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The Boys (Trade Paperbacks) #12
The Boys, Volume 12: The Bloody Doors Off
The war is over and the world is saved. The supes have been beaten down so far they'll never get up again. So why would anyone want one hundred and eighteen metric tons of the only substance on earth that can kill them all stone dead? Bad days start coming thick and fast, as the Boys are caught in the last throes of the battle they were recruited to fight so long ago. Hughie, all on his own and out of luck, finds himself walking down one last bloody trail - and the truth he finds waiting for him at the end of it will be nothing short of shattering! Billy Butcher's vengeance comes full circle, in this twelfth and final entry in the story of The Boys.
170 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2012
37 people are currently reading
969 people want to read
About the author
Garth Ennis
2,629 books3,183 followersEnnis began his comic-writing career in 1989 with the series Troubled Souls. Appearing in the short-lived but critically-acclaimed British anthology Crisis and illustrated by McCrea, it told the story of a young, apolitical Protestant man caught up by fate in the violence of the Irish 'Troubles'. It spawned a sequel, For a Few Troubles More, a broad Belfast-based comedy featuring two supporting characters from Troubled Souls, Dougie and Ivor, who would later get their own American comics series, Dicks, from Caliber in 1997, and several follow-ups from Avatar.
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 220 reviews
June 29, 2024
The sweetness of this rather shocking, startling and coldly comical last volume of The Boys was that it was all in plain sight, we just didn't want to see it? Overall a great series balancing gory violence, explicit uncompromising story lines and lo and behold even the series' title gets closure in this volume.
Things maybe, move a bit too fast at times, but I feel that we're being made to experience this volume through Hughie's P.O.V. I presume there's probably many readers who'd preferred the penultimate volume to be the last, but for me this works better, it was always about The Boys, and not about the powered beings. Thank you. 10 out of 12. Five Star Read.
2019 and 2017 read
Things maybe, move a bit too fast at times, but I feel that we're being made to experience this volume through Hughie's P.O.V. I presume there's probably many readers who'd preferred the penultimate volume to be the last, but for me this works better, it was always about The Boys, and not about the powered beings. Thank you. 10 out of 12. Five Star Read.
2019 and 2017 read
December 21, 2019
Oh, for fuck's sake, Ennis! You're killing me!
Ok, so you see it slowly coming Little by little you realize that Butcher is...a tad unhinged.
Still.
STILL!
I was not expecting this.
What? What happened, Anne? <--asks the imaginary audience in my head
Well, my dear imaginary friends, I simply can't tell you without spoiling it.
I will say that what I thought was going to happen, didn't. And what I never thought was going to happen...did.
Is this a worthy and satisfying conclusion to a fantastic title?
YES.
Will this be something that I try to get the other moms at soccer practice to read?
No.
This is the sort of story that a select group of comic readers will love, and the rest will probably think is a flaming dumpster fire of unnecessary violence, sexual perversions, and colorful gore. The whole thing is one giant Trigger Warning, so buyer beware.
If you liked the first 10 volumes, you'll like this one.
Ok, so you see it slowly coming Little by little you realize that Butcher is...a tad unhinged.
Still.
STILL!
I was not expecting this.
What? What happened, Anne? <--asks the imaginary audience in my head
Well, my dear imaginary friends, I simply can't tell you without spoiling it.
I will say that what I thought was going to happen, didn't. And what I never thought was going to happen...did.
Is this a worthy and satisfying conclusion to a fantastic title?
YES.
Will this be something that I try to get the other moms at soccer practice to read?
No.
This is the sort of story that a select group of comic readers will love, and the rest will probably think is a flaming dumpster fire of unnecessary violence, sexual perversions, and colorful gore. The whole thing is one giant Trigger Warning, so buyer beware.
If you liked the first 10 volumes, you'll like this one.
June 9, 2021
Al principio pensé que era un volumen de relleno para completar la docena de los volúmenes... De hecho la primera parte daba esa sensación... Pero a mitad del volumen se da un giro de 180 grados que cambia todo. La verdad no me esperaba ese final, pero supongo que fue consecuente con el resto del comic. Afortunadamente se lograron cerrar todas las brechas y dudas generadas a los largo de la lectura. creo que ha sido un buen final.
July 23, 2022
Citesc comicsuri şi romane grafice de vreo 20 de ani şi tre să vă zic că The Boys mi-a pus capac. Mi-a trebui o săptămână încheiată să citesc cele 72 de numere şi cele 4 extra-shot-uri (Highland Laddie; Herogasm; Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker şi Dear Becky) vreo 2000 de pagini în total, and it was fuckin" worth every page. Există câteva diferențe majore față de serial (care-i şi el foarte bun în felul său), şi la final m-a rupt cu două twist-uri atât de bune şi atât de bine pregătite încât l-ar face pe Shyamalan să se sinucidă de ciudă şi pe care, din păcate, n-o să le vedeți în serial. Grafica e foarte bună, povestea e de-o violență extrem de inventivă şi de brutală, care rivalizează lejer cu documentarele alea despre atrocitățile din lagărele naziste şi japoneze din al Doilea Război Mondial, există câteva scene pe care o să le duc cu mine în mormânt, atâta-s de grele. Dar în final vreau să vă zic că ce m-a impresionat cu adevărat a fost scriitura. Pe Garth Ennis îl ştiu de pe vremea când scria John Constantine, Hellblazer şi Preacher (ambele extrem de bune), dar The Boys e lejer cea mai bună chestie pe care a făcut-o. În aparență e o poveste simplă, dar te prinzi după o vreme, pe nesimțite, că e un epic cu implicații mult mai adânci care aduce în discuții teme precum puterea absolută, corupția, moralitatea, răzbunarea şi care ar trebui să fie limitele ei, lăcomia corporatistă, iubirea adevărată, războiul, pacea and all that jazz. Pe ultima sută de metri toate piesele încep să cadă la locul lor şi acela e momentul în care realizezi că absolut fiecare replică pe care ai citit-o în ultimele 1700 de pagini era acolo dintr-un motiv foarte bun, and it just blows your mind. Pe lângă genul ăsta de scriitură Breaking Bad pare de-a dreptul dezlânat.
Dacă nu vreţi să citiți decât o singură bandă desenată în viața asta, eu recomand The Boys.
Dacă nu vreţi să citiți decât o singură bandă desenată în viața asta, eu recomand The Boys.
