Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

THE BOYS, Season 3

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In Season 3 of Amazon Prime’s stellar THE BOYS, Homelander’s popularity is suffering among the mainstream but skyrocketing among men admiring his unrepentant macho act. As he becomes increasingly psychotic and dangerous, Billy the Butcher and the Boys, now government operatives, seek a weapon rumored to have killed Soldier Boy (a take on Captain America), which they believe will kill Homelander. Butcher, meanwhile, has another big card up his sleeve. The game is on, and it’s better than ever.

Based on the over-the-top graphic novels by Garth Ennis, THE BOYS accomplishes something amazing. It simultaneously lampoons comic-book superheroes, perfectly satirizes America by holding up a mirror to expose its glaring fault lines, and, at the same time, presents the most realistic depiction of what superheroes would actually be like. In Season 1, we saw the Seven, America’s greatest superheroes based on the Justice League, act like pampered celebrities. In Season 2, we saw the dangers of idealizing and worshipping them and flirting with the idea of giving them national defense powers. In Season 3, we see that superheroes don’t make you a better person, they only make you more of what you are, accentuating your flaws, and we see what happens when the weak project their desires onto a strongman who unfortunately also happens to be a psychopath.

Nothing is spared. The self-indulgent “Imagine” video celebrities put out during quarantine, corporations co-opting social justice movements, Pepsi’s horrible BLM commercial, Kyle Rittenhouse’s lame defense of murder, Trump and his heavily propagandized and fanatical following–the most hilarious bits aren’t so much the lampooning of the superheroes but of America itself, and they’re achieved simply, without any preaching, by holding up a mirror and asking you to take a look.

This season started off a little rougher than the previous two until it found its footing, reaching a little too hard for shock while delivering less of its natural comedy. Once things get rolling, though, and the fight is on, it blasts its way into its old brilliance. Soldier Boy, in particular, offers a fantastic and hilarious take on Captain America, coming back from the dead not with enduring American values but instead all its traditional prejudices. And Anthony Starr’s Homelander is even more menacing and unpredictable. Shifting alliances and a new weapon used by the Boys ups the ante and might just even the playing field. The worst of the bunch don’t always lose but are sometimes served a comeuppance in which they realize how horrible they are and have to live with it. All of the conflict that simmered outside the public eye for two seasons is coming to a head, and in the next season, we may see it boil over into a polarized America.

I’ll be there to watch it, can’t wait.

UTOPIA

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Adapted by Gillian Flynn for American audiences from a 2013 British series, UTOPIA (Amazon Prime) is a compelling and surprisingly dark story about a group of comic book nerds who get up in a conspiracy to change the world. I liked it, though I found it uneven.

The story begins with comic book nerds finding out that UTOPIA, the sequel to their favorite graphic novel, DYSTOPIA, has been discovered and is for sale. They aren’t just fans of the comic but conspiracy theorists who believe hidden messages in it predicted every major disease outbreak, raising the question as to whether these diseases were natural or bio-engineered. Unfortunately, mysterious forces are in play that want to prevent anybody from seeing the comic and will do anything to stop it while finding its real-life star, Jessica Hyde.

It’s just my kind of thing, and I went into it expecting it to be the next STRANGER THINGS, but the story quickly takes a very dark righthand turn into torture and frequent murder and stays there. In the American version, for example, a character is created only to be killed for shock value and to show how ruthless another character is, a creative decision by Flynn that comes across ham-handed and disrupts the chemistry. (A cute meta reference to herself comes across the same way.) People are regularly tortured in this show for revenge or information, and even while they’re giving it, the torture keeps coming. That aspect just didn’t quite work for me and makes the resulting story uneven, plus it makes a key character who often does it (and constantly casually threatens it) unlikeable when we’re supposed to be rooting for her.

When you find out what the conspiracy is, it’s actually nothing we haven’t seen before, but it’s done extremely well. When the villain reveals the entire plan, many viewers will be like, oh, um, that’s not exactly a bad idea. The bad guys are like a cult designed to produce a certain change in the world, but by the end they’re not necessarily the bad guys, they’re simply the antagonist with an opposing goal, the mark of a good story.

The ending sets up a season 2, though I’m not sure the story needs it. I’m curious how the British version ended and will try to find it. On a final note, John Cusak and Rainn Wilson are in the show, and they’re fantastic in their roles.

THE BOYS, Season 1

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I went into THE BOYS with low expectations and ended up falling in love. This Amazon Prime original proves again we are in the golden age of television.

