#hugie cambell

[popculturebuffet]

The Boys Volume 4: We Gotta Go Now Review Part 2 (Issues 27-30) (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Welcome back all you happy people to my review of the the Boys, specifically the X-Cruating X-Men Themed arc, We Gotta Go Now. Part one is RIGHT HERE in case you haven’t seen it. I split in in half because Tumblr REALLY dosen’t like longer posts and since I have yet to find a better platform and didn’t want to have to redo half my work like I did with two parts of my scott pilgrim retrospective, I opted to split the diffrence.

I don’t have much of an intro this time as last time I covered my issues with the book, why Garth Ennis was a poor choice for it given his admitted hatred for superhero comics even into present day, and the first four issues in which Ennis tried to satraize the x-men.. by saying they have a lot of teams, making wolverine into a gibbering moron.. again.

And rather than actually parody the x-men outside of two gags, mostly spent the time making them into racist, and one of the homophobics, gibbering assholes. So get situated with part one and then meet me back here under the cut so I can finish this monster:

Content Warning: This review contains talks of sucicide, child abuse, child abudction, rape and pedophilia, as it’s in the material i’m reviewing so if ANY OF THIS is a psychological trigger for you, please use caution reading it or skip this review for your own health. 

Issue 27:

So we open with MM and the guy from last time.. Silver’s father. As it turned out “Uncle Paul” took her out for ice cream and she vanished, taken off the street with no one finding her.. revealing that Voight isn’t just finding orphans but KIDNAPPING CHILDREN. This.. is actually a valid dark take on the x-men for me. While more often than not parents actually do fuly support their children leaving with charles and if their ripped from parents it’s from an abusive home, it’s still an intresting dark take: what if Charles wasn’t asking permission but simply kidnapping children to fuel his teams. Hell the curren era actually explores this with some parents terrified of their children leaving for Krakoa and anti-mutant racists using this fear as fuel. 

Anyways, Paul sadly killed himself feeling he was responsible for the incident and MM sadly leaves, now having damming info on their foes.. but knowing just how badly this broke this poor man. It’s a genuinely gripping and emotoinal scene and if the boy shad more of this and less of 

Then i’d be talking about a MUCH better comic. 

So meanwhile it’s st patrick’s day in new york and G-Whiz are naturally up to some drunken bullshit.

So while one of them fails to notice the diffrence between scottisha nd irish to Huey’s mild annoyance

Meanwhlie Butcher has a club soda with a bar owning budy whose reactoin to some patrons trying to enter wearing green and clearly looking to get ripped is uniquely insanely awesome...

Over the top? Perhaps but given the man is himself irish and has to watch people use his hertiage as an excuse to get shit faced, you can see why maybe he needs to throw a hatchet once in a while and given he clearly has hawkeye level percision they weren’t in any real danger.. unless they didn’t leave then Butcher would be helping bury the bodies. 

So Hugie tries to reason with Buzzcut but ti’s clear he’s been too heavily indocrinated as it’s “diffrnet” since they’ve been trained all their life.. and then G-Whiz all pee in one of their memebers mouth while Blowchowchi decides to masturbate on him after. 

So Hugie joins Butcher instead and we get some good character stuff: Hugie WANTS to stil lsave them as he gets these idiots have no idea of what’s approriate because they were never taught it, but Butcher says their too far gone and he needs to pull Hugie out anyway. Hugie also needles butcher on some questions.. and gets too far when he makes it clear he knows what happened with butchers wife but wisely drops it. 

Back at the G-Mansion... we meet G-Coast and G-Style.... you.. you aren’t prepared for the amount of racisim your about to witness...

I was not exagerating. Even for the time this is HORRIBLY offensive, sterotypical and racist. And while I shoudln’t HAVE TO mention it, a white man should NOT be using the fucking n-word in his scripts, let alone for shit like this. He went OUT OF HIS WAY to do this. This isn’t an analog to ANYTHING x-men related. None of the team members rsemble any actual black x-men or x-men period. Garth ennis just wanted to go on a weird racist tangent about rappers. I don’t have the reaction images for this it’s just fucking vile and stupid. Easily the worst thing he’s done and as we’ve seen that threshold is vast, but introducing two teams JUST to make racist as hell sterotypes in the name of “comedy” is so fucking low he’s fallen off the fucking globe. 

Not-Iceman, does his name REALLY matter given the level of names we’re dealing with? I say nay, talks about what if Silver made the right deceision but Five-Oh disagrees saying the “other stuff” , we’ll get to that, is worth the fame and that... i’m not going ot say it..

You know Five-Oh maybe she didn’t sleep with you not because she’s some “frigid bitch” as dude bros like you would say.. but because your a giant pile of dicks that somehow took the form of a human being. 

WE end the issue with a long, pretty thoughtful rant on why St. Patrick’s day sucks, which comes off as a personal thing for Gath Ennis, unsuprisingly given he’s from ireland himself, but I honestly can’t blame him for it and he makes a good argument for once. They even use the grossout the series tends to lean into at times for good effect, using a barf filled st. patrick’s day bowler as an effective symbol of what the holliday’s become. 

Issue 28:

We open the next issue at Stillwells office as he talks with Goodkin over the phone. Goodkin wants silver back, but Stillwell admits they CAN’T bring her back and suggests he just move on and also isn’t happy to find out via some background noise that Goodkin is training another Pre-Whiz, i.e. a kid version of G-Whiz. Goodkin also says “i don’t answer to you”.. to the man who very clearly is trying to kill him. You know Goodkin you could just put on a t-shirt under your suit jacket that says “GO ON AND KILL ME BITCH YOU AIN’T GOT THE TESTICULAR FORTITUDE”, you’d at least die faster.. probably from one of your own students given there’s a reason that shirt was banned from the manor.  Lost all of the G-Pirates that day. 

So we move on to Silver’s Funeral, where G-Whiz are about as respectful as you’d expect:

Blowchowski... just shove the pencil up your dick and be done with it. Given what we’ve seen with you this arc the fact you haven’t dropped trow and jammed a pencil up what I assume is an especailly tiny penis is the only suprising thing about your character. 

King Helmet of G-Style gives a ulogy which is unsuprsiingly about having wanted to bang Silver when she was alive. What’s honestly more intresting is that King Helmet has one of the better names Ennis farted out.. but simply a spirit halloween roman soldier costume. While Darrick Robertson isn’t a BAD artist the designs for the various supes are just... weak. Ther’es nothing funny or interesting their just the generic superhero costumes you’d find in a dtv movie.  There was no love or effort put in here and it really mutes the already dead silent parody further when instead of actually putting effort in you just sketched out the easiest costumes you could. 

As for the G-Men their even less respectful. 