January 24, 2013
Hard to review - while on the one hand, the things this volume has to say about male friendship, power, self-knowledge and so on are very welcome (and, as usual, better handled than the male/female stuff), the overall turn of the story is quite simply horrid... not bad, not badly done, just very hard to read, to the point where (at about the halfway mark) one simply doesn't want to go on because it hurts too much to process. I think that's a tribute to Ennis, that one is so invested in the characters that what happens is simultaneously one part romp and absolutely, genuinely distressing, but it makes for an uncomfortable read. On the other hand, it's an entirely logical read; while I as an invested reader might not like Butcher's decisions, I believe utterly in his *choice* to carry on and make them - and I'd have to say that the fear-for-Hughie's-soul that Ennis creates over the last two volumes (and the surprising ability to create genuine anger and dislike for Butcher, then defuse it without compromising either his evil or his genius) is a gem. It works, that's the thing. The series itself would end perfectly well without this volume, and in some ways would actually end *better*, but there is enough to like in this - including, and perhaps especially the emotion it generates - to make one glad it exists. I will miss this series greatly - a brilliant study in "wtf next?"
September 7, 2019
That'll do Boys, that'll do.
It's funny, Butcher is the one always saying never to make these long sentimental speeches, but wouldn't you know, he's the one making most of the sentimental speeches in this one.
It's a fitting end, I suppose. It takes all the pieces, tears them apart, puts them together again...everything has a kind logic to it, a logic very much in the logic of The Boys comics.
Why'd they have to do M.M., Frenchie, and the Female like that? I don't know.
But it all wrapped up good in the end. We got to see Butcher's point of view, we got see Wee Hughie's.
And we learned something true, no matter how much changes, things stay pretty much fuckin' the same. (Hey, doesn't that Supe in the front have an erection? And isn't that one in the back just The Deep in a white outfit?)
The more things change, mate...
It's funny, Butcher is the one always saying never to make these long sentimental speeches, but wouldn't you know, he's the one making most of the sentimental speeches in this one.
It's a fitting end, I suppose. It takes all the pieces, tears them apart, puts them together again...everything has a kind logic to it, a logic very much in the logic of The Boys comics.
Why'd they have to do M.M., Frenchie, and the Female like that? I don't know.
But it all wrapped up good in the end. We got to see Butcher's point of view, we got see Wee Hughie's.
And we learned something true, no matter how much changes, things stay pretty much fuckin' the same. (Hey, doesn't that Supe in the front have an erection? And isn't that one in the back just The Deep in a white outfit?)
The more things change, mate...
December 31, 2012
We're talking about the end of the series here. Spoiler Warning.
*****
When this volume of the series showed up and said, "The Conclusion to the NEW YORK TIMES Bestslling series." I was surprised.
I hadn't expected the end of everything to come quite so soon. It felt to me that the story had finally reached it's a high point of tension, and now we were going to see the unraveling of all the many plans and machinations that had been built up over the previous 11 books.
Saying it felt rushed would be overstating the case. But it did feel abrupt. So much of the story had been very careful and deliberate in its pacing. The tension had been slowly building. To have everything resolve so suddenly?
Yeah. I suppose it did feel a little rushed to me.
Things I liked:
The main plot came to a good conclusion. Things played out well. Sensible and satisfying.
The reveals were good. The resolution of the major mysteries were good, well-dovetailed into the story.
Also, a *lot* of the little mysteries were resolved. I wasn't left hanging on anything, and over 11 books, there were a lot of dangling threads. That was handled well.
Things I didn't like:
To me, the disappointment ended up not in the plot resolutions, but in the how individual character's storylines settled out.
***extra spoiler warning.***
First and foremost, the fact that Butcher suddenly turned into a I-must-destroy-the-world bad guy really rubbed me the wrong way. It was *fairly* in keeping with his character. But only barely. And coming into the story like it does, seemingly out of nowhere, it left me with a bit of narrative whiplash.
But while I can buy that Butcher would try to destroy all the supes in the world. (Because honestly, he's a bit of a sociopath. We know that.) The fact that he would kill the rest of the team? No. No I don't buy that at all.
Even worse, it means that we can't get any sort of resolution with some of the charactrs I'd come to love: MM, Frenchie, or the Female. To suddenly kill off all 3/5ths of the main cast at the end of the series *post* climax left me feeling really gypped as a reader.
Does this slightly sour ending ruin the series? No. I still enjoyed The Boys immensely.
The same is true with the female-character issues I mentioned back in my review of Volume 9. They were disappointing, but not malicious or egregious.
It's like this... Rampant, venomous sexism is like someone putting a turd in your bowl of cereal: it doesn't matter how good the cereal is, your breakfast is pretty much ruined.
But this wasn't like that. It's more like someone putting fennel in part of the dinner they've made me. I fucking hate fennel. Did it ruin the whole dinner? No. But I really wish they'd left it out.
(That's a crap analogy. But I think you can see where I'm going here.)
All in all? I'd rank the whole series at 5 stars, (Which is why that's what I've given most of the books. If not for some of the sexist stuff going on, and my mild dissatisfaction with the ending, this would be a 6-star series. (Like Sandman, or Transmetropolitan, that I gush about at every opportunity to anyone who happens to be nearby.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 23, 2023
Solid ending to The Boys which is surprising because I'd heard the series was canceled and/or were rushed to a conclusion. But you could not tie everything in a bow neat enough, everything pays off, it's all the closure you need. It's a hat-on-a-hat, as the series really ends with volume 11's climactic battle. But it's worthwhile as Ennis has been laying breadcrumbs for over a hundred issues, so seeing things brought to a swift and bloody (or wild and weird) end is intensely satisfying. This series has been a rollercoaster of uneven stories and conflicting tones. The highs are thrilling and there are times when it is genuinely well-written and intelligent in a way that can really surprise you. But then there were long digressions into bullshit like Frenchie's backstory, the Scottish highlands, and spending way too long at a disgusting Saint Patrick's Day bar crawl for some reason. It starts as one thing, then becomes another, and goes to two other places before coming back to storylines it paused twenty issues ago, so there were times when it was a little frustrating. However, the heady combination of pure pitch-black humor, surprisingly intricate spycraft, and shocking violence wins overall, a quality series with some rough patches.
July 21, 2017
In which loose ends are dealt with in typical Boys fashion ...
The series is definitely over. There are some lovely final moments here. A certain relationship appears to finally be on solid ground. The Brooklyn Bridge gets rebuilt. Butcher is as manipulative as ever, even getting Hughie to call home. The final fates of many characters are revealed. We realize how much Hughie has grown as a character over the course of the series. More importantly, he does too. There were even a few moments that managed to provoke a tear or two from this jaded old comics fan's eye ...
The Boys is quite possibly the best series Ennis has ever written. Certainly it's at least as good as Preacher. It's a fun premise that develops nicely and comes to a satisfying conclusion. Series that can pull off all three of those are not common. Highly recommended!
