Butcher’s suspicions–instead of him just resolving them–play out with spying and so on. It makes him less of a character. Ennis is now playing him for laughs. It’s a very strange misfire.
The best scene in the comic isn’t actually with any of the Boys. Well, except a funny flashback. Otherwise, the best scene is when the sincere den mother of Super Duper talks down the team’s new leader. Ennis is actually really good at sincerity, though he seems embarrassed about it.
Also trying is all the dating stuff with Annie and Hughie. Way to suck the life out of the characters. She’s thinking of quitting and is now boring. Hughie’s just his regular wholesome self, which is similarly boring.
The arc isn’t shaping up well. Ennis would have done better with just a Super Duper limited series. They’re a whole lot more interesting than a suspicious Butcher.
CREDITS
The Innocents, Part Two; writer, Garth Ennis; artist, Darick Robertson; colorist, Tony Aviña; letterer, Simon Bowland; editor, Joseph Rybandt; publisher, Dynamite Entertainment.
With the exception of the decaying corpses, Richard Corben actually goes for bright and well-lighted for Fall of the House of Usher.
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The Flash Thompson thing is a somewhat funny distraction–Silver Sable kidnapped him instead of Peter–but it doesn’t make up for Ultimate Silver Sable being the worst villain in this comic since Geldof or whatever. Bendis tries real hard on her and her sidekicks too, which makes his failure more obvious.
It’s funny how the Zaius subplot is actually where Bechko and Hardman have the most problems, even though it’s mostly a talking heads subplot. They’re keeping the Zaius subplot… well, it’s kind of the soil. It feeds into the other two plots and presumably could make major changes for them when they all collide. But it’s separate; the Zira subplot is separate too, but it won’t affect anything.
I’m getting really sick of Carey’s cliffhangers. He doesn’t have a good resolution for the previous issue’s and then he has another weak one here. He’s introducing a bunch of information this time in the cliffhanger, presumably to encourage one to come back next time….
Ennis takes the Butcher finding out about Hughie and Annie thing in an unexpected direction. It makes Butcher suspicious Hughie’s a double agent, which leads to a couple lengthy talking heads scenes of Hughie being normal and Butcher being suspicious.
What a bad last issue. Poor Percio ends up doing something like four to eight panels a page to get all the story done and he doesn’t work well under pressure. Lots and lots of loose art.
Maybe not everything should get an Ultimate version.