Lastly, I read the second book in The Boys series. Considering that I’ve also finally started reading old Marvel comics again (April, 1978 presently), three graphic novels between every book may very well be too many comics in a row. ‘Cause, I mean, jeeze. I was actually getting tired of the whole shebang last night, and I don’t think it was because I disliked Get Some.

For one thing, Ennis seems to have listened (through time!) to my complaints about the presentation of homophobia in the prior volume. The book is still 100% definitely written (as the name perhaps implies) for teenage boys smoking behind the dumpster[1], but at least the joint got classed up a bit. The downside is that this series feels really episodic, at least right now. Yes, there’s no question that an arc exists, and in the style of Joss Whedon where every episode has some callback to either the ongoing plot arc or ongoing character arcs rather than the Chris Carter style where three times a year the Smoking Man shows up in the credits and you can multitask through every other episode. And I was okay with both episodes presented in this book (although the Batman / Nightwing knock-off was pretty trite overall), but after how excited I was to see multiple sides of the “superheroes are all destructive, narcissistic douchebags who need to be controlled, or better yet, killed” argument that was set up last time, having the relevant characters only show up a couple of times on the far end of a phone definitely knocked the wind out of my sails.

Contrariwise, that was the pilot, and these are the early days. Preacher taught me that Garth Ennis can plot big, so he gets a pass for now. (Plus, despite having never smoked behind a dumpster, I am secretly still 13 some of the time.)

[1] Or more likely for the significantly older males in arrested development[2] that said teenage boys eventually become, considering the age warnings that must surely exist on anything Ennis has ever written
[2] This month!