The series is definitely over. There are some lovely final moments here. A certain relationship appears to finally be on solid ground. The Brooklyn Bridge gets rebuilt. Butcher is as manipulative as ever, even getting Hughie to call home. The final fates of many characters are revealed. We realize how much Hughie has grown as a character over the course of the series. More importantly, he does too. There were even a few moments that managed to provoke a tear or two from this jaded old comics fan's eye ...
The Boys is quite possibly the best series Ennis has ever written. Certainly it's at least as good as Preacher. It's a fun premise that develops nicely and comes to a satisfying conclusion. Series that can pull off all three of those are not common. Highly recommended!
July 19, 2017
The Bloody Doors Off is a perfect ending to an uneven yet highly original series.
Full review here!
Full review here!
August 25, 2022
GODDAMMIT.
Brutal, fkn BRUTAL.
A very interesting ending. Not hugely satisfying after the slog we've been through with this lot but still, I guess I should have seen it coming.
I feel like there are still a few bits of info that slipped through the cracks for me so I'm thinking this will be twice as good on a re-read, but I need some time to process the rest, first!
The finale was nice and brutal but all the same it did seem to be missing a little bit of the spunk of the early days. I feel like we got our brutal end, but then it sort of washed out with the epilogue. So it was a little disappointing for me in that respect.
I really loved the Boys themselves so I kind of wish the story hadn't been so bogged down the political satire, but all the same I did enjoy their moments.
I guess mixed feelings on finishing? I enjoyed the brutality, but it was tainted a little in the end with more of the info that bored me the whole way through.
Still highly recommend this series, though. All in all, it's been a fun ride.
Brutal, fkn BRUTAL.
A very interesting ending. Not hugely satisfying after the slog we've been through with this lot but still, I guess I should have seen it coming.
I feel like there are still a few bits of info that slipped through the cracks for me so I'm thinking this will be twice as good on a re-read, but I need some time to process the rest, first!
The finale was nice and brutal but all the same it did seem to be missing a little bit of the spunk of the early days. I feel like we got our brutal end, but then it sort of washed out with the epilogue. So it was a little disappointing for me in that respect.
I really loved the Boys themselves so I kind of wish the story hadn't been so bogged down the political satire, but all the same I did enjoy their moments.
I guess mixed feelings on finishing? I enjoyed the brutality, but it was tainted a little in the end with more of the info that bored me the whole way through.
Still highly recommend this series, though. All in all, it's been a fun ride.
June 17, 2016
Not an overly satisfying ending. Unfortunate .
January 4, 2021
Oh well, I just don't want to comment on it, it was just heartbreaking, traumatic thing to read, but it serves the characters well, except few, they tried to give it a happy ending, some disturbing scenes, some so sad moments, after reading the ending of this I just want to sleep.
October 19, 2020
The Boys is an unflinchingly graphic, 12-volume descent into sexual violence, exploding bodies, depravity, broken taboos and bodily fluids that purports to deconstruct the superhero genre with a chaser of black humor. All it really accomplishes, however, is a whole lot of sophomoric commentary on power and politics, stretches of exposition that last for entire issues at a time, unpleasant and inconsistent artwork, and a certain hypocrisy from a creative team which seems to revel in depicting all of the terrible violations it decries.
The story involves a CIA black ops group tasked with monitoring, terrorizing and murdering rogue superheroes in a world where pretty much *all* superheroes are nothing more than fraudulent predators and degenerates. Into this mess enters Wee Hughie, a fellow who loses his girlfriend early on as collateral damage in a super-brawl. Hughie, recruited by the Boys’ leader, Butcher, sees just how sick and dirty the world of supes - and those who oppose them - really is. And pretty soon, what begins as a covert containment program turns into all-out war.
Put together, what could have been a brilliant criticism of a genre that we take for granted instead feels like a three-day lecture by 15-year-old edgelords who really want you to know why their hormonally supercharged worldview ought to be taken seriously by grown-ups. No, we don’t want to hear why you think sexual violence is okay when it is committed by a bulldog. No, we don’t want to see how often you can fit an act of public excretion into your story. No, we don’t want to see how cool your characters in trench coats are. No, we don’t need to actually see somebody eating a dead infant.
One imagines that this entire series is an extended middle finger to the notion of “With great power comes great responsibility.” It often feels like the creators here are angry that superhero comics even exists, and that their fans continue to buy them. We get it - the superhero genre has definitely gotten big enough and overstuffed enough for somebody to take the air out of it. But The Boys ain’t it. This isn’t insightful enough to work as criticism, clever enough to work as parody, funny enough to work as black comedy, or focused enough to work on any of the three previous fronts even if the skill was there for this to succeed.
The Boys is just a chronicle of cynicism, vicious and vile, slapdash and self-indulgent, excessive and egocentric. For those looking to read a different kind of take on the superhero concept, there are plenty better to choose from - Brian Michael Bendis’ POWERS instantly comes to mind - that won’t make you want to disinfect your hands when you’re done.
The story involves a CIA black ops group tasked with monitoring, terrorizing and murdering rogue superheroes in a world where pretty much *all* superheroes are nothing more than fraudulent predators and degenerates. Into this mess enters Wee Hughie, a fellow who loses his girlfriend early on as collateral damage in a super-brawl. Hughie, recruited by the Boys’ leader, Butcher, sees just how sick and dirty the world of supes - and those who oppose them - really is. And pretty soon, what begins as a covert containment program turns into all-out war.
Put together, what could have been a brilliant criticism of a genre that we take for granted instead feels like a three-day lecture by 15-year-old edgelords who really want you to know why their hormonally supercharged worldview ought to be taken seriously by grown-ups. No, we don’t want to hear why you think sexual violence is okay when it is committed by a bulldog. No, we don’t want to see how often you can fit an act of public excretion into your story. No, we don’t want to see how cool your characters in trench coats are. No, we don’t need to actually see somebody eating a dead infant.
One imagines that this entire series is an extended middle finger to the notion of “With great power comes great responsibility.” It often feels like the creators here are angry that superhero comics even exists, and that their fans continue to buy them. We get it - the superhero genre has definitely gotten big enough and overstuffed enough for somebody to take the air out of it. But The Boys ain’t it. This isn’t insightful enough to work as criticism, clever enough to work as parody, funny enough to work as black comedy, or focused enough to work on any of the three previous fronts even if the skill was there for this to succeed.
The Boys is just a chronicle of cynicism, vicious and vile, slapdash and self-indulgent, excessive and egocentric. For those looking to read a different kind of take on the superhero concept, there are plenty better to choose from - Brian Michael Bendis’ POWERS instantly comes to mind - that won’t make you want to disinfect your hands when you’re done.
