Goonhammer Reviews: Da Red Gobbo's Last Stand, by Andi Ewington

Image credit: Games Workshop

Da Red Gobbo is one of those little facets of the Warhammer world that, while prominent only for a short time each year, has a rather interesting pedigree.

Back in 1997, Andy Chambers (Survival Instinct, Path of the Renegade), Rick Priestley, and Gav Thorpe (13th Legion, Luther: First of the Fallen) launched the game Gorkamorka. This was the next installment in the 'Warhammer 40K skirmish' series that debuted with 1995's Necromunda and did for orks what the latter game did for humans.

While Gorkamorka wouldn't capture the same popularity that Necromunda did, its addition of vehicular combat and madcap ork-on-ork krumpin' has imbued it with an enduring legacy all its own. One such element was a character known as Da Red Gobbo, a special character playable by the Rebel Grots faction introduced in 1998's Diggamob expansion. Da Red Gobbo was the leader of the Gretchin Revolutionary Committee, grots who'd had enough of being second-class citizens in service of the orks.

Aesthetically and stylistically, Da Red Gobbo was a send-up of the communist revolutionary, right down to the star on his cap and the association with the color red (hell, even his name is a bit of a pun). Amusingly, Da Red Gobbo wasn't actually even a character, but rather a sort of role that a grot could assume when the time came to take up the mantle of the revolutionary spirit. Red Gobbos rise and fall, are born and die, over and over again in opposition to Ork injustice in a sort of perpetual cycle of the Hegelian dialectic.

So there's the revolutionary. But the festive character as we know him today didn't come into being for another two decades.

Image credit: Games Workshop

At some point back in 2019, someone (I presume) in the marketing department decided that what the world needed was a little more Christmas cheer. On Halloween that year, an article appeared on the Warhammer Community site re-introducing the world to Da Red Gobbo- only this time thematically associated with Christmas₁.

And just like that, Warhammer had its own holiday mascot. While that year saw the start of the annual tradition of releasing a festive Red Gobbo mini, the Black Library wouldn't get involved for another two years. With 2020's Brutal Kunnin' under his belt, Mike Brooks was tapped to pen Da Gobbo's Revenge the year following, and another annual tradition- the annual Red Gobbo Black Library release- was born.

That brings us to this year's entry, Da Red Gobbo's Last Stand. Following in the footsteps of writers Mike Brooks, Denny Flowers, Rhuairidh James, and Justin Woolley, Andi Ewington crafts a standalone tale of the emergence of another Red Gobbo to once more take up the cause of grot revolution.

This is Ewington's first book for the Black Library, which is in itself a bit unusual as new faces are typically asked to deliver short stories before being commissioned for longer works. But Ewington isn't new to writing, with a pedigree that includes a background in video-game tie-in comics (Dark Souls II, Just Cause 3), original comics/graphic novels (Forty-Five45, Overrun), and speculative fiction (Bones & Betrayals: Silence of the Dead).

2025's Red Gobbo mini, the Tinboy. Image credit: Games Workshop

The Story

The Red Gobbo novella follows up last year's crash-landing-on-a-planet setting by keeping this one almost entirely in the void. When Kaptin Bloodhook and his band of Orks aboard Da Jolly Smasha chance upon a space hulk emerging from the void, it presents an opportunity that both Gork and Mork would leap at. Of course, such hulks are renowned for being filled with peril and danger, so what better way to make sure it's safe than to shove a gaggle of your most expendable crew- the grots- onboard and see what happens?

Who could have foreseen that the 'gaggle of expendable crew' might have their own ideas- especially after they discover the space hulk is infested with genestealers. In their darkest hour, a hero arises to challenge the tyranny of Kaptin Bloodhook and lead his people to safety.

With Orks on one side and Genestealers on the other, can Bodgit, the newest Red Gobbo, split the difference or will this truly be his last stand?

Unconventional Conventionists

I've long had a mixed reception for Ork stories, largely as a result of the humor that's typically ladled into the tale. It's not that I don't like some humor with my grimdark- I love Ciaphas Cain tales, for instance- but it has more to do with how well the writer manages to pull it off. As I wrote in my review of Painboyz by Mike Brooks (part of the Blood of the Imperium anthology, reviewed here).

