Wondering About Amazon Prime's The Boys

I've been seeing ads for Amazon's new show The Boys, based on the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic from Dynamite Studios (and previously Wildstorm, which I just learned about reading the Wikipedia page a moment ago). It looks fairly well done, but I'm not totally sure how I feel about it, especially given this review on the AV Club, which I also read just a few minutes ago.

I guess the issue I have is the source material - Garth Ennis has long reveled in nihilism, and while it was entertaining when I was reading Preacher or Hitman, I wonder if it's not gotten out of hand, even for him?

He's one of that cohort of British comics writers who came up in the 80s and 90s on stuff like 2000AD, and then made their way to the US via Vertigo, and from there ended up in superhero comics. But whereas someone like Grant Morrison loves superhero comics and has continued working in the genre, Ennis went on a similar route to Warren Ellis and turned his back on superheroes as soon as he could.

I don't entirely blame him, since I think that most superhero books are basically the same now as they were 20-30 years ago, if a little more gross and intense. But what I've seen of his work since Preacher has lacked heart, for lack of a better term.

It might have been the switch to Marvel in the early 2000s that precipitated it. Preacher was graphic, extreme and sometimes all you could do was laugh in horror (cf. the Meat Woman), but you could see he held affection for characters like Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy, or even Arseface. It was so thematically rich that it actually got me into Western movies, especially John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Even now I don't think I can name a more perfect comics series, other than Ennis's run on Hellblazer or Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

And it seemed like he was onto something similar with War Stories, the one-shots he did for Vertigo after Preacher, about wars (mainly World War 2, one of his favorite themes). But then he went for Marvel's MAX line, and I think his worst instincts got the better of him. Mainly in the final issue of his Fury mini-series, where Nick Fury (pre Samuel L Jackson) strangles the main villain with his own intestines. Apparently George Clooney had been attached to play Fury, but was put off by that book.

From there Ennis went on to the Punisher, first under Marvel Knights and then MAX. His first storyline was fun, in a back-to-basics way, but the impression I get of some of the MAX issues is that he was just there to rack up as much of a body count as possible. This is notwithstanding my pleasure at seeing his fingerprints all over Punisher War Zone, of course, but I can't deny that those stories aren't really his absolute best.

Another one that I dip into from time to time is Crossed, which he did for Avatar. Crossed is basically just gross and disturbing, a version of zombies where instead of the mindless walking dead, the zombies are maniacal rapists and murderers acting out their civilized selves' worst impulses. There's room for thematically rich stuff there, which is why I have a look every once in a while, but for the most part it's unrelentingly brutal.

The Boys is kind of in this vein, from what I've seen. The first image of the series, essentially, is the crushed, armless corpse of the main character's girlfriend, a hapless victim of collateral damage during a superhero fight. I do think the story plays well with one of Ennis's best-loved themes, which is the ease with which the people in charge of society get subverted into immorality, but I guess my experience has been that he's more concerned with grossing out the reader than giving us characters to care about.

Maybe that's unfair - Wee Hughie is a pretty good character, but somehow I've never connected enough with the book to buy the trade paperbacks, even having skipped ahead a few collections to the end, where things go pretty crazy.

It might just be that, overall, I'm tired with all the relentless negativity and nihilism of media at the moment. I've talked about it on Star Trek Discovery (though my complaint there is more the writing than the tone), and it's present in a number of other shows and comics at the moment. The problem is that nihilism is also present in the real world, much more so than in 2006 when Ennis and Robertson started The Boys, and it gets a little tiring to see that kind of thing even in the places I go to escape from the real world.

Now, I should point out one other, slightly contradictory thing, which is that I'm pleased for him and Darick Robertson that they've had the show optioned, and are getting paid well for it (I presume). I think he's one of those writers whose work deserves more recognition - I just wish it was for some of his better work. I know Preacher's on AMC, but I also don't get the sense it's taken off the way other AMC shows have... and that's a real shame.

