Dear Garth
If you really are Garth Ennis...
(This is going to sound rude, but I have bought issues 1-54, Herogasm 1-6, Highland Laddie 1 and no less than five TPBs. If that doesn't give me the right to complain, I don’t care. Sorry.)
OK, this is what I want to know. Why did you decide to turn the boys into a terrible joke?
All right, maybe it’s satire and my sense of humour isn't developed enough to take satire properly. But I like Steve Bell’s IF; he does an absurd take on the modern universe (at least until Thatcher left office, which is about where I stopped reading). The Boys has several elephants in the room and the most important one is that it can never decide if it is a serious story or a complete set of jokes and piss-takes.
Right from the start, you told us that Butcher was incredibly dangerous and very smart. But he isn't. OK, he’s a dangerous sociopath – I get that. But he’s also very stupid. Why exactly does he recruit Hughie in the first place – Hughie’s a nice guy, but completely useless? And then he decides that Hughie just HAS to be working for VA. And THEN you tell us that Butcher engineered the confrontation with Malchemical, but Butcher didn't do a damned thing to start it. Judge Dredd is smarter than Butcher.
Second, Hughie is completely freaking useless. What does he have to interest Butcher beside a burning desire for revenge against A-Train? He is a coward who doesn't even start to toughen himself up. I wanted to see him kick Malchemical’s ass, not be taken out so easily. Hughie is an idiot. And his origin story, such as it is, is just more disgustingness...and an insult to my home country, scotland. You would have been better off if you'd just ripped off Oor Willie without trying to put your own spin on it.
Third, every single freaking story arc has at least one disgusting moment. Hughie needs a shit in Get Some. Love Sausage’s costume. Anne’s period when Hughie goes down on her. The scenes at Herogasm. And so on. And so on. We don’t need disgusting shit to make us read comics; we need good storytelling and a consistent universe.
Fourth, I never had the sense that the Boys were in any real danger. Even when facing the G-Men, it doesn't seem like impossible odds. And Payback folds far too quickly. Even the Homelander doesn’t seem like much of a threat at the end.
This should have been Stormwatch; TA. Instead it veers between Morrison’s run on The Authority (bloody awful) and James Robinson’s run on JLA (even worse.)
Is there any chance of an ‘ultimate’ The Boys? Perhaps one written by Warren Ellis? Hell, could I submit a background?
Garth, I like a lot of your stuff, but why do you always feel the urge to be disgusting?
Chris
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Originally Posted by statsman
