sizzler

drive-by readings

The Boys #46 (Dynamite) "Believe, Part Three" Garth Ennis Russ Braun Tony Aviña Simon Bowland Darick Robertson (cover)

what we learned: finally: Butcher and Hughie let it all out, and i can empathize with Hughie for being scared of not being trusted anymore. Butcher breathes a sigh of relief, but there's still a big problem as the two are in love. also Mother's Milk flask is missing.
oh shit moment: two: Queen Maeve is a spy for the Boys (and didja see her pics!!) and Hughie watches Annie/Starlight's initiation into the Seven.
what's next: like Butcher says, you gotta be cruel to be kind. is this gonna break up Hughie and Annie?


due to the family nature (pfshhh) of this blog, that's all we can show you.

opening wounds

drive-by readings

The Boys #45 (Dynamite) "Believe, Part Two" Garth Ennis Russ Braun Tony Aviña Simon Bowland Darick Robertson (cover)

what we learned: Annie comes clean with Hughie, but the latter pukes and runs. the Homelander and Oh Father start rolling the dice on whether they should support Vought on the "supes for national defense" thing. good thing the Boys are on the case.
oh shit moment: when i realized that The Female cutting loose in that right-wing Christian festival was just a teaser. damn!!!
what's next: Butcher and Hughie have been conveniently dancing around for issues now on the subject of Annie. goddammit, let the truth out already!!!


Simon Pegg is asking for his royalties.

the real inglorious basterds

The Boys doing their version of goose-stomping on Nazi super"hero" Stormfront. wooohoooooooo!

drive-by readings: Herogasm #2

Herogasm #2 (Dynamite) "Amsterdam" Garth Ennis John McCrea Keith Burns Simon Bowland Tony Aviña Darick Robertson (cover)

we didn't learn much from this issue, except ... wait, we learned a lot from this issue, and they're all unprintable. yes, little boys, move along now, nothing to see here. don't you see the Mature Readers label? geddouddaheah.

and on that note ... we look forward to the Boys crashing the party next issue. snort up.

drive-by readings: The Boys #31

The Boys #31 (Dynamite) "The Self Preservation Society, Part 1" Garth Ennis Carlos Ezquerra Hector Ezquerra Simon Bowland Tony Aviña Darick Robertson (cover)

finally! from the opening storyline where we were introduced to the Seven (the ethically-challenged version of the JLA), i was waiting for this throwdown. in a set up that kind of echoes the death of Luca Brasi, one of the Boys get taken down. and that made me really sad. dammit, i want a lot of asskicking to happen because of this. no more name taking, Billy Butcher. by the way, Garth, nice work on retelling an alternate version of Hal Jordan's origin.

where no 15 year old geek has gone before

... Garth Ennis is taking them there, aye, as long as they even get to purchase this material.



after the tongue-in-cheek sleazy premise of the first few issues, The Boys jumped (or were pushed?) off the DC/Wildstorm wagon because of the material itself. finding a new home under Dynamite, the series continued its narrative on superhero skullduggery and political conspiracies while toning down (relatively) its graphic depictions of the crazy shit that Ennis said would "out-Preacher Preacher". if you ask me, the past year's output has been too talky for me.

now comes (pun intended) its first spinoff, Herogasm, which takes us back to those early days (in tone) of The Boys. in a nutshell, all these (damaged) superheroes (who are technically backed by the military establishment) need their R&R, and what better way to do that than cook up a fake global/planetary crisis ("alien invasion!") and heroically "leave" Earth to deal with it. actually, they just all went to some supersecret remote island, where all the best hookers in the world are waiting. and i don't just mean female hookers.

i started laughing as soon as Homelander (the Superman of this book) made his Hollywood-tailored we-who-are-about-to-die speech - i knew where this was going, and i'm surprised no one has thought of this before. all the heroes we idolize are just frauds and just as fucked-up as the rest of us. they just happen to have superpowers.

according to CBR (by way of Wikipedia), Ennis states that " ... while we're having a pop at the notion of mass crossovers within a shared universe, we're not picking on 'Crisis' or 'Secret Wars' or 'Countdown' or whatever in particular." oh yeah? i think i lost it when Homelander started mentioning "Chaocrisis" and "Covert Intrusion". "Final Fracas"? "Civil Dispute"? heee heee heee.

so where are the Boys in this version of a summer event? right smack in the middle of it, and they're not after a cape this time. oh no, they aren't ...


summer suddenly got even better!!!