I’m just so tired of this at this point. Again I read FIVE VOLUMES of this shit. I’m so tired of “OH THEIR A PRICK GET IT” characterization.but this arc is worse with it because we spent SO MUCH time with the g-men compared to teenage kicks. At least with Annie’s story we have a sympathetic pov. Here we’re just stuck in the room with a bunch of petty douchebags. I know the x-men infight, it is a thing with them, but come on. If your going to parody soap opera drama in these books at least make it FUNNY drama or darkly hilarious or pognaint or anything. Not just “Oh well she woudln’t suck my dick so I hate her “ or “I’m a homophobic asshat”. ‘or “I think Nightcrawler is brain damaged”. 

Butcher naturally isn’t pleased to find out from Frenchie that Hugie is at the funeral with G-Wiz trying to save them, and tells frenchie to grab him asap, while Butcher rushes to join them and MM heads for the legend to get some passwords, with Butcher trusting his word. 

So while that goes on Stillwell talks to his boss trying to encourage him into letting him take out the G-Men, pointing out Goodkin wanting silver back is the last straw: with the combo of this, the new pre-whiz, and whatever incident killed nubia that keeps getting bring up and we’ll find out about soon enough, it’s time to clean house and while they might loose profits if they don’t stop the g-men now, they might have to clean up something worse if they let it keep going like this. 

MM uses said paswords to get into Voight’s records. It won’t last him long, their security is naturally great as any shady corp covering up a lot of horrible shit does.. i.e. all of them, but it should get him what he needs. 

So the inevitable naturally happens next: G-Whiz take Hugie into the woods near the manor and having been informed of his double agent status prepare to kill him. It’s a genuinely sad scene as Hugie TRIES to talk sense into them, how they shouldn't have  to want this and they can be something better.. but it’s not enough and they sick Blowchowski on him who naturally has acid vomit powers. Just like the real John Belushi. Hugie apologizes..... because he sees Frenchie and The Female behind them.

One mostly off panel murder party later, one of G-Whiz HAPPENS to be a telepath and alerts Divine about it, while back at the scene of the crime Butcher and MM show up and with one member of G-Whiz left alive, they decide to interogate the shell shocked kid: Our cliffhanger is Butcher asking him to spill or Hugie’s going to cut his throat. 

29: So the Last G-Man tells his story and .. it’s genuinely heartrending and tragic, adding another horrifying lair to the dark version of the x-men. Had the Boys been more like THIS , more dark deconscurctions of various heroes with some human elements to keep it from getting too edgelord instead of just

For too damn many pages, again.. I could be talking about a masterpiece instead of this thing. 

But while I won’t hesitate to rip a work to shred with my admantium claws if it’s bad enough.. I will never hestiate to give credit whre it’s do and this sequence is truly harrowing: 

We find out how it is for most of the G-Kids: Goodkin finds them, plies them with candy and toys and other goodies and tells them they get to be a superhero someday. What kid WOULD turn that down? 

Eventually relaity sets in and you want to leave but unsuprisingly Goodkin doesn't let the kids go instead telling them this sacrifice is what it takes to be a g-man and all that bullshit. Eventually.. the kids are indocrinated enough to buy into it, helped by being given friends in the other kids and the g-men and the ones who don’t settle in.. well as Butcher says “use your  imagination”. 

So thus their plied with more toys post compound v, big boy toys like drugs and porn as they grow into it, and taught to protect the brand whatever the cost.. revealing silver killed nubia to prevent a meltdown. 

We then get the last piece.. and the main reason for that content warning: Goodkin rapes them. He rapes the kids, and other g-men eithe rkeep silent or join in. This did anger me when I first heard about it.. but it was because I assumed like everything ELSE ennis did with heroes it was used as an edgelord punchline. Instead with proper contect.. it’s heartbreaking. These poor kids indoctrinated, raped, abused, and made into playthings for a sick old man who keeps the cycle of abuse going constantly. It also gives a horrifying and disturbing reason WHY goodkin keeps expanding. It’s not even clearly meant to be a commentary on the x-men, it’s just a horrifying taken on them, taking a pure and fun concept.. and twisting it into something nightmarish but valid story wise. instead of using child rape just for shock he uses it to tel lthe story of a bunch of kids who were made into fucked up adults by a man who just wanted mor etoys to play with and break. It’s haunting horrifying.. and damn good writing. 

It’s why I say Garth Ennis CAN write.. he’s just not very good at satire or deconstuction when the things he’s taking apar the dosen’t understand. he CAN writ ea good story.. he was just never capable of being objective enough to make THIS story as good as this all the time. 

Jamal, the last g-whiz’s ending is also tearjerking as Europo punches him in the head for telling on them. But that’s just the opening Salvo. The boys are soon faced down with ALL the g-men across all franchises lead by Five-Oh, all ready to die for John Goodkin. And while Butcher’s ready to haul ass and run, Hughie?

And to Butcher’s shock the other boys fully back him in this sucidie mission because while Hugie IS doing it because he’s good and pissed at this shit.. he’s not wrong. Goodkin is unhinged, has a loyal cult and kills LOYAL members who say anything. Hugie outright infiltrated his operation. He’s not going to stop till ALL of you are dead for this or all the G-Men are. Blackmail won’t work because that will just make him want to kill you harder to preserve things.  Approaching it strategically is out because they have a teleporter who just demonstrated he can kill any of you at any time unless you prepare for him. You aren’t dealing with your normal fame hungry supes, you are dealing with a ride or die CULT of supes who you just pissed off and who unlike the Seven, who have a cold war type thing with our heroes, are under NO obligation not to punch your guts out.  Not only that.... Frenchie and the Female just DECIMATED an entire team with just the two of them, Butcher shows next arc he’s more than capable of taking on an even higher level team once their heavy hitter is gone, Hugie has NONE of his usual issues about killing these bastards, and MM is just as good and pissed and an experinced fighter. Bucher’s whole objection here makes no sense, epsecailly since the narrative has overly built up the boys as nearly unstoppable. In the show where they have no powers sure, makes more sense. But here while their on about the same level as the G-Men, their way more used to killing equal oponents. 

So we’re about to get a cool fight scene.. when we get a subversion instead.. Voght shows up and Goodkin tells his men to stand down their clearly on their side right? Right?

Instead we get an UTTERLY BRUTAL and gory slaughter as the G-Men are gunned down, hit with stinger missles for the fliers and then, as hinted at the top of the story flamethrowered. Nothing is left, no one is spared, and the G-Men in one night are no more. As Stillwell puts it to butcher “Just so you know, we can clean up our own shit.” For once ,Butcher’s feeligns are accurate

I’m split on this conclusion. On the one hand while I do give the boys good chance.. they woudln’t of made it out of this unscathed and the boys not getting catharissi here is the point: instead of righteously taking down some cultish dickheads, they watch as these same dickheads who were robbed of a normal life are utterly and completely slaughtered.. and get a picture of just WHAT their up against. This isn’t just a show for Vought’s other teams what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, this is what happens if the BOYS press Vought too hard. It’s a big move by Stillwell, to show “We COULD wipe our asses with you ANYTIME if you stepped too far”. They wiped out an ARMY of supes in seconds, and even if they had been coming at them, still would’ve won on numbers and kit alone. As skilled as our heroes are... even with prep they would not surivive this. So while it is unsatisfying narratively.. that’s the point and it works: our heroes don’t get to right some injustice they get to watch as a bunch of rabid brainwashed dogs are put down and it’s made clear they could be next. 

