Housewife by day, murderous vigilante by night

[superboyprime]

Comments

[proteus_lives]

God, virtually every character deserves to be punched in the face when Ennis writes them.

[sinisterlink]

Have to agree here. This main character is doing absolutely nothing for me. Are we supposed to like her? From both the posts I've seen of this series so far she seems to be constantly thinking about how boring and mundane her normal life/family is.

[stolisomancer]

It's clearly a relationship she cherishes with people she loves, but Ennis is going for a sort of juxtaposition gag that I don't think works quite as well as he wants it to.

[ravenous_raven]

It's clearly a relationship she cherishes with people she loves

I've only seen bits and pieces on here, but...even when she's not talking about how disgusted she is about them, the art just makes her husband look really unattractive and infers she doesn't like him at all.

[darkknightjrk]

I've also only seen bits and pieces here, but I kinda read it as that she does care for her husband and children, but she's also passionate about the assassin work she loves to do. I think Ennis is taking the "workaholic mom who's passion gets in the way of her family" story, but adding machine guns and leather.

[stolisomancer]

Her husband's clearly a well-meaning, non-threatening nerd, who's as far from the mob lifestyle as it's possible to get. Jennifer, in the full issues, is occasionally ambivalent about her husband and son, but her focus is entirely on her attempts at revenge, and Ennis is trying to mine the contrast for comedy.

I don't think he's doing it particularly well. I'm certain that he thinks it's funny, and I did crack a smile at a couple of the jokes, but the entire thing comes off like a rejected Punisher story that somebody forced to be PG-13.

[icon_uk]

I'm not getting "cherish" out of this at all, "Finds an occasionally convenient cover in" at best. She doesn't seem to love them so much as analyse them coldly.

[stolisomancer]

That is where using hidden secret techniques like "actually reading the entire book I'm talking about" comes into play.

[icon_uk]

Well, yes, that one's a given based on the rules that scans_daily posters abide by.

If the rest of the comic showcases a different personality for the character that's fine, however, as these pages were posted as an exemplar of the issue, we have to do what we always do and work with what we've been given.

[stolisomancer]

And thus I am telling you that you've come to a faulty conclusion.

From the first two pages of issue #1, available online:

"But I can't be mad at A [her husband Andrew] - he's so sweet all the time, so easy to get along with. Life with him is such a pleasure relief."

"Defrosted lamb chops as a thank-you. I know Andrew gets on well with his boss, but he still has to work extra hard to get the time off. I'm lucky to have someone who makes us such a priority."

[icon_uk]

Even in the extra pages, too much of it is ambiguous to convince me her family is something she particularly loves or cherishes as anything beyond how useful it is to her mission. Look at the sample line you cite.

"But I can't be mad at A - he's so sweet all the time, so easy to get along with. Life with him is such a pleasure relief."

"Relief" isn't the word you use about someone you love, it's for someone you find... convenient.

Her relationship with him appears to be constructed about how easy it is to use him to her own ends, how easy he is to drug, how undemanding he is for anything except his birdwatching, which she exploits so she can build her armoury, and the like.

She never seems to use the pronoun "we" which I'm familiar with from most married family and friends who use it without even noticing, everything is "I"

This just doesn't feel like a marriage, it feels like a cover she's arranged and is taking advantage of, but which she would drop in a moment if she felt it would suit her ends. Yes, there are some nice moments in the arrangement, but they're all for HER and how they suit HER mission.

[stolisomancer]

Love takes many forms, and she's a borderline sociopath who spends her nights murdering people by the half-dozen. Her range of demonstrable emotion is perhaps slightly underdeveloped.

I submit that for a woman who is clearly harboring serious issues up to and including a ready willingness to commit multiple counts of premeditated homicide, this is what her version of love looks like. She doesn't need her family life in order to conduct her mission; in fact, it's a vast complication. The only reason for her to pursue it at all is because she cares for these people.

[icon_uk]

Oh indeed, I think that is most likely true, but her emotional state is SO damaged that I simply wouldn't use terms like "cherish" or "love" in relation to her, as the meaning she might assign to them is so far from the norm as to be, at best, misleading.

If she has to choose between her self-appointed mission and her family, I don't think for a moment the family would come first. The fact she's making a stab (no pun intended) at it doesn't endear any part of her to me, or make me care about what happens to her, I'm more concerned about the poor family she has.

That's probably my major issue with this series in principle; I don't like the Punisher as a concept, never have, and this sort of cross between Frank Castle and the Jane Doe movies, doesn't engage me at all.

