The defining image of sword and sorcery stories is a lone warrior — either armored or half naked, and always with a sword — wandering an agrarian landscape. That’s the image you think of for “Conan The Barbarian,” “Red Sonja,” “Berserk,” etc.

“Babs” evokes this imagery in its opening pages; a gold-bikini-bound woman rides a horse through a forest, slowly making her way into a close-up. The text boxes, though, strike a sardonic tone and immediately suggest this isn’t as straightforward as it looks. The narrator describes Babs as “fair of face yet s**t of luck.” Once she gets her close-up on page 2, her first full words are: “This goddamned scalemail’s going to chew my f***ing nipples off.”

Next, Babs is swapping stories with her drinking buddy Izzy, who lost a score to a crowd of “Leprec**ts.” (Ennis, who’s from Northern Ireland, often isn’t kind to Irish stereotypes — especially Irish-Americans with little grasp on actual Irish history.)

Speaking to Comics Beat, Ennis suggested that “Babs” came from the same place as “The Boys” — he’s parodying a silly genre he regards as too self-serious for its own good. Ennis likes fantasy more than he likes superheroes, though (he calls his feelings “fond disdain” and says he genuinely loves “The Hobbit”). So, while “The Boys” is a vicious parody, “Babs” is an affectionate one.

Like “The Boys,” contrast is the key of the satire. “The Boys” has superheroes in bright and colorful costumes that are also debauched and violently killed. Burrows draws “Babs” like a traditional fantasy book; there’s dragons, orcs, knights, whimsical forests, shantytown pubs, etc. An alternative cover of issue #1, drawn by Chris Burnham, features a stern-faced Babs raising her sword like Conan The Barbarian.

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The speech bubbles, though, are filled with Ennis’ usual blend of dialogue. His flippancy is about as far from the formal archaic style associated with fantasy works as you can imagine. “Babs” (comic and character) look like typical fantasy, but they don’t act like it.