In the aftermath of VAC's first superhero combat trial, Greg Mallory finds himself cast adrift- until the opportunity for vengeance suddenly presents itself. A clandestine organization arises with the coming of the cold war, and Mallory finds himself playing spymaster... with no inkling of the moral compromise he'll eventually be forced to make. Sixty years of the Boys' secret history continues, in part three of Barbary Coast.
The Boys is one of the books that I repeatedly hear mocked as nothing more than anti-superhero ultra-violence, with shock value for the sake of shock value, but it's really much more than that. If this story were a Hollywood blockbuster, we'd be in the closing moments of the third act, as the hero finds out the villain's nefarious plot, setting in motion the climactic scenes. Garth Ennis has woven a complex and deep history here, drawing in real historical events and facts, pulling in his own obvious love of war stories and cloak and dagger tales, and combined it all into a truly impressive tour de force. It's clear that, for all the changes he's been through, it's this conversation that will change Wee Hughie into whatever he is about to become. Whether that will be savior, murderer, or something entirely different is maddeningly unclear, and will keep me coming back month after month. The Boys Fifty-Four keeps up the excellent narrative of 'Barbary Coast' while never losing sight of Read Full Review
More than most issues of "The Boys," this will be a hit or miss one. Some will call it boring, others will be entranced by Mallory's story, and I fall somewhere in the middle. Parts of it work well and Ennis is great at writing these sort of moral characters that make bad choices because of their morality or the influence of or simply because they're too dumb to see reality. That doesn't make the entire tale well-written or engaging. It drags far too often. But, at the end of the day, it is a necessary issue and one not to be missed by faithful readers of the series. Read Full Review
This issue gives the long time readers of The Boys a lot of the answers they have been looking for. However, the issue just reads very slowly because of density of information. What's the rush to deliver everything in one issue? Perhaps if each of the time periods had its own specific story, such as the previous issue than it would be more enjoyable. However, in its form here, the issue is a labor to get through mentally. I've waited fifty issues for some of these answers and I would have waited one or two more to deliver them in a more creative and entertaining fashion. Read Full Review
I get it. Ennis likes writing about WWII. He's good at it. But this is dragging a bit. What's great about two characters having a conversation and using a lot of flashbacks? Not that much, really. I'm being particularly harsh on this issue probably, but a lot of the exposition done in this series is really blase.
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