February 10, 2013
I really wondered just what else there was to tell about these boys once the aggressive supes were wiped out. Figures that Ennis could wring tension, drama and good dialogue from a premise that lesser writers would faint away at.
Butcher goes clearly off the deep end, picks up a shovel, and starts digging to the earth's core, and while we probably all knew he had it in him, this is still disturbing to see it play out in front of us.
The story goes to the extremes we've all been waiting for, and unbelievably for me, keeps right on walking through. It's one thing to see these Boys break down like this, and yet I'm invested and not pleased with how their fates finalise.
In the end this is the tale it was meant to climax to, and I'm sure I'd have been pissed and disappointed if Ennis had gone any other way, but I still felt myself torn between "poetic ending" and "wow that felt more predictable than I'd have expected from a proto-nihilist such as Ennis.". Which really means he's not, he's a romantic beneath all the bloodshed, rape and ridiculous gore.
Butcher goes clearly off the deep end, picks up a shovel, and starts digging to the earth's core, and while we probably all knew he had it in him, this is still disturbing to see it play out in front of us.
The story goes to the extremes we've all been waiting for, and unbelievably for me, keeps right on walking through. It's one thing to see these Boys break down like this, and yet I'm invested and not pleased with how their fates finalise.
In the end this is the tale it was meant to climax to, and I'm sure I'd have been pissed and disappointed if Ennis had gone any other way, but I still felt myself torn between "poetic ending" and "wow that felt more predictable than I'd have expected from a proto-nihilist such as Ennis.". Which really means he's not, he's a romantic beneath all the bloodshed, rape and ridiculous gore.
April 4, 2013
Having read the conclusion, I think The Boys may be the best thing Ennis has written. It appears to be over the top satire of superhero comics, but it is so much more than that. A large part of it is a critique of certain forms of masculinity and how toxic they can be.
There is plenty of violence, swearing and nudity to please the id, along with crude humor. But there is also a surprising depth to this series.
There is plenty of violence, swearing and nudity to please the id, along with crude humor. But there is also a surprising depth to this series.
August 31, 2021
2021 reads, #61-72. In preparation for finally watching the Amazon Prime Video adaptation currently being made out of it, I recently had the opportunity to acquire the entire six-year, 72-issue run of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys (broken down at Goodreads into 12 larger graphic novels; this review covers them all, which I'm copying and pasting into each book page), the anti-superhero tale from the creator of legendary '90s Vertigo Generation-X hit Preacher that is now popularly known as "The Darkest Comic Book In History And We're Not Just Buying Into The Hype When We Say That, You Should Do Yourself A Favor And Seriously Take That Warning Legitimately;" and while the original plan had been to read only a few issues of what I was fully expecting to be a mediocre title, whose reputation I assumed had been artificially inflated by a bunch of uncultured nerds who wouldn't know true transgressive literature if it reached up and bit them on the dick, I ended up doing a feverish binge of all 72 issues in a mere 72-hour period this weekend, because the hype turned out to be fully believable in this case, and I kept greedily drinking it all in as fast as I could, partly because I couldn't believe something this relentlessly dark could even exist within the comics industry in any form at all, and kept half-expecting it to disappear in front of my eyes as I was reading it, like some kind of evil magical spell that had finally reached its end.
And indeed, the first thing you'll wonder as you start making your way through it is how this possibly could've started life at "mainstream indie" Wildstorm in the first place, which was just about to go through an acquisition by DC when The Boys was first brought on, which is why Wildstorm unceremoniously dumped The Boys six issues in, although to their credit with the enthusiastic help of the pre-DC staff to get it to a more unknown publisher that would do it right before the acquisition happened, and even giving Robertson a special allowance to his otherwise DC-exclusive contract in order to continue working on it. And this is not just because the title is a particularly sickening example of the Dark Age "superheroes are actually barely disguised Nazi monsters" trope that's been around since literally the early '80s (imagine taking Alan Moore's infamously apocalyptic ending to his early underground hit Miracleman and making that page 1 of issue 1 of The Boys), but it's just as much an indictment if not more so of the corporate psychopaths who own the intellectual property rights to such superheroes, intimating here that if we lived in a world where Time Warner owned not only the story, movie and merchandising rights to caped heroes but the actual real-time life rights of the human beings committing these acts of derring-do, the employees of Time Warner would essentially spend a billion dollars a year attempting to hide the psychopathic crimes such "heroes" would of course start immediately committing, the moment they realize that they have powers that can only be stopped by only a handful of other creatures on the planet, and a fully oiled corporate machine going around cleaning up whatever messes they choose to cause with such powers.
That leads to a world where the violent gangrape initiation ceremony of a new member of the Justice League of America, by this universe's version of Superman, Batman, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter, is merely chapter one of a sprawling, always worsening look at the depths of the human race's capacity for depravity, as we quickly learn that the "super" powers of this universe are not caused by superior alien DNA or bites from radioactive spiders but rather a single "supersoldier" serum developed by a Nazi scientist in the 1930s, which makes it just a bunch of normal, everyday random people who end up becoming said superheroes in the universe of The Boys (around 200,000 of them now, by most people's estimates, although with the vast majority of them never making their powers publicly known, and the only "famous" superheroes being the ones who have managed to achieve corporate sponsorship); and it turns out that when you give superpowers to a bunch of normal, everyday random people, and not the "paragons of virtue" that DC and Marvel have made sure all their own superheroes over the years have been, those normal, everyday random people almost immediately become corrupt, perverted serial killers upon realizing that no one can stop them besides their equally corrupt, equally perverted superfriends. And this is not to mention creating the very real threat of a future government coup by the main multinational superhero conglomerate, Vought-American (a clear stand-in for real-life baddies Marvel-Disney), if their whims aren't catered to by an increasingly nervous Congress and White House (whose current VP, by the way, is a literally mentally challenged Vought stoolie).
That's led the CIA to quietly putting our titular Boys on the payroll, four equally violent psychopaths (plus our hapless Simon Pegg everyman reader-stand-in character) as a dirty-tricks squad being desperately used by the government as a secret behind-the-scenes check and balance against the growing dictatorial control of Vought-American, while a billion dollars are being spent by V-A at TMZ and TikTok to keep up the public appearance of these caped rapists' Dudley Do-Rite reputations, then eventually (in what many comics fans will consider the most cynical turn of the entire storyline) creating their own version of "Dark Age" comics when the Boys' shenanigans make it too impossible to keep their corporate mouthpieces' various horrific vices out of the public spotlight anymore, deciding to turn the vices into virtues so to not cause even the slightest interruption to the hamburger-selling that's been going on the whole time.
