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The Boys GN1: The Name of the Game Posted 06 Jun 2007 Writer: Garth Ennis Artist: Darick Robertson Letters: Greg Thompson Colors: Tony Aviña Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment  4.50 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by Adam Mcgovern

Forget the philosophical chestnut that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the world of The Boys, power is corruption. And super-power is the worst kind. There have been many series told from the villain’s perspective, but never one so adamant that the villain has a point. Uniquely, “The Boys” are not villains at all, just a covert militia charged with checking rogue superheroes in a reality where that’s a redundancy. This book isn’t having the current fad of conflicted do-gooders crying through their crises; in The Boys, to be a costumed star at all is to behave as badly as the egomaniac celebs and corrupt politicians they stand in for here. In the 1930s, an experimental drug got leaked into the food chain, both creating superpowers for a randomly privileged few, and providing this book’s metaphor for the real-world imbalance of wealth and resources that makes the haves frivolous and careless, the have-nots obedient and exhausted, and the have-leasts homicidally resentful.

“In a climate where it’s practically illegal to contemplate our culture’s shortcomings or our enemies’ motives, The Boys is the only comic in a glut of pseudo-soul-searching (Identity Crisis, Civil War) to question authority from the perspective of those who don’t have it.”

That last group is where The Boys fit in; a shadowy band of five malcontents with a cause, its two anchor characters in the first arc collected here are Wee Hughie, a lovable nerd from colonized Scotland, and Billy Butcher, a murderous bastard from ego-bruised England. Each man has lost a loved one to some superhero’s collateral damage (or worse), and Billy is mentoring Hughie as The Boys’ newest member. Billy remembers his wife as the kind of person who “made you — believe in things,” and belief is a major currency in this book — Hughie believes all manner of UFO/conspiracy bushwah; the world believes the heroes got their powers from various mystic rays or magic rings instead of an unauthorized drug; and Billy is a master con-man no one can seem to help believing. He convinces the bereaved Hughie to join the team with hypnotic skill and carefully-timed releases of the type of official secrets Hughie thrives on. Whether all of these inside stories are real or just provide a reassuring structure for these guys’ senseless loss (and rationale for their unquenched vengeance), we can’t be sure. What we do know is that Billy has a barbaric charm it’s impossible for us not to fall for too, and the first major mystery of the series is what if anything he says will turn out to be worth trusting.

Ironically for all this, The Boys is a study in bald truths: the government, which feels threatened by “the Supes” in the power pecking order, readily enlists Billy and bankrolls his psychological ops and outright attacks; the Supes brazenly abuse their abilities and openly discuss how they’ll spin this for the media; and Billy is blatantly comfortable with his brutal role in leveling the playing field. In one scene, an ignored Supe’s canned goodguy speechifying turns into a frustrated tantrum mid-sentence with a mere change of the typeface to bigger and bolder, a classic use of the medium’s own clichés to show the utter

“The Boys is a study in bald truths.”

collapse of pretense in an immoral world and an aging genre. The Supes seek to manipulate the dishonesty of public discourse, while The Boys gleefully feed off it, putting a brat-pack of costumed kids in the hospital and hearing on the news that the damage was done by “time terrorists,” lest anyone have to admit that The Boys exist. What nobody does is consider that the social order could ever shift; the Supes will always be a menace, the government will always hold the cards, The Boys or someone like them will always be taking shots at the self-righteous, and the masses will always be caught in the crossfire. Billy thinks he’s a student and a dispenser of harsh reality, but it’s not the reality most of those meek workaday masses live, and since he’s put himself as far outside moral norms as his enemies have, the series’ second major mystery is how soon and how badly The Boys will screw up at the expense of the regular guys and girls they like to think they’re fighting for.

If you were offended by the explicit humor or insulted by the attitude toward superhero fans in Ennis’ The Pro, well, then, read any issue of The Boys and that one will look like a Cartoon Network JLA comic. It won’t help you much in liking this book, but that’s not what’s truly dangerous about The Boys. In a climate where it’s practically illegal to contemplate our culture’s shortcomings or our enemies’ motives, The Boys is the only comic in a glut of pseudo-soul-searching (Identity Crisis, Civil War) to question authority from the perspective of those who don’t have it. That position can do strange things to your mind and worse things to the world. It can also produce some intense and important art. The Boys is the comic DC didn’t want you to read, but it’s one of the comics you shouldn’t miss.

 

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