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Herogasm #1

tipping points

with a is-he-a-murderer-or-not Jericho inside Nightwing, the latter has to make a decision when the JLA comes a-calling ... and of course, 'Wing's gonna say:


of course, we like to cheer heroes beating up on each other.

speaking of beating, Frank Castle's heart is still cool as a cucumber although Molly Von Richtofen's heart is probably doing calisthenics, and not because she spotted a hottie.

we all await the final chapter where we bury Elite and this Ma Gnucci nonsense once and for all (heh! snort!)

cherry picking

cherry picking: stuff i double-clicked read. will try not to spoil. i said try.

World War Hulk is NOT the end of the world!

as we can see here, Jen got a haircut, lost her powers and is back to lawyering. which means the world survived World War Hulk. now if only we could learn in advance what happened. Recorder, speak up!!! oh, he blew up?! dang.

Marc Ecko supports the New Warriors

that's all you need to know. oh, and Stark Tower (and Tony Stark) are still/again upright. which corroborates the statement we made above. this officially makes all plot threads running in the Marvel Universe entangled - what happened when?


'Cuda, Woulda, Shoulda.

guess who's back ................! yep, its your friendly neighborhood gangsta Barracuda! mayhem ensues. and Frank's all tied up. and is possibly a pappy?

boys2men. (pause) not.

The Boys
Garth Ennis/Darick Robertson
DC/Wildstorm


Garth Ennis, how do i love thee? let me count the ways ...

ok, i can't count that high. but i love you, man.

coming off the heels off my faves Preacher and the Punisher, Ennis needed to get back into the superhero game (his previous DC work Hitman is on my hit list as well), but on his own terms. and this is it.

Present-day earth has been overrun by capes. by capes, we mean metahumans. by metahumans, we mean superheroes. by superheroes, we mean dudes and dudettes with extraordinary powers. and no, this is not a good thing.

just ask Wee Hughie.


a slacker and conspiracy theorist who's life is just turning the corner, the best moment he's ever had is shattered in a few seconds. a fight between a superhero and a supervillain turns ugly and Hughie's girlfriend has to be scraped from a wall. in just one page, Darick Robertson (veteran of edgy and occasionally mind-fucking fare such as Transmetropolitan) already answers the "why". this is Ennis' version of Civil War; take that, Mark Millar!

flash ... ah-hah ... he'll save everyone of us ... if he doesn't kill us first

capes have dominated the landscape, and governments reluctantly have had to clean up behind them, for the "greater good". it was inevitable that super-powered individuals would eventually let that power into their head and it shows. consider for example, the Seven, which are obviously modeled after DC's Justice League (aren't they all?). this distortion of the hero/anti-hero echoes the Authority going up against the G7 countries and their own homegrown capes (another of my favorite books, written by Millar himself).


that's where the similarities to the JLA end; the Seven are several 180 degrees from those boy scouts. their newest member, Starlight (the Green Lantern analogue), has to perform oral sex to three members for her initiation. Queen Maeve (Wonder Woman) cusses and smokes (and who knows what else). A-Train (Flash) was responsible for the death of Hughie's girl. and of course, you have the Aquaman analogue, The Deep, complaining about billing and income.

money ... money changes everything

somehow they have principles; here Homelander (Superman, who else) gives A-Train an ass kicking for an inappropriate joke. if he's that badass, i can only imagine what Black Noir (the Batman) does in his spare time.


