Comics again this week, which means two posts in a row, which kind of breaks the rules I imposed for myself but to be honest, I'm reading a lot more comics than books at the moment, so needs must, as they say. So what we have here is another example, after my 100 Bullets and Fables posts, of me looking at Book One of a series everyone else has already finished, or is waiting for Book 72 of. Like it or lump it though, because it's what you're getting. 
Ah, Preacher. Preacher, Preacher, Preacher. When I was a young fella, way back in the dim and murky depths of prehistory (I think it was in the mid 1990's), the Judge Dredd Megazine was going through one of those 'We aren't making any money so we need to fill up on cheap reprint until we can balance the books. We'll brand it as a New Look and hope no-one notices' phases that it occasionally suffered, (I am not criticising this policy. It kept the title alive, when things were grim)and the result was that they took to reprinting Preacher, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.
It blew my mind and years later was the catalyst for my very first venture to a comic shop, when I decided to pick up collections of the many issues the Megazine didn't re-print. The rest is history. I suppose it's no surprise then that Garth Ennis has implanted himself as my most favouritest of comic book writers.
Sadly, his creations after Preacher were, for the most part, a collection of mini-series and one shots. Another major epic was conspicuous by it's absence. War Stories, Dan Dare, Streets of Glory, Wormwood; they were all awesome works, but they weren't showcasing just what a master of the long form Mr Ennis is.
Enter The Boys.
The Boys are a team of people, loosely affiliated with, but not controlled by, the US authorities. Their job, though it's more of a calling, is to 'police' the Superhero community. All done under the table and on the down low of course, because it wouldn't do to have the general public find out that the 'Capes' are anything less than paragons of virtue. And that's basically the plot, although in true Ennis fashion you know that not everything you see in these early, premise establishing stories, will be what it seems.
I'm not as versed in the 'behind the scenes' of comics as I am in the world of TV but even an amateur like me is aware of Garth Ennis' somewhat less than reverential attitude toward the big name superhero franchises that are endlessly churned out by Marvel and DC, so it's perhaps to be expected that his take on the subject would be somewhat irreverent but what we get here in this 1st volume is more than I think even his staunchest fans would have expected (or his staunchest detractors would have dreaded). Simply put, the man is merciless.
The first collection is entitled The Name Of The Game and collects the first two arcs, following the eponymous opening two parter with the four part 'Cherry'. 'The Name...' introduces us, in time honoured fashion, to the new man on the team, allowing us to become acquainted with The Boys through his eyes while over on the Capes side of town, a new girl is being inducted into the ranks of the big guns, giving us a handy introduction to those characters too. And they are most certainly not your Daddies superheroes. Even if they do look very similar.
You might, at first glance, think that he slays a few too many sacred cows in what is, after all, supposed to be a launching pad for an ongoing series; when you take down all the obvious targets and make all the obvious jokes, where do you go next? But therein lies the genius. By making the 'inevitable resurrection' gag at a superhero funeral; by making the Superman analogue an arrogant prick; by having the superheroes squabbling among themselves over who gets top billing; and by doing it all in the first few issues, Ennis has taken what many assumed to be the main 'gimmick' of the book and used it as shorthand to establish the world we're going to be living in for the next however many issues. Now, he can get on with what the series is really about.
And what is it about? Well if the hints we get here are anything to go by, it's about power, and the abuses thereof; it's about love conquering all (or not), in a Romeo and Juliet stylee; and it's about how the Black and White morality so beloved of our four colour heroes just doesn't hold a lot of water, when it's exposed to the 'real' world.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe it's just about 2 groups of sociopaths kicking seven bells out of each other. Either way, it's very very violent and very very funny. I love it to bits.
Now to the art and as usual when I discuss comics, I can only apologise to the artist for paying him short shrift and having no clue what I'm talking about.
Darick Robertson is the name in the frame and he's an artist whose work I'm unfamiliar with; and yes, for those of you who know about this stuff, that means I haven't read Transmetropolitan. It's on the list.
Wee Hughie 
Robertson's art suits this book to a tee. Going from 'realistic' portrayals of people for the serious stuff, to a more exaggerated cartoony look for the humorous moments and into pretty bloody brutal for the violence scenes, all while never seeming to change that much at all (I'm not describing this very well), it never looks anything less than stunning. And since it seems to be the law that this fact must be mentioned, check out the pic of Wee Hughie in this post; Robertson draws a mean Simon Pegg.
Garth Ennis
Darick Robertson
