The Boys - Garth Ennis
- Omnibus Vol. 1 - Containing #1 - 14 with bonus material. After the brutal death of his girlfriend at the hands of a negligent and uncaring super, Hughie is recruited by the Boys, five individuals backed by the CIA who want to keep tabs on and sometimes take out bad supers. And the supers of this world are very, very bad indeed. They use surveillance equipment to blackmail the hedonistic young group Teenage Kix, infiltrate a Russian/CIA plot to overthrow Moscow using supers, and investigate the death of a young gay man who hung with sidekicks. So here's the deal with this book. It's vile, way over the top, sometimes funny, sometimes not so much. Ennis' highly puerile anti-superhero fixation is given free rein; he's at his worst and least mature when mocking superheroes. Here the supes are not only amoral and brutal, they are all, every single one, sexually neurotic or "poofs." There's even a scene where a gerbil crawls out of KO'd supe's rectum. Gag. The satire here is vulgar, cheap, mean, and over the top, but worst of all, childish. It's about a subtle as three hammers to the crotch. All that said, though, as it gets going it becomes more palatable. The Boys' mission is sympathetic, it's a decent story, and everyone is so terrible that you keep reading just to see somebody get some kind of comeuppance. The world-building is pretty terrible though. [2.5]
