Broken Frontier

Zombie-like resurrected superheroes, love, life and hamsters all preoccupy Hughie this issue.

Garth Ennis has made this title a genuine hit for Dynamite Entertainment. With viciously satirical stories, The Boys has made its mark and changed the comic book landscape… and Ennis is not done yet.

Hughie continues on his lone quest, collecting data on the resurrected hero Blarney Cock. The hero Hughie himself killed the first time and now has been charged with killing the second time by the Legend. Blarney Cock seems to have gone missing which worries Hughie but not enough to interrupt his growing romance with Annie January. Annie is ready to take their relationship to the next level but it is all still so fragile. Can Hughie hold onto his good thing even when he faces something horrible? Meanwhile, we learn a little bit more about the ghosts who haunt Mother’s Milk…

After over a year and a half of publication The Boys finally takes a little break from the almost unrelenting mean spiritedness. Ennis has been pouring out satire here by the bucketful but it has been a very dark version of satire. Here he finally lets up a little and begins treating subjects like hope and love with a little respect – as something other than punching bags. Also, for the first time, some of the rest of the supporting cast in this title show signs of becoming real characters rather than cardboard cut-outs. This is not to say, however, that Ennis goes completely without injecting his sharp and often sophomoric humor into the story.

Artist Darick Robertson continues with his realistic art style which has been polished and honed after all of this time on the series. The fact that he has gone seventeen issues without a fill-in or a really late issue is something impressive in the current comic book atmosphere. As is the fact that his highly detailed art never looks or seems rushed and all of his figures are consistent from panel to panel, page to page, and even issue to issue.

With "Good for the Soul," it looks like The Boys may be finally showing a little sophistication. Of course, with one more issue to go in this story arc readers may still have the rug jerked out from under them but I hold out cautious hope that Ennis has learned to balance the bluntness of a baseball bat with the precision slices of a scalpel.