greedy, and perpetually annoyed by the universe’s refusal to let her catch a break. She’s basically the antithesis of every Conan-style hero, and that makes her way more fun to spend time with.
Bottom Line
Look, if you enjoyed the first BABS series – or if you’ve been a fan of Ennis and Burrows’s previous collaborations – then The Black Road South is an absolute must-read. It’s got everything that made the original work (violence, comedy, sharp satire, great character dynamics) plus an expanded world and presumably even more creative ways for Babs to make bad decisions.
And if you’re new to the series, there’s still time to catch up before January. Grab that trade paperback, get familiar with Babs and Barry and the completely absurd fantasy world they inhabit, and prepare yourself for round two.
Because whether Babs likes it or not (and she definitely doesn’t), she’s about to embark on another “suicide run” in pursuit of treasure. And we all know exactly how well that’s going to go for her.
BABS: The Black Road South #1 arrives January 14, 2026, from AHOY Comics. Main cover by Jacen Burrows, variant cover by John McCrea. Prepare for carnage.
