Never too late -- The Boys
Billy Butcher, Wee Hughie, Mother's Milk, The Frenchman and The Female are The Boys: a CIA-backed team of very dangerous people, each one dedicated to the struggle against the most lethal force on Earth -- superpower. Some superheroes have to be watched. Some have to be controlled. And some of them -- sometimes -- need to be taken out of the picture. That's when you call in The Boys.
To get this right out of the way, let me contrast The Boys with Y: The Last Man in a very important regard -- I wholeheartedly recommend Y to anyone who enjoys a strong sci-fi story with engaging characters and intriguing concepts. The fact that Y just happens to be a comic book is incidental; even those not fans of illustrated narrative may well find themselves convinced of its virtues. But not only is The Boys inexorably tied to its medium, it's all about its medium, specifically superheroic comics. But it's not the sharp scalpel-like dissection and deconstruction that Alan Moore gave us with Watchmen -- it's a brutal, unforgiving dismemberment via chainsaw. You need to not only be acquainted with comic book history to get most of the references in The Boys, you also need to be willing to watch them get dragged through the mud until they can take no more. If you're still inordinately sentimental about comics (or, really, anything), this is not for you. Writer Garth Ennis said that this book would out-Preacher Preacher, and if that makes sense to you, maybe you'd enjoy it, but otherwise...mmm, keep on moving.
So why do I like it?
Strangely, the most compelling aspect of The Boys is its universe and its history. There are no aliens or mutants, just a strange substance called Compound V concocted by the Nazis that will confer genetically-tied superhuman benefits (or fatal side effects). There are few major deviations from our timeline (a WWII super-soldier program goes catastrophically wrong and the inept, corrupt corporation controlling Compound V, Vought-American, contributes to massive American casualties in Vietnam) until 9/11, during which the Dick-Cheney analogue president has the first three hijacked airliners shot down, but the cretinous vice president (a Vought-bought man) orders the fourth to be allowed to proceed, enabling an attempt to allow the Seven, the premiere super-heroic team in the world (with point-for-point analogues to the Justice League) to attempt to recapture the plane. It unfolds as horrifically as you could expect, with almost every logistical flaw manifesting finally in the death of one of the Seven and the loss of the plane and crew as it plummets into the Brooklyn Bridge, destroying it and killing a thousand people. That's the event that brings the Boys and the Seven directly into conflict, threatening to ignite a war neither side can win (or possibly even survive); when it finally erupts in bloodshed, an uneasy truce is called and a sacrifice given to balance the scales, the Boys disband, and the Seven continue lording it above the peons they claim to protect.
Here's the thing, though -- for all the invocations of heroism and doing good, the costumed characters are anything but heroes. Most of them don't have a single virtue, and those few that are genuinely good suffer greatly because of it. It's always been pretty clear that Garth Ennis has little love for superheroes, and he's not forgiving of them in The Boys. At best they're superficial and self-centered, at worst they're racist, violent and homicidal. (And there are precious few supervillains in The Boys -- given the malevolence of the superheroes, they would be redundant.) The Boys themselves are utterly ruthless in pursuit of their mission and rarely leave survivors in their wake. Few characters outside of Wee Hughie, our Simon-Pegg-esque protagonist, and Annie Saturday (his girlfriend, but also, unbeknownst to him, the newest member of the Seven) have even glimmers of decency. Superheroics and the comics are a publicity front from Vought to keep the superheroes palatable -- it's that kind of world.
Wee Hughie, even when he's doing something stupid and/or kind, remains the focus of the book -- it's his introduction to the Boys and eventual discovery of the world's secret history that drives the narrative of the book. He's a bit naive and entirely too well-meaning to be entirely compatible with the Boys, but it's that aspect of him that Billy Butcher, their leader, seeks to exploit in his own personal vendetta. Hughie's the hero, but it's Butcher that pulls the strings, rarely allowing circumstances to unravel out of his field of preparation. And Hughie's beginning to get a glimmer of the idea that Butcher might be every bit as bad as the murderous superpowered thugs they're seeking to rein in.
