The Good Old Boys by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
This is more of a short story fail, but it's a fail nonetheless.
The Good Old Boys is one of the short story specials printed during the run of the comic series Preacher, which I just finished reading. While the series is good, three of the specials are gathered in the fourth volume of the series, called Ancient History. I read it because two of the stories are relative to the plot and are wildly entertaining. This story on the other hand, is not.
Preacher and it's stories are very very graphic and meant only for mature audiences with a high tolerance for blood, gore and general foulness. Do not read this review if it squicks you.
The story revolves around two characters that pretty much dominate the second volume of the book, Jody and T.C. In that volume, they are portrayed as evil, homicidal (among other things) cronies that serve our main character's grandmother and they all live on an old plantation in the swamps of Louisiana. That's all we really know about them, that's all we really care to know about them, and they get offed by the main character in the same volume.
So by the time this story comes around, those characters are already dead. What you should also know about them is that Jody is portrayed as the smarter, tougher and meaner one of the two, while T.C. is generally the more redneck one of the two that will literally fuck anything (there is mention of a birthday cake he once couldn't keep his junk out of.)
Our opening scenes of the two is of Jody resting while T.C. fishes and intends to do unnatural things with the fish he catches when Jody wakes up and the two are off. They end up in a fight where Jody, the local heavyweight champion of these fights, is pitted against an actual gorilla in an attempt by the local rich man of finally beating this guy in a fight that everyone bets on. And of course, Jody wins, pummeling the gorilla to death with a baseball bat.
While this is going on, a plane has crash-landed into the swamps of Louisiana with a "supermodel turned TV reporter" and a "cop on the edge" involved in some getaway from a Middle Eastern terrorist (I think) on who the woman has blackmail on that she's keeping in her panties. Not kidding. They say all that in the dialogue!
Jody and T.C. run into the terrorist's cronies while returning from the fight and begin to off them, magically never getting hit by bullets or the like, and run into our stranded couple. Somehow, they end up saving the day, killing everyone, and Jody even gets to keep the woman.
The bad dialogue and scenes just continue from the beginning. The terrorist can't swear right (making one of the cronies claim that he's going to go work for the Cubans because that at least know how to swear properly) and he's such a stereotype that it's almost painful reading any scene he's in. The "cop on the edge" is more of a wussy whiner than anything else, who even fails at getting it up in one love scene with the female protagonist. She couldn't be more cliched if she tried, including letting Jody get into her knickers (just the very thought of that makes me cringe.) Not to mention that somehow, even though Jody and T.C. are homicidal and ruthless, they still manage to be the good guys in this. It's wrong on so many levels.
I understand the story was trying to be a twisted parody of 1980's action movies, but this is bad even by 1980's action movie standards. Chuck Norris movies are better than this writing garbage and while it was supposed to be funny, it just ended up being painful. It brings nothing to the series, and in fact I'd say it takes away some of the evil edge Jody and T.C. had to them in the second volume. It seemed like an attempt to make the unlikeable bad guys from the volume into something you might like to remember and it sucked, making me want to forget those characters were even written.
It's painful to read and not essential to the story in any way. If you ever read the Preacher series, avoid this with your life.
The Good Old Boys is one of the short story specials printed during the run of the comic series Preacher, which I just finished reading. While the series is good, three of the specials are gathered in the fourth volume of the series, called Ancient History. I read it because two of the stories are relative to the plot and are wildly entertaining. This story on the other hand, is not.
Preacher and it's stories are very very graphic and meant only for mature audiences with a high tolerance for blood, gore and general foulness. Do not read this review if it squicks you.
The story revolves around two characters that pretty much dominate the second volume of the book, Jody and T.C. In that volume, they are portrayed as evil, homicidal (among other things) cronies that serve our main character's grandmother and they all live on an old plantation in the swamps of Louisiana. That's all we really know about them, that's all we really care to know about them, and they get offed by the main character in the same volume.
So by the time this story comes around, those characters are already dead. What you should also know about them is that Jody is portrayed as the smarter, tougher and meaner one of the two, while T.C. is generally the more redneck one of the two that will literally fuck anything (there is mention of a birthday cake he once couldn't keep his junk out of.)
Our opening scenes of the two is of Jody resting while T.C. fishes and intends to do unnatural things with the fish he catches when Jody wakes up and the two are off. They end up in a fight where Jody, the local heavyweight champion of these fights, is pitted against an actual gorilla in an attempt by the local rich man of finally beating this guy in a fight that everyone bets on. And of course, Jody wins, pummeling the gorilla to death with a baseball bat.
While this is going on, a plane has crash-landed into the swamps of Louisiana with a "supermodel turned TV reporter" and a "cop on the edge" involved in some getaway from a Middle Eastern terrorist (I think) on who the woman has blackmail on that she's keeping in her panties. Not kidding. They say all that in the dialogue!
Jody and T.C. run into the terrorist's cronies while returning from the fight and begin to off them, magically never getting hit by bullets or the like, and run into our stranded couple. Somehow, they end up saving the day, killing everyone, and Jody even gets to keep the woman.
The bad dialogue and scenes just continue from the beginning. The terrorist can't swear right (making one of the cronies claim that he's going to go work for the Cubans because that at least know how to swear properly) and he's such a stereotype that it's almost painful reading any scene he's in. The "cop on the edge" is more of a wussy whiner than anything else, who even fails at getting it up in one love scene with the female protagonist. She couldn't be more cliched if she tried, including letting Jody get into her knickers (just the very thought of that makes me cringe.) Not to mention that somehow, even though Jody and T.C. are homicidal and ruthless, they still manage to be the good guys in this. It's wrong on so many levels.
I understand the story was trying to be a twisted parody of 1980's action movies, but this is bad even by 1980's action movie standards. Chuck Norris movies are better than this writing garbage and while it was supposed to be funny, it just ended up being painful. It brings nothing to the series, and in fact I'd say it takes away some of the evil edge Jody and T.C. had to them in the second volume. It seemed like an attempt to make the unlikeable bad guys from the volume into something you might like to remember and it sucked, making me want to forget those characters were even written.
It's painful to read and not essential to the story in any way. If you ever read the Preacher series, avoid this with your life.