The Boys Volume 7: The Innocents: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson, Russ Braun, and John McCrea (2010): Revelations follow revelations, as Bill Butcher comes to believe Hughie is secretly working for the evil Vought-American corporation because his girlfriend turns out to be a member of premiere superhero group The Seven.
Hughie being Hughie, this is all a coincidence aggravated by Hughie's blithe ignorance of current events and, for that matter, who exactly it is that he and the rest of The Boys are fighting. Hughie's also going to finally find out a different terrible truth about his girlfriend, but only after spending time keeping tabs on Superduper, the only superhero group composed of neither bastards nor poseurs.
That's because, no joke, they're all suffering from major mental health issues which render them benign, loveable, and pretty much harmless. Hughie's relationship with the members of Superduper (a parody of DC's teen supergroup of the 31st century, the Legion of Superheroes) will pay dividends much later in the series. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 10: Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson (2011): Collection of the six-issue miniseries that finally laid out Boys leader Bill Butcher's tortured personal history. The violence is often overwhelming, as is the tragedy: Butcher is cut from the same mould as Ennis's Saint of Killers in the earlier Preacher series, a violent hardcase redeemed by love and then further damned with the loss of that love. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 11: Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Russ Braun, John McCrea, Keith Burns, and Darick Robertson (2011-2012): The corporate controlled superheroes have decided to take over the world. Well, 65% of them, anyway, while the other 35% lay low and wait to see who wins.
Have Bill Butcher's plans prepared the world to successfully stand against several thousand nigh-invulnerable wankers, or will the vile and vainglorious Homelander soon rule over everything? And which side will corporation Vought-American, which didn't authorize a hostile takeover of the United States by the superheroes it created, come down on as all Hell breaks loose? And will Bill Butcher finally get vengeance upon the Homelander for the rape and subsequent death in (super-powered) childbirth of his wife? And if everything ends here, why is there one more volume to go? Highly recommended.
The Boys Volume 12: The Bloody Doors Off: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Garth Ennis, Russ Braun, and Darick Robertson (2012): The six-year, 90-issue, 2000-page odyssey of The Boys ends here, a few months after the blood-soaked superheroic attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. Loveable Scottish Boys member Hughie is still having relationship problems with former superheroine Starlight, more normally referred to as Annie. Vought-American is still up to lots of things, most of them profitable and dreadful. But with armageddon averted, Boys leader Bill Butcher suggests that the Boys take a vacation.
But when a Russian superhero ally of the Boys shows up dead along with a black marketeer, the vacation is cut short. And then the deaths of both supporting and main characters start to mount. Who is tidying up? Was the superhero coup the real threat? Is Hughie capable, mentally and physically, of engaging this newly revealed conspiracy and saving millions or perhaps even billions of lives? Is this Garth Ennis' last superhero comic book? All will be revealed. Highly recommended.
The Boys Volume 3: Good for the Soul: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson (2008): Many terrible things happen and more terrible things are revealed about the superheroes of the world of The Boys. Pretty much all of them are corporate lackeys of Vought-American, a multi-national that's excellent at making money and terrible at making weapons that actually work.
Ennis and Robertson illustrate this with some World War Two references to profit-motivated cock-ups by arms manufacturers on the Allied side, all of which made the companies tons of money and all of which resulted in increased fatalities. Because modern warfare is all about money. The troops are essentially irrelevant except as testing units for the hardware, regardless of whether it's an improvement on the last hardware.
The super-powered Boys, funded by the CIA but running their own deeper game, once again take the piss out of some superheroes while trying to uncover the truth about 9/11 in their universe, where the Brooklyn Bridge and not the World Trade Center Towers was destroyed. A pretty searing portrait of dangerous, profit-motivated incompetence. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 6: The Self-Preservation Society: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson, John McCrea, and Carlos Ezquerra (2009-2010): Payback, Ennis's horrifying parody of Marvel's Avengers, comes after The Boys. Stormfront, Payback's thinly veiled version of Thor, is an actual Nazi used by uber-corporation Vought-American to exterminate undesireable ethnics on Third-World land they want to purchase when he's not posing for photo ops and pretending to be a German God of Thunder.
But like pretty much ever other super-powered character in Ennis's bleak vision of the world, he's never been properly trained in hand-to-hand combat because he's simply too powerful to worry about it. That's about to change. Another bracing, barbaric, ultraviolent yawp against the world's violent stupidities. Recommended.
John Byrne's Next Men: Scattered Part 2: written and illustrated by John Byrne (2010): Byrne's great 1990's series, once on a 15-year hiatus, draws to a (sorta) close, as one volume remains. The time-travel stuff is complicated but nicely reasoned out; the stakes are high; everything we saw long ago in the first issues moves satisfyingly towards an ending. But you'll need to read everything that came before to understand what comes now. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 4: We Gotta Go Now: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson (2008-2009; collected 2009): Black Ops group The Boys delve into the secret history of the G-Men, superhero-corporation Vought American's (very) thinly veiled version of the X-Men and all their X-books, X-teams, and X-merchandising. As superhero groups in the world of The Boys go, the G-Men may be the most awful of all when their secret origins are revealed. But how will The Boys fight several hundred angry, crazy superheroes with a bewilderingly wide array of superpowers? Excellent question. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 5: Herogasm: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson and John McCrea (2009; collected 2009): Corporate-owned superheroes. Just like the comic books themselves! CIA-affiliated Black Ops group The Boys continue their investigation of superhero corporation Vought American and the legion of super-heroes created, controlled, and owned by them as the heroes of the world have their annual team-up against a force too powerful for them to combat singly or in small groups. It's a crisis and a not-so-secret war!