My issues with it besides not getting any closure, which again feels intentional so fair enough, is that it’s WAY TOO TELEGRAPHED this is supposed to be shocking and while it is horrifying, hence me not showing it to you because god damn, we spend almost a scene an issue leading up to this. We get SO MUCH SETUP that of course this is how it ends. It’d be weirder if Stillwell showed up AFTER and we got a subversion. The first scene in paticular ruins it by telegraphing the flamethrowers. It honestly woudl’ve been more effective if we didn’t have that scene and just had stillwell calmly say to contain them, leaving us wondering.. and then get this horrifying finish that shows EXACTLY what he meant. NO saving some of them, no save points just ALL of them dead in an instant. Scorched earth on this investment. Still it’s an effective scene and I’ll give Garth, flawed though it may be. 

Issue 30: 

Finally we’re almost done with this. Not even hiding my relief like a professional. This has been a nightmare, the only relief being I was paid very good money for this shitshow. 

So we open with Stillwell cleaning up G-Whiz’s frathouse, while preparing plans: Their going to use lookalikes to help keep the G-Men afloat for now and use a preemtive strike on the manor as cover.. but eventually the fans will realize the g-men really aren’t coming back and they’ll have to take the hit. We also see Pre-Whiz, the children Goodkin was grooming next, preparing to fight... only to be darkly dropped out of a crate over iceland. GET IT BECAUSE THESE INNOCENT CHLIDREN DIED. Like it’s a joke that COULD work, i’ve seen an utterly hilarious montage of a bunch of teenagers dying over and over and over again. 

See THAT’S actually funny. Pre-Whiz dying isn’t funny because.. these are a bunch of abused children who really think their going to be heroes.. getting thrown out of a plane to die as collateral. If they were older, maybe, but these are fucking toddlers getting murdered. 

With Hank and Dean not only are they both 15-16, but the deaths don’t have any hint of tragedy. Their just over the top stupidity or sci fi carnage set to a pithy montage song. The show later DOES play it for tragedy when dean finds out and shockingly does not take it well at all, but it works then because it undercuts the prevoius comedy of the clone thing with the reality that this is a real person you’ve been fucking around like this without ever telling him. Ennis TRIES to mix pathos with comedy here and it just comes off terribly. 

So we get some scenes with each of the boys after this: Butcher tells Hugie this can’t happen again and “We’re not here to make things better, we’re here to prevent then form getting worse”

If you don’t MAKE things better, don’t even TRY to be better people, what’s the point? Sure Hugie was HORRIBLY misguided here... but if you just go in assumign all supes are bad and not trying to get some good ones on your side so next time your standing down an army you hav ebackup, if you don’t TRY to take down Vought too and just perform triage.. what’s the point of you Billy?  I get you have to do triage FOR NOW, that’s fine, but if you NEVER try to do anything better, what’s the bloody point of you?

Frenchie and the Female get a bit as he tries to stop her from going to sate her bloodlust.. but it dosen’t work and he looks on sadly as she goes in for the kill. 

We get a damn good scene with Mother’s Mliik who goes to give Silver’s father closure. Will it help him? He dose’nt know.. and we don’t either. MM decides to walk back after instead of getting a ride he coudl use it. Again.. why sin’t MM, the compastionte, intresting and pragmatic character with a more unqiue backstory the lead and not the fucking cardboard cutout who decides “Eh fuck actually helping people”? 

We then find out just what Butcher found out the other day as he beats it out of kessler.. he knowsl.. he’s just pissed. Silver..was a spy for Raynor. Raynor loved the idea of having her own Supe spy in the g-men, and ignored Silver’s warnings Goodkin was closing in on them. The pressure of betraying a man she loved like a father even though he sure as fuck didn’t deserve it and having to betray him as she felt things were getting out of hand literally killed her, with Raynor sending in the boys as she hadn’t gotten anything concrete out of Silver, anything she coudl use and wanted to put this to bed once and for all. 

We get a scene setting up the next arc of Homelander both being informed of the g-men massacre, with the boys being blamed for it naturally, and Stillwell using it as an excuse to finally go after him. Homelander can’t since Bucher has damming evidence on him.. but another team could. One looking for some.. Payback. 

We get another really good scene with Hugie and Annie, with Hugie telling her, if in vauge terms about loosing his previous girlfriend and the two cuddle. Aww

In less... good terms we end the arc with Butcher.. taking Raynor up the ass... before turning it into a threat on her family, because of course she’s cheating and her if she pulls this again. Does she deserve some compuance sure? Should ennis have framed it like sexual assault with Butcher not only on top of her with Raynor in his power, but ending on her terrfied face while he looks pleased with himself, (’m not making this up but fuck if i’m showing you something this disturbing)? 

FUCK NO

Final Thoughts:

As you can probably gather I don’t like this series or arc. 

For the series it tries to be extra deep then goes right to being juvinille without the nuance of something like Final Space or the Venture Bros, works that CAN blend goofy as shit with deep character work. The Boys is just too immature to make it work half the time and while it has genuine moments of greatness their smothered by so much edgelord bullsemen. 

The arc itself  is a mess. It’s bloated, clocking it at 8 issues and not needing all of them, with several scenes that come out like padding, from the endless scenes of Stillwell pregaming for his G-Men Genocide,  to endless scenes of the g-men themselves that don’t add anything in half of them. This arc could’ve cut an issue and would’ve been better for it. 

This is the least of i’ts problems though: The arc TRIES to satarize the x-men but as I should’ve bludgoned into your head forgoes actually satire and doing any research for “THERE’S A LOT OF TEAMS AND CHARLIES A RAPIST” There is a good story SOMEWHERE in there of making a dark version of the x-men where their groomed into being child soldiers by a pedophile, dark as balls but an intresting concept. But it’s drowned out by the G-men themselves being 1/2 dimensional cardboard cutouts with maybe one trait, NONE OF THEM being symapthetic enough for it to work: 

G-Whiz are supposed to be.. but are homophobic frat boy douchers who aren’t given enoguh character for Hugie’s claims their just innocent kids to work. Fratboys do the kinds of things these idiots do all the time, it’s not abnormal enough for this narrative to work. The G-Men are varying shades of racist and one a homophobe and G-Style and G-Coast are some of the most racist comic book characters i’ve ever witnessed. And I’ve read comics with Fu Fucking Man Chu in them. Ennis own inablitly to actually craft comeplling or layered or symapthetic vilians makes the whole arc implode on itself. What coudl’ve been a dark version of the strangest heroes in all ends up as a limp wristed parody. What a fucking waste bub. 

