Never too late -- The Boys

[sigma7]

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

Comments

[roseneko]

Excellent review. I admit I'm interested - balancing that crapsack-world (to use the TV trope term) mentality with enough humanity to keep the reader from giving up in disgust is tough. I'm curious, though; you say that you have to be deeply familiar with comics to gain most of the references. Do you think it's accessible at all to someone familiar with the archetypes and general outlines, but not many of the specifics?

[sigma7]

Familiarity with comics and characters will add a level of mirth to the proceedings, but it's certainly not a prerequisite -- I didn't know until reading solicits well after the fact that Superduper was a take on the Legion of Super-Heroes, for example (mainly because Superduper has about fifty fewer members and they seem to have abandoned the "from the far future" angle). I'd say the real dealbreaker is going to be the violence or gore or language or...simply the unrepentant filth that permeates the soul not only of most of the characters but of everything that seems to happen to them. It's as rough as I've seen in any comic -- except maybe one (but more on that later).

Me, I gave up on Preacher twice (and eventually came back each time, and am glad I did so), and it was an ABC Family series compared to this. Ennis is often labeled as simply heartless and puerile, and I disagree -- it's just that it's often hard to see the emotional core under all the misery and grime he slogs upon it

[roseneko]

re: the comic - True that. Nice use of theme. I may look for the trades when they come out.

Incidentally, were you interested in the First Law series at all? If you enjoy that kind of skewering-of-archetypes-in-gritty-real-world stuff, it's highly enjoyable - and Joe Abercrombie also understands the necessity of those occasional moments of black humor and actual humanity to keep his characters identifiable.

[sigma7]

Haven't read First Law yet -- gonna have to hunt that down. Have interest.

Looks like they've released three definitive editions of The Boys and trade-paperbacks through issue #47 (and the first two completed spin-off mini-series, Herogasm and Highland Laddie). The Name of the Game and Get Some are the first two, but the third, Good For the Soul, is mostly the Legend recounting the secret history of the world to Hughie, including 9/11 in issue #21, easily my favorite of the series. It's just the perfectly harrowing realization of the pipe-dreams of superheroes trying to stop an airliner mid-flight colliding with basic physics and raw ego.

It's all kinds of wrong.

[bedsitter23]

Excellent, and though I generally don't care who is penciling the story, Robertson was a great deal responsible for why it works so well early on.

[sigma7]

McCrae was always an able fill-in, if occasionally jarringly distinct from Robertson; Braun fits more into Robertson's style. The one storyline where I really didn't like the penciling was "The Self-Preservation Society," which was just a bit too rough around the edges and lacked the urgency and kinesis of Robertson's work; it made a brick wall being kicked down look...boring.

But yes, Robertson's simply integral to much of the character design, especially personal favorites like Groundhawk. I don't think this book would've had the same appeal without him.