A review by crookedtreehouse
The Boys, Volume 4: We Gotta Go Now by Garth Ennis
3.0
This could have easily been a four star book. The premise: a take down of the X-Men franchise from Marvel, and how it got out of control, is mostly well-handled.
And while I can always do without the Butcher/CIA angle in the comics (both the consenting sexual violence between the two leaders, and the Monkey is into disabled porn gag), they're not the cringiest part of this comic.
Dragging down the momentum of this comic is Garth Ennis's G-Force Vs G-Style subplot where he gets to type the N word a billion time to edgily critique the East Coast/West Coast US rap beefs that were resolved fifteen years before he poorly satirizes them.
Ennis has never and will never have a talent for writing voices who aren't white. He's terrible at it. And every time he makes what seems like a sincere and interesting look at race, such as Jamal lamenting that he is going to have to join one of the feuding teams and devolve into a cartoonish steteotype, he follows it up with racist garbage.
It's such a shame because, while it's not the only problem with this book, it is the Largest Problem in this book. And this isn't a case of looking at an old book from a more progressive perspective, his use of language and the plot points he lays out here weren't acceptable at the time they were published. Maybe if this had come out in the 70s or 80s you could feel gross about it but shrug it off, but this was put out when people Knew Better than this.
The positives are the X-Men satire. It's not particularly inventive, and its continuous desire to be Edgy is rooted deeply in the 90s, but that does play to the points Ennis is making. Also the swerve around the arc's resolution makes the overall story much more complex.
And while I can always do without the Butcher/CIA angle in the comics (both the consenting sexual violence between the two leaders, and the Monkey is into disabled porn gag), they're not the cringiest part of this comic.
Dragging down the momentum of this comic is Garth Ennis's G-Force Vs G-Style subplot where he gets to type the N word a billion time to edgily critique the East Coast/West Coast US rap beefs that were resolved fifteen years before he poorly satirizes them.
Ennis has never and will never have a talent for writing voices who aren't white. He's terrible at it. And every time he makes what seems like a sincere and interesting look at race, such as Jamal lamenting that he is going to have to join one of the feuding teams and devolve into a cartoonish steteotype, he follows it up with racist garbage.
It's such a shame because, while it's not the only problem with this book, it is the Largest Problem in this book. And this isn't a case of looking at an old book from a more progressive perspective, his use of language and the plot points he lays out here weren't acceptable at the time they were published. Maybe if this had come out in the 70s or 80s you could feel gross about it but shrug it off, but this was put out when people Knew Better than this.
The positives are the X-Men satire. It's not particularly inventive, and its continuous desire to be Edgy is rooted deeply in the 90s, but that does play to the points Ennis is making. Also the swerve around the arc's resolution makes the overall story much more complex.