If you liked this review follow me for more, and if you REALLY enjoyed it and want to see me pick apart more bad comics join my patreon. Even a buck a month helps with my bills, and doing so unlocks stretch goals for more reviews, including Chuck Austen’s x-men and america. So join today if you want to see those, your joining helps get those made and will have me reviewing amphibia season 1 and both seasons of tuca and bertie as well as all of quack pack. 

PATREON IS RIGHT HERE

[popculturebuffet]

The Boys Volume 4: We Gotta Go Now Review Part 1 (Issues 23-26) (Commission For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And since I likely have a bunch of new faces in the audience, welcome. I’m Jake, I do deep dives into comics and animation.  While I haven’t talked about them nearly enough on this blog I truly love superhero comics. To me wether it’s with a vast universe like Marvel or DC, a smaller upstart one like Valiant or Catlyst, or self contained ones like Astro City , there's just no end of stories to tell or things you can do with them, from gritty street action, to straight up parody to a bunch of lesser heroes or even villians trying to make a go of things. There’s just so much that can be done, so far you can go, and so batshit and creative you can get with these characters histories long and short, that it’s no wonder DC and Marvel are STILL around today and probably always will be.. and not just because hteir easy IP factories for their parent companies. There’s a magic in superhero stories, in these flawed humans deciding to shoot for something better and use their powers, skills, or inate ablities to save lives, fight evil, and maybe take in a poker game with a giant rock man now and again. 

But while I love superhero comics like most things I love.. i’m not blind to their issues either: While the bigger named characters are guarnateed to get fresh runs of their comic again and again till the heatdeath of the universe, like any media you never know if that runs’ going to be good or not or when they are good if the bigger, more interesting changes are going ot stick and even if they do, for how long. And if i’ts a bad change... you have no idea how long that stench will linger. As of this writing She Hulk is STILL not back to her old self, Hank Pym is still dead, and Conner Kent is still on the Suicide Squad. 

And with smaller heroes who often can go years or decades without an ongoing i’ts even worst: They can get shuffled from writers, written terribly in crossovers or mindlessly killed off simply to provide “shock value”. In some cases characters or entire lines can be suppressed: Marvel infamously got rid of the fantastic four as a group for several years and tried to not let anything intresting happen with the X-Men simply because they didn’t own the movie rights. DC was arguably even worse as former editor Dan DiDio flat out got rid of scores of characters because he hated Legacy Heroes.. despite that being one of DC’s signature things, and characters like Wally West, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, who the idiot outright hated, were given the short end of the stick and only brought back begrudgingly, with Wally put through absolute hell to try and get fans to hate him, cumulating in making him a murderer (which was thankfully undone last month). 

And sometimes you just get writers who stick around LONG after thir best years are done because tenure, like Brian MIcheal Bendis, Dan Slott and Jason Aaron, guys who DID make good comics once but are now just making bad decisions and getting rewarded for it. 

My point is while I love comics there’s a LOT about the industry, it’s storytelling and it’s corporate nature to satirize. I do love a good superhero parody: The Venture Bros is my favorite show ever and both the animated and second live action versions of the tick hold a special place in my heart. So taking that to the very corporate foundations of heroes was and still is a brilliant idea. 

I say all this because I want to make this clear: When I tear into today’s comic i’ts not because I have any issue with making jabs at superhero comics or the horrible corporate beast that makes them possible. The concept of the Boys is brilliant: In a world where corrupt superheroes are propped up by a mega corp seeking only to use them for profit and gleeful to cover up the worst of them’s actions, 4 brave anti-heroes and a bull dog say “Fuck that noise” and, as their leader Butcher puts it “Spank the bastards when they get out of line”. I love the idea of making fun of the corporate side of heroics, what a big bad corp could do with this kind of power, how that’d impact the world and see how our heroes could beat the kind of menace that our government has made pretty much indestructible. Especially now decades after it landed where we’re more aware of how fucked corporations are than ever. 

Now from everything I can gather the series DOES do this right, using black comedy to show just how bad this system fucks over the people and the very heroes it’s using and just how like corprate machines do with actors and athlets chews theese people up , spits them out and lets the worst ones get away with murder, while also taking playful jabs at modern superhero media.  In the right hands a good story was told with it.

But for the first draft of it, the original comic by Garth Ennis... it was in the very worst hands possible. As anyone reading this or who as even heard a whisper of Garth Ennis has heard, Garth Ennis hates superhero comics. it’s not something he’s even remotely hid. And just to show that hasn’t changed here’s a bit from a 2019 interview from Uproxx, where when asked if the Seven were modled off any heroes in paticular he had this as his actual response:

Well, I don’t like any of them. You can pick your favorite and watch me denigrate them. The thing is, due to a quirk of distribution and growing up in Northern Ireland in the ’70s and ’80s, I never really saw American superhero comics. Not often enough or for long enough that I was able to really get into them. I grew up on British comics until I was well into my teens. I was reading material very, very different from what you see in the American superhero tradition. I think coming to them as, pretty much, an adult, I responded to them the way adults did in those days, which is, “This makes no sense. This is ridiculous. This is silly.” That’s where the suspicion and disdain arose

And why yes he didn’t answer the very easy question, when asked next “Are you surprised to see people still crave superhero content to the degree that they do?”:

Considering the state the world is in, I’m not terribly surprised by people resorting to fantasy. I’m always a little reluctant when I see people making that choice, but I do see where, in a world like this one, when things have gotten as wretched as they have, where that longing for fantasy has. Beyond that, I think there is a long human tradition of praying that a man will come from the sky to save you. Generally, hasn’t worked out too well, but I understand where the instinct comes from.

See as I said him not liking superhero comics isn’t the issue. You can satarize something you don’t like, just look at Kevin Can Fuck Himself, that’s fine.. but you have to UNDERSTAND that thing to deconstruct it. It’s like demolishing a condemmed building: sure any idiot with some explosives can DESTROY a building but to take it down properly you have to know the place in and out, it’s weaknesses what tools to use, and how to prevent collateral damage etc. 

And that’s the problem here: because Ennis couldn’t be arsed to know WHY superhero comics work for people, his satire boils down to 

He can’t fathom a world where super beings would want to HELP people and that power wouldn't corrupt pretty much all of them with maybe 7 or 8 exceptions. And as we’ll see when you paint all of one set of characters with teh same douchey brush, it limits what you can do parody or satire wise.

So to show why this dose’nt work it’s best I dive into a bit of the work itself and really crawl around in the foundation, find the weak spots and smash this bastard to hell. 

Now you may be asking “Why are you starting with volume 4?” The answer is twofold. The first is Kev, one of my patrons and the guy who commissions my paid for work most of the time, wanted me to cover this as i’m a MASSIVE x-men fan and reference them all the time in my reviews, and i’d also mentioned I didn’t really like what little I had read of the boys comic when he commissioned this, two and a half issues for the record. My response was graceful and greatful:

I took the job anyway. Let’s face it if I was going to cover any ONE arc of the boys, it’d be this one, I was curious if the book was REALLY as bad as I remembered, and i’d probably be covering it someday anyway so why not get paid for it. I did do my homework though: I read all 3 volumes before this and the trade with the ongoing issues after this detailing both the boys fight with Payback (Their terrible avengers parody) and their origins. Like I said if your going to deconstruct something you gotta know it in and out. So join me under the cut as, to borrow a phrase from this very comic “Give this bastard a spanking” won’t you?

