A review by luana420
The Boys Volume 7: The Innocents by Garth Ennis
1.0
A symbolic one-star because of my feelings of absolute raging hatred towards nice guy protagonist Wee Hughie by the time this volume ended.
The plot continues apace, with intrigue on the side of Vought-American rising to an admirable boiling point as regards Homelander's instability and resentment. The arc with the faux Legion of Doom is equal parts charming (their cluelessness) and tense (the truly horrifying not-Metamorpho they suddenly have to contend with). The art by Russ Braun is actually more pleasing to me than Darick Robertson's, so all in all, if you are not me and you had been enjoying The Boys up until now, you'll most likely keep enjoying it with this volume as well.
HOWEVER
When Hughie finds out what Annie had to do to join the Seven, he unleashes a tirade of misogynist invective before walking out on her in a huff. Now, the book suddenly invokes the voice of an omniscient narrator (a new stylistic trick that hadn't been done before at all) to tell us that "Hughie knew how wrong he was but he couldn't help himself" (paraphrased) seeing as how one of the men Annie serviced was A-Train, the notFlash who accidentally killed Hughie's fiancée.
Unless Hughie gets utterly fucking demolished in the next volume, and my boy Ennis assures us that he is wrong for being angry at any part of that situation that DOESN'T involve Annie blowing Robin's killer and him having an emotional response to that (and even then how the fuck was she gonna know), this series and indeed Ennis as a writer will get some serious fucking moral caveats in my mental registry.
I hope I don't have to put you in the Shane Black drawer, Garthy!
The plot continues apace, with intrigue on the side of Vought-American rising to an admirable boiling point as regards Homelander's instability and resentment. The arc with the faux Legion of Doom is equal parts charming (their cluelessness) and tense (the truly horrifying not-Metamorpho they suddenly have to contend with). The art by Russ Braun is actually more pleasing to me than Darick Robertson's, so all in all, if you are not me and you had been enjoying The Boys up until now, you'll most likely keep enjoying it with this volume as well.
HOWEVER
When Hughie finds out what Annie had to do to join the Seven, he unleashes a tirade of misogynist invective before walking out on her in a huff. Now, the book suddenly invokes the voice of an omniscient narrator (a new stylistic trick that hadn't been done before at all) to tell us that "Hughie knew how wrong he was but he couldn't help himself" (paraphrased) seeing as how one of the men Annie serviced was A-Train, the notFlash who accidentally killed Hughie's fiancée.
Unless Hughie gets utterly fucking demolished in the next volume, and my boy Ennis assures us that he is wrong for being angry at any part of that situation that DOESN'T involve Annie blowing Robin's killer and him having an emotional response to that (and even then how the fuck was she gonna know), this series and indeed Ennis as a writer will get some serious fucking moral caveats in my mental registry.
I hope I don't have to put you in the Shane Black drawer, Garthy!