So in this, then, the 72-issue uber-plot going on here is an angry condemnation of the entire superhero comics industry, not just the intellectual premise of turning such Nazi ubermen into toothless rah-rah heroes, but the psychopathic mindset needed among the emotionally stunted man-child comics creators to pull off this premise, the glib incel glee among the industry's Comic Book Guy fans who made such material so popular in the '80s and '90s to begin with, the corporate middlemen who know exactly what kind of Nazi rape-porn twaddle they're peddling but simply don't care, and even you for thinking that a mean-spirited but ultimately toothless satire of the subject somehow counts as an effective antidote. It doesn't, as this series' infamously pessimistic climax proves, and now I'm more curious than ever to see how this ceaselessly piss-fueled indictment of the entire industry ended up getting adapted at the corporate-friendly Amazon, whose own employees are guilty of many of this story's most damning behavior. Certainly you shouldn't take this on unless you're ready for one of the most relentlessly bleak stories you've ever read in your life; but absolutely you should do so if you're ready for such, and big kudos to creators Ennis and Robertson for actually managing to finish it without slitting their own wrists somewhere around issue #54 or so. Do yourself a big favor and go into it with this attitude in mind.
And indeed, the first thing you'll wonder as you start making your way through it is how this possibly could've started life at "mainstream indie" Wildstorm in the first place, which was just about to go through an acquisition by DC when The Boys was first brought on, which is why Wildstorm unceremoniously dumped The Boys six issues in, although to their credit with the enthusiastic help of the pre-DC staff to get it to a more unknown publisher that would do it right before the acquisition happened, and even giving Robertson a special allowance to his otherwise DC-exclusive contract in order to continue working on it. And this is not just because the title is a particularly sickening example of the Dark Age "superheroes are actually barely disguised Nazi monsters" trope that's been around since literally the early '80s (imagine taking Alan Moore's infamously apocalyptic ending to his early underground hit Miracleman and making that page 1 of issue 1 of The Boys), but it's just as much an indictment if not more so of the corporate psychopaths who own the intellectual property rights to such superheroes, intimating here that if we lived in a world where Time Warner owned not only the story, movie and merchandising rights to caped heroes but the actual real-time life rights of the human beings committing these acts of derring-do, the employees of Time Warner would essentially spend a billion dollars a year attempting to hide the psychopathic crimes such "heroes" would of course start immediately committing, the moment they realize that they have powers that can only be stopped by only a handful of other creatures on the planet, and a fully oiled corporate machine going around cleaning up whatever messes they choose to cause with such powers.
That leads to a world where the violent gangrape initiation ceremony of a new member of the Justice League of America, by this universe's version of Superman, Batman, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter, is merely chapter one of a sprawling, always worsening look at the depths of the human race's capacity for depravity, as we quickly learn that the "super" powers of this universe are not caused by superior alien DNA or bites from radioactive spiders but rather a single "supersoldier" serum developed by a Nazi scientist in the 1930s, which makes it just a bunch of normal, everyday random people who end up becoming said superheroes in the universe of The Boys (around 200,000 of them now, by most people's estimates, although with the vast majority of them never making their powers publicly known, and the only "famous" superheroes being the ones who have managed to achieve corporate sponsorship); and it turns out that when you give superpowers to a bunch of normal, everyday random people, and not the "paragons of virtue" that DC and Marvel have made sure all their own superheroes over the years have been, those normal, everyday random people almost immediately become corrupt, perverted serial killers upon realizing that no one can stop them besides their equally corrupt, equally perverted superfriends. And this is not to mention creating the very real threat of a future government coup by the main multinational superhero conglomerate, Vought-American (a clear stand-in for real-life baddies Marvel-Disney), if their whims aren't catered to by an increasingly nervous Congress and White House (whose current VP, by the way, is a literally mentally challenged Vought stoolie).
That's led the CIA to quietly putting our titular Boys on the payroll, four equally violent psychopaths (plus our hapless Simon Pegg everyman reader-stand-in character) as a dirty-tricks squad being desperately used by the government as a secret behind-the-scenes check and balance against the growing dictatorial control of Vought-American, while a billion dollars are being spent by V-A at TMZ and TikTok to keep up the public appearance of these caped rapists' Dudley Do-Rite reputations, then eventually (in what many comics fans will consider the most cynical turn of the entire storyline) creating their own version of "Dark Age" comics when the Boys' shenanigans make it too impossible to keep their corporate mouthpieces' various horrific vices out of the public spotlight anymore, deciding to turn the vices into virtues so to not cause even the slightest interruption to the hamburger-selling that's been going on the whole time.
So in this, then, the 72-issue uber-plot going on here is an angry condemnation of the entire superhero comics industry, not just the intellectual premise of turning such Nazi ubermen into toothless rah-rah heroes, but the psychopathic mindset needed among the emotionally stunted man-child comics creators to pull off this premise, the glib incel glee among the industry's Comic Book Guy fans who made such material so popular in the '80s and '90s to begin with, the corporate middlemen who know exactly what kind of Nazi rape-porn twaddle they're peddling but simply don't care, and even you for thinking that a mean-spirited but ultimately toothless satire of the subject somehow counts as an effective antidote. It doesn't, as this series' infamously pessimistic climax proves, and now I'm more curious than ever to see how this ceaselessly piss-fueled indictment of the entire industry ended up getting adapted at the corporate-friendly Amazon, whose own employees are guilty of many of this story's most damning behavior. Certainly you shouldn't take this on unless you're ready for one of the most relentlessly bleak stories you've ever read in your life; but absolutely you should do so if you're ready for such, and big kudos to creators Ennis and Robertson for actually managing to finish it without slitting their own wrists somewhere around issue #54 or so. Do yourself a big favor and go into it with this attitude in mind.
May 21, 2024
Eu estava um pouco receoso quanto ao conteúdo dessa HQ, porque no volume anterior já havia acontecido o grande confronto entre Os Rapazes e os Sete, logo imaginei que essa edição 12 seria uma espécie de epílogo, mostrando Hughie e seus amigos seguindo a vida após cumprirem seus trabalhos. Porém, logo nas primeiras edições, percebemos que há algo de errado, e a situação de que a leitura seria tranquila, se esvai.
Quando Os Rapazes percebem que Butcher está aprontando algo, toda a narrativa passa a ser de "desespero" e agonia, imaginando o que pode acontecer. Nesse sentido, Garth Ennis trabalha muito bem e quebra totalmente as expectativas do leitor. Tudo que acontece nessa HQ, apenas a última cena é de se esperar, o restante, é uma surpresa atrás da outra, com sentimento de revolta.