Content Warning: This review contains mentions of Rape, Pedophilia, and other forms of sexual assault as it’s part of the material being reviewed. If this is a pscyholgical trigger for you you might want to sit this one out for your own mental health and i will totally understand. thank you.

A Quick and Dirty Summary of The Boys to Get You Up To Speed:

The Boys takes place in a world where Superheroes are entirely made and controlled by Voight American. Voight is a defense contractor who were great at making sales but craptastic at making actual weapons until they stumbled upon Compound V, an expensive to produce blue good that can give people superpowers. Voight made sure to get a monopoly on it, and thus found a product they could sel lin the supes: packaging assorted douchebags with colorful origin stories and making hand over fist from their comics in merch. In exchange said supes live like the douchiest of celebrties given whatever they want and as long as they tow the company line and do what Voight said, Voight will gladly bribe whoever it takes to keep their reps clean. 

So to keep them in check General Greg Mallory formed The Boys, a black ops team of trench coated badasses who keep an eye on the supes and backed by CIA Director Susan Raynor. On most days they simply watch them via survillence and get blackmail material or do investigative work.  But if something really bad is up then they inject some compound v themselves for those who need it and go kick the shit out of them. 

Mallory eventually left after a tragic incident, the team shut down and the book opens as the team reassembles and we meet said boys:

Billy Butcher: In Garth Ennis head a total badass who takes no shit from anyone, takes the piss out of everyone and really sticks it to those supes after the tragic rape and death of his wife. In reality he’s an obnxoious 8th grade bully in the body of a grown ass man who throws around swears, homophibic slurs and other obnoxious language like candy. And to prove to those who haven’t suffered through him i’m not lying here’s a scene where he’s telling Hugie the secrets of various super heroes while in a comic shop, censored because I don’t put hate speech on my blog. 

Yes this really happened. I made no alterations other than the black bars for the deorgotory slang for gay men and lesbians. In one sentence he proves to be homephobic, transphobic and racist, putting being gay or trans, or having sex with white women when black, on the same level as date rape, being in the Klan and child molestation. And choking on Cum I guess. 

Butcher looks, acts and sounds like an edgelord 14 year old’s verison of the punisher, yet was somehow created by someone who was 36 at the time. He’s always like this, putting on this too cool for school attitude and being a swaggering dickhead. And Garth hasn’t regretted his characterization or anything: in another recent interview he called Butcher his favorite character and it shows. Butcher is Garth’s ego stroking big dicke swinging self insert, again a 14 year old’s edgelord fanfic punisher self insert character, but who somehow got 64 issues of his own comic. 

Mother’s Milk: My faviorite of the group and easily the most complex and intresting. The son of two workers at a voight plant who got compound v through his brother’s breast milk and thus has superpowers thanks ot said milk. And yes.. he still needs it today, and we’ll leave it at that because this entire idea is deeply stupid and gross. 

His dad fought Voight in court and after years of his time and sanity won.. but Voight shrugged it off. Martin, while in the marines was recurited by Butcher and became his right hand, his concisence and best friend and is both the nicest of the boys outside of Hugie, and the most intresting. Naturally it took till THIS arc for him to actually get a storyline to himself and until the next arc to get his origin story. 

Wee Hughie: Our deutratgonist and the newest member of the boys, a scottish boy modelded after Simon Peg, who not concidentally plays Hugie’s Dad in the Amazon Prime series. His girlfriend was tragically mowed down by A-Train, one of the seven, earth’s mightest douchebags. Butcher gave him a purpose and a job in the states.. and also hired Huguies land lord to jack off under Hugie’s door because Butcher dosen’t like where Hughie lives. 

Hugie is the most likeable of the group, a moral soul in a very fucked up world who tries to do his best and who Butcher clearly is trying to make into a killing machine and treats like garbage half the time. 

Frenchie and the Female: A double act, Frenchie is a wackado from well france whose origin story involves a baguette joust.. I would much rather be reviewing his origin story. The Female is an asian woman who as a baby was doused in compound v and kept basicaly as an animal till she escaped and the boys rescued her. While Butcher, being the dick he is, wanted to put her down, Frenchie insisted on treating her like a human being, teaching her to read and right and helping her with her blood lust, as they’d only really cared about teaching the child to be a weapon. The two sate their bloodlust by doing various random stuff to stave off boredome and are certified badasses. And as you can tell anyone BUT butcher should be the lead here but Garth Ennis wanted to write himself into the lead so here we are. 

Terror: Butcher’s bulldog whose a good boy.. who Butcher also likes to tell FUCK IT having trained him to hump things including a much smaller dog on command because again, 8th grade schoolyard bully. 

We have one last main character whose not a boy: Starlight, a naive 20 something supe named Annie and one of the only decent ones in the entire comic.  Starlight is the newest member of the seven, basically the justice league but dickheads, and on her first day all the male members force her to suck her dick lest she not get the job. This is both played for mild douchey laughs and the narrative tries to frame it as some price she paid for it she regrets and not you know her being coereced into a sex act by assholes. Her role in the story is to get dicked around and to fall in love with Hugie, the two having a loving relationship sexually and otherwise and being the only cute thing in a book that’s concentrated deep hurting. 

So far the boys have fought a bunch of teen douchebags, a russian woman with a habit for using a giant didlo because HEHEHEHEHE DILDOS, an iron man expy whose inablity to stop randomly humping objects is treated not as a serious issue he has to overcome but played for dark laughs, and his douchebag n nightwing equilvent. So so far.. you hvaen’t missed much and your better off that way. So now your ready let’s finally talk about We Gotta Go Now, the fourth Arc and Trade from the Boys. 

Issue 23:

We open at at  Vought Warehouse where two employees are talking over some equipment their stockpiling.. equipment that includes depeleted uranium and flamethrowers. 

Clearly Vought is getting ready to go after something big and the fact they need THAT Much fire power spells out it’s a supe. 

We then cut to Hughie in bed with Annie, enjoying the afterglow before that whole “someone jizzing under his door” “Running gag” comes up. I’m still not wholly convinced Garth Ennis isn’t just two 12 year olds in a trench coat. 

Cut to a diner where Butcher is having lunch with Raynor who has a new mission for him: The G-Men. The G-Men are unsuprisingly this unvierses x-men, having tons of spinoff teams, and unlike the x-men fighting in public a lot because the boys universe dose’nt HAVE supervillians. Which makes ABSOLUTELY no sense to me: if your going to sell these guys to the public they need flashy villians to fight. It’d make more sense if Voight was secretly juicing up test subjects to throw them at the seven and other teams or giving guys weak gear to get slaughterd to make thei rbottom line look better and with the x-men it’s especially galling given their supposed to fight for those who fear and hate them.. and half the time it’s against evil mutants. With no foes.. what the hell are the x-men against here exactly? General perscution? For being what a lot of other people are? 