Well, no. In reality, the heroes and some villains annually go to a tropical island where they debauch themselves for a week on the company dime: the company-wide team-up is all about sex and drugs, not saving the world. The greatest threat to the world is the superheroes themselves and the corporation that controls them. The Boys do learn a lot more about both the secret history of recent events and what the World's Greatest Hero, the Homelander, is really up to. None of it is pretty. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 8: Highland Laddie: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson and John McCrea (2010-2011; collected 2011): Depressed by recent personal events and by his work with The Boys, Scottish team-member Hughie (he whom artist Darick Robertson originally drew to look pretty much exactly like Simon Pegg) returns home to the north of Scotland for some soul-searching. Almost certainly the most Scottish superhero miniseries ever written. Recommended.
The Boys Volume 9: The Big Ride: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson and Russ Braun (2011; collected 2011): As things gradually move towards a series-ending climax (still three volumes to go, though), we learn terrible secrets about the first go-round for The Boys in their battle against Vought American and its corporate superheroes. We also learn about the first appearance of said superheroes during World War Two and the subsequent history of both the superheroes and the CIA's attempts to find out what Vought American is up to. We also learn even more about the insane sex lives of superheroes. And one of The Boys will not make it out of this volume alive! Recommended.
Justice League Volume 2: The Villain's Journey: written by Geoff Johns; illustrated by Jim Lee, Gene Ha, Gary Frank, and Ivan Reis (2012): The new Justice League battles a couple of new menaces, refuses Green Arrow's request to join the team, and ponders its role in today's fast-paced, modern society. The new Shazam's interminably long origin story also begins. People yell at Batman. And Superman and Wonder Woman kiss.
Jim Lee's new costume designs for DC's major heroes really are fussy and distracting. Superman needs his red shorts back. And everyone needs to stop wearing armor like the Avengers all did in that terrible 1990's Avengers cartoon that didn't feature any of the major Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor). Most of the heroes here are pissy almost all the time, which in today's superhero comics is what substitutes for camaraderie and characterization. Lightly recommended.
The Boys Volume 2: Get Some: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson and Peter Snejberg (2007): The Wrath of Ennis turns to teen sidekicks, millionaire playboys who are really dark-night avengers, and the former Soviet Union in the second collection of The Boys.
Here, the covert group seeking to stop superheroic abuses of power sets its targets on the Tek-Knight and his former partner Swingwing during an investigation into the mysterious death of a gay teen. Celebrity culture takes its punches here, as does the often hypocritical world of celebrity charity endorsements. Well, that and dressing up in a high-tech costume to fight crime. And asteroids with vaginas.
After that, the Boys truck off to Russia to find out what a mysterious corporation, a Russian crimelord, a hyper-patriotic Russian politician, and a drug that creates unstable superheroes have in common. And by unstable, I mean physically unstable: these heroes have heads with a tendency to explode.
Loveable former Soviet hero Love Sausage helps the Boys uncover a conspiracy between capitalism and Russian patriotism, one that could plunge the entire planet into World War Three. All that and Little Hughie discovers the joys of alcohol made from Soviet-era brake fluid. MMM!!! Recommended, not for the squeamish or easily offended.
The Boys Volume 1: The Name of the Game: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson (2006-2007): Even though Irish comic-book writer Garth Ennis has done a lot of work for Marvel and DC over the last 20 years, he hates superheroes. Boy, does he hate superheroes. Well, except for Superman.
The Boys is Ennis's superhero hate made manifest, a scabrous series about superpowered beings and the people who hate them and the people who want to be them and the people who try to control them. The Boys bears a thematic resemblance to the great Marshal Law series by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, another world of superheroes gone terribly wrong. Ennis's superheroes may sometimes superficially appear to be like the beloved characters of pop culture (indeed, they often do in both costume and name, anyway). But for the most part, his superheroes are corrupted by fame and power, nearly as bad as the supervillains they have violent, super-destructive public battles with. Sometimes worse.
And so a mysterious former CIA operative puts together a team to monitor superheroes and, when necessary, destroy either their public image or, if possible, their existence. Collectively, these are the Boys (though one is a woman). They have super-powers because that's pretty much necessary to survive conflicts with super-powered beings. And their leader, Butcher, really hates superpowers. And he's got an agenda of his own.
This first volume introduces the Boys and sets them on their first case, an investigation of a teen superhero group (think Teen Titans or Young Justice). The horrible world just beneath the surface of jaunty, colourful superheroing fairly firmly puts one on the side of the Boys, even if they're no angels. Darick Robertson's clean, straightforward art lays everything out in almost clinical detail -- he's about as normative as a modern-day (mostly) superhero artist can be. That the most sympathetic member of the Boys, Little Hughie, has been drawn to look almost exactly like Simon Pegg adds a whole other layer of sympathy. Well, as does the origin of Little Hughie's antipathy towards superheroes, an event that brings him to the attention of Butcher.
Terrible things happen. So do funny things. Sometimes they're the same thing. Ennis's satiric vision is as sharp as ever, the character names often sadly appropriate (in this world, the Superman stand-in is named The Homelander. And boy, is he a prick). Early throwaways seem to promise later development (the existence of fundamentalist Christian superhero groups seems somehow logical and creepy, though no creepier than the 'Extreme' super-teens the Boys try to take down).
The deforming capability of power (and the will-to-power) seems to be Ennis's main target here, as torture and sexual cruelty come esaily to most super-beings. And they're never punished for their cruelties and murders because, hey, they're part of the Establishment. People like them. They're cool. They've got power. Well, here comes the Butcher. Recommended, but not for the squeamish.
