Comics Fondle

I was going to start with imagining the aneurysm Paul Levitz got when he read issue seven, thinking he’d already canceled the book at that point, but then I realized it was the book he canceled the series over. Or at least the story-arc he canceled it over, issue six being the last issue. It makes sense… Ennis does a beautiful rip on Batman here, both using obvious analogs, but fitting them into The Boys’s setting perfectly. He even–and I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not–has a brief homage to the 1970s, when Robin left the Batcave on his motorcycle for greener pastures.

What Ennis does with The Boys here, where he sets it apart from the other “real” and self-aware comic books about superheroes, is he keeps his mix healthy. Yes, it’s a hilarious rip on Batman and Robin, but he also develops his setting (particularly, here, with an exploration of what superhero comic books do in the fictional Boys setting, but also–to some extent–in actuality), has a good mystery, and develops his characters. Wee Hughie comes along here, in a plot sense, but it’s actually Butcher and Mother’s Milk who get the most developing.

Then there’s the humor aspect. While–and I can’t quit harping on it–the Batman and Robin stuff shocks (and Ennis manages to shock over and over, without ever having to go cheap on his material), the rest of the book is funny too. The Boys has a lot in common with Chronicles of Wormwood because it’s the pop culture Ennis. He’s got a fantastic bit with a Boba Fett action figure thief who turns out to be an unexpected (or, rather, a more realistic) culprit than I had imagined. He’s got the stuff with The Frenchman and The Female, just great stuff over and over for them. And then he’s got his conclusion. It’s absurd and funny enough as it reads until the reveal, but then the reveal just makes it even better.

A friend and I always talk about how exciting it is to read Ennis in his writing prime, but I still don’t think we give him enough credit.

A

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