>>83037947

Yeah, it's pretty vintage Ennis. Good stuff, but his hateboner for superheroes can get a little grating. We get it, superheroes in real life would probably be dicks. Still, when it comes to superheroes, Ennis makes a better anti-Grant Morrison than Mark Millar does, and the mean-spirited violence is perfect for Robertson. There's a lot of fun to be had with this series.

Totally worth it, in my opinion.

>>83037947
The battlefields issues alone are worth the 15 bucks

>>83037947
It's fucking hilarious.

If you liked his Punisher you'll love The Boys.
On the other hand, if you think capeshit is serious business then you'll probably not like it.

>>83038097
It had a few amazing moments in it
>the first time you see Billy and Homelander talking 1 on 1
>Female and Frenchman at the carnival
>Jack vs Terror and Billy, mostly Billy
The whole ending was great.

>>83037947
>>83037947
>I definitely enjoyed the humor, violence and general edgyness.
Can't go wrong with The Boys, in that case. It's 100% humor, violence and edgyness.

It's not consistently good and some parts either drag on too much or simply aren't as interesting, but overall it's a great read if you like Ennis' brand of humor.

>>83037947
Yep, it's good.

>>83037947
Depends on where you stand on the whole superhero genre. The Boys is one long-ass satirical takedown of the genre, but it also requires that the reader actually be familiar with what Ennis is tearing down.

For you to get the most out of the satire, you have to have some knowledge of comics industry history (there are veiled references to squabbles between well-known industry personalities, for instance) and all manner of specific superhero tropes. If you're not really all that familiar with all of that, the book will just come off as a mean-spirited slog of a read. It takes a certain reader to appreciate The Boys—one who loves superhero comics to know all sorts of details about the genre and its history, but also one who harbors a degree of hate for superhero comics for all the frustrating things about the genre and its history.

Also, since this is an Ennis work, some knowledge of real-world history and politics will help shed light on some of the stuff he tends to dwell on. For example, one of the minor subplots of the book is loosely based on the controversy over the mechanical failures of the M16 rifle in the Vietnam War, and how the hand-in-glove relationship between the rifle's manufacturer and the government allowed such a fiasco to happen. This subplot is actually a small part of one of the larger themes of the comic: Its criticism of the "corporatization" of the military.

It's telling that the name of one of the corporate big bad in the comic is "Voight-American," which is a reference (and a quite unsubtle one, even by Ennis standards) to "Ling-Temco-Vought" one of the largest corporate conglomerates in the American military-industrial complex that was mired in all sorts of anti-trust shenanigans throughout its existence (Ling-Temco-Vought went bankrupt at the turn of the 21st century).

In any case, $15 for the Ennis Humble Bundle is a good deal. As that anon above me said, it's worth it just for the Battlefields stuff.

One of the most enjoyable runs in recent years. Great fun book.

Violent as fuck, loads of tits, biting commentary, and some funny as fuck clever dialogue.

Also, I guarantee you'll find at least one character to really love, and get into in a big way.

>>83039351
>If you're not really all that familiar with all of that, the book will just come off as a mean-spirited slog of a read.
That's false.

I barely caught any of the references in The Boys apart from the really obvious stuff (like "these guys are like the justice League and those are like the X-Men!"), but I still enjoyed it.

Also, this shitty "mean-spirited" meme really needs to die already.

>>83039390
>least one character
It's ok anon, you can say Nina

>>83039351
>mean-spirited
enter pls
On a more serious note, I'm a bit above casual level on capeshit but that's because I don't care about it (outside of Invincible and a few other titles) so I never got those subtle references, but I stll enjoyed the fuck out of it.

>>83039416
Didn't mean to suggest that "mean-spirited" is bad in this case. Its ill-regard for the superhero genre is one of the strongest aspects of The Boys in my opinion, as I'm personally fed up with the whole notion of the "mythologizing" of superheroes. I do think that a lack of familiarity with the tropes Ennis is skewering potentially makes the work come off as monotonous, though, which is why I raise "mean-spiritedness" as a potential negative for the reader with casual knowledge of superhero comics.

