EJP's Comics Primer, Pt. 3: Watchmen, The Boys

Alan Moore's Watchmen
It's OK if you're not really into comics and never plan to be, but a good story is a good story, no matter what the format. Alan Moore is an incredible story teller, and he's either created or adapted some incredible characters over the past few decades (for some adapted characters, check out my League of Extraordinary Gentlemen post). Like Hellboy, Watchmen is about to become a little less obscure to the non-comic-reading populace thanks to the upcoming movie about which Clyde Squid just posted. But if you are a geek and/or consider yourself a well-read person, check out the comic first. You'll notice on the cover below that it's considered "One of Time Magazine's 100 best novels." That's not just graphic novels, that's all novels.In brief, the book is set in an America where "heroes" exist, but only one of them actually has super powers (the blue guy you see in the trailer). The rest of the heroes are vigilantes, who dress up and fight crime because they're crazy, rich and bored, crave the fame, or occasionally, are actually trying to mete out some justice. The comic's tagline, "Who watches the Watchmen?" really explains it all. Who places limits on these powerful people, or on the people who take power into their own hands in the name of justice? In the space of essentially 12 comic issues, Moore creates a complex world with its own history (and future). David Gibbons's art is also admirable, and I'll be interested to see how they carry it over into the film (which, supposedly, is sticking insanely close to the comic).

Any further explanation wouldn't do it credit. This one's really not to be missed.

Garth Ennis's The Boys
The Boys is essentially a Troma movie in comic book form. If you have no idea what a Troma movie is...you can probably stop reading this post now. I'm not being a snob--I'm trying to protect you. These comics, like most Troma movies, are packed with gratuitous sex, violence (oh the violence!), and some the foulest language I have ever seen in print. On the spectrum of high brow to low brow, with Watchmen being high brow, The Boys pretty much falls off the other end.

Good thing I can appreciate low brow stuff, too. The Boys is the answer to Moore's question, "Who watches the watchmen?" How to put this...Many years ago, when the first Spiderman movie came out, Jon Stewart gave this synopsis of the character on The Daily Show "Spiderman is the story of weakling who gains super powers, then uses them for good...for free." In that one statement, Stewart exposes the weak underbelly of nearly all superhero comics. Not to diminish Stan Lee's legacy, but everyone praises him for creating such human super heroes, but how human are they really? Sure, with great power lies great responsibility, but doesn't it seem unlikely that so many people with powers actually choose to accept that responsibility?

That's the problem in the world depicted in The Boys: the supes fight crime, but they don't want to live in a crappy apartment to do it. They're going to kill the bad guys, but they don't want to take responsibility for any collateral damage. And a lot of the supes, though nice on the outside, are rotten to the core on the inside. That's where The Boys come in. A group of five who for various reasons (many not divulged yet--this is a relatively new comic) hold grudges against the supes. They'll use blackmail, violence, and some more violence to make sure the super "heroes" are kept in check.

There are a lot of reasons not to read this comic. If you're thin-skinned or otherwise easily offended, don't even open the first page of the first TPB, "The Name of the Game". But here are the reasons to read it: it's laugh-out-loud funny, one of the characters is modeled after Simon Pegg (geek alert!), the writing by Garth Ennis is creative and entertaining, and the art by Darick Robertson is beautifully detailed down to the squishiest eyeball. Pick up the first TPB in your comic shop and glance through the first 10 pages. In those first 10 pages, you'll get a very good idea of whether you'll love it or hate it. So I won't wholeheartedly say "Check it out!", but I know at least some of you should give it a shot, you dirty #@%$ers.