Oddly perhaps, "Dexter", though a vaguely similar concept, I can sort of make work for me, because the main character is funny, witty and more importantly absolutely aware of the abnormality of his own situation and the dangers he poses to society and himself. This seems to skirt over that.

If you're enjoying it though, hey more power to you! Vive la difference and all that! :)

[liliaeth]

It also helps that Dexter has proven that when it comes down to it, his family comes before his urge to kill. When the choice came between looking after his stepdaughter and making sure she wasn't in danger, or hiding his connection to an intended target, he gave away the connection, even knowing it could betray him later on.

Dexter might have started with using Rita and her kids as cover, but over time he genuinely came to care for them and even love them. That's not something I see with this character.

[espanolbot]

Even Superman, Dan Dare etc?

[proteus_lives]

No, there are exeptions. That's why I said virtually.

I Think I'm Over Ennis. Damn.

[jlroberson]

I wouldn't have picked this up as some Top Cow thing in the 90s. Why would I now?

I've realized as the Boys has gradually bored me away and I realized no, he really IS going to drag this fundamentally uninteresting and fatty story to as many issues as he can, apart from maybe Wormwood (or Battlefields--war comics seem to force him not to fall back on as much shtick) Ennis has pretty much hit that point of--not quite self-parody, more like just formulaic. I know what I'll see now, every time I read a comic of his.

And then there's ones that just abuse the reader to no ultimately good purpose like CROSSED.

This isn't a "morals" issue. I've read Ennis since his very first work. I was a HUGE Preacher fan, still am. What it is, is that I'm getting the feeling he's just crapping it out, like he's just marking time. He's turned into something like a Millar version of himself.

And to repeat: I know now nothing will happen in THE BOYS at this point that I care about. If only it had been, say, only 12 issues. But seriously, 50 issues and we already had the "huge reveal" ages ago and you're STILL going? Look, superheroes are not that interesting, you're not saying much that Pat Mills & Kev O'Neill didn't do better years ago(note: no diss at all meant on Robertson, who does a great job as he always does) and in FAR FEWER PAGES. When you take a critique of superheroes and drag it out this far, Garth, you are simply doing another kind of superhero comic, because they sell, and cannot pretend to be "criticizing" them anymore, but rather "exploiting" them.

[stolisomancer]

I'm not sure The Boys is really a superhero parody anymore so much as it's veered off into a dark comedy concerning American kleptocracy. If it was just a superhero parody, I probably wouldn't be reading it anymore either.

I didn't read Marshal Law as a kid, though, so I have no particular affection for it. Going back and reading it now, it seems like a half-assed Judge Dredd-alike.

Re: I Think I'm Over Ennis. Damn.

[halloweenjack]

We are of a single mind on this.

[richardak]

I have to admit: I am enjoying this comic immensely. You didn't include it in this scan, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but I loved the way she killed her aunt and uncle aboard their yacht in this issue. I thought it was very clever.

And how could I not love this character, when she is so clearly an expy of the Huntress? Or am I imagining that?

[psychopathicus_rex]

Yeah, I'm liking it, too. I like the idea of someone having to juggle family life and a vigilante identity.

[fifthie]

Or am I imagining that?

Yes.

[richardak]

Woman who is the daughter of a mob boss watches her parents murdered in front of her when she is very young by other mobsters who are also mobsters, then grows up to become a lethal vigilante who hunts down and kills the mobsters responsible for her family's murder. That description fits the Huntress and what we know so far of Jennifer Blood. So what leads you to conclude that the similarity is all in my head?

[darkknightjrk]

The difference being that Huntress, to my knowledge, never really killed anyone. She had to have had a fairly clean record, otherwise Batman would have shit-canned her to prison years ago.

[richardak]

By the standards of DC superheroes, she's killed a lot of people. She murdered Stephen Mandragora. She didn't directly pull the trigger on Santo Cassamento, but she murdered him all the same. The 1994 Huntress miniseries opens with her massacring an entire gang of crooks; the art is very clear that she's killing them; I'm pretty sure she kills other people later in that same miniseries, but I'd have to check. What she did to Archer Braun would probably constitute manslaughter at the very least, at least in the United States (I don't know what Russian law says). So by the standards of the DCU, she's got a pretty high body count. And Batman did try to arrest her...once.

[stolisomancer]

I would put even odds at best on Ennis even knowing who the Huntress is, although you're right in that there are similarities.

[richardak]

Could be coincidental, but that's not important to me.

