THE BOYS: HEROGASM #2 (OF 6) Writer GARTH ENNIS, Art JOHN McCREA

My goodness this is a nasty comic. With the flood of publications on the market, sometimes the impact or shock value of a book can go somewhat unnoticed. Herogasm is that kind of comic, yes it's a Garth Ennis scribe so you know it's gonna have some 'shock' to it; but this is off the scale. After finishing #2 Herogasm it's hard to know what psychology lays behind Ennis's purpose with this comic. If you look at the writing from a ruff analytical perspective you could make an assumption that Herogasm is Ennis's overall disdain for the superhero concept. I mean let's face superheros are a ridicules concept in many ways, the idea of superhumans in tights rescuing everyone and maintaining a kinda moral superiority, even the evil superhumans have a one dimensional image. So the superheros/being concept does represent a bland projection of what is good and is bad in humans (albeit superhuman).

So Ennis's world of superhumans is an unpleasant one where there is not so much evil doing as such, it's more just absolute disregard for everything. A kinda of excess, say a super enhanced elite just fucking hookers/porn stars/themselves all day, taking drugs, doing crime, killing for the fun of it, in fact doing whatever they want - whilst staying cushy with goverment. So overall the writer (Ennis) is saying that unfortunately the few that were granted super powers, by luck or whatever, are the worst kind of people you could imagine to have those powers (or are they just us on another level?). Garth Ennis writes the details of their antics in an almost unbelievable way, meaning you gotta read it again for the 'how the fuck a writer' (or other writers) could top some of the dialogue in this comic or comics there after. For example when superheros do drugs (in 'Herogasm'), we know excess leads to different levels of drug taking (cocaine, party drugs etc) in our reality. But superbeing drug taking would be different (according to Ennis), drug taking in Herogasm represents a superbeing world of a 'we can do anything we like and get away with it'; as they take excess and indulgent behaviors to a new extremes. What drugs do they do? The same as us, but with variations like 'dried fetus' (from an abortion lab) mixed into marijuana and smoked?? Shooting up Heroin laced with dried vaginal secretion from some other female superhero??? The sex in this comic is just crazy, I mean it's super heroes fucking everyone, but the first few pages shows what happens when a superhuman has sex with a non superhuman. In a somewhat mainstream comic, how could you top that?

Herogasm gives the worst possible impression you could have on the superhero/superhuman concept. Is that the aim? Possibly. Still it's hard to get into this comic, although it lasts 6 issues, the ongoing story of this particular 'world' continues in the comic The Boys.

Like I said it's hard to like this comic, but hard to dislike it at the same time.