Quiet times like these, I’ve just been reading. My attention span is still fragmented, but it’s getting a little better. Still on short books, but that’s not so bad.

I finished the moon is down by John Steinbeck and the first volume of the boys by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Book reports to follow, because part of the point of this blog these days is to keep track of what I read.

the moon is down is good, which I guess makes sense. I’d not read any Steinbeck except for of mice and men before, and this one has a lot in common with that. I’m sure I’m doing myself a disservice by limiting my exposure to the man’s work thus far to two short, easy-read novels, but I like ‘em both, so what the hell? Like of mice and men this is a breezy read- two hours, tops, even if you’re reading it on the train- and enjoyable both as a surfacey piece and rich with subtext. It’s about a small town, ostensibly in Norway or somewhere, that’s been conquered by Bad Guys, who are pretty much Germans even if it doesn’t say so, during a grand war that’s engulfed Europe and has spread to the rest of the world. It was written as a propaganda piece during World War Two, and it was remarkably effective as such- hundreds of thousands of bootleg copies were printed off in various translations throughout Western Europe, and within weeks of liberation in most countries, it was the first thing to hit the legit press.

It’s got a sort-of red dawn feel to it, but maybe that’s just because I like red dawn and this is a book about an occupied town and its people. The central thrust of the book is that there’s no such thing as an occupational army winning a war, because occupational armies are by their nature full of sad soldiers who alternate between wanting acceptance from and feeling hatred toward the occupied people, who will always outnumber them, and who will always resent them. And so the book spends at least as much time with the Bad Guys as it does the people of the town, which is probably why it’s endured beyond just a WWII propaganda piece. The villains are not brutal or savage, they do not twirl their mustaches or wear monocles. Steinbeck accomplishes a rare feat in making you both empathize with them and still understand that, at their core, they are the ones who are wrong, and so there’s no sympathy. Just an understanding of how they came to be.

That sort of subtlety rarely works its way into this sort of work, and it makes Steinbeck all the more impressive. I should probably read grapes of wrath now, because if this is what he’s capable of in his small work… But I am resistant to the canon just because I am contrary that way, and I would probably not have picked up this book if it were not for the fact that I re-watched red dawn while I was in the pharmaceutical research unit a few weeks ago and saw the moon is down referenced in its Wikipedia page.

But I’m rambling. I’ll refrain from drawing any comparisons between the failures of occupational armies of the sort that Steinbeck writes about here and the struggles of the, er, Coalition of the Willing’s occupational army in Iraq, but I will say that considering that viewpoint through this lens makes certain aspects of why they were not greeted as liberators make a bit of sense.

And enough of that. I have to tell you about the boys.

I hate this book. And its authors are two of my favorite creators in their medium. the boys is the first book in an extended graphic novel that promises to boldly reinterpret the concept of the superhero through a gritty, real-world perspective… a concept which, if it hadn’t begun its transformation into cliche before watchmen was even finished, would certainly be unnecessary given that Brian Bendis and Mike Oeming have been doing a pretty stellar job of that in powers since 2000 or so.

Ennis is responsible for a nine-volume graphic novel called preacher which is one of my favorite things in the English language. I read it initially when I was seventeen, and it was my catcher in the rye; I re-read it when I was twenty-one and it was my on the road; I went through it again at twenty-six and it was my a farewell to arms. It’s one of the most ambitious works in the medium, and it succeeds on nearly every level. It’s a captivating adventure story that effectively distills dozens of religious arguments into a condensed form, commenting upon all of them throughout its nine books; it’s an examination of loyalty and courage and following a mission, no matter the cost, and, perhaps most elegantly- and most progressively- it re-examines the treatment of women throughout major American adventure storytelling, from early Westerns through to Tarantino. Essentially, it condemns the sort of machismo that required that women could never be treated as equals in most works because it would diminish the power of the male hero. preacher is a radical and powerful piece of work on themes that don’t get much press outside of a specific field of academia, that explores feminism in relation to American adventure narratives in ways that Joss Whedon hasn’t even come close to yet.

And it’s also got a character who shot himself in the face when he learned that Kurt Cobain died, and who, five surgeries later, emerged back into the world under the name arseface.

The pre-press on the boys included a quote from Ennis that claimed that this was the book that would out-preacher preacher. I guess the only thing he remembered from preacher was Arseface and the fart jokes, because aside from an occasional excursion into that sort of sensibility, it’s got nothing in common with preacher at all.

Instead the boys is a sexist, vaguely racist piece about, sigh, what the world might really be like if there were superheroes in it. It follows Billy Butcher, a tough guy Englishman, and a handful of other characters (the titular boys) as they sign on with the CIA to stomp on superheroes.

There are four female characters in the boys- the CIA boss who comissions them, and whom Billy Butcher literally fucks in the ass every time she appears on the page; Starlight, a teen heroine who, in order to join the Justice League analogue in the series, has to blow the Superman, Batman, and Flash stand-ins; Queen Maeve, a Wonder Woman stand-in who drinks and chain-smokes through the book and abuses Starlight; and the mysterious female member of The Boys, cleverly named the female in lieu of receiving an actual identity.

And I didn’t want to take all of this out of context, because it’s the guy who wrote preacher, but there’s not really another way to take it. The bit about Starlight blowing those dudes is played for laughs; the CIA boss curses at Bily as he fucks her in the ass, but she exists solely to show that he’s so tough and powerful that even a woman who hates him wants him to put it in her butt. In one scene, Billy Butcher recruits His Black Friend to join the team, and finds the guy’s daughter, who talks back and dresses trashy, hanging out with stereotyped Scary Black Guys, whom Billy promptly out-toughs and scares away. Meanwhile, every other character he meets who gets to talk just spends the book agreeing with Billy, who is prone to ranting about how the world should be, and that’s about it. Characters in the boys exist to prove how tough and cool and scary Billy Butcher is (so cool that even a cold ice-bitch CIA officer can’t wait to have him in her ass, and so tough that a couple of black thugs from central casting are left to run and cry when he shows them what hard really is), or to agree with whatever he says. That’s it, really.

It’s awful, embarrassing work. Ennis’ post-preacher work has largely been uneven, and occasionally offensive (he did a book for Virgin Media called seven brothers that has a lot of these same problems), but this is just embarrassing. The guy created Tulip O’Hare in preacher, Kit Ryan in hellblazer, Deborah Tiegel in hitman, and this is what his current work has devolved into? Seriously disappointing.

(oddly, the only impressive work Ennis has really done since he finished preacher and hitman is the punisher for Marvel. For a guy whose best work was always on his original creations, this is a bit of a switch.)

Anyway. I’ll read something intended for people with attention spans long enough to finish a whole, full-length book again at some point. In