Kamakazi
07-08-2011, 11:05 AM
Let me start out by listing everything The Boys #56 doesn't have.
- Grampa Mallory
- Stories about Grampa Mallory
- Sockpuppet Annie (And admit it, she's been pointless lately)
- Hughie whining. Kinda.
What it does have:
-Butcher being his old passive-aggressive jerk self.
-Jack from Jupiter
-Aids Monkeys
-Proof that this board is telepathic
So, here's your recap. I don't have the issue with me, so I'll make it short. Short for me, anyway.
Hughie shows up at the airport, and Butcher is there to meet him. I think. There's an odd disconnect going on in this issue, where the art never quite matches the script. Also, the script isn't very clear. One could easily assume that Butcher just happened to be a the airport and accidentally ran into Hughie.
Hughie seems bothered that Butcher isn't welcoming him back. This is either poor writing, or yet another example of how completely stupid Hughie is, because a normal person probably would have assumed that Butcher was there to kill Hughie. I'm going with "Hughie's stupid." In fact, this whole issue seems to be a testament to Hughie's stupidity.
Butcher tells Hughie that they're going to investigate a murder. Since this is The Boys, you automatically know two things: It involves a Supe, and it involves Homosexuality. It seems that Jack from Jupiter likes to go Invulnerable, then pay transsexuals to... you get the picture.
The Seven are also investigating the death, and Jack's possible involvement. We should probably just cut right to the chase here and say that nobody actually thinks Jack did it, because he's too much of a wuss. The Seven don't think he did it, Butcher doesn't think he did it, and we don't think he did it, but the whole book is about various people investigating whether or not he did it.
You're probably asking yourself why the Seven even care. It's because we're on the eve of Homelander's glorious plan to... whatever the hell it is that Homelander's planning on doing. Didn't Butcher already explain, like in the very first issue, that the Supes don't commit wholesale slaughter for the same reason Bill Gates doesn't: because it's funner and more profitable not to?
Oh, there's also a small sub-plot featuring the Vought Wonder-Team of Vought Guy and Vought Gal. I have no idea why it exists. I guess just to remind us that they're still around. BTW, why doesn't VGuy's mind powers work on VGal? He never seems to have any clue what she's doing. Of course, he doesn't seem to know what Homelander is planning either. I think they've Nerfed our beloved Vought Guy!
Hughie and Butcher wind up at Doctor Peculiar's, a kind of Supe Pimp who has two green monkeys. Butcher calls them "Aids Monkeys", for no apparent reason.
SPECIAL BONUS POINTS to whoever it was that guessed that the monkeys had sex with Kessler's ears. I think it was Boris, but then, I attribute everything to Boris.
Through all of this, Butcher is making it clear (to anyone but Hughie, anyway) that he knows all about Hughie's "summer vacation". He asks Hughie if Annie has been around lately. Hughie, being an idiot, lies and says "no". Didn't Mallory spend 756 previous issues expressly telling Hughie that Butcher knows everything that's even remotely connected with The Boys?
Hughie also attempts to be clever, telling Butcher that he wants "to be NCO" of The Boys. Butcher points out that Hughie has no clue what "NCO" even stands for. Hughie attempts to be clever a second time, and makes some comments about how they "ought to exterminate the Supes, but that wouldn't be as fun" as merely torturing them. Butcher, who clearly speaks for us this issue, doesn't even pretend to fall for Hughie's B.S., and basically rolls his eyes at him. EXCELLENT!
See, this is when the book is great: when it focuses on the core story, and actually allows people to act in the way that people might actually act. Butcher is portrayed perfectly in this issue: A controlling, arrogant bully who has nothing but contempt even for his friends.
Unfortunately, all this Greatness comes with a price, and that price is this: there is now literally no way to explain why Hughie was ever drafted into The Boys in the first place. Butcher has no "soft spot" that would explain why he'd recruit an incompetent loser with an I.Q. of 75 into his elite team of killers.
Now, the issue is NOT an unmitigated success. There's still a lot of Dumb going on here. For example, we're told that Maeve has had literally dozens of abortions. Why? She's a Supe, and one of the Seven. She can order up nothing but vasectomized boy-toys, if that's what she wants. Surely it's more hassle to fly down to a Pimp's hideout and endure a medical procedure than it'd be to hire pre-fixed man-whores.
Speaking of Maeve, she's off the sauce and on to orange juice. She's obviously going to die heroically fighting against Homelander.
Also, wasn't A-Train's eye burned out from his attempt to rape Annie? Apparently he grew a new one. I keep wishing they'd address that, but I guess none of the creative team cares.
So there we have it: the best issue in what seems like ages. And truth be told, it wasn't THAT great- it was just much better than the whole Mallory/Highland Laddie clusterfark.
