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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