The trailer caught my eye but seemed to promise an over-baked premise with plenty of inside jokes and campiness. Superheroes are bad guys, it’s up to a small group of former-government operatives to keep them in line. The beauty, however, is in the execution. The series fully fleshes out the pessimistic concept and plays it perfectly by making superheroes analogous to entertainment and sports celebrities backed by a giant corporation, in doing so making superheroes, well, actually believable.

In this world, superheroes are discovered and signed with a corporation called Vought, which sells them on crime-fighting contracts to cities across the United States. They are given costumes and personas and then branded by a vast marketing apparatus including product endorsements, social media campaigns, the works. Accustomed to being worshipped and having powers allowing them to do anything they want, they become erratic, egotistical jerks in their private lives. With enormous powers and without any real training, they often produce a huge amount of collateral damage as they fight crime, which is covered up by Vought. Vought is not satisfied with fighting crime and branding and merchandising, and wants to take superheroes to the next level–licensing them to the government for national defense.

After Hughie (the likeable Jack Quaid) loses what he loves to a superhero, he is recruited by Billy the Butcher, who is reassembling a disbanded secret government unit tasked with keeping the superheroes in line. Butcher is the story’s Captain Ahab, consumed by a diabolical desire for vengeance to a level where he sometimes feels like a supervillain. Their target is the Seven, this universe’s version of the Justice League, led by Homelander, a cross between Superman and Captain America.

The Seven is the most interesting part of THE BOYS. Homelander (played to menacing perfection by Anthony Starr) steals the show, a megalomaniac who projects an aw-shucks, morning-in-America, apple-pie persona. Whenever he’s onscreen, you never forget at any moment he could kill you and everybody else if he wanted. The other superheroes in the Seven are presented as a Wonder Woman-type who drinks too much and is going through the motions after losing her naivete, an Aqua Man type who sexually harasses his coworkers, and A-Train, who comes across as the worst kind of celebrity athlete. Each has a weakness that doesn’t quite redeem them but does make them at least a little sympathetic, a great touch reminding you nobody in this show is perfect, everybody is flawed but also very human. Our entry into this world is Starlight, a naive Midwestern emerging superhero who becomes the newest member of The Seven and is in for a shock. Her romance with Hughie starts out as a weak thread but grows stronger by the end.

The growing conflict between the Boys and the Seven plays out to an excellent season 1 climax. With so much on the table at the end, season 2 promises higher stakes and mayhem. I can’t wait.

EUGENIC by James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan

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Written by James Tynion IV (Dark Knights: Metal, Detective Comics) and beautifully illustrated by Eryk Donovan (Constantine: The Hellblazer, Memetic), Eugenic offers an innovative take on the apocalypse: The human race may simply birth a new species that replaces us. The result is a story packed with big ideas, overall distinguishing it as a standout sci-fi horror graphic novel.

The novel begins in the aftermath of a devastating pandemic, which is now over thanks to Dr. Cyrus Crane, a geneticist who came up with a cure. But the majority of people who took the cure are having children—unnatural children . . .

Eugenic is made up of this origin story plus two more spanning three centuries after the arrival of the children, who grew up with superior strength and size, and with no artificial divisions due to their strange features making everybody equal. A new division exists, however, between the original humans and their strange cousins, a division that becomes competition as to who will rule the world.

The ideas in Eugenic are powerful. Could genetics make the human race better, and if so, will it create a new ruling class? Scientists are already talking about the potential for “designer babies,” making the possibility of both happening very real. Genetic alterations could make us smarter, stronger, more attractive, and more resistant to aging and disease, but may be only available to those who can afford it. And for those who would become like gods, would they lose their humanity? Or would they regard their inferior cousins as not being real humans?

Eugenic plays with these ideas in an original way by making the genetic alterations available to the majority while excluding an immune minority. The “numans” promise utopia. The original humans, however, accomplished many beautiful things despite their flaws, with their many mistakes being the cost of free will. Eugenic asks what it means to be human, a question that becomes all the more tangible and important when humanity gains the means to change itself.

These ideas are packaged in titillating horror. The numans are monstrous in size and appearance, breed humans as pets and manipulate genetic lines, and coddle until they lose their patience and destroy. There’s plenty of hideousness on display in Eugenic, and just enough horror to drive its points home.

With so much information and the big leaps forward in time, however, a tradeoff is some readers may find the stories heavy on exposition. In each story, a central character reflects on their world and then acts to change history. One might wish each episode was a novel in its own right, which would allow deeper characterization and a more complex story to invest the reader.