And when the Boys reform with Wee Hughie (unwittingly shooting him up with Compound V to make him immensely strong and durable), they immediately start slow by firing a warning shot -- blackmailing a low-tier superhero group Teenage Kix. When the Seven tip off the Kix with their blackmailers' identity, the Boys and the Kix come to blows, Hughie panics and lashes out at one of the Kix -- and puts his fist straight through him, to everyone's horror. The surviving Kix retreat, beaten and crippled, and they're probably the group that comes out the easiest after facing off against the Boys.
Most of the character/group allusions in The Boys are paper-thin at best. (It should also be noted that this is a book which was initially and briefly published under DC's Wildstorm imprint before being unceremoniously jettisoned. Probably not for the sex or nudity or language or bloodshed, but probably from the transparent use of these barely-altered-egos -- I can imagine it being a nightmare of possible litigation that just wasn't worth the possible minimal returns an adults-only book rakes in.) The entire hierarchy (and dynamic) of X-Men is mocked with the G-Men and its subgroups (G-Wiz, G-Force, G-Brits, G-Style, etc.); and Payback are standins for the Avengers. Even Stan Lee gets a representation in the form of The Legend, a cigar-chomping little man who enlightens Hughie on many of the superhero world's dark secrets while talking in a font about 20% larger than anyone else's. Tek Knight is half-Batman, half-Iron-Man, but he seeks out therapy when he develops the unusual and disquieting compulsion to have sex with a variety of...unusual objects:
This isn't a feminist book by any stretch of the imagination -- there are no empowered and unfettered women in its pages. The Female is a silent killing machine enslaved by her own murderous impulses, Starlight is victimized from her very first appearance, and Queen Maeve is a barely-functional post-traumatic alcoholic after 9/11. But then, as we've been reminded a few times in recent weeks, the comic landscape isn't very feminist itself, is it? Ennis is fond of the stoic, determined action heroine, and you could argue that the Female amps the idea up into overdrive, but she's still very much a cypher, even after her origin story. Women don't have good things happen to them in this book -- but then, nobody does. There are certainly more aspects of the storyline that can be seen as misogynistic than feminist -- Rayner and Butcher's entire dynamic, Starlight, and let's not even get into the debauchery of Herogasm (superheroes don't really go on crossovers -- it's just an excuse for an annual island orgy and awards ceremony). But a lot of these characters are painted with a wide, wide brush -- of course the superhero called Oh Father is going to be a Catholic pedophile, and the Frenchman's origin is so far buried into stereotypes that it simply can't be taken at face value. No one is empowered who isn't also disabled -- by psychosis, by naivete, by a thirst for revenge -- in an equal and opposite reaction. The book to this point is about a knife's-edge balance of opposing forces that's tipping into pandemonium (and looks to take that first fatal step in the very next issue).
And still there's a very odd sentimentality to a lot of this book under the vulgarity and violence and various bodily fluids. The Frenchman's constant sympathy and support for the Female. Annie's conversation with God. Hughie's home life. The interplay and emotional connections between the members of my favorite team, Superduper. Even Butcher -- first in small glimpses in the regular title and many more in his origin mini-series -- gets glimpses of a humanity that he works very hard to suppress. And a title that seems immersed in the grotesque manages to avert its eyes a few times -- a few pivotal events haven't yet been shown in full and may never be (or they may be; we've certainly been shown things and people since issue #50 that I'd given up on ever seeing first-hand).
And speaking of seeing, major kudos to Darick Robertson, co-creator and penciler for most of the book's run. His fill-in artists have been sporadic (Russ Braun is almost right there), but Robertson is as on-task on The Boys as he is in his early-to-mid issues of Transmetropolitan, with a real gift for evocative facial expressions.
So. Yeah. It's not a beautiful world. Of all the fictional universes I've come across, I can think of post-apocalyptic settings I'd rather dwell in than this one. But I'm totally caught up in the characters and the plot, now, and I dread how it's going to end. We've seen hundreds of characters slaughtered up to this point -- and we're still on the precipice. It's easily my favorite title being published right now, mainly for how elegantly and spitefully takes apart the superheroic pretenses with nothing more than human nature. But if gore makes you flinch, if you can't bear to see your favorite characters going through nine kinds of hell, if you cringe at harsh language or you can't imagine your four-colored fandoms to be carpet-bombed into oblivion, stay way the hell away from The Boys.
