Delayed Gratification: The Boys #63 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to provide you with one final review from last week’s books before the comic store opens up with the new books. You, however, will have to provide your own shitty Thin Lizzy joke.

If you’ve been reading Garth Ennis’s The Boys for a while, this is the stuff you’ve been waiting for almost since the book started at Wildstorm Comics back in 2006. If you haven’t been reading it, well, you’re kinda screwed. There aren’t enough pixels on this page to bring you up to speed on what the hell is going on, so yeah: you’re boned. If it helps, there are at least two dismemberments and three decapitations. Superhero comics, everybody!

The Boys is almost a prototypical comic written for the trade. Comprised almost exclusively of six-issue, reprint-friendly arcs, it is truly a long form novel in comic form… to the point where when I almost have to recommend that you don’t buy the individual issues – and I’m a fan. I initially bought in when the book was announced, and as an old Preacher fan, I told my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to remember that the Voice Of God usually smells less of garlic and bourbon, to add it to my pulls as soon as issue one was solicited.

And I didn’t like it. The build was slow, the plot was talky, and it seemed like to took forever for it to get going. In retrospect, for me the best thing that could have happened to this book was its cancellation by Wildstorm after the sixth issue, apparently over the miniscule and ridiculous concern that the Homelander, the Superman analogue of The Boys, orally raped a superheroine with a couple of his buddies. Superhero comics, everybody!

But by being cancelled and coming back after a few months thanks to Dynamite Comics (along with a convenient trade of the first six issues) was the thing that saved the book for me because in a collected form, that first arc really, really worked. For The Boys, Ennis writes a tight, coherent six-issue arc… but there are many times where he just doesn’t seem to give all that much of a fuck about the pacing of an individual issue.

And I’m more than 300 words into this review and haven’t mentioned anything about the actual issue. But understanding how The Boys has been written in important before deciding to buy this book, because a key plot point behind a major character moment in issue 63? Yeah, it happened in the first issue. And that moment hasn’t exactly been a repeatedly hammered-upon, Batman-style “MY PARENTS ARE DEAAAAD!” part of most of the issues between that one and this one. There’s also a character beat between Boys members The Frenchman and The Female that will mean absolutely fuckall to you if you haven’t been reading the book.

With that said, God damn does this book pay off on plotlines that have been a long time in coming. There have been stretches of The Boys where we’ve spent what seems like issue upon issue getting character backgrounds and world building – all of which has been entertaining as hell provided you got in on the ground floor – but now we’re into the good shit. Revenge. Long-simmering plots finally being triggered. Butcher finally pissed off and going into motion. A bunch of irons that have been in the fire for literally years are all going off at once, and it is exciting.

Russ Braun’s art is fine, but on The Boys it’s a no-win situation. One of the primary selling points of this book initially was the fact that it was written by Ennis with pencils by Darick Robertson. And while Robertson’s been doing covers all along, he dropped off regular penciling duties a while ago, so anyone that comes into the book is gonna be compared to him, which is a long hard way to go. With that said, Braun’s stuff is fine, and reminiscent enough of Robertson’s to keep the feel of the book where it counts. Braun’s lines aren’t as fine, and he shades with a thick cross-hatch… but his facial expressions are damn solid (There is a moment focusing on The Female that is almost heartbreaking considering she is a silent, superpowered killing machine with some form of antisocial personality disorder – hi, Amanda!), his action is brutal, and his graphic violence and gore are up to Ennis’s scripts… which not everyone is up for in the long term.

The Boys #63 is a fast-paced, exciting book where a lot of storylines pay off in a completely thrilling and satisfying way… provided you’ve been reading the book. If you haven’t? It’s a bunch of Europeans with funny accents kicking superheroes in the junk. Which can be entertaining in and of itself, but is probably not worth the four buck price of admission. Unless you buy this along with picking up the trades to get youself up to speed… which you really should be doing.