Fair enough. I haven’t read this, and it was a flippant remark. I’ve actively avoided Ennis’ work for many years because I find much of his humour puerile and his recurring anal rape motifs often veered alarmingly close to homophobia for me.
But if this plays as you say, then my snark was misplaced, and is withdrawn.
There is no doubt Ennis knows how to push buttons and doesn’t shy from stories dealing with sexual violence but his Dear Billy 4 parter from War Stories is one of the most devastating and tender accounts of the harm sexual violence does to victims and their nearest.
His approach to sexual violence / sex / violence is very varied - it can be shocking and graphic background material that is either ridiculously framed (crossed) or sensitively done (a walk through hell) or played as pure comedy (a train called love) or as the pivot point of a serious comic (the last Russian winter, dear billy) but mostly it comes across intelligently in terms of his goals. I always through crossed was instructive - Ennis (and also Spurrier) seldom went for the ‘look at this, now this, now this’ shock potential of crossed but always for the ‘human-survivor scrambling for dignity and sanity’ while other authors (sadly including the great David Lapham) just went for GORE! RAPE! VIOLENCE!
It’s been said more than few times that Garth’s shlocky hits (the boys, crossed) where what allowed publishers to indulge him his historical war comics - a genre that’s sadly clearly not commercially successful. That does sadly make a lot of sense.
As for The Boys series - watched 2 so far and its very enjoyable but neither butcher nor hugie remind me in anyway of their comic origins. Urban is just too small and his accent all over the shop (but he’s good if you forget it’s meant to be butcher). Likewise frenchie. Doesn’t make it not enjoyable but does make it slightly odd, plus... where is Terror!