To get this right out of the way, let me contrast The Boys with Y: The Last Man in a very important regard -- I wholeheartedly recommend Y to anyone who enjoys a strong sci-fi story with engaging characters and intriguing concepts. The fact that Y just happens to be a comic book is incidental; even those not fans of illustrated narrative may well find themselves convinced of its virtues. But not only is The Boys inexorably tied to its medium, it's all about its medium, specifically superheroic comics. But it's not the sharp scalpel-like dissection and deconstruction that Alan Moore gave us with Watchmen -- it's a brutal, unforgiving dismemberment via chainsaw. You need to not only be acquainted with comic book history to get most of the references in The Boys, you also need to be willing to watch them get dragged through the mud until they can take no more. If you're still inordinately sentimental about comics (or, really, anything), this is not for you. Writer Garth Ennis said that this book would out-Preacher Preacher, and if that makes sense to you, maybe you'd enjoy it, but otherwise...mmm, keep on moving.
So why do I like it?
Strangely, the most compelling aspect of The Boys is its universe and its history. There are no aliens or mutants, just a strange substance called Compound V concocted by the Nazis that will confer genetically-tied superhuman benefits (or fatal side effects). There are few major deviations from our timeline (a WWII super-soldier program goes catastrophically wrong and the inept, corrupt corporation controlling Compound V, Vought-American, contributes to massive American casualties in Vietnam) until 9/11, during which the Dick-Cheney analogue president has the first three hijacked airliners shot down, but the cretinous vice president (a Vought-bought man) orders the fourth to be allowed to proceed, enabling an attempt to allow the Seven, the premiere super-heroic team in the world (with point-for-point analogues to the Justice League) to attempt to recapture the plane. It unfolds as horrifically as you could expect, with almost every logistical flaw manifesting finally in the death of one of the Seven and the loss of the plane and crew as it plummets into the Brooklyn Bridge, destroying it and killing a thousand people. That's the event that brings the Boys and the Seven directly into conflict, threatening to ignite a war neither side can win (or possibly even survive); when it finally erupts in bloodshed, an uneasy truce is called and a sacrifice given to balance the scales, the Boys disband, and the Seven continue lording it above the peons they claim to protect.
Here's the thing, though -- for all the invocations of heroism and doing good, the costumed characters are anything but heroes. Most of them don't have a single virtue, and those few that are genuinely good suffer greatly because of it. It's always been pretty clear that Garth Ennis has little love for superheroes, and he's not forgiving of them in The Boys. At best they're superficial and self-centered, at worst they're racist, violent and homicidal. (And there are precious few supervillains in The Boys -- given the malevolence of the superheroes, they would be redundant.) The Boys themselves are utterly ruthless in pursuit of their mission and rarely leave survivors in their wake. Few characters outside of Wee Hughie, our Simon-Pegg-esque protagonist, and Annie Saturday (his girlfriend, but also, unbeknownst to him, the newest member of the Seven) have even glimmers of decency. Superheroics and the comics are a publicity front from Vought to keep the superheroes palatable -- it's that kind of world.
Wee Hughie, even when he's doing something stupid and/or kind, remains the focus of the book -- it's his introduction to the Boys and eventual discovery of the world's secret history that drives the narrative of the book. He's a bit naive and entirely too well-meaning to be entirely compatible with the Boys, but it's that aspect of him that Billy Butcher, their leader, seeks to exploit in his own personal vendetta. Hughie's the hero, but it's Butcher that pulls the strings, rarely allowing circumstances to unravel out of his field of preparation. And Hughie's beginning to get a glimmer of the idea that Butcher might be every bit as bad as the murderous superpowered thugs they're seeking to rein in.
And when the Boys reform with Wee Hughie (unwittingly shooting him up with Compound V to make him immensely strong and durable), they immediately start slow by firing a warning shot -- blackmailing a low-tier superhero group Teenage Kix. When the Seven tip off the Kix with their blackmailers' identity, the Boys and the Kix come to blows, Hughie panics and lashes out at one of the Kix -- and puts his fist straight through him, to everyone's horror. The surviving Kix retreat, beaten and crippled, and they're probably the group that comes out the easiest after facing off against the Boys.