At Last

Just felt like an appropriate thing to post, given how stuff at home is going:

Thoughts on the Women's World Cup

So another Women's World Cup ends with the US taking the trophy home. With my limited knowledge of the women's game, I guess I'm not surprised, since all I really knew about women's football before this tournament started was the 1999 tournament, with the now-iconic team that won their second trophy on penalties and, properly, for the first time, put soccer front and center here in the US in ways that the men's team hasn't been able to.

It may sound bad but I wasn't really planning on paying much attention when it all started last month. It was a little more top of mind for me than it might have been if I didn't religiously read the Guardian's football coverage every day, and their Football Weekly podcast has done a decent job in the regular season of mentioning the doings in women's football. I'd been sort of looking forward to a break, but then it all started and I found myself swept along in the excitement.

I remember listening to the Football Weekly that went out the day before it started, and getting a sense of excitement from the correspondents, and I think that's what made me want to keep up. But the thing that really got my attention was seeing Italy unexpectedly beat Australia.

As an Italy fan, I think it's fair to call myself "long-suffering". I still have fond memories of Italy's 2006 triumph (in the men's tournament), but since then the World Cup has been one disaster after another, and the European Championships have been only a bit better. To be honest I didn't even know the women hadn't qualified for the last couple of tournaments, so seeing this unfancied team come out of the blocks was impressive. Even more impressive was the 5-0 against Jamaica that essentially guaranteed progression to the round of 16. And if Italy went out in the quarterfinal to eventual finalists the Netherlands, well, it was at least a good run, which was needed after so many years of the men doing so badly.

The other thing I enjoyed about the tournament was the mirror-universe quality to it all. Some teams that are nowhere in the men's game qualified for this tournament (like Thailand), or were even considered strong contenders (like Canada). Even China and Japan got to the knockout rounds, which is a big feat for Asian teams on the men's side.

Probably the biggest example of this quality, though, is the position of the US. By winning today the US takes home its fourth trophy, making it the most successful women's team on this stage, whereas the men didn't qualify for Russia 2018 either. I was struck by the narrative surrounding their progress as the team everybody loved to hate, especially given how they kicked off their tournament with that 13-0 demolition of Thailand.

But I also got into the narratives around Megan Rapinoe and her ongoing spat with both Donald Trump and with the US Soccer Federation, as well as how the women's team overall has taken the federation to court to achieve parity with the men in terms of pay. Given their success internationally, it's hard to argue, especially when you read the analysis of how little they earn compared to the men.

All of a sudden, not only could I not avoid profiles of Rapinoe or Everybody's Favorite, Alex Morgan, but I couldn't get enough of them myself, especially given how outspoken Morgan is on this pay gap question. The profiles on her talk about how marketable she is (which I take as a euphemism for "attractive"), so it's more notable how willing she is to speak bluntly about pay, her goal celebrations or even backing up Rapinoe on not visiting the White House.

I also can't help contrasting Morgan with Neymar Jr. on the subject of diving and drawing fouls. Both are key players who score a lot of goals and therefore get the stuffing knocked out of them regularly. And if Morgan has started to incorporate diving into her own repertoire, it's still a far cry from the theatrics that Neymar engages in when he gets fouled - to the point that he's probably damaged his own reputation every time he pounds the turf while rolling about.

Morgan gets bowled over, makes maybe some kind of meal of it, but then she's back on her feet and drawing more fouls, with a lot less complaining than him.

Or another example that I loved: in the Sweden-Netherlands semi-final Kosovare Asllani took a ball to the face that left her getting stretchered off at the end of the match, and going to the hospital for scans. Yet she recovered fast enough to play again in the third-place playoff a few days later, and even scored the first goal. 

I'd say it's those kinds of stories that made me glad I've watched a fair chunk of this tournament. I just hope I'll be able to keep up with this side of the game as it develops, though with luck a true female equivalent to Neymar's playacting is still a few years off.