Red Team #2

[history79]

"The most obvious influence would be 'The Wire,' which I'm pretty sure is going to stand as the greatest TV show of all time. There's a dash of 'The Shield' in there too. And, to a lesser extent, 'The Sopranos,' 'Breaking Bad,' 'Brotherhood,' even a little 'Justified.' All that amped-up crime drama we've been getting over the past 15 years."

- Garth Ennis




8 pages of24

Comments

[reveen]

That marketing quote is fucking hilarious. Aw yeah my comic is totally like Breaking Bad and the Sopranos. In fact it's like all your favorite critically acclaimed prestige drama classics. Did I namedrop Game of Thrones? Because it's also like Game of Thrones except with crypto-fascist American policing instead of feudalism.

EDIT: Also these guys are such perfectionist crybabies. When the cops want to assassinate someone in real life they can just shoot them and say "Aw jeez, he had a gun even though he was handcuffed!" and people will just believe it.

[lucean]

What's so weird about this is that it is really difficult to see how this is anything like Breaking Bad or Sopranos, especially since somehow the clearest comparison is the Shield. Yet even that is number two, with the Wire being number one despite that show never touching on the theme of this story.

[mazway_75]

Personal bias: I put the Shield higher because it's the rare case where the final season of a long-running show is the best.

Plus, always loved it didn't wimp out for any "redemptive ending" but let Vic get exactly the fate he deserved after all he'd done. Much better than Wire's hit-and-miss newspaper storyline.

[lucean]

It's a tough call as they are so different as shows, which really highlights how idiotic that comment from Ennis is. I might put the Shield up there as well over the Wire, but it's such a personal opinion moment.

I think the biggest challenge for Shield's legacy is that it was so absurdly ahead of its time. Just look at how even now they are scared to do a show like that, which just highlights how committed they were. And the fact that they stuck until the end that Vic was the villain instead of wimping out like majority of those shows was magnificent.

Hell, now that I'm thinking on this again, I'm reminded about this post I meant to do a few years ago, but ended up putting on the backburner, on the initial run of Powers. It is just that to me there is a really interesting comparison to The Shield there in that where that show always remembered that Vic shouldn't be cheered, Powers lost their thread the moment it started to fawn over Deena Pilgrim.

[mazway_75]

They had to have Forest Whitikaer's Internal Affairs guy go on a rant summing up their feelings on fans of "he is NOT a good cop forced to bend rules, he's as a big a crook as anyone he goes after, do not defend him!"

[tinygaylaura]

"I'm Garth Ennis

Author

Dream weaver

Visionary

You are entering the world of my imagination..."

[tripodeca113]

That's unfair....no other writer can measure up to the power house that is Garth Marenghi. Still Marenghi certainly did address this topic better.

[tinygaylaura]

His books always say something

Even if its something obvious like "Don't mutate crabs to be as big as men"

[mazway_75]

I wonder if Ennis has even spent more than a few months in the U.S. from the way he thinks it works.

Even when this was written in 2013, the idea that "if cops find out a pack of their own are killers, they turn on them" was idiotic.

[starwolf_oakley]

More than a few "Law and Order" episodes make it clear murderous cops are NOT going to be protected. It usually causes a LOT of stress and friction for the characters.

And, in a few episodes, the murderous cops are acquitted or get a lesser charge.

[lordultimus]

What is it with Irish comic writers hating on Clinton?

(Seriously, Mark Millar's Authority could have been renamed "did I mention Clinton sucked?")

[tinygaylaura]

I think its a different Clinton they are talking about here

From the context I think its a drug dealer who just had the same last name or something?

IDK

I have not read the full comic nor do I plan to after seeing these scans

I mean yes I could pirate it but

Those are minutes of my life I'm not getting back

[floro_kirby]

Mark Millar is actually Scottish.

[tinygaylaura]

Well this has aged like milk

Also its hilarious to me that in the Boys Garth Ennis was like "Superheroes are just tools of fascism, the status quo and propaganda who are all bastards because they do whatever they want and face no consequences"

And then he turns around and writes a series whose message is "Cops are your friends and good people actually and it's fine for them to break the law and murder people so long as they tell you that the people they're killing were bad people, honest"

Like

This series could basically be renamed Copaganda.

I can't wait for the issue where they shoot a fleeing suspect six times in the back and then Garth "Reveals" that the character they shot was actually a puppy eating serial rapist so actually it was totally justified for them to do this and its just all those Bleeding Heart Liberals upset about cops gunning people down like they were fuckin Dirty Harry who are the REAL problem

[mazway_75]

Haven't read this but bold prediction:

It ends with a kill gone bad, that one guy the only survivor detailing it...and learning the higher-ups were onto these guys from the start, turning a blind eye and even want him to lead a regular unit.

Eddie: "but...I just confessed that we, a pack of cops, have been going around murdering suspects and...

"Eddie, Eddie, Eddie...come on...do you really think you guys were the only ones doing this?"

[filthysize]

lol this is the exact opposite message of The Wire.