The The "The Boys" Boys Thread
 

So has anyone read The Boys? Garth Ennis (dude who wrote Preacher) gets the help of Darick Robertson (who drew Transmetropolitan) to work through his superhero issues. By making up a parallel world with one or a few obvious analogues to most popular superheroes, having them act as the power-mad dicks they might conceivably be if they were real, and having a gang of total badasses in black longcoats beat the crap out of them.

I can't stand how blackly cynical it is, but I still love it. Beside all the kicks in the nuts of superheroes left and right, it's got some genuine humor, and some intriguing mysterious characters who actually seem to carry conversations of stunning authenticity reminiscent of Brian Michael Bendis' work, or Tarantino. It's got some hardcore melodrama and speculative fiction. And it's got a Russian communist superhero called Love Sausage whose power and weakness both are fifteen inches of love sausage.

And it's currently on issue 20 of 60. Whatcha waiting for?

I could do without the unstoppable urge to throw in as many crude sexual jokes as necessary (Tek Knight's triumph against the meteor being the foremost example) but I really really like The Boys. I kind of glance past all the sexual humor to focus more on the asshole DC universe parodies and, well, I like Hugie and Butcher.

Watching The Boys kick the everloving shit out of the Teen Titans knockoff was hilarious.

Call it a guilty pleasure.

Though I swear if he goes an entire story arc without a penis joke it would make it like 1000% better.

I think what I most dislike about Garth Ennis' The Boys is that it pretends to be "GARTH ENNIS HATES SUPERHEROES" but really it's Garth Ennis loves superheroes, as long as they're stereotypical Hard Men in black leather longjohns. If Garth Ennis wants to act out his S&M fetish they have clubs for that. Er, so I hear.

I mean I'm not saying I don't spend six hours a day writing "Everyone in dragonball z sucks, except for the dragonball z character I just made up who's better then all those jerks and is super at kung-fu and beats up everybody and bitches totally dig him and he's awesome" fanfic, but at least I don't try to get people to pay money for it.

There.

Or to put it another way,
EDIT: Haven't read a single word of it but I have read Preacher and on that basis I feel qualified to say I know what everything Garth Ennis writes eventually boils down to.

Garth Ennis did a PERFECT Punisher. Seriously, read the Punisher MAX series and you'll see that he's actually good given the right material.

But the Boys... yeah, he could have turned the vulgar down a few THOUSAND notches.

I mean seriously. Does EVERY super have to be homosexual (or bisexual), a Jesus freak, or a pervert? Can't have even ONE super whose just a normal guy who happens to wear long underwear and fight crime?

No, and it's sad, because the comic is a hundred thousand times better when he doesn't. I liked the story arc with Swingwing for that reason especially, cause it was really interesting to have a superhero that was horribly homophobic but he had to make public appearances and be totally supportive because that's what got him the 'nice guy' public image.

And when he ended up killing one of the gays, The Boys taught him a lesson.

All Mary Sue levels aside if he could just stick to that concept without 12 Inches of Cock and Hamster Felching and Ripping Off Nutsacks I'd have an easier time enjoying it.

Of course I'm just now getting into comics and I'm not that harsh of a critic, so I guess he won.

So I was looking at this thread and realized that I pretty much just came into a thread that a person posted letting people know about a comic they enjoyed and totally shit all over it. I'm not saying The Boys doesn't deserve criticism but it couldn't have killed me to be a little nicer about it. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I act like the people who do should feel like they shouldn't or aren't allowed to. I mean it's not like Garth Ennis is personally fucking me up the ass, just some analogues of fictional characters I enjoy.

So, my bad, IQ and Mirai.

Oh, that's fine. I didn't see anything out of order with your post. Probably desensitized by Garth Ennis' constant floods of criticism of everything and everyone. . .

It's rather like talking about Tim Buckley these days. But hey, to be fair, the first third to half of Preacher was generally pretty good.

Still, most obvious setup I ever saw.

I keep trying to give you openings but you never want to take them.