and if you can't read who the Martian Manhunter equivalent was from the meeting pic above, he's called Jack from Jupiter (that cracked me up).

and those are the grown-ups. the young 'uns, like the ones in Teenage Kix (Teen Titans presumably), lead testosterone-filled lives in moral absentia while high on depravity. and these are the "good guys".

to see the whole story ... buy the book, dammit!

and so ... enter Billy (the) Butcher.

mandated to keep the capes in line, and having no compunction in crossing it if necessary, Billy reassembles his old team and pulls in favors from the CIA to use resources. Billy seems to be the personification of "badass", even in this world where the capes can be interchanged with villains, and despite the occasional "father figure" posing.

i mean he even sics his bulldog, Terror, on a hapless shih tzu.


but he's disciplined, and he has a plan.


although we should ask, what's in it for him? a story for another day (there's only four issues so far, dammit!).


so his second order of business (after gathering his team), is to give Teenage Kix a scare.


his army includes a Frenchman called The Frenchman, who as these two panels clearly demonstrate, is unlike any of his compatriots who rolled over for the Germans (ok, that stale joke was the cause of the severe beating these gentlemen are getting from him).


there's also a nameless girl - well, she's referred to as 'the female of the Species' and obviously is not a boy but is part of the Boys. she's mute, she prefers not to be touched, and deals brutality to rival Mafia gangs.


the hilarious scene echoes an earlier Punisher story, written by ... who else?

there's also a black dude named Mother's Milk, whom little is known about at this stage, except he's a single parent, he'd rather do community service, but according to Billy, is the engine that makes the whole thing go.

speaking of Billy again, just in case you're ready to give him a Nobel prize for trying to bring the capes in line, here's a scene for you - they might term it "being in bed with the CIA".

if you want to see the whole thing ... buy the book, dammit!


so what about Wee Hughie Campbell's role in all of these proceedings? Billy wants someone on his team who has a personal stake (albeit subtly forced by Billy) in roping in the out-of-control heroes. Hughie grudgingly agrees, even getting some kicks in functioning as the evidence-collector (basically paparazzi work). but when Billy slyly injects him with a DNA-altering serum that would allegedly enable him to go toe to toe with the super-powered loose cannons, Hughie has his doubts. it remains to be seen how this will all play out.



all i can say is, i am sure i'll be as spellbound and excited to follow this series like i did Preacher.

by the way, just for anyone who's planning to purchase a firearm, Butcher has this to say:


so either you're a wanker. or not.

i'm betting if you don't like this comic, you are a wanker. wanker.
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issues read #1-4

pillage people

Thor: Vikings
Garth Ennis/Glenn Fabry
Marvel/MAX

the god, the bad AND ugly

ok, to describe this 5-issue throwdown by one of my favorite writers, Garth Ennis, i can just simply show you this pic:

ok, that beats how Tommy Lee Jones died in Under Siege

in a nutshell: in 1003 AD, Harald Jaekelsson and his band of marauding vikings (is that an oxymoron? weren't there any vikings who, you know, just sold pots and pans, but in an obnoxious salesman kind of way?) has just sacked a village and decides to undertake a voyage to the New World (sacking local villages probably got too boring). the village's priest, wounded and dying, still manages to call them out and curses them with a runestone and a few drops of his blood. what's a viking to do? why, make sure the annoying geezer stays dead this time of course. problem is, instead of a few drops of blood activating the curse, its a bucketful and the whole nine yards ...

and so Jaekelsson and his men find themselves landing in New York - around 1,000 years later than Leif Eriksson discovered the North American continent (i'm told that Eriksson invited him to join his voyage, but Jaekelsson had to "go quench a burning fire in his loins"). the curse had transformed them into the undying, and of course the stupid tourists at the South Street Seaport thought they were from the Capital One commercials. except they were uglier.

what's in your gullet?

hey, that's the second time the South St. Seaport has been mentioned in this blog. i love New York!

mayhem ensues as undead, rotting, magical Norsemen do what they were born to do in modern-day Manhattan - pillage, pillage, pillage. heads and limbs get chopped off, women get raped, blood everywhere - just a normal day in a Garth Ennis book (just kidding, Garth!).