- Grampa Mallory
- Stories about Grampa Mallory
- Sockpuppet Annie (And admit it, she's been pointless lately)
- Hughie whining. Kinda.
What it does have:
-Butcher being his old passive-aggressive jerk self.
-Jack from Jupiter
-Aids Monkeys
-Proof that this board is telepathic
So, here's your recap. I don't have the issue with me, so I'll make it short. Short for me, anyway.
Hughie shows up at the airport, and Butcher is there to meet him. I think. There's an odd disconnect going on in this issue, where the art never quite matches the script. Also, the script isn't very clear. One could easily assume that Butcher just happened to be a the airport and accidentally ran into Hughie.
Hughie seems bothered that Butcher isn't welcoming him back. This is either poor writing, or yet another example of how completely stupid Hughie is, because a normal person probably would have assumed that Butcher was there to kill Hughie. I'm going with "Hughie's stupid." In fact, this whole issue seems to be a testament to Hughie's stupidity.
Butcher tells Hughie that they're going to investigate a murder. Since this is The Boys, you automatically know two things: It involves a Supe, and it involves Homosexuality. It seems that Jack from Jupiter likes to go Invulnerable, then pay transsexuals to... you get the picture.
The Seven are also investigating the death, and Jack's possible involvement. We should probably just cut right to the chase here and say that nobody actually thinks Jack did it, because he's too much of a wuss. The Seven don't think he did it, Butcher doesn't think he did it, and we don't think he did it, but the whole book is about various people investigating whether or not he did it.
You're probably asking yourself why the Seven even care. It's because we're on the eve of Homelander's glorious plan to... whatever the hell it is that Homelander's planning on doing. Didn't Butcher already explain, like in the very first issue, that the Supes don't commit wholesale slaughter for the same reason Bill Gates doesn't: because it's funner and more profitable not to?
Oh, there's also a small sub-plot featuring the Vought Wonder-Team of Vought Guy and Vought Gal. I have no idea why it exists. I guess just to remind us that they're still around. BTW, why doesn't VGuy's mind powers work on VGal? He never seems to have any clue what she's doing. Of course, he doesn't seem to know what Homelander is planning either. I think they've Nerfed our beloved Vought Guy!
Hughie and Butcher wind up at Doctor Peculiar's, a kind of Supe Pimp who has two green monkeys. Butcher calls them "Aids Monkeys", for no apparent reason.
SPECIAL BONUS POINTS to whoever it was that guessed that the monkeys had sex with Kessler's ears. I think it was Boris, but then, I attribute everything to Boris.
Through all of this, Butcher is making it clear (to anyone but Hughie, anyway) that he knows all about Hughie's "summer vacation". He asks Hughie if Annie has been around lately. Hughie, being an idiot, lies and says "no". Didn't Mallory spend 756 previous issues expressly telling Hughie that Butcher knows everything that's even remotely connected with The Boys?
Hughie also attempts to be clever, telling Butcher that he wants "to be NCO" of The Boys. Butcher points out that Hughie has no clue what "NCO" even stands for. Hughie attempts to be clever a second time, and makes some comments about how they "ought to exterminate the Supes, but that wouldn't be as fun" as merely torturing them. Butcher, who clearly speaks for us this issue, doesn't even pretend to fall for Hughie's B.S., and basically rolls his eyes at him. EXCELLENT!
See, this is when the book is great: when it focuses on the core story, and actually allows people to act in the way that people might actually act. Butcher is portrayed perfectly in this issue: A controlling, arrogant bully who has nothing but contempt even for his friends.
Unfortunately, all this Greatness comes with a price, and that price is this: there is now literally no way to explain why Hughie was ever drafted into The Boys in the first place. Butcher has no "soft spot" that would explain why he'd recruit an incompetent loser with an I.Q. of 75 into his elite team of killers.
Now, the issue is NOT an unmitigated success. There's still a lot of Dumb going on here. For example, we're told that Maeve has had literally dozens of abortions. Why? She's a Supe, and one of the Seven. She can order up nothing but vasectomized boy-toys, if that's what she wants. Surely it's more hassle to fly down to a Pimp's hideout and endure a medical procedure than it'd be to hire pre-fixed man-whores.
Speaking of Maeve, she's off the sauce and on to orange juice. She's obviously going to die heroically fighting against Homelander.
Also, wasn't A-Train's eye burned out from his attempt to rape Annie? Apparently he grew a new one. I keep wishing they'd address that, but I guess none of the creative team cares.
So there we have it: the best issue in what seems like ages. And truth be told, it wasn't THAT great- it was just much better than the whole Mallory/Highland Laddie clusterfark.