We’re not even that many pages in, and already the surface level satire rears it’s ugly head: instead of getting into the mutant metaphor, i.e. how most mutants are white and straight but stand in for black and gay people, and how messy it is and using THAT for satire he just goes with “Their popular therefore they blow goats”. And given what comic we’re in i’m sure Garth means that LITERALLY. 

So back to the plot: Raynor’s reason for being suspicious is recently Silver Kincaid, The G-Men’s answer to Jean Grey only with silver hair and gravity powers, comitted suicide, standing creepily outside a small town, asking for her “uncle paul” then collapsing in a heap of gore. Naturally Voight got to the body before Raynor’s people could. Since much like Jean, Silver was an OG member of her team and very high up, something big had to have happened to tip this and she wants answers. Butcher.. wants to fuck her in the bathroom. Yeah a ““RUNNING GAG”” is that every time the two meet they have loud rough hate sex, usually with anal that Butcher usually talks her into. Because Garth Ennis takes “Fuck the goverment” literally I suppose. 

So back at the Boys HQ in the Manhattan Flatiron Building, Butcher runs down what info they have from The Legend, aka the series Stan Lee stand in, a comic book writer who helped voight start making comics and being a well.. legend, he still has deep connections in the industry, working as the Boys informant since naturally working with the supes so closesly makes him hate them as much as Butcher does. 

So after getting a corkboard full of really bad names, more on those later, Butcher has Hugie break it down since, convenitely, Hugie’s been studying the G-Men lately. 

The G-Men much like the X-Men are outcasts, in this case young supe orphans saved from a cruel world by John Goodkin, the team’s founder and leader. Their cover is they fight a world that hates and fears them like the x-men. In practice since there’s no anti-supe prejudice in this world their wild and crazy rich kids and adults like every other damn supe. The only real diffrences are how marketable they are, their Voight’s biggest seller, and how many there are: 7 teams with over 80 indviduals.  

Again there ARE ways to make fun of the x-men: Have them mostly be cis white guys who treat the gay, black and female members of the team like commodites to be propped up to show their “woke”. Have them fight a brotherhood expy like I said that voight pays for to make them look deeper. Have voight stage anti-supe attackes on them to sell the persuction complex.

 There’s way more to make fun of then than “Gee they have a LOT of teams”. Especailly when ther’es a REASON for “gee they have a lot of teams”: There are a LOT of mutant characters and, especially in the current Krakoan era, a lot of directions to go with said mutants. We’ve had detectives, corporate sponsored heroes, black ops, teen teams, the old teen teens mentoring the new, pirates, the suicide squad but with mutants, a space team and Nightcrawler founding a religion with a ragtag bunch of misfits. And a lot of those are fresh NEW ideas that just happened in the last two years or so. There’s reason for all these books and while it’s fine to poke some fun at them, he’s not making fun of it being done for profit, as we learn Voight is against the expansion, he’s just saying “HEHEHE THEY HAVE A LOT OF TEAMS THEY MUST BE SELL OUTS”. 

So the plan is simple: the orginally Goodkin mansion burned down last year, so the Boys Bugs, which they only had a few of as for some reason Butcher dosen’t consider them worth the time of day despite you know, constantly expanding and getting into more shite being a danger to all, burned with them. The good news is G-Wiz, the teen team (which is packed with 20 somethings, which is an actual good dig at how long the x-men keep teen members as “teens” despite clearly being older by basic logic, if an accidental one given that wasn’t as big an issue yet), lives right down the road from the new place, goes back and forth all the time and isn’t very observant... so our heroes COULD sneak in an infiltrator..i.e. Hughie. 

So after a cut to the seven where they get a prank call that will be explained shortly we cut back to the boys and end with Hughie dressed up lke a supe with Butcher naturally laughing like the jackass he is. 

Before we go on you may be wondering: “Wait won’t Hugie be discovered since he dosen’t have powers?”, especially if you watcfhed the show where the boys, minus the female, indeed don’t. In the comics though? Yeah outside of the aformentioned diffrence with MM, the rest of the boys all shoot up with compound v to 

So yeah in a book decrying superheroes.. the main characters are a bunch of superepowered beings playing black ops judge jury and executioner who are only sympathetic because their facing WAY worse cardboard cutouts, and even then not by much. Clearly Ennis only has a problem with superheroes who have a “pretense” of being good people but flawed anti heroes who murder reguarly are a-ok. Then again his biggest mainstream book and faviorite hero is the punisher, so it shoudln’t be that suprising that when given the chance his version of the punisher “Is like him but he can kick them in the balls and not just shoot them off”. And yes that’s something punisher actually did, but i’m saving that for later. 

Issue 24:

So we open the issue and the G-Whiz boys are all singing Louie Louie.  In 2008

Come on Garth everyone knows all the teens were still groving to this...

2 years later and still straight fire. Anyway, we then cut to Mother’s Milk whose investgating the scene of Silver’s Suicide, running into the cop who found her who runs his creditinals since you know, Voight faked some earlier that week, gotta be careful. 

So the G-Frat Bros show Hughie around tellin ghim he dosen’t have to use codenames. We also meet Blowchowski, whose a parody of Blutarski from animal house. In that he’s literally just Bluto from animal house with no real change other than wearing a panty on his head.  I think my thoughts on this can be best summed up in gif form. 

So being immature twits, the guy showing Hugie around shows him to the porn room they have and asks if he wants to jerk off. 

At the Legend’s Comic Book Store Basment Lair, I may hate this comic but I still love a job that lets me say shit like this on a regular basis, Butcher visits and we get some exposition on how the fuck he got in there: The Legend faked the necessary papers for Voght, which will be given to Goodkin who will pass it off to a G-Man who can’t be arsed to actually look into it, thus giving them time before they contact Voght and realize they didn’t actually send Hughie.  Butcher also came down because frankly he dosen’t trust Raynor: She visited in person and while he knows she WANTS him to think she just wanted to fuck him, he shockingly didn’t fall for it and instead thinks there’s something she’s not telling him. 

Back in the small town, MM finds out from the pop at a local mom and pop store that the place used to be a lot of things.. including an ice cream parlor at one ponit... and said store was exactly where Silver was starring. When asking the sheirff if she came from here he admits there’s never been an orphanage, but she COULD’VE come from here he just has to check records... there will be a lot but as MM says “I”m one patient motherfucka”

Less awesome is back at G-Delta Chi, where unsuprisingly it turns out the strangest frat of all... is the one sending homophobic immature prank calls to the Seven, the latest being just Blowchowski farting into a phone. 

We do get a genuinely funny moment though right after as X-Frator ask Hughie to do a call.. just as annie answers. 

