#fuck this comic

[goingrampant]

The Boys #2 notes: Pages 3-4, 8-9

As page 3 starts, we have a moment with Wee Hughie crying on the bench and Billy Butcher looking at him with concern, and it looks like there might actually be some genuine empathy featured front and center. Wee Hughie is emotionally distraught at the loss of a loved one, and Butcher recognizes this and decides to give him some space. It's not a big challenge to traditional masculinity, but it allows for two whole panels of Wee Hughie's honest grief before getting back to toxic masculinity.

The third panel is only mostly about Wee Hughie's grief. It starts to transition into something to reassure the immature frat boys reading that this isn't about respecting men feeling emotional pain and instead about toxic masculine domination.

Discussion of a rape joke below the cut:

I literally just stared at this comic in disgust for a while before I could muster the resolve to write about it. Butcher lures Wee Hughie to the cause by demonstrating his manly domination through rape by proxy, using his dog as an extension of himself, making Terror rape another dog. It's tied into the fascist theme of opposing societal degeneracy, viewing everything through the lens of conflict and then mastering weakness through sexual domination.

While Wee Hughie is trying to grieve, his sobs are interrupted by a Shih Tzu's annoying yipping. The Shih Tzu is used to illustrate degeneracy, an offense to these men's sensibilities. Though this Shih Tzu is poorly trained, they hate it just for its breed, which they look down on (Butcher: "Horrible little things;" Wee Hughie: "I hate those wee bastards..."), as opposed to Terror the bulldog. Dog breeding is an application of eugenics, and they view the whole Shih Tzu breed as bad--the art style portrays it as especially gross--compared to the bulldog, portrayed as cute and lovable. That's a little fascist.

This Shih Tzu is portrayed homophobically as a male figure that has degenerated into femininity as illustrative of his lack of moral substance. He's named Benjamin--like he should be a proud, strong man-like dog--but is bred to be a fancy little dog meant for warming laps and looking nice, like a bitch. (No, not a pun; that's just what the word means in both contexts.) He looks ill-groomed and has fur collected into a little pink bow, and his owner--a little old lady--praises him for pooping in the middle of the road, totally ignorant of how poorly she's trained him, and has no intent of cleaning up after him. We live in a society, amirite.

So, because Benjamin is degenerate, Butcher tells Terror, "Fuck it." The dog looks cute (?) and, otherwise, like the opposite of Benjamin. Terror's colors are bright. He looks cheery. He's a properly masculine man dog.

There's a cut away from the plotline for pages 5-7, which I'll cover in the next post. For page 8, we come right back to Terror raping Benjamin with a panel overtly depicting the two of them. Terror has his eyes rolled back in pleasure, while Benjamin screams. Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck is wrong with everyone involved in the production of this comic?

This isn't framed as horrific at all. This is framed as good fun, showing the degenerate portion of society what's what. Terror and Benjamin, though dogs, are somewhat anthropomorphized into a traditionally masculine man raping a degenerate feminized man to show the world what power looks like. These are hellish far-right politics on display. Fascism.

The little old woman hits Terror with her purse, trying to rescue her dog, but she is also part of the degeneracy and can't affect the truly masculine man-dog. Meanwhile, Benjamin yips in a distortion of his annoying yips, now like the "bitch" in a porn scene, played up to frame the masculine man-dog as especially masculine. Wee Hughie loves this, and it cheers him up (you know, from his moment of genuine human emotion) and endears him to Butcher.

Wee Hughie grins like trollface. He looks absolutely delighted at the spectacle taking place. A random man in the background also finds it amusing, laughing in delight, like that's the first good thing he's experienced all day. Butcher looks smug, like he's proud to uplift the world. Through rape.

Finally, Butcher leads Wee Hughie on a walk through the park and calls for Terror to join them. The old woman sadly collects her dazed dog as Terror, Butcher, and Wee Hughie casually stroll away. As an interesting detail, we can fully see Terror's testicles to emphasize his manliness. The dog then frames the two men as especially manly men in a degenerate world. Delighted, Wee Hughie shakes Butcher's hand, happy to have made a new friend.

I kind of just want to slap Garth Ennis across the face.

Don't trust men who like this comic.

I've seen people defend the comic by saying you're not supposed to like Butcher that much, that he's supposed to be a piece of shit, etc. That's not what I see here. He's framed as toxically masculine Mary Poppins, making the world better through fun chaos. From rape. It uplifts the worst parts of humanity, framing it as making the world better--like a fascist work.

The show is better. It unfortunately does nod to this scene through Butcher giving Terror a dog toy representing his enemy, Homelander, telling him to "fuck it," and then we hear rhythmic squeaking. It's still a rape joke, but it's much less nasty and doesn't tie in such fascist themes of macho men conquering degeneracy.

[hydrattan]

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

[toonstarterz]

I found out japanese fans are calling this the "american comic book-style marcille"

i'm WHEEZING LMAO

[riacte]

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]

[purplepenguintime]

Certified dungeon meshi moment

[j-tee]

SHAPE HELL

Yup.

[sabertoothwalrus]

get him a ouppy!!!!!

[mysillycomics]

[spacetravels]

today at work i got hit with a plane

[nouverx]

"I want to eat you" is their love language and you can't change my mind

[spaceistheplaceart]

thinking about what mabel and ford have in common <3 sweaters, diaries, and bad breakups.

[parkjammys]

the audacity of the official dc account to even post this 😭

[knockknockwhosthereartistism]

The worst trauma comes from those who you love

[greykolla-art]

My blog has become infested with angst goblins, and they must be fed with some hypothetical scenarios!🙏💚

[bbbbbbbbatman]

Bruce keeping a tighter and tighter lid on his identity around the Justice League because with each new person to reveal their identity he realizes that he has fucked far too high a percentage of his co workers as Bruce Wayne and he has to take this secret to his grave

[lastoneout]

People don't like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn't be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they're basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.

Like it's just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like "we're using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can" and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.