Besides the vaguely obviously device of Butcher narrating his tale to his dead father (in his casket, no less), Garth Ennis does a fairly decent job with this issue. In some ways, leaving Butcher a mystery–instead of giving him Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker (way too cute)–would have been better. However, given Ennis opens with Falklands War and then goes back to Butcher’s childhood in the seventies? It works.
Ennis’s big problem with The Boys is his lack of interest. He had a gimmick, he got tired of it, but he didn’t create characters strong enough to support a series without continuously imaginative plotting. Butcher, for example, is a caricature. Ennis hasn’t even given him generic details. So Candlestickmaker is actually something entirely new.
Darick Robertson (late of the regular series) returns; he does an outstanding job doing domestic turmoil and urban squalor.
It’s good, with no right to be.
CREDITS
Bomb Alley; writer, Garth Ennis; artist, Darick Robertson; colorist, Tony Aviña; letterer, Simon Bowland; editor, Joseph Rybandt; publisher, Dynamite Entertainment.
The Stop Button 
Leave a Reply