It's possibly the most Ennis thing Ennis has Ennis'd to date. Has a strong plot with good twists and turns, characters that end up loving (or hating, or both) as they get fleshed out throughout the series, a lot of really stunning moments, lots of comedy ("normal" comedy, and his usual brand of raunchy humor), lots of violence...

It's fairly good, desu. One of my favourite ongoings in recent memory.

>>83039923
>It's possibly the most Ennis thing Ennis has Ennis'd to date.

It's certainly in the running for the title. I do slightly prefer The Pro as far as his superhero satire work goes—it's a much more compact read, whilst treading over many of the same general ideas and themes. I read The Boys as it was coming out, and there were times were it really felt like the narrative was just dragging along interminably. The end was ultimately satisfying, though.

>>83037947
Depends on your tolerance for edge. If you liked Preacher, you can probably handle the Boys. Like with a lot of Ennis' work, there's some legitimately good writing behind the edge.

>>83037947
It's an okay series, but I really think that Ennis could've whittled it down to 40, maybe 55 issues, because at times it really feels like he faffs about.

Overall, the only character I cared about in the end was Butcher
>inb4 accusations of edgyness
in the later issues because he started to really develop beyond the "cockney cunt" personality.

The humor, though, is always good, and taking the piss out of superheros is always over-the-top as fuck.

If you can get it for cheap, then I definitely recommend it.

If anything, Ennis managed to give it a proper ending with closure for most, if not all, characters.

I was going to write that The Boys is as relevant as ever as a satire and parody of the superhero comics industry, even though it started out a decade ago.

But then I realized something: With Rebirth and all the other events DC and Marvel have been pushing these past couple of years, something like The Boys isn't even really necessary anymore. DC and Marvel have basically become parodies of themselves. We don't really need Ennis anymore to point out the cynicism and the utter ridiculousness of cyclical, never-ending morality plays being performed by spandex-clad corporate icons being marketed as "modern mythology"—one only has to watch a modern superhero movie or read the latest "rebooted" comic.

>>83041188
If anything, The Boys is a lot closer to the feeling of golden age adventure, with silver age bufoonery, and the right amount of dark age darkness than anything on the market since ever.

>>83041003
>It's an okay series, but I really think that Ennis could've whittled it down to 40, maybe 55 issues, because at times it really feels like he faffs about.

I think what compounded the whole perception that Ennis dragged the thing out a bit too long were the three six-issue miniseries (Herogasm, Highland Laddie, and Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker).

Those could have easily been edited down to, say, three double-sized one-shots or even incorporated as running stories within the main series, given how the events they depicted were pretty important to the overall narrative (the fact that they were reissued as regularly numbered volumes in the trade paperback editions just goes to show that they weren't so much "spin-offs" or "tie-ins" as they were regular, essential parts of the main series).

>>83041553
They definitely didn't help the perception, but I question their importance, since Highland Laddie only introduced whatshisface and his actions in HL doesn't have much an effect on the rest of the series beyond "that's where Wee Hughie met him". Herogasm introduces us to Vic the Veep a bit more closely, and that's about it. I didn't read BBCM because of the previous two. And I lost out on pretty much nothing, since I still appreciated Billy as a character regardless.

>>83037947
Thanks for posting about this anon, I just got the bundle. I read all of The Boys on here because someone storytimed it (plus some of the other stuff in the bundle), and I feel better that this way at least Ennis gets something out of it. I thought the series was pretty entertaining, standard Ennis similar to early Preacher but not as good.

>>83041663
I suppose they're important in the character-building and background exposition sense. Gives further insight into motivations and such.

You are right, though, in that they are more-or-less optional in terms of advancing the series' main plot or gaining an essential understanding of the characters and their relationships.