Most of the character/group allusions in The Boys are paper-thin at best. (It should also be noted that this is a book which was initially and briefly published under DC's Wildstorm imprint before being unceremoniously jettisoned. Probably not for the sex or nudity or language or bloodshed, but probably from the transparent use of these barely-altered-egos -- I can imagine it being a nightmare of possible litigation that just wasn't worth the possible minimal returns an adults-only book rakes in.) The entire hierarchy (and dynamic) of X-Men is mocked with the G-Men and its subgroups (G-Wiz, G-Force, G-Brits, G-Style, etc.); and Payback are standins for the Avengers. Even Stan Lee gets a representation in the form of The Legend, a cigar-chomping little man who enlightens Hughie on many of the superhero world's dark secrets while talking in a font about 20% larger than anyone else's. Tek Knight is half-Batman, half-Iron-Man, but he seeks out therapy when he develops the unusual and disquieting compulsion to have sex with a variety of...unusual objects:
This isn't a feminist book by any stretch of the imagination -- there are no empowered and unfettered women in its pages. The Female is a silent killing machine enslaved by her own murderous impulses, Starlight is victimized from her very first appearance, and Queen Maeve is a barely-functional post-traumatic alcoholic after 9/11. But then, as we've been reminded a few times in recent weeks, the comic landscape isn't very feminist itself, is it? Ennis is fond of the stoic, determined action heroine, and you could argue that the Female amps the idea up into overdrive, but she's still very much a cypher, even after her origin story. Women don't have good things happen to them in this book -- but then, nobody does. There are certainly more aspects of the storyline that can be seen as misogynistic than feminist -- Rayner and Butcher's entire dynamic, Starlight, and let's not even get into the debauchery of Herogasm (superheroes don't really go on crossovers -- it's just an excuse for an annual island orgy and awards ceremony). But a lot of these characters are painted with a wide, wide brush -- of course the superhero called Oh Father is going to be a Catholic pedophile, and the Frenchman's origin is so far buried into stereotypes that it simply can't be taken at face value. No one is empowered who isn't also disabled -- by psychosis, by naivete, by a thirst for revenge -- in an equal and opposite reaction. The book to this point is about a knife's-edge balance of opposing forces that's tipping into pandemonium (and looks to take that first fatal step in the very next issue).
And still there's a very odd sentimentality to a lot of this book under the vulgarity and violence and various bodily fluids. The Frenchman's constant sympathy and support for the Female. Annie's conversation with God. Hughie's home life. The interplay and emotional connections between the members of my favorite team, Superduper. Even Butcher -- first in small glimpses in the regular title and many more in his origin mini-series -- gets glimpses of a humanity that he works very hard to suppress. And a title that seems immersed in the grotesque manages to avert its eyes a few times -- a few pivotal events haven't yet been shown in full and may never be (or they may be; we've certainly been shown things and people since issue #50 that I'd given up on ever seeing first-hand).
And speaking of seeing, major kudos to Darick Robertson, co-creator and penciler for most of the book's run. His fill-in artists have been sporadic (Russ Braun is almost right there), but Robertson is as on-task on The Boys as he is in his early-to-mid issues of Transmetropolitan, with a real gift for evocative facial expressions.
So. Yeah. It's not a beautiful world. Of all the fictional universes I've come across, I can think of post-apocalyptic settings I'd rather dwell in than this one. But I'm totally caught up in the characters and the plot, now, and I dread how it's going to end. We've seen hundreds of characters slaughtered up to this point -- and we're still on the precipice. It's easily my favorite title being published right now, mainly for how elegantly and spitefully takes apart the superheroic pretenses with nothing more than human nature. But if gore makes you flinch, if you can't bear to see your favorite characters going through nine kinds of hell, if you cringe at harsh language or you can't imagine your four-colored fandoms to be carpet-bombed into oblivion, stay way the hell away from The Boys.