The BOYS - Ten

I've caught up with the BOYS since my review of the trade paper back, and now the latest issue has come out. It concludes the latest storyline mocking Batman and Nightwing and dealing with the gay community and the perspectives that people have towards gay characters in comics. Since it's the conclusion I'm not really going to give you to many details about the actual book but I will tell you about the storyline. Basically The Legend (mock up of Stan Lee) asks Butcher to find out who killed a young gay man who had been seen last with Swingwing a costumed superhero. Swingwing = Nightwing just in case you couldn't figure that one out yourself. Well after going down several wrong paths Hughie ends up steering the team in the right direction and solves the case. I can't say that the storyline was fantastic, but it was still rather good. It seemed as if Ennis was just using it to as kind of a breather from the beginning and to get himself use to the characters again. But I have to say this issue felt really rushed and with both the writing and art.

Not only were Hughie and Butcher the only characters seen, outside of two panels with Mother's Milk, but they just seemed out of character the whole time. It was like Ennis had a good idea and probably could have done more with it at Wildstorm, but now he has to worry about DC suing him so he's pulling back and not giving us the good stuff. As for the art Robertson was very loose on his details and Dynamite doesn't seem to have the inkers to clean up the book and keep the feel the first six issues had. There were also a couple of bad proportions on Butcher, but in general the two men really changed a lot from page to page which distracted from the story and really was just a let down. I understand the Dynamite wants to pump a lot of books out and on time but never surrender quality over quantity you'll lose out every time. Dynamite needs to understand that they're dealing with super stars now, this book has the potential to be huge but it needs to be treated right. Get a better inker and a more consistent colorist for starters that's just good business for you're biggest book out right now. Second let them go at their own pace,
Ennis is a machine and there's never going to be any worries of him running out of ideas to play with and map out, but artist need time to make the book look right and Robertson's relatively new to star-dome so he needs to be put in the right environment to continue producing at the level he was when the book first came out. I'm really hoping Dynamite doesn't screw this book up or I'll be forced only to read the Trades, well my friends Trades at the very most.

I have to say Ennis did a good job of bring to light, how most Comic Companies deal with the Gay community and makes a lot of valid points using Hughie as his voice but next time I hope Ennis won't forget that he still has an accent when he's mad. Next month starts a new storyline and hopefully a turn for the better, the teams going to Russia and I swear Ennis just loves Russia, he seems to take everyone there on their four or fifth story arc, but whatever the man's untouchable right now. Here's some pages but be warned I think they spoil the ending!

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The Boys - Volume One - Name of the Game

Yeah, yeah, I know another comic review. Seriously this isn't turning into a Comic Blog, it's just all I've had time to do lately is read books. I probably should have tried to see Balls of Fury but then there's always tomorrow. I finally caught up to the phenomenon that is The BOYS. I had bought all of the Wildstorm issues but never got around to reading them, then the book got canceled and I was like maybe I should read them, then Dynamite Entertainment picked it up and I continued to put it off. Especially when they released an uncensored TPB of the Wildstorm issues, I thought why bother reading the single issues I'll just by the Trade. And I did! Great story huh?

Any who, The BOYS, for those who don't know, is a CIA Black Ops group that is in charge of watching the Super Heroes that go unchecked in the world. And why not? The world has a staggering amount of Super Heroes and it would only be a matter of time before someone tried to pull an Authority and take over the world inflicting their rules and rule upon everyone. And that's what The BOYS are there to stop from happening. The big English looking guy on the bottom left is in fact English and his name is Billy Butcher, he's the leader and has more than a personal grudge against Super Hero types. They don't for sure say which Supe it is that his grudge against but it's not hard to figure it out. The Bloke next to him is Wee Hughie, his girlfriend gets smashed into a wall by a Supe and he's left holding her arms wondering what the hell happened. He's new to the team since this is there second go round at this, but this time they don't have any red tape to worry about. Then there's the Female who likes to rip men's faces off and stuff them up their ass... you're not allowed to touch her and I'm pretty sure Hughie will end up having a relationship with her at some point just because they're some pretty obvious clues leading to it, but we'll see. She's there as muscle and it keeps her from killing people for the Mob. Next is Mother's Milk, or M.M. I can't wait to hear the story behind his name. He's a snob and a neat freak, and just a great character. Really he doesn't have enough pages and dialog which is a shame because he's written quite well and is an unusual character in comics today. Finally there's Frenchie, and yes he's French and crazy and that's about all there is to him other than all his dialog is in French and no it's not translated, welcome to the real world.

I would have printed some pages but this book is the most Mature comic book out there and hell it might just be the most mature comic ever written. After reading the Trade I blew through the 3 issues put out on Dynamite and my only complaint is that the inker and colorist was better on the Wildstorm issues. Wee Hughie and the Butcher are the stars of the show, and work well together as partners. Butcher being the Mentor to Hughie. Hughie is brilliantly conceived for the book. How else would you bring someone into this crazy world where Superheroes walk around fucking everything that moves and pretty are photocopies of our real world Celebrities. Well we enter the world with Hughie, who is innocent and has just lost a woman who told him she loved him from the minute she met him. Love is something everyone can relate to no matter how cold they appear to be. So we join Hughie as he learns the ropes, through his eyes we see just how F'd up this world of Super Heroes is. Butcher is an enigma, he's hard to trust from the get go. Even when he's getting the clearance to start up the biz again, the CIA director tells him that he's a bad mother fucker and not in a Shaft kind of way. Yet he's so honest and open with Hughie and he stands up for M.M. when his daughter starts mouthing off to him. Even Hughie can't figure him out, but that's the point. You want to know more about him, and frankly who doesn't like a bad ass dude? Guys want to be him, girls want to be with him no matter how poorly he may treat them.

The book was canceled due to the fact that it depicts Superheroes in a negative light. Really what it's doing is what WANTED couldn't get done, and essentially what Planetary did for the Marvel U, only The BOYS reflects the DCU. Frankly it's brilliant in saying, but not really saying, yes it's those characters. Yes that's Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but also Beast Boy and the rest of the Teen Titans and the JSA. There is a bit of a problem with the Batman archetype since there's one on the JLA-esc team the Seven, and then in the newer issues another one that is an exact replica of Batman, only he fucks everything including his Butler's ear, a watermelon and a cup of coffee just to name a few. The dialog is fantastic and you really can hear the accents that each character has and get start to read what they're saying so naturally that you forget that everyone doesn't talk like they do. This may not be the book for you if you're not ready to venture out of the perfect world of Super Heroes, but if you are theres no reason you can't enjoy both sides. Without Superman and Spider-Man, we wouldn't be able to have books like this. Time will tell if this book is responsible for being another Watchmen, in which every book for years to come has to have an anti-hero. More than likely there will be a few copies of it with their own original take but this book really will truly go down in comic history for being just being that fucking good, and for just being fucked up.

Written by Garth Ennis and Art by Darick Robertson

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