Overall, Eugenic is top-notch sci-fi, the kind of brainy sci-fi many have grown to love about Black Mirror, sci-fi that makes readers ask big questions and think. Typically, technology promises to make humanity better but often only makes us more human, accentuating our strengths and flaws. Eugenic wonders what would happen if we used technology to turn ourselves into gods, whether we might lose our humanity entirely in the process.

MARSHAL LAW by Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill

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marshal lawBack in the 1980s, a friend turned me onto one of the best comics I ever read, MARSHAL LAW. I was happy to recently find the six-issue first series and reread it.

MARSHAL LAW portrays a future in which superheroes are created using controversial techniques. The result is Public Spirit, an all-American superman type who is promoted as a man of the future. Inspired by his example, thousands of men sign up for the treatment and become super-soldiers fighting an endless war in South America while Public Spirit travels to a distant star and returns to great fanfare.

The America he left behind has turned dangerous as superheroes haunt the ruins of California cities struck by a massive earthquake. The superheroes have enhanced bodies, but their minds are the same, some unhinged by war or as a side effect of their treatment, and most don’t feel pain, prompting them to inflict it on others. The outgunned police steer clear of these zones except for one man, MARSHAL LAW.

Clad in black leather, derided as a fascist cop, and brutal, MARSHAL LAW is a superhero who feels betrayed by the empty promises and repulsed by the violent lives led by his rogue brothers and sisters. A superhero who hunts superheroes, he tracks a monstrous hero who has committed a series of murder-rapes, and sets his sights on Public Spirit.

Written by Pat Mills with art by Kevin O’Neill, MARSHAL LAW stands out as a bold, dark and original superhero story. After seeing LOGAN and the new interest in R-rated superhero movies, I’d love to see this character adapted for screen. If you like thoughtful and dark comics like RED SON and KINGDOM COME, be sure to check this one if you haven’t yet.

KINGDOM COME By Mark Waid And Alex Ross

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KINGOM COME2Confession: When I was a kid, I didn’t read many comic books. I can’t tell you who did what in episode whatever. At heart, I’m a nerd, not a geek.

I just couldn’t get into the serial nature of them, and I didn’t find their moral clarity appealing. Often, the heroes always seemed to encounter situations where there was a clear right or wrong rather than a choice of a lesser of two evils. I found the latter juxtaposition much more appealing, the idea of an extremely powerful icon of virtue facing difficult ethical choices. Also the idea of something that is extremely powerful and extremely good ultimately judging humanity. On a spectrum, I think, we’re all on Superman’s shit list.

Enter some amazing graphic novel collections such as RED SON, THE WATCHMEN, and, reviewed here, KINGDOM COME. I picked it off my bookshelf to reread after BATMAN V SUPERMAN came out. I haven’t seen the film yet, but it seems to explore a lot of interesting dark themes. Mainly, whether an all-powerful hero, however good, can fit into the modern world, and whether that hero, however good, should be considered an enemy, as our fate is in that hero’s interpretation of good.

In KINGDOM COME by Mark Waid and Alex Ross (DC Comics, 1996), it’s the modern day, and Superman, Batman and the other heroes of yesteryear are getting old. Their progeny–the metahumans–now roam the planet in great numbers. The supervillains have been defeated long ago, and the superheroes are bored, so they have formed gangs and fight for sport, terrorizing the humans. The story is told through the eyes of an elderly preacher, who is given vision of the apocalypse triggered by conflict between superheroes. He lives in a world where humans have slowly ceded their ambition to be better because superheroes are there to take care of them. Faced with perfect, humans no longer aspire for progress as a species.

When a superhero fight turned deadly results in the destruction and irradiation of the U.S. breadbasket, Superman comes out of retirement to reform the Justice League. Some of the younger superheroes join him willingly, but others resist, some out of rebelliousness, others because they fear Superman is taking too much power into his own hands and deciding the planet’s fate on his own. Eventually, the rebellious superheroes are imprisoned, but Lex Luthor, in the guise of defending humanity, has other plans. The result is Ragnarok, superhero against superhero and civil war and final battle. Old generation versus the new. The question is whether it can be stopped or if it will destroy the world.

Mark Waid tells a complex, engaging story with no clear right or wrong, and the final battle seems inevitable. Superman is put in a no-win situation. There are cameos by so many heroes that if you’re a comics geek, you’ll be in heaven. Alex Ross’s art is amazing.

If you’re interested in looking at superheroes a different way, check it out. It’s a dark, complex and bold superhero story told with fantastic visuals.
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