I thought on comics: The Boys

The Boys By Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson

The Boys aren't alright. It has been 7 issues, and in that expansive comic time we have watched the reader's eye of Little Hughie get begrudgingly initiated into a cabal of anti-superhero black-ops types, all the while hemming and hawing at the implication of violence and black leather.

And that's it.

Sure there has been the occasional behind-the-scenes dalliance into the sordid lives of superheroes, which comes off as so much gory Ennis-shorthand for "deserves everything that's coming," but I can't think of a single moment from previous issues that stands out. Which is saying something when I look back through the issues and am reminded of an especially ominous rape scene. (Not to sound insensitive, but when will rape stop being the fall back for irredeemable character trait. At this point it reads as almost nothing. Especially in a Garth Ennis book.)

Well this week, something finally happens, and guess what: its violence and sexual deviance. Yawn. The writing seems loose and the action boring. People's faces get smashed, balls are hit, and someone GOES OVER THE LINE! Snore. And the usually busy-but-precise artwork of Darick Robertson seems smudged and rushed. Maybe this long set-up, which I will accept as spaced for trade, will pay off in the coming issues, but somehow I doubt it. The whole thing strikes me as a rushed attempt at recreating the offensive magic of Preacher, while Ennis focuses on his superior Punisher series or War Stories (if those are still being written).

However, I also get the feeling that, maybe, I'm just getting too old for this sort of thing.

It could be said that if I were fifteen and reading this I would eat up the anti-establishment, fuck-em-if-they-can't-take-a-joke vibe of the book in the same way that I devoured and hid the Preacher books so many years ago. In a time when bringing in new, and especially young readers is so important, I can see what's happening. This book reads like a an MTV show: loud, full of big talk, and in need of editing. JK. But really, if you were to tell a teenager to read a comic book, do you think that Runaways (an amazing, written-for-teens book, but only for young'ns who are already into comics) would catch their attention more than this?

The problem is that I can re-read the Preacher series and see a pastiche of the American Western tale told in an overblown, yet economic fashion (much in the same way that Sin City works as a pastiche of Noir tales). Yet this book just reeks of violence for violence sake. The idea that superheroes have too much power has been covered in so many books, I won't even begin, the human vs. the superhuman has also been retread so many times it gets hard to count (if you want real evidence, ask for it in the comments). And to slowly draw it out just makes it insulting. Adding insane amounts of violence doesn't do anything new. Especially when it takes seven issues to reach that violence. Mainstream comics are already in the habit of referencing the nonsensical, and dark nature of the genre, which makes angsty commentary on it obsolete.

I know Garth Ennis (Preacher, Hellblazer) and Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan, Fury) can do better. But people younger than me might not.

Also purchased this week:

100 Bullets, Book 10: Decayed

Nextwave, Issue #11

Fables, Book 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers