Category: Boys
-
Why get Russ Braun to draw and then do all that color shading when he’s capable of doing it himself? Does Dynamite actually tell their artists to go light on detail? Ennis isn’t just doing a bridging issue, he’s apparently doing a bridging arc. The Seven are gearing up for whatever the Homelander has planned,…
-
Ennis doesn’t pull it off. There’s a huge connection to the regular Boys series, which seems rather forced, and the artists screw up the final shot of Annie so it’s unclear what’s going on with her and Hughie. Highland Laddie ought to be amazing. It ought to be Local Hero as a comic book, with…
-
Yeah, Ennis’s rehabilitation of Annie continues big time. So does McCrea and Burns’s terrible rendition of her–at one point her eye is in front of her hair. Very creepy. After going too slow the last issue, Ennis goes too fast this time. There’s the whole English guy who hangs out with Hughie, there’s stuff with…
-
Ennis backtracks on quite a bit here with Annie. It appears she was never really the good Christian superhero Ennis wrote her being. Instead, she’s always been aware she’s a corporate product and a successful one. If he always meant to do this revelation, he sure didn’t write for it. There were a lot of…
-
Another excellent issue, save the art. When Annie shows up at the end, I didn’t even recognize her. I thought for a minute Ennis was bringing in one of Hughie’s childhood crushes. Otherwise, like I said, excellent. Even with the flashes to Boys events, the series feels completely removed from it. If Highland Laddie does…
-
No doubt about it, Ennis is having a good time on Highland Laddie. The most fun is trying to remove all the superhero stuff from it mentally; the story works just as well. Makes one wonder what the main series would be like if Ennis started with characters and story and added all the superhero…
-
If it weren’t for the art from John McCrea and Keith Burns, Highland Laddie–the first issue anyway–would be the best Boys in a year or so. Even with it, the issue shows off Ennis’s actual writing abilities, not how many jokes he can make about superheroes. Hughie goes back home to Scotland, reuniting with his…
-
Ennis inexplicably employs a third person narrator for the end of the issue, after Hughie breaks up with Annie. I’m nearly positive he’s never used it before in the series. It’s jarring, reminding the reader it’s just a comic. He also skips over giving the reader a look into Hughie’s thought process, as he acts…
-
Butcher gets around to setting Hughie up for the whole truth about Annie, which implies he’s also messing with Mother’s Milk’s flask, but there’s also a big reveal about Maeve. It all of a sudden makes sense why Ennis has always been so careful with her character–he’s got major plans for her. Or at least…
-
Actually, it wasn’t a soft cliffhanger last issue; Ennis takes the reader through Annie telling Hughie about her superhero life and Ennis and Braun show Hughie’s thought process in glorious detail. There’s a little humor with Frenchie and the Female as they infiltrate the superhero religion convention. Not a lot, but enough–with visual gags–to get…
-
I was going to comment on how different Robertson’s art looks, but it’s Russ Braun, not Robertson. Braun does a good job too, except Tony Avina’s colors do way too much, putting in cheekbones and the like. Ennis finally has a go at religion this time–corporate “700 Club” type religion, with some Scientology digs thrown…
-
It’s another underwhelming issue. Ennis actually goes so far as to have Annie sitting in a coffee shop, writing Hughie an email all about her secrets. Why Butcher isn’t investigating her (or why he doesn’t have Hughie’s phone automatically tapped) is left untouched. One has to assume Ennis is trying to get the series somewhere…
-
Robertson has help on the art from Richard P. Clark. Not sure it’s actually help, given there are some really weak panels. Especially towards the end. Yeah, so… the end of Super Duper arc. Ennis introduces the ultra violence of The Boys into the Super Duper household and it terrifies the kids. Butcher terrifies the…
-
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…
-
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. The first such scene is fine. The second’s practically unbearable. It just goes on and…
-
Ennis is tying some stuff up–or at least buying the laces–with McCrea and Burns on the art. It’s not the right issue for them, it’s all way too mundane. Butcher finally finds out about Annie, Frenchie tries to get the Female hooked on 2000 AD, we find out Mother’s Milk has some issues from his…
-
Lots of jokes for the Female’s origin too. Frenchie has to tell it to Hughie, but there’re a few implications it’s an accurate retelling. Ennis plays it for violence and for laughs. The Female ingests the superhero juice as a baby, which leads to her being a caged killing machine from birth. She escapes, learns…
-
Ennis tells Frenchie’s story, which he does mostly for laughs. Robertson gets the humor well–the setting, a tranquil French village, helps a lot. There aren’t any surprises–Hughie even goes so far as to doubt its veracity–and only a couple real standouts. The first is short but awesome. As Frenchie recounts a touching summer love affair,…
-
Once again, Ennis avoids the big question the flashback raises. Hughie and Mother’s Milk are still talking–I think Hughie went for coffee–and there’s a bit more back story. Not a lot. Ennis skips about fourteen years. He does get in a big fight scene, which Robertson draws quite well. But the issue–as none of the…
-
Ennis gets to Mother’s Milk’s story–and hints at something to do with the Female’s. M.M.’s story is a doozy. Ennis takes a somewhat traditional story–the giant corporation knowingly poisoning people with toxic waste–and adds the superhuman element. It’s devastating at times, even with some of the more amusing visuals. It’s like Ennis and Robertson are…
-
And the Ezquerras are back for the finish. It’s an awesome finish for with the Super Nazi going down–though, really, Hughie getting queasy over them attacking a super-powered Nazi is a real problem. Maybe with a vaguely sympathetic superhero it’d be different, but not this guy. I assume Ennis knows what he’s doing with it.…
-
I really wish I could remember the name of the Wonder Woman analog because Ennis does some great stuff with her this issue. He also does something interesting with the Homelander–setting him up to attempt being a superhero. But those developments are on the Seven side of things…. On the Boys side of things, Butcher…
-
My bad, the Female doesn’t die. I thought she did (and I took it, as a reader, in total stride). But she makes it. And then the Boys get into a big fight with a second-rate super team. Lots of violence, but with the Ezquerra art it’s all very digestible. A couple things stand out…
-
Holy crap. Ennis kills one of The Boys (or so it seems). It’s a strange occurrence for a few reasons. First, it doesn’t seem like a big change in the series. Ennis has already done a lot of jarring things, so killing off a lead doesn’t faze as much as it could. But it should,…
-
Ennis sure doesn’t resolve a lot this issue. In fact, he might not resolve anything. I thought for a minute that hooker from last issue was going to be important, but no. He doesn’t resolve Hughie’s story, he doesn’t resolve the company man’s story…. About all he does resolve is the Wonder Woman stand-in and…
-
This issue’s very confusing. First, Ennis wasn’t clear enough before about Hughie’s interaction with Black Noir. I think that name’s right. But it was a lot more traumatic than I thought. Second, McCrea and Burns don’t draw Hughie well. Forget Simon Pegg, he looks exactly like the Frenchman here. Made he and Butcher’s scene awkward.…
-
It’s entirely unclear why this issue should be part of Herogasm and not part of The Boys proper. Ennis finally explains a little more about “Vic the Veep,” who’s sort of like the retarded messiah from Preacher, but the vice president. He also explains what happened with the U.S. government on The Boys’s 9/11–I’m not…
-
This issue feels more like the regular Boys, even with McCrea and Burns on the art. Ennis opens the issue with the Boys on their mission–of course, he saves a reveal for the last page. Regardless of the actual reveal, Ennis shows a different hand. He’s intentionally keeping stuff from the reader to pique interest.…
-
It took until the Boys show up I forgot they hadn’t made an appearance yet in this issue of Herogasm. Ennis has a lot going on–the moronic vice president arriving, the company man explaining the situation to some of the heroes… the Superman stand-in killing everyone on a plane. You know, little stuff. Maybe it’s…
-
Herogasm definitely gives Ennis the chance to unwind. Even when the art gets a little lazy–the art’s from John McCrea and Keith Burns–you can tell they’re still having fun. There’s still an edge to the writing, but Ennis is back in his “making fun of superheroes” mode. One just wishes DC had kept the series…
The Stop Button 