Com a conclusão de The Boys, passei a gostar mais do Hughie e entender seu papel na trama. Ele teve um bom desenvolvimento e uma boa participação na equipe.
De fato foi uma experiência muito divertida ler The Boys. Toda violência escrachada, o conteúdo chocante, as besteiras, mesclados a seriedade da trama principal, funcionaram muito bem. Vou sentir saudades de acompanhar Os Rapazes.
Quando Os Rapazes percebem que Butcher está aprontando algo, toda a narrativa passa a ser de "desespero" e agonia, imaginando o que pode acontecer. Nesse sentido, Garth Ennis trabalha muito bem e quebra totalmente as expectativas do leitor. Tudo que acontece nessa HQ, apenas a última cena é de se esperar, o restante, é uma surpresa atrás da outra, com sentimento de revolta.
Com a conclusão de The Boys, passei a gostar mais do Hughie e entender seu papel na trama. Ele teve um bom desenvolvimento e uma boa participação na equipe.
De fato foi uma experiência muito divertida ler The Boys. Toda violência escrachada, o conteúdo chocante, as besteiras, mesclados a seriedade da trama principal, funcionaram muito bem. Vou sentir saudades de acompanhar Os Rapazes.
April 18, 2020
So this finally concludes my reread of The Boys. Oddly, even though this was the volume I'd read most recently, it was the one I remembered the least about. I had mental images of Hughie and Butcher fighting on a rooftop, but all context for the scene had evaporated from my mind. This whole volume feels quite strange, as the superhero problem that the entire series has been 100% about was completely resolved in Volume 11. So where do you go from there? The answer: completely off the rails.
It's going to be impossible to talk about this volume without major spoilers, so much from here will be behind a spoiler tag.
I see some people saying this is easily the best thing Ennis has written and I have to strongly disagree. To me this series is little more than Ennis taking the piss at superheroes with nothing of any kind of depth to say whatsoever. And that's fine, there's plenty of room for that kind of story to be told, but let's not pretend it's any more meaningful than that. I reread Preacher several years back and though some of Jesse Custer's attitudes are a bit awkwardly sexist (a lot of it is the character, and some of it was simply the 1990s), that series held up remarkably well upon reread and though I can see the cracks in it now, it remains one of my all-time favorites. The Boys absolutely does not hold up the same way upon a reread, and there wasn't even as much time passed by between my first and second readthroughs.
If you like Garth Ennis's other work, you'll probably enjoy this as a one-time read. But it definitely doesn't have the staying power or depth as some of his other work. There was so much tell-instead-of-show in The Boys through lazy, massive dumps of endless exposition that I feel like the entire series can be summed up as a 72-issue conversation between Hughie and the Legend buried under word balloons in the Legend's basement, or better yet, a phone call between one anonymous character in a business suit who's name you don't know, and the even-more-anonymous character he's talking to whose identify you never see nor get the slightest of clues about.
It's going to be impossible to talk about this volume without major spoilers, so much from here will be behind a spoiler tag.
I see some people saying this is easily the best thing Ennis has written and I have to strongly disagree. To me this series is little more than Ennis taking the piss at superheroes with nothing of any kind of depth to say whatsoever. And that's fine, there's plenty of room for that kind of story to be told, but let's not pretend it's any more meaningful than that. I reread Preacher several years back and though some of Jesse Custer's attitudes are a bit awkwardly sexist (a lot of it is the character, and some of it was simply the 1990s), that series held up remarkably well upon reread and though I can see the cracks in it now, it remains one of my all-time favorites. The Boys absolutely does not hold up the same way upon a reread, and there wasn't even as much time passed by between my first and second readthroughs.
If you like Garth Ennis's other work, you'll probably enjoy this as a one-time read. But it definitely doesn't have the staying power or depth as some of his other work. There was so much tell-instead-of-show in The Boys through lazy, massive dumps of endless exposition that I feel like the entire series can be summed up as a 72-issue conversation between Hughie and the Legend buried under word balloons in the Legend's basement, or better yet, a phone call between one anonymous character in a business suit who's name you don't know, and the even-more-anonymous character he's talking to whose identify you never see nor get the slightest of clues about.
April 18, 2020
So this finally concludes my reread of The Boys. Oddly, even though this was the volume I'd read most recently, it was the one I remembered the least about. I had mental images of Hughie and Butcher fighting on a rooftop, but all context for the scene had evaporated from my mind. This whole volume feels quite strange, as the superhero problem that the entire series has been 100% about was completely resolved in Volume 11. So where do you go from there? The answer: completely off the rails.
It's going to be impossible to talk about this volume without major spoilers, so much from here will be behind a spoiler tag.
I see some people saying this is easily the best thing Ennis has written and I have to strongly disagree. To me this series is little more than Ennis taking the piss at superheroes with nothing of any kind of depth to say whatsoever. And that's fine, there's plenty of room for that kind of story to be told, but let's not pretend it's any more meaningful than that. I reread Preacher several years back and though some of Jesse Custer's attitudes are a bit awkwardly sexist (a lot of it is the character, and some of it was simply the 1990s), that series held up remarkably well upon reread and though I can see the cracks in it now, it remains one of my all-time favorites. The Boys absolutely does not hold up the same way upon a reread, and there wasn't even as much time passed by between my first and second readthroughs.
If you like Garth Ennis's other work, you'll probably enjoy this as a one-time read. But it definitely doesn't have the staying power or depth as some of his other work. There was so much tell-instead-of-show in The Boys through lazy, massive dumps of endless exposition that I feel like the entire series can be summed up as a 72-issue conversation between Hughie and the Legend buried under word balloons in the Legend's basement, or better yet, a phone call between one anonymous character in a business suit who's name you don't know, and the even-more-anonymous character he's talking to whose identify you never see nor get the slightest of clues about.
It's going to be impossible to talk about this volume without major spoilers, so much from here will be behind a spoiler tag.
I see some people saying this is easily the best thing Ennis has written and I have to strongly disagree. To me this series is little more than Ennis taking the piss at superheroes with nothing of any kind of depth to say whatsoever. And that's fine, there's plenty of room for that kind of story to be told, but let's not pretend it's any more meaningful than that. I reread Preacher several years back and though some of Jesse Custer's attitudes are a bit awkwardly sexist (a lot of it is the character, and some of it was simply the 1990s), that series held up remarkably well upon reread and though I can see the cracks in it now, it remains one of my all-time favorites. The Boys absolutely does not hold up the same way upon a reread, and there wasn't even as much time passed by between my first and second readthroughs.
