Look! The good guys are the bad guys!

I picked up Garth Ennis' "The Boys" at issue one, having been intrigued enough by the cover art to flip through a few pages while I was at Nerd-a-rama. It's about a team of non-powered humans, employed by the US government to keep superheroes in check. Not exactly breaking new ground, but still a nice take. Supers are oblivious to the humans around them, engage in tectonic battles with no regard for innocent life, and need to be stopped. I really dug on the first two issues and was looking forward to #3 this week.

And it was fine...except, the writing (and this is no shock, this is a comic) is hamfisted: the supers are morally bankrupt and deserving of punishment, and our anti-heroes are dark but ultimately on the side of right. What's wrong with this? Well, there was no shock for me when I got to the full-page image of "The Homelander" (übermensch archetype) demanding fellatio from a new recruit to "The Seven". No surprise, as I already knew what I'd be seeing when the final panel on the prior page had him saying (it's not handy, I'm quoting from memory) "You just have one more test to pass."

Well, duh. Of course he's going to drop spandex trou and present arms.

So now, I have to decide if I want to keep reading a book that's "cleverly" made the good guys the villains and the anti-heroes the heroes. Plus, I'm not enjoying Darick Robertson's inking: super thick, overpowering his coloring. Maybe one more issue and then done.