The Boys #1

Written by Garth Ennis

Art and cover by Darick Robertson

 

This is the title that the increasingly prolific Garth Ennis has said is going to "out Preacher Preacher," so brace yourself to be disappointed—With a claim that bold and a pedigree this prestigious, expectations for The Boys are going to be sky high, and while the first issue was a fine read, it's no Preacher. At least, certainly not yet.

 

Ennis' Preacher is widely regarded as one of the better comics to ever come out of DC's influential Vertigo imprint (if not comics in general), and is known for it's sick, sick sense of humor, balanced by powerful character drama. It's a book that Ennis, for all of the amazing work he's done since, has yet to match, even in the sick humor department (though certain Hitman stories and jokes from Adventures in the Rifle Brigade sure come close).

 

Ennis is a man who excels in certain genres, particularly the neo-Western and the traditional war story, and this book falls into the genre he's done much of his best-known and best-selling work in—the dark superhero parody (think Hitman, The Pro,  Kev or the Marvel Knights version of The Punisher). It's a solidly written book, with some arresting images (a Captain America analogue getting his head stomped on the first page, for example) and intriguing characters, but really nothing we haven't seen a half dozen times from Ennis already.

 

In this first chapter, "The Name of the Game," we meet Butcher, a big English bloke with a drool-y bulldog named Terror and a, um, special relationship with a female CIA director. He offers his services to his friend, essentially pitching the book while he's at it: There are some 200,000 superheroes in the world, and they can cause an awful lot of problems for the U.S. government if they get out of line, so the feds best have someone around to gather intel and occasionally stomp their super-powered faces in. Butcher seems to think he's just the man for the job, though he'll need others as well (four others, from the look of the cover).

 

We meet another likely recruit in Wee Hughie, a Scotsman who has the most important qualification for the job: A hatred of superheroes. We actually see the genesis of this hatred, as his girlfriend is graphically killed before his very eyes in a super-brawl initiated by a speedster who seems to go by the name "A Train."

 

There's not much else to the book thus far, but the fact that it mixes military types and superhero bashing—two of the subjects Ennis excels at—recommends what will follow. The art, by Darick Robertson of Transmetropolitan fame (and thus no slouch in the Drawing Totally Sick Shit department) is an inspired pairing with Ennis' script, and he does some wonderful work with character designs and expressions in this issue.  His art doesn't disappoint.

 

The same can't be said for Ennis’ script however. Perhaps it's just off to a slow start, but when you're promised the next Preacher, how can you help but be disappointed with getting the next Kev instead?

 

Rating - 7