[stolisomancer]

I picked this one up on Wednesday, and while I still think Ennis does more interesting dialogue than most other writers, this book doesn't work as much as he wants it to.

For Ennis, this is apparently supposed to be comparatively subtle comedy, largely derived from Martha Stewart/Suzy Homemaker thinking idly to herself about gun trivia while she juggles a Punisher plot and a very suburban existence. It reminds me of nothing quite so much as that Ashton Kutcher movie Killers from a couple of years ago.

The problem is simply that Jennifer's inner monologue isn't quite as funny as Ennis thinks it is, so you're left with a low-wattage Punisher story. I'm curious what he'll have happen when her lives inevitably intersect, but that's most of what's keeping me reading.

[leoboiko]

I really enjoyed the moment in Widowmaker when Jenny Cesare dons the Punisher shirt. Very Kill Bill (despite the ugly implications of “I love you because you murdered my husband”). This other female Punisher… well, I can’t bring myself to like her. Low-wattage, as you say.

[stolisomancer]

I don't believe it's necessary to like her to enjoy the book, no more so than you needed to like Frank Castle to enjoy Ennis's Punisher. That's a bit of a critical red herring: a likable protagonist is not an absolute necessity for enjoyable fiction.

The larger problem is that it's supposed to be a comedy, but really isn't. I appreciate that Ennis is trying for a more subtle sort of humor than his usual audacity, but it's not quite funny enough to qualify for its genre.

[leoboiko]

Oh, I mean “like” in a broader, fuzzier sense, as in wanting to read more. It’s not that I don’t find her cool or admirable, it’s that I don’t find her interesting. (My English is weird, don’t mind me.)

You’re right, fiction can be interesting even without interesting protagonists, but in this particular case I’m failing to find anything at all that manages to be hooking.

[leoboiko]

I think I found one thing that’s bothering me: she looks too much like a model or starlet in the cover. Is it just me or she’s wearing lipstick, eyeliner, eyebrow makeup? What’s with the overproduced hair? Compare Jenny:

[stolisomancer]

Covers always lie? I don't know.

[golden_orange]

This could possibly be a bit of bleeding over from the whole 'soccer mom / suburban housewife' thing; she's conscious of her appearance even when she's about to go kill people.

[liliaeth]

a likable protagonist is not an absolute necessity for enjoyable fiction.

Maybe not for you, but it is for me. If I don't like at least one chracter in the book/movie/whatever I just can't bring myself to keep reading/watching... it.

[greenmask]

This might work for me with different art. But it might not.

[halloweenjack]

Yeah, the art is kind of a distraction--Ennis does this whole thing about different calibers of ammo on the first scan, and I keep getting distracted by her tongue sticking out of her mouth--but it's the concept itself that really doesn't grab me. I keep thinking that he had the idea to do some kind of Action Mom comic--maybe a sequel to Preacher centered on Tulip O'Hare Custer--and saw The Long Kiss Goodnight the same day that he discovered Dooce and reimagined Heather Armstrong as a female Frank Castle. And really is in it for the potential movie.

[icon_uk]

That sticking out tongue really does sort of stand out, it's very distracting.

[bradhanon]

When someone posted scans from from the previous issue where our protagonist is bored during sex with her husband, I said the following:

Maybe it's just me, but I can't help reading it as either denial of the female libido, or a setup for yet another of Ennis's dick-measuring contests. It'll be the latter if she later runs into a male character who acts more like Jesse Custer and goes all wibbly over him.

And now we get big muscley guy and she's got a huge crush on him. Yes, he's going to turn out to be evil (I'm betting he attempts to rape her, she kills him, and that causes hijinks, but we'll see) but still, the basic Ennisian cock paradigm is fulfilled. Considering I haven't read any of his work in years, you'd think it'd be harder to predict what's going to happen, wouldn't you?

[stolisomancer]

In the actual issue, she sees the guy and thinks he's a dick the moment she sees him, hence the "I just knew this guy would be trouble" line. You have completely misread the pages posted here.

[auggie18]

Really? A huge crush? It seemed more like she was kinda annoyed by him to me.

[fajrdrako]

Is it just me, but I'm reading a lot of sexism in this. I think Jennifer is supposed to be funny, juxtaposing her violence with the mundanity of her family, but I'm getting a 'cute little woman' vibe that I'm having trouble with - the author isn't making her interesting enough, isn't giving us a reason to care. It seems very artificial to me.

I was disappointed, because it reminds me of "Scarlet', which I love.