Ennis doesn't forget the other details, but just enough to keep the action going. check a couple below:

now THAT should've been a Capital One commercial!

and guess who's sitting in the Oval Office. i swear to God, for all its faults, we love democracy. can you imagine people rioting because of political cartoons?


so where the are so-called superheroes who defend this fair city (99% of the time - this never happens in Boise, Idaho or Billings, Montana)? why, just like the cops and soldiers before them, they're getting their asses handed back to them of course.

the Avengers have defeated time-traveling, world-beating lunatics
but can't overcome a shipfull of undead rotting corpses

and what about the main protagonist of this book, the hero of epics, the son of Odin, the Thunder God, the Mighty Thor?

oh, he's just dandy, between drowning by the East River, with a bitchslapped face, two broken hands, getting chained to and yanked down by his own mystic hammer, and getting run through with a sword. bah. god of thunder, my ass.

oh, the ignominy.

when Thor finally decides to get out of the stinky river and join the battle, he finds Dr. Strange, this universe's resident mystic, waiting for him. i am actually fascinated by and loathe this version of Doc Stephen ... since when did he gain a dismissive attitude and a satchelful of killer retorts, again?


perhaps its because he knows Thor did just suffer a severe beatdown, so Strange was bold enough to throw zingers at him. at any other time, Thor would have thrown his hammer at Strange for being so glib.


so what's Dr. Strange's grand plan? well, he figures out that the runestone curse got extended because the old man messed the trick up with more than the requisite amount of blood. so to counteract this, they need help from warriors who were descendants of the old man (which i'm not sure of that he would have any, given that Jaekelsson sacked his whole village - but let's just get on with it). Ennis inserts tongue-in-cheek humor everywhere, but primarily through Strange (while analyzing the old man's bloodline: "mostly farmers and fishermen, a carpenter or two, another wise man, a goatherd - oh! i wish i hadn't seen that."), and if it weren't for the character as i knew it, would be a winner through and through.

rounding up the selection process from the descendants, we have the following:
(1) Sigrid the tomboy

famous last words.

(2) Magnus the conservative Christian

if this was how they recruited believers, i'd jump to it right away

and (3) Erik Lonnroth, of the Nazi Luftwaffe (but with his heart in the right place, naks)



it really helps as well, to have this new Dr. Strange at your side. i can imagine Magnus laughing inside his helmet, if he managed to understand the wisecracks of the 21st century.


lest we forget, its Thor who's headlining this book, and he makes his presence (re-)felt, by simply yelling his tormentor's name, causing damage to a few eardrums (Fabry does a nice job here).


running parallel to the wiseass Dr. Strange, Thor suddenly seems to have watched a lot of TV lately, presumably of American sporting kind. how can you not laugh cheer?

in other words, start pissing in your pants.

the outcome becomes predictable, as you know this four warriors would kick ass. Thor likes 3 extra warriors by his side, as evidenced by past history. in the kicking ass department, the whole thing becomes an Indiana Jones-type roller coaster ride, especially with Erik the Nazi flyboy fighting off vikings who jump on his plane.

i like Fabry better when he's doing covers, but he's done an ok job here. Ennis, as usual, spins a yarn out of the rotting carcass that is his brain, and its not something i didn't really expect. but i'm always interested in his work, and he's in that top shelf of comic book writers i prefer, with Millar, Ellis, Morrison and Busiek/Waid.

the lesson to would-be conquerors: never count god-like creatures out, even if you gave them two broken hands and used their face as a punching bag. or else you'd end up somewhere out there. as in out there.


hey, wait ... this sets up the future sequel, Thor:Vikings in Space. think of all the damage Jaekelsson can wreak in the ISS. or maybe not.
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issues read: #1-5