We get a nice interlude with Frenchie and The Female, with Hughie letting Frenchie know he’s heading up to the big house while Frenchie let’s the Female know he knows she’s been killing mobsters to relieve her bloodlust, and while a mite condesending about it isn’t going to let butcher know as he knows better than to tell that shithead anything. 

The issue ends with the frant bros frat bros coming Goodkind’s way and with the G-Men greeting them at the door. 

Okay while the designs are fairly generic, I will give artist Darrick Robertson full credit for accurately parodying how goofy the x-men’s posing can get, having them all do this.. to answer the damn door. When it came to the 90′s and even the claremont era, awkard posing was just one of the x-men’s mutations and I’ts fair enough to take the piss out of that. 

Also “It’s not gonna be an orgy”. Of course it’s not. .that’s the mini series after this. Not even kidding. One of Garths’ actual clever ideas honestly: Having the annual crossovers really be a smokescreen for the supes to have a big orgy.  Honestly more intresting than most crossover events i’ll give him that.  I mean maybe we woudln’t need an orgy but a big party with all the super heroes sounds way better than “Venoms generic goth vampire dad is evil and stuff”

Issue 25:  We open with two Voght execs talking shop, the current head of Vought American who I’m not sure has a name and James Stillwell, who works directly with the Seven and showed up in a previous arc peddling compound V to the russian mob, which resulted in a didlo based plane explosion, a giant dicked russian beating some people in the face, and butcher head exploding a wherehouse full of supes. Why?

So it’s then Hughie meets Groundhawk, the G-Men’s version of Wolverine. Behold the full and vast complexity of his character:

Yeahhhh there’s a lot to unpack here. So starting off the outfit isn’t remotely similar to wolverin’es aside from the mask which is some weird combination of Wolverine’s and Hawkman’s. What do Marvel’s Wolverine and DC’s Hawkman have in common besides wearing masks, kciking ass and being kind of grumbly and standoffish?

Like it’s barely any comparison. Secondly instead of claws he has hammers for hands. 

This confuses me to NO end. Did.. did he really have NOTHING he could do with the finger claws? People have been making fun of those for YEARS. Shiskabobs, having them be forks, even x-men the animated series, an actual x-men product had this

When an ACTUAL X-Men Product has wolverine carving up some turkey casually and all you can think is stop hammer time, maybe your just not cut out for comedy Garth. And given his other works since have been dead serious, he clearly agrees. 

Then there’s the name: Groundhawk. Besides the STILL baffling decision to merge Wolverine and Hawkman, which is somehow NOT the most disturbing fusion that’s happened to Carter..

There are SO many animals to go with: Mongoose, Racoon, Possum, Landshark, Badger, Badger Badger, Mushroom MUSHROOOM, Snake (A snake), swordfish, the alps, Atari Lynx, Atari Jaguar, Kitty Boo Boo Fuck. All of these would’ve been better than “Groundhawk, including just calling him groundhog! Wolverine’s name is not that complicated, making fun of him by giving him a sillier animal is the EASEIST joke you could make and one of the most satisfying. GAH. 

Finally there’s the simple fact that Ennis has gone FAR harder on wolverine before. As research I read some of Ennis other work to get a good gage, and to specifcally gage how much he apparently hated wolverine, as unlike Captain America (And yes he REALLY hates Captain America for “making a mockery of the troops”... despite being created by two former serviceman, being loved by serviceman then and now and you having never served a day in your life, Garth), I couldn’t find a record. So I read issues 16 and 17 of his second punisher series, the one before MAX, and the confederacy of dunces arc that closed out said series by having superheroes try and fail to stop frank. And well yeah not only does he REALLY hate Logan.. but when writing the ACTUAL character his writing was so bafflingly insane and off character, so utterly trying to tear said character down, that mere words cannot describe it.. so instead here’s a montage of panels. Feel free to play this certain song used by LInkara that popped into my head when reading these moments for mood. Or don’t. Either wayyy...

As you can see when Ennis writes the ACTUAL canon wolverine with these stories so far not rectconned out, he writes him as a blithering catcphrase spewing idiot who can’t do anything, who Garth’s boy Punisher gets to humiliate again and again, including SHOOTING HIM IN THE BALLS because he’d “get in the way”. Yes the nigh unstoppable former samurai, secret agent, and all around badass who can heal and has unbrekable claws is going ot get in the way of the unhinged man whose powers are “military guy who owns a LOT of guns”. 

While Garth did go out of his way to actually give Wolverine’s KNockoff a character the character assaination parade he had with the ACTUAL wolverine just makes it come off as laughably tame. You HAD FRANK CASTLE SHOOT THE REAL WOLVERINE IN THE NUTS. You can’t top that in terms of  insutling the character, to the point he’d make sure to have Butcher actually do that to Soldier Boy, take a wild guess who he’s refrencing, next arc. 

So Hugie gives Goodkin his papers, who predictably passes them off to Critter. Critter is their best analogue except instead of being erudite he’s just really harry and REALLY homophobic, reguarly taking shots at fellow teammate The Divine, the angel analogue whose gay. Which baffles me since the X-Men actually HAD a gay member by the time this comic came out, Northstar, and instead he picked Warren because, if I had to guess , “Well he looks the most like a homosexual so...” I also find it ironic given one of the OG5 would be retconned as closeted evenutally with Iceman. And i’ts not lead time either this came out in 2008 SIX YEARS after Northstar joined the team. It just shows that Garth’s research didn’t go beyond flipping through a few issues of xmen while at marvel and going “Well gee they probably blow goats”

So the G-Mutants decide to go grab a beer. Something I want to bring up before we get to their actual conversation: NONE of these guys resemble actual x-men characters. The only MAYBE one is Buzzcut, the leader who looks like Cannonball, but again it feels like Garth read a handful of x-men and related comics or picked a few characters off Wikipedia and was done with it. 

So we find out that the older G-Men don’t like the G-Neration X all that much, shocker and as many have worry about G-Coast and G-Style showing up to the funeral. Oh boy... these guys. Okay so instead of modeling a team after x-factor or bringing in the hinted at g-brits, aka excalibur or doing anything else... two of the teams are G-Coast and G-Style, based on the east coast west coast rap fued and the deaths of two-pac and biggy. Yes really. Not only is this mildly stupid and nonsenical it gets DOWNRIGHT RACIST soon enough. .but we’ll get to that. Five-Oh comes in and he’s the cyclops parody... and he’s a cop for some reason. Because Scott Summers is kind of straight edge and has a visor?  He also is mad about Silver because welll i’ll let him tell it...

“Hehehe GET IT BECAUSE JEAN DOSEN’T SLEEP WITH CYCLOPS AND WANTS WOLVERINE GET IT GET IT GET IT” My god if your going to spend 8 fucking issues on one team, you THINK you’d have more than the most surface level fratbro bullshit to make fun of them. God damn. Also just to pedantically twist the knife, Scott and Jean famously had this scene during the dark phoenix saga, aka one of the x-men’s biggest stories. 