If you like Garth Ennis's other work, you'll probably enjoy this as a one-time read. But it definitely doesn't have the staying power or depth as some of his other work. There was so much tell-instead-of-show in The Boys through lazy, massive dumps of endless exposition that I feel like the entire series can be summed up as a 72-issue conversation between Hughie and the Legend buried under word balloons in the Legend's basement, or better yet, a phone call between one anonymous character in a business suit who's name you don't know, and the even-more-anonymous character he's talking to whose identify you never see nor get the slightest of clues about.
December 5, 2015
Acabada la serie de “The Boys”, solo puedo decir que Garth Ennis lo ha vuelto hacer: el que ya me conquistara incondicionalmente con el salvaje “Predicador” me ha cautivado con estos doce números repletos de crudeza, ingenio y saber hacer.
“The Boys” puede no tener el calado que cualquiera percibe en “Predicador”, puede no ser una obra tan redonda y absorbente, pero posee una calidad tan alta en cada uno de sus apartados que, para mí, va directa al estante de los favoritos, el máximo galardón que este humilde lector puede otorgar.
El punto de partida es una base que últimamente se está trabajando bastante: los superhéroes no son tan virtuosos como parecen. De hecho, en “The Boys” la mayoría son seres deleznables, hipócritas egocéntricos o, directamente, psicópatas sin ningún aprecio por la vida de los humanos. Sin embargo, la industria que los explota los vende como salvadores maravillosos. En medio de este mundo, uno de nuestros personajes pierde, de un modo bastante traumático, a su novia en medio de una batalla entre dos de estos súper-tipos.
El dibujo de Darick Robertson es elegante, atractivo, asqueroso, preciso, o aberrante, según lo que toque, y casa perfectamente con el tono de las letras. El argumento es adictivo y original; los personajes son profundos y llenos de claroscuros; el desarrollo de la trama, salvo alguna línea del final y ciertos puntos en los que se va un poco por otros derroteros, es ágil y está bien llevada… la verdad es que lo tiene todo y los escasos momentos menos brillantes se ven claramente eclipsados por la altísima calidad general.
Es una historia que recomiendo encarecidamente, sobre todo a aquellos que les guste “Predicador” o, simplemente, los comics más o menos densos y de largo recorrido que no escatimen el punto de realidad gráfica que tiene que un súper hombre estrelle su súper puño con súper fuerza en un cráneo normal y corriente.
“The Boys” puede no tener el calado que cualquiera percibe en “Predicador”, puede no ser una obra tan redonda y absorbente, pero posee una calidad tan alta en cada uno de sus apartados que, para mí, va directa al estante de los favoritos, el máximo galardón que este humilde lector puede otorgar.
El punto de partida es una base que últimamente se está trabajando bastante: los superhéroes no son tan virtuosos como parecen. De hecho, en “The Boys” la mayoría son seres deleznables, hipócritas egocéntricos o, directamente, psicópatas sin ningún aprecio por la vida de los humanos. Sin embargo, la industria que los explota los vende como salvadores maravillosos. En medio de este mundo, uno de nuestros personajes pierde, de un modo bastante traumático, a su novia en medio de una batalla entre dos de estos súper-tipos.
El dibujo de Darick Robertson es elegante, atractivo, asqueroso, preciso, o aberrante, según lo que toque, y casa perfectamente con el tono de las letras. El argumento es adictivo y original; los personajes son profundos y llenos de claroscuros; el desarrollo de la trama, salvo alguna línea del final y ciertos puntos en los que se va un poco por otros derroteros, es ágil y está bien llevada… la verdad es que lo tiene todo y los escasos momentos menos brillantes se ven claramente eclipsados por la altísima calidad general.
Es una historia que recomiendo encarecidamente, sobre todo a aquellos que les guste “Predicador” o, simplemente, los comics más o menos densos y de largo recorrido que no escatimen el punto de realidad gráfica que tiene que un súper hombre estrelle su súper puño con súper fuerza en un cráneo normal y corriente.
October 16, 2020
আগাগোড়া বীভৎস রসের রেখোপন্যাসমালা। অনেক জায়গায় থমকে গিয়ে মনে হয়েছে, এনিস কাহিনীর একটা মোড়ে এসে চিন্তা করেছেন, "এখন কী করে ব্যাপারটাকে আরো খাইষ্টা বানানো যায়?" গল্পের ঘটনাপরম্পরা খুব আহামরি কিছু নয়, কিন্তু মোচড়গুলো অপ্রত্যাশিত বলে উপভোগ্য ঠেকেছে। রবার্টসনের আঁকায় পাল্পের রগরগে, অতিমানবীয় ধাঁচটা দক্ষভাবে ধরে রাখা আছে শুরু থেকে শেষ অব্দি। টিভির জন্যে ধারাবাহিক আকারে যা বানানো হয়েছে, সেটা রেখোপন্যাসগুলোর তুলনায় পাটাধোয়া পানির মতো।
March 16, 2021
Tal vez si lo vuelva a leer, tenga más paciencia con él.
Pero no creo que me sienta motivado a volverlo a leer.
No quería traer a colación la serie, pero se me hace inevitable. En primer lugar porque todo lo que hace irresistible a los personajes (tanto protagonistas como antagonistas) y a lo que está en juego con respecto al riesgo y las motivaciones solo existe en la adaptación.
Ennis sabe cómo crear premisas interesantes, pero luego solo las llena de explosiones de violencia que llegan a desensibilizar tan pronto, que cuando se supone que deben de significar algo o ser momentos importantes, son, en palabras que usaría el mismo Ennis, solo otro pedo en el viento.
Si el objetivo era que todo personaje sea tal despreciable a punto de que solo quisiera que absolutamente todos pierdan, pues Ennis lo logró. El único motivo por el que terminé de leer toda la obra es porque quería saber qué aspectos más podrían tomar y mejorar en la serie, porque si hubiera leído "The Boys" antes de verla, es muy probable que hubiera dejado los cómics a medias.
Pero bueh... ahora le toca a "Preacher".
Pero no creo que me sienta motivado a volverlo a leer.
No quería traer a colación la serie, pero se me hace inevitable. En primer lugar porque todo lo que hace irresistible a los personajes (tanto protagonistas como antagonistas) y a lo que está en juego con respecto al riesgo y las motivaciones solo existe en la adaptación.
Ennis sabe cómo crear premisas interesantes, pero luego solo las llena de explosiones de violencia que llegan a desensibilizar tan pronto, que cuando se supone que deben de significar algo o ser momentos importantes, son, en palabras que usaría el mismo Ennis, solo otro pedo en el viento.