Jack Lemmon once notably observed that writing comedy is so much harder than writing drama, and I don’t doubt it for a moment. I’ve read other Ork stories that may be entertaining enough, but when it comes to the humor it’s either trying too hard or not hard enough.

Ewington manages to largely sidestep this by writing an Ork story that doesn't seem to actually try too hard to be an Ork story. It would have been almost forgivable for a Black Library debutante to lean in a little too much into the tropes and jokes, which would have made for generally unpleasant and occasionally excruciating reading.

Instead, he tacked closer to a traditional Warhammer action story with elements of humor sprinkled in rather than swinging for the laughs, and the story as a result is much more enjoyable. Put another way, I wasn't laughing my way through the book, but I chuckled far more often than I rolled my eyes. And the bits that worked worked, such as when the Ork runtherd solves the problem of two grots fighting over which one gets to wear a voidsuit by stuffing them both into it and zipping it up.

'All sorted!' he spat, patting the helmet, happy that everything was as 'airtight' as it could be.

To be sure, it's a Red Gobbo book which means it's still over the top and ridiculous. The number of Genestealers a handful of gretchin kill off in ranged combat strains credulity a bit, but it's part of the charm. It's not puissant skill at arms, it's the dumbest of dumb luck.

2021's mini. Image credit: Games Workshop

When the Students are Ready...

Nature, ever adaptable, has some remarkable examples of emergent biology when a need arises. When the queen of the hive dies, worker bees immediately begin feeding royal jelly to one of the larva that would otherwise have been destined to become more workers, transforming it into a new queen. When the breeding female of a school of clownfish dies, the largest male undergoes a transformation into the replacement breeding female.

So it goes for the grots, it seems, for when they are pushed to the brink by their larger greenskin brethren one of their number will transform into Da Red Gobbo and save them from their misfortunes.₂

Ewington's tale hints at the metaphysical behind the transformation, embodied almost by a sort of 'Red Gobbo spirit' that infuses the grot so chosen.

Bodgit reminded himself that he had become Da Red Gobbo by accident- he hadn't set out to be a boss for the rest of the grots- the ones still breathing, at least. This ancient, mutinous power had kept him alive. If only he could understand what it wanted him to do with it... A tingling sensation spread across his skin, as though the spirits of past Red Gobbos were stabbing him with tiny pins.

It's not quite as obvious, say, as the Force in Star Wars, but more than once it's teased that the spirit of Da Red Gobbo is more than just a symbolic manifestation, but rather almost a superpower of sorts. Whether it's solving the login code of a security console in one try or knowing just where to land his voidcraft when the time comes, the echoes of 'Red Gobbos Past' offer just the right solution at the right time.

I tend to prefer the prosaic to the whimsical here, but of course being 40K there's always just enough 'unreliable narrator' spice in the mix to ultimately have your cake any way you like it. It certainly doesn't detract from the story, during which as noted above you've already likely made peace with the strained credulity of a Red Gobbo tale.

Final Thoughts

If I had any criticism of the book it was that at times Ewington, perhaps feeling constrained by the expected page count, exhibited a tendency to 'tell over show' that I found a bit distracting. Sentences like...

"Since becoming Da Red Gobbo, he had found himself growing in confidence."
"The desperation and fury in Bodgit's actions painted a vivid picture of survival, a testament to the grot's sheet will to live whatever the cost."
"Ever since Bodgit's transformation into Da Red Gobbo, Klutz had found a nugget of courage growing within him."

...almost felt like time-lapse writing, something akin to a movie-style montage sequence. In a longer feature they'd be replaced perhaps with a scene or two showing the growth and development of the characters over time, but if the novella size was a constraint then they could just as easily been jettisoned out the same airlock that Kaptin Bloodhook threatened to launch Blodgit out of at no loss to the narrative and a tidy savings in word count.

Overall though, Ewington has crafted a surprisingly readable story in this year's Red Gobbo novella. I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's more a reflection that he avoided the trap of trying too hard for the yuks and the gags and instead kept the story moving along entertainingly. Neither Orks nor Da Red Gobbo are my favorite subject matter, but I enjoyed this one and I'd like to see more from the author.

Footnotes

Sadly, WARCOM like lots of company sites doesn't feel particularly compelled to keep older content available for review. It was a bit of a pain in the ass to find the original article, but find it I did. Sharing it here for posterity.
Or die trying...

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Tags: black library | book review | andi ewington