The Boys, Volume 1: The Name of the Game by Garth Ennis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you weren't familiar with this comic book, you've probably at least seen promos for the streaming series adaptation available on Amazon Prime Video. After watched season one, and as season two is currently in release, I decided to give the source material a read. As with "Preacher," this presents its own challenges in keeping the comic book and series straight. This is because (as with "Preacher") there is a common cast of major characters, but significant differences in the story and details. That said, the book and series both open in a similar way with Hughie being drawn into the action by a tragic event involving a superhero (A-Train, this team's version of the DC character, Flash) and Hughie's girlfriend.
If the description of A-Train as - essentially - the same as the Flash makes the book sound derivative, it is intentionally so. In a nutshell, "The Boys" takes the Justice League and gives the characters nasty personality traits, ranging from pettiness to madness, and then centers the story not on the superheroes but on a group that works to check those "heroes'" power from the shadows (i.e. the titular "Boys.") So, A-Train is fast like the Flash, but he lacks Barry Allen's intellect and soft-spoken mannerism, and so - conversely - A-Train is a high school jock dialed up to his most vain and brash form. The other members similarly have unappealing personality traits, and even full-blown dark sides. This divergence between is most intensely seen in Homelander (the Superman of this series, but without the Man of Steel's perfect moral compass and stoic Midwestern calm,) but even Noir (the Batman of the group) is intended to make Bruce Wayne seem like a well-adapted beacon of light by comparison.
The six issues contained in volume one both tell the tale of Hughie's reluctant entrance into "The Boys," and follows him through his first mission as the newly reassembled Boys take on "Teenage Kix." (A youth superhero group which is to "The Seven" as the Teen Titans are to the Justice League.) Having Hughie in the role of the group's "everyman" would be an odd choice in real life because it puts a rank amateur on a team of professionals who are already outgunned. From a narrative point of view, however, the appeal is clear. It creates emotional stakes within a group that is otherwise stone-cold killers (if with some positive personality traits to subvert expectations.) Hughie's naivete and raw fear is particularly necessary in the book because the stakes are somewhat lessened by the fact that the Boys are not as severely outmatched as they are in the series (in the series "The Female" is the only superpowered member of the "Boys.") The decision to recruit Hughie is explained both by the desperation of the team's leader, Butcher, and his desire to include someone who is personally driven. There are not a lot of people willing to sign on to take on a two-faced lunatic with the powers of Superman (i.e. Homelander,) and Hughie is uniquely motivated by the tragedy of his girlfriend's death to go after superheroes who've been corporately levered above the law.
The comic is a bit more sexually graphic than the series, though in some ways the series is more viscerally horrifying. (As I mentioned, in the series the Boys - excepting one - are in no way capable of going toe-to-toe with the enemy.)
The art is well drawn and colored and I didn't have any problems following the happenings conveyed graphically.
I enjoyed this comic as I have with other Garth Ennis works. At least this volume was a bit more lighthearted and not as visceral as the series, but I don't count that as a good or bad thing. Just different and just appealing to different states of mind. The comic is funny in places and action-packed in others. If you are interested in the concept of neurotic to psychotic superheroes and what it would take to keep them under control, it's worth giving this book a read.
View all my reviews
