Garth Ennis seems to hate two things, Americans and Superheroes. Unfortunately for him he spends a lot of time working in American comics, which seems like a rather bad choice for the man. The Boys combined Ennis' contempt for America and the whole American tradition of Superheroes in the usual nuanced Ennis way.

And to Ennis, nuanced means shoving a bunch of villains with creepy sexual fetishes into the story. The Boys doesn't vary from the same Ennis pattern. There's a bunch of merry sociopaths who are the good guys, mainly because they're British and share Ennis' sense of humor. There are a bunch of other sociopaths who are the bad guys, in the case of The Boys, because they're superheroes.

If The Boys was supposed to comment on superheroes or comic books, it doesn't. That's because Garth Ennis thinks that showing a bunch of superheroes having sex with each other or with a gerbil is social commentary. Another thing Ennis can't do is pace his story or keep in on track, which is why The Boys sprawls all over the map, and storylines like the trip to Moscow, the 9/11 exposition or the X-Men house (I'll spoil it for you, Professor X is a pedophile. Of course with Ennis you can just safely guess that the villain will have some sort of freaky sexual fetish) just drag on from issue to issue taking twice as long to go anywhere as they need to.

What The Boys however does is be misogynist, homophobic and generally violently sociopathic. What it isn't however, is worthwhile. It's not hard to see why The Boys got the boot, and why Dynamite has to be stuck publishing it.

Garth Ennis isn't a bad writer, he's just never cared to use enough enough judgment to try and be a good one. Instead he's always chosen to indulge himself and The Boys is Ennis' self-indulgence taken beyond the level of even absolute revulsion.