The Boys #66 Recap, Live As It Happens!

[Kamakazi]

So this time around, I'm gonna tell you what I think as I read it. I think I may have used this gimmick before. Not sure. But hell, there are only six issues or so left, so who cares if I cannibalize a gimmick or two?

We open with a shot of Vas, who has magically grown his fingers back. I guess he goes to the same doctor as Frenchy, who somehow regenerated an entire arm on the cover of the last issue. See, that's the problem with us fanboys. We remember things. Kinda makes you wonder why the writers and artists don't. Anyway, for reasons best known to Garth, Butcher is being kept off-panel. Like maybe we don't know it's Butcher. He's discussing depleted Uranium. We've seen this very discussion before, back in the "We Gotta Go Now" arc. At least I'm not the only one reusing gimmicks.

Anyway, Vas whines something about "not letting Butcher do something or other", and then we see a guy hanging from a chain. I'm sure there's a frightfully interesting backstory here. I'm also sure we'll never get to read it, because if it doesn't involve dog sex, decapitations, or silly accents, Ennis can't be arsed to actually include it in the book. Butcher monologs some more, and shoots poor Vas with a bazooka. A small side note here, but I do have to wonder when Ennis decided that all anyone wants to read about in comics is assholes behaving in assholish ways. Who are we rooting for here? Or is the concept of actually giving a shit about characters just way too effete for this title?

A couple of pages pass with Hughie wandering around aimlessly, while a huge wall of text blathers on and on in the form of a news broadcast. All of this could have been handled with one line of text: "One year later..." There's also one of those odd moments when Ennis acknowledges the idiocy of his own plot, when the news cast points out that Vought's entire plan was to get supes in the military, yet Vought couldn't create a decent Supe. But this being Garth Ennis, he couldn't even do that without contradicting himself. He says that the results of V are "totally unpredictable", but that's complete bullshit. Every single member of the Boys who was given V had exactly the same results.

I'm not even sure how to recap this next part. Frenchy has apparently completely lost his mind, and now wanders around dressed as Napoleon. MM is telling us about how he "needs to solve his family problems", but what the hell has he been doing for the past year if not dealing with the fact that his daughter is doing porn? And there's something about the Female catching Hughie masturbating, but I really don't give a damn. The whole segment is just weird. The newscast said that the incident at the White House occurred "last year", but everything else in the book makes it sound like it all happened yesterday. WTF?

So, Mother's Milk calls the ball, and the Boys are no more. Yay.

We switch over to Vought Guy and Gal, who are discussing their futures. This is precisely as fun as reading a transcript of the Enron trial. The only good part is that they get kinda cuddly towards the end of the scene. Cuddly for them, anyway.

Back with The Boys: Butcher returns. He offers them three months off. Somehow, that's better than "the rest of our lives off", so they take him up on it. Butcher makes Hughie his second in command. This pisses the rest of The Boys off. And yet, instead of just doing the logical thing and just disbanding, like they were set to do no more than 60 seconds before, they wander around whining about how unfair it all is. It's hard to even make jokes about any of this. It's like the issue was written by a random sentence generator.

We finish up with the only good part of the book: (Okay, Frenchy was hilarious, but still...) Annie tells Hughie to screw off, and leaves him. He, being a retard, can't figure out why. He wanders back home, where Butcher has again thoughtfully left a pool of blood-flecked semen in the doorway. He has a text from Vas, but there's nothing in it. And thus we finish up the book. It was basically a giant f'ing recap of the series so far. Like we needed one, this close to the end.

[Chrisnuttall]

So Butcher has basically gone completely off the rails. I'd be worried about the rest of the Boys, if I cared about them enough.

I read it - once again - in a comic shop. I wouldn't waste 50sen (roughly 10pence) on the Boys now.

What a waste of a great idea.

Chris

[Mr Beer]

Or is the concept of actually giving a shit about characters just way too effete for this title?