There’s also the fact New X-Men had a whole storyline about the fact Scott was th eone not wanting sex so.. yeah is this petty. A little? Do I want to blast Garth for not doing ANY research and pandering to peopple who don’t actually like superheroes instead of doing his damn job and doing any actual research, absolutley. 

So we get another cut back to Mother’s Mlik whose found no Silver Kincaid, but figured it was a long shot.. he’s really looking for Uncle Paul. He and the cop shoot the shit with Marvin explaning why he got into his line of work, the cop thinks he’s cia... which given their they contract the boys out..

So back with Hughie he’s taking a piss when he runs into Nubia their Storm fill in, whose been talked about before in the story and is currently wondering around like a zombie saying Killlll meeee which naturally freaks Hugie out.  This requires a bit of boys lore to explain: In this world comic ressurections do happen.. but they don’t last long and as you can tell are NOT pretty. The subject comes back braindead, as the body heals but the brain can’t, incoherent and while retaining SOME semblance of their old life and goals, it’s not enough to make them functional> This was demonstrated when Blarney Cock, yes BLARNEY COCK, was killed by Hugie in the first arc only to return with the goal of shoving his hamster back up his ass. 

My thoughts exactly. This brings up an issue with the boys comic in general: it REALLY dosen’t treat women well. It’s female characters are a sterotypical silent asian murder machine, an innocent who while not a bad character gets fucked with constantly, a wonder woman expy who spends most  of her time drunk or fucking and is STILL one of the more actually intresting supes, a Laura Kenney Expy whose on the teen titans for some reason and cuts herself because ‘THAT’S EDGY RIGHTTTT”,  and now, a Jean Grey expy who dies as a plot device and a storm expy whose a suffering zombie. Every supe team has maybe one woman at the lest, two at most when most super teams generally have at LEAST two , usually three. While me are usually the wost with debachary it dosen’t mean women can’ tbe awful or that isn’t an agnle he coudl’ve explored , but since that’d require effort beyond “their kind of a dick and MIGHT have some unique gimmick like pulling a Cousin Walter”, of course he didn’t. 

So Goodkin comes in and has.. Europo take her away. Europo.. EUROPO. 

Like with Wolverine and Cyclops THAT’S the best nightcrawler parody name you had. Europo. It sounds like a silver age superman one off character. 

BEHOLD THE GLORY OF .. EUROPO, EUROPES SUPER MAN! CAN HE SUPLEX A GIANT WHALE BEFORE IT KILLS LOIS?

When questioned WHY keep her in this state of living death< Goodkin explains “because she’s my child, their all my children”

So with that we get an interlude with Monkey. Monkey is Raynor’s subordinate and the boy’s liason. He’s called that for two reasons: because he once got fucked in the ears by two mutant monkeys, I wish I was kidding, and because he’s Butcher’s personal butt monkey, who he tortures and terrroizes on a seemingly daily basis, caling him during his off hours time and in their first scene on panel, pulling the poor guy out of his office to torment him. 

Now granted Monkey isn’t exactly a LIKEABLE guy, he has a fetish for paraplegic women which is later revealed to be because he assumes their helpless.. when he tries raping one only to learn that , no the fuck they aren’t and get his ass kicked as he deserves, and the guy is frequently seen with his hand shoved down his pants. But it’s STILL FUCKING QUESTIONALE to have a white man basically enslave a man.. who as I neglected to mention, is POC.

How could DC, who published this book before it’s current and forever punisher Dynamite, and then Dynamite themselves look at this and go “This is okay”. what the actual fuck?

So a handicapped prostitue comes to his door and he dose’nt question this at all, while Hugie prepares for bed and instead accidently walks into a circle jerk to very vanilla porn from the other guys. Hugie’s response to this is my own

So the issue ends with the prostitute getting frustrated an dleaving, telling MOnkey’s “Friend he can hav ea refund” also she’s not really paraplegic. Eh.  Monkey puts two and two together and when entering his apartment finds his hard drive gone and we end on Butcher sauntering down the road singing with a bag at his side clearly containing said hard drive. 

Issue 26:

Our last issue for this part, I decided to split it into two as this one is way too long to do as just one and I overestimated how much I could summarize, begins with Hugie leaving the frat for the day. He tries to talk Butcher into getting to stay longer as Hugie’s realized something: these are’nt BAD guys. Immature as shit sure, but they’ve been fed into Goodkind’s machine for so long Hugie figures he can stop them before they become G-Men and turn into an even worse problem. Butcher in one of his far more humanizing moments, tells Hugie to follow his nose and keep going as he did good on the Swingwing case. He also tells him no supe is good because of course he does. 

So while Hugie is plesantly suprised by Annie and Butcher orders his dog to rape a cat for his own amusment. 

We cut to the G-Men... and get an ACTUALLY funny and amusing bit of satire. I know after Groundhawk and europo i’m stumped Ennis actually knows anything about X-Men other than Wolverine’s nuts are vunerable, but we get some actual on point parody, making fun of Charles Xavier’s penchant for big sweeping speeches... which has never remotely died and in the hickman era only balloned awesomely. 

I... really can’t stop laughing at this. It’s genuinely funny, applying Charles grand declarations of mutantkind.. to fucking brunch. This is what I wish this series had more of. 

Critter DOES end up showing some intelligence during the brunch, and once again his homophobia towards Divine and Flamer.... yes FLAMER. 

But Critter despite being an ass does have a point.. not about the homphobia, he can fuck himself with pink glitter incrusted rake for that, I mean about the expansion: the more teams they have, the worse security gets, as evidenced by the fact the boys were able to sneak in a member called bagpipe with no real danger. Goodkind understands.. but says he just can’t help hi mself, another creepy hint for the future. 

So after a really cute and sweet scene with Annie and Hugie who just had sex outside and are just.. precious together, we get back to butcher.. who is UTTERLY HORRIFIED AND SUPRISED by what he finds on the hard drive. Given this is Monkey’s hard drive, that could be a lot of things but it’s clearly G-Men related. 

Mother’s Milk meanwhile finds not Paul.. but Pauls’ brother, but wants to know why THE Paul shot himself and after some reistance is let in. 

Back at Goodkin Manor, Divine proves he’s not much better than Critter by throwing around a bunch of stertoypes and othe rbullshit as G-Coast and G-Style are arriving soon, and the whole team joins in. 

So with that one of the two teams arrives, and we cut to Butcher who says he’s going to have to kill a c-word over what he’s found. 

That does it for part 1. Tune in next time to find out just what goodkin is hiding, if Hugie can save G-Whiz, and just how horribly racist g-coast and g-style are. If you enjoyed this review please consider joining my patreon whic hhas exclusive reviews and even for just 1 buck a month you get a FREE REVIEW ON SIGNUP. So if you have any x-men you want me to cover or any other boy syou want me to dig into, please consider it and i’ll see you at the next part. 

Update: Now i’ts finished you can find part two RIGHT HERE