Si el objetivo era que todo personaje sea tal despreciable a punto de que solo quisiera que absolutamente todos pierdan, pues Ennis lo logró. El único motivo por el que terminé de leer toda la obra es porque quería saber qué aspectos más podrían tomar y mejorar en la serie, porque si hubiera leído "The Boys" antes de verla, es muy probable que hubiera dejado los cómics a medias.
Pero bueh... ahora le toca a "Preacher".
May 31, 2016
A cracking end to the series, I wasn't expecting the series to end like this. After finishing volume 11 and seeing there was still more to come I thought "why? How can he continue the story?" but Garth Ennis managed to find a way. I think this is the strongest book in the series, still has that same level of violence but all loose ends have been tied up and it almost has the feel of the ending of a Hollywood movie.
Enjoyed this series, it has been very long, had highs and lows and I'm surprised to find myself missing it already.
Enjoyed this series, it has been very long, had highs and lows and I'm surprised to find myself missing it already.
April 10, 2023
EDIT AN HOUR LATER: OMG THIS GODFORSAKEN COMIC IS BEING ADAPTED INTO A SHOW, ARE THERE NO BOUNDARIES
Overall series: 3.5/5
- I finished this entire series in 2 days
- I’m most definitely scarred for life
- 49% regret; 51% content
- truly do not read this unless you’re ok with ultra violence and the darkest of dark elements to the superhero genre and just life .. my god
- I wish I could unsee things but I can’t
Overall series: 3.5/5
- I finished this entire series in 2 days
- I’m most definitely scarred for life
- 49% regret; 51% content
- truly do not read this unless you’re ok with ultra violence and the darkest of dark elements to the superhero genre and just life .. my god
- I wish I could unsee things but I can’t
August 10, 2019
A very good end to the series. Garth Ennis’ plotting is up there with the best - pretty much every thread is tied up. I loved the ending, Hughie and Annie can finally be together and at peace. In terms of characters, each of The Boys and Annie are some of the best that Ennis has written in his career. I was originally planning to watch the TV show after reading this but I’ve grown to love some of these characters so much that I’ll hold off on the show for a while.
July 15, 2019
Ok, so this series does a bunch right: the premise is neat, Butcher is a compelling weirdo, and all the little mechanical bits of story structure just work. But i remain totally uninterested in Ennis's sexual/racial/etc politics. Regressive reaction masquerading as gritty enlightenment and fair-mindedness. Bah.
Read
May 12, 2013*screaming and crying*
I don't... What do I... How do I deal with these emotions? Time for a big review I guess.
I don't... What do I... How do I deal with these emotions? Time for a big review I guess.
September 28, 2014
An outstanding series if you are not the queasy type.
October 22, 2021
As this series went on, we always knew that the "heroes" weren't really heroes in the traditional sense. I mean, just look at the way they go about their business, rationalizing that the ends justify the means. They're really only classified as "heroes" when contrasted against the "supes" of their world, who are vile to say the least. But the Boys are really just broken people who happen to be on the good side, and thank goodness for that, as any one of the boys would be a truly terrifying villain. But none more so than Butcher.
From the beginning, we knew that Butcher was the engine that kept the Boys going. Even when we learned about Mallory, we learned that Butcher was the one who pushed past Mallory and began to lead the Boys with a fervor and delight that was ...a bit disturbing. And where everyone else on the team always rationalized their assaults on heroes as making sure that particular hero or team don't get too out of hand, Butcher was truly the one who had hate for every single one of the supes. After all he's the one that said "I wish we could do away with the lot of them", and he meant it.
Here we see the culmination of Butcher's hate. His thirst for revenge causes his sanity to break to the point of wanting not only all the supes dead, but also chalking up whoever else dies in the process as acceptable collateral damage. Because, we should've all seen it coming. It was very apparent that Butcher was not a dude that played with a full deck. His charm and personality was a disarming tactic to hide the monster inside. And in this volume, Hughie has to deal with the full measure of Butcher's attack against the world.
Ennis writes a magnificent send off to the series by not taking a half measure, but instead goes full force towards the inevitable. Ultimately Hughie is in a much better place because of the events that happen, but man Ennis puts Hughie and us through the ringer to get there.
This was a fantastic series that is easily dismissed because of it's gratuitous use of violence and sex. But underneath it, it was truly a character study on superheroes, and the reaction to them and their antics. Ennis was able to construct a great piece of work by peeling back layers slowly, as well as letting tension build and dropping clues along the way. I know Preacher is his masterpiece, but to me, The Boys is my favorite work of his.
All the artists on the series really did good work, but none more so than Derrick Robertson and Russ Braun. Without them, the book wouldn't be as good as it is. They elevated the script to another level and dug in deep to the murky details that streamed from Ennis' script.
This series is not for the faint of heart. But if you are not easily offended - hell maybe not even easily, cause this one does have some rough, rough moments in it - and your a fan of Ennis, this is a must read.
From the beginning, we knew that Butcher was the engine that kept the Boys going. Even when we learned about Mallory, we learned that Butcher was the one who pushed past Mallory and began to lead the Boys with a fervor and delight that was ...a bit disturbing. And where everyone else on the team always rationalized their assaults on heroes as making sure that particular hero or team don't get too out of hand, Butcher was truly the one who had hate for every single one of the supes. After all he's the one that said "I wish we could do away with the lot of them", and he meant it.
Here we see the culmination of Butcher's hate. His thirst for revenge causes his sanity to break to the point of wanting not only all the supes dead, but also chalking up whoever else dies in the process as acceptable collateral damage. Because, we should've all seen it coming. It was very apparent that Butcher was not a dude that played with a full deck. His charm and personality was a disarming tactic to hide the monster inside. And in this volume, Hughie has to deal with the full measure of Butcher's attack against the world.
Ennis writes a magnificent send off to the series by not taking a half measure, but instead goes full force towards the inevitable. Ultimately Hughie is in a much better place because of the events that happen, but man Ennis puts Hughie and us through the ringer to get there.
This was a fantastic series that is easily dismissed because of it's gratuitous use of violence and sex. But underneath it, it was truly a character study on superheroes, and the reaction to them and their antics. Ennis was able to construct a great piece of work by peeling back layers slowly, as well as letting tension build and dropping clues along the way. I know Preacher is his masterpiece, but to me, The Boys is my favorite work of his.
All the artists on the series really did good work, but none more so than Derrick Robertson and Russ Braun. Without them, the book wouldn't be as good as it is. They elevated the script to another level and dug in deep to the murky details that streamed from Ennis' script.
This series is not for the faint of heart. But if you are not easily offended - hell maybe not even easily, cause this one does have some rough, rough moments in it - and your a fan of Ennis, this is a must read.
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