The Boys is Written by Garth Ennis and Drawn by Darrick Robertson.
This a parody review I did. See if guess who I'm parodying. If I did it right, it should be obvious.
There are two main theories about 90's comics. The most popular is that it was the dark age of comics where melodramatic nonsense, terrible hyperbolic artwork, and grim 'n' gritty idiots run rampant. There were hardly any decent or good comics to be seen. The other theory is that it was dork age of comics where melodramatic nonsense... You get the drill.
While the industry got better for a little while, Rob Liefield began drawing again; foil covers returned from the grave, and Jeff Loeb started aiming his books at idiots. All this wouldn't bother me if wasn't for The Boys. The Boys is the most hypocritical comic book of the decade and a reminder of how far we haven't come.
The basic premise is that the superheroes are out-of-control idiots, so the titular Boys decide they don't like superheroes. The Boys give themselves superpowers, code names, matching uniforms and beat up law-breakers. Wait...
The Boys argue that one of the reasons that the super heroes are so ineffective is because they don't have decent training and rely on their powers. The Boys pull a guy off the street, give him super powers but no training. Not surprisingly, he ends up accidentally killing someone. Similarly, the Boys argue that superheroes are too secretive and human beings are natural corrupt with no oversight. So they work with the CIA and recruit someone from the Mafia.
Talking about the whole series would take too much time, so let's just focus on the first issue. Right off the bat I know I'm in for some trouble. The protagonists are all wearing black leather jackets. It's like the character design got as far as watching the Matrix. The first page is just a foot destroying a super hero's head. It's an entire page wasted to shock value with no context. It's the 90's on a single panel. The only good thing I can say about the design is that no one is wearing a pony tail. On the next page we have a caption that just says "Butcher". I guess that's the name of the guy on the bench. The first line of dialogue is "I'm going to Fuckin' have you. You ****." That level of classiness and cleverness is what you can expect from the series. On the next page, Butcher gets off the bench and walks away. The page is obviously just padding because Ennis didn't have enough to say to fill 22 pages of comic.
Next we to jump to "Wee Hughiee," a very homophobic Simon Pegg clone. This is a terrible cliche. As soon as a character says something homophobic the audience knows he's a jerk and doomed to be a victim or antagonist. Why would the writer do such a thing? Oh wait. He's the protagonist and we're supposed to like and identify with him.
"Wee Hughiee," is hanging out with a woman who declares her love for him. She should have just slit her throat on the spot because she's obviously going to die as a cheap dramatic effect. Indeed, she only lasts one more padded page before being vaporized by an inept superhero. Killing off the protagonist's love interest is about the laziest thing the writer could have done.
Up next is Butcher talking to a female secretary. Then they have sleazy sex while insulting each other. Who needs context when we have EXTREME comics? They keep on talking throughout the next few pages about setting up a team to beat up corrupt super-heroes. I already pointed out the irony of this.
Intercut between this is a bunch of men wearing black coats talking to Hughiee about a settlement. The family and other friends of the woman who was killed are completely ignored, and the woman is never really brought up again. Hughiee has only known her for a month and dated her for less than a minute. Why should he have a legally recognized interest in her? Are they talking about compensation for pain and suffering? Who are they anyway?
Butcher starts a team by kneeing a random guy in the privates and forcing him to work for Butcher. Butcher then decides to recruit "Wee Hughie" by sitting next to him on a park bench in an entire page panel. Why he wants to give an untrained loser with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder superpowers isn't even brought up for a few more issues, and by then I had stopped caring.
That's it for the issue. The comic consists of cliches sewn to shock scenes, sewn to padding around the black hole where a story should be. It's an embarrassment to the creators who have made much better comics than this. It's been selling pretty well so that means the industry is going to try to rip it off with even worse nonsense. On the plus side, I can make fun of that too.
This a parody review I did. See if guess who I'm parodying. If I did it right, it should be obvious.
There are two main theories about 90's comics. The most popular is that it was the dark age of comics where melodramatic nonsense, terrible hyperbolic artwork, and grim 'n' gritty idiots run rampant. There were hardly any decent or good comics to be seen. The other theory is that it was dork age of comics where melodramatic nonsense... You get the drill.
While the industry got better for a little while, Rob Liefield began drawing again; foil covers returned from the grave, and Jeff Loeb started aiming his books at idiots. All this wouldn't bother me if wasn't for The Boys. The Boys is the most hypocritical comic book of the decade and a reminder of how far we haven't come.
The basic premise is that the superheroes are out-of-control idiots, so the titular Boys decide they don't like superheroes. The Boys give themselves superpowers, code names, matching uniforms and beat up law-breakers. Wait...
The Boys argue that one of the reasons that the super heroes are so ineffective is because they don't have decent training and rely on their powers. The Boys pull a guy off the street, give him super powers but no training. Not surprisingly, he ends up accidentally killing someone. Similarly, the Boys argue that superheroes are too secretive and human beings are natural corrupt with no oversight. So they work with the CIA and recruit someone from the Mafia.
Talking about the whole series would take too much time, so let's just focus on the first issue. Right off the bat I know I'm in for some trouble. The protagonists are all wearing black leather jackets. It's like the character design got as far as watching the Matrix. The first page is just a foot destroying a super hero's head. It's an entire page wasted to shock value with no context. It's the 90's on a single panel. The only good thing I can say about the design is that no one is wearing a pony tail. On the next page we have a caption that just says "Butcher". I guess that's the name of the guy on the bench. The first line of dialogue is "I'm going to Fuckin' have you. You ****." That level of classiness and cleverness is what you can expect from the series. On the next page, Butcher gets off the bench and walks away. The page is obviously just padding because Ennis didn't have enough to say to fill 22 pages of comic.
Next we to jump to "Wee Hughiee," a very homophobic Simon Pegg clone. This is a terrible cliche. As soon as a character says something homophobic the audience knows he's a jerk and doomed to be a victim or antagonist. Why would the writer do such a thing? Oh wait. He's the protagonist and we're supposed to like and identify with him.
"Wee Hughiee," is hanging out with a woman who declares her love for him. She should have just slit her throat on the spot because she's obviously going to die as a cheap dramatic effect. Indeed, she only lasts one more padded page before being vaporized by an inept superhero. Killing off the protagonist's love interest is about the laziest thing the writer could have done.
Up next is Butcher talking to a female secretary. Then they have sleazy sex while insulting each other. Who needs context when we have EXTREME comics? They keep on talking throughout the next few pages about setting up a team to beat up corrupt super-heroes. I already pointed out the irony of this.
Intercut between this is a bunch of men wearing black coats talking to Hughiee about a settlement. The family and other friends of the woman who was killed are completely ignored, and the woman is never really brought up again. Hughiee has only known her for a month and dated her for less than a minute. Why should he have a legally recognized interest in her? Are they talking about compensation for pain and suffering? Who are they anyway?
Butcher starts a team by kneeing a random guy in the privates and forcing him to work for Butcher. Butcher then decides to recruit "Wee Hughie" by sitting next to him on a park bench in an entire page panel. Why he wants to give an untrained loser with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder superpowers isn't even brought up for a few more issues, and by then I had stopped caring.
That's it for the issue. The comic consists of cliches sewn to shock scenes, sewn to padding around the black hole where a story should be. It's an embarrassment to the creators who have made much better comics than this. It's been selling pretty well so that means the industry is going to try to rip it off with even worse nonsense. On the plus side, I can make fun of that too.