Excellent review as always Kamakazi and the above made me LOL.

What is the deal with the bloody semen, anyone know?

[Dannycat]

What is the deal with the bloody semen, anyone know?

Garth Ennis' weird sense of humor I think.

[Kamakazi]

Excellent review as always Kamakazi and the above made me LOL.

What is the deal with the bloody semen, anyone know?

Waaaaaaay back in issue #1 or #2, Hughie showed Butcher the apartment he was moving into. Butcher informed Hughie that he'd find a pool of bloody semen outside his door every night. And over the course of the book, we've seen it happen several times.

The only logical explanation is that Butcher is leaving it himself. There's no other possible way to explain it.

[Mr Beer]

Apparently it's usually caused by prostate gland biopsy but if it's been going on for years, it can't be that. So the secretor has anything from benign tumours to system wide metastasized cancers:

"Blood in the semen is most commonly a result of a prostate-gland biopsy. More than 80% of men who undergo a prostate biopsy may have some blood in their semen that persists for three to four weeks. Likewise, vasectomy can lead to bloody semen for about one week after the procedure.

In men with hematospermia who have not had a recent prostate biopsy or vasectomy, a number of benign and malignant conditions of the male genital system may be the cause. In many situations, no definitive cause is found.

The following conditions have been reported in association with hematospermia:
•benign or malignant tumors of the prostate, bladder, testes, or seminal vesicles,
•infections (including, but not limited to, chlamydia, herpes, cytomegalovirus, and trichomoniasis),
•inflammation of the prostate (prostatitis), epididymis (epididymitis), or urethra (urethritis),
•calculi (stones similar to kidney stones) in the seminal vesicles or prostate,
•polyps in the urethra,
•ejaculation-duct obstructions,
•metastatic cancers (that have spread from other sites in the body) located in the genitourinary system, and
•cysts, hemorrhage, or other abnormalities in the seminal vesicles."

http://www.medicinenet.com/blood_in_...le-al_city.htm

[Mr Beer]

Apparently blood in your semen can be an ominous medical symptom, who would have thought it?

[ambaxtoxin]

It was basically a giant f'ing recap of the series so far. Like we needed one, this close to the end.

If you think about it, this'll be the first issue of the last TPB. So... Ennis has provided this issue for future generations who - with a severely shortened attention span - will only pick up the last part of sagas in a bid to save time.

Think about it: the kids of 2015 will only read the Alamo arc of Preacher. They'll only watch Return of the Jedi. The last series of The Sopranos. Ennis is simply preparing for the inevitable. Be fair. It's a failsafe for the future almost on par with Black Noir.

[ambaxtoxin]

Another thing: Butcher has mentioned Mallory twice in two issues, and Annie says when leaving Hughie she's moving out West (I assume that's where Barbary Coast is).

Mallory to play an integral part in the finale? We can but hope (not).

[statsman]

Ennis does his best actual writing with characters he likes- all of whom are soldiers or ex-soldiers or civilians that act like soldiers. By issue 65, that left Butcher, MM and (sometimes) Frenchy as the only ones he could stand, leaving all of the others to fill various stereotype roles as objects of ridicule. The readers are almost coerced to follow where the writer leads them, so we all hate the other characters, too, now.

This book started out as Ennis' long form diatribe against caped, super-powered comics. He wanted to explore the ludicrousness of many of the conventions of the genre. A couple of things hinder the effort- the story got so long that he forgot he was satirizing the field (and got tangled up in the plot), and his ease with only a couple of the baser forms of humore- farce and ridicule. Whimsy and irony, the humor staples of most writers from the UK, are not arrows in Ennis' quiver (contrast with Peter Milligan's work on X-Statix, which approaches similar themes with a much more varied and textured humor).

The problem is that ridicule and farce are heavy-handed tools, and get in the way of any plot work. The series finds itself careening between humor and story, and it's getting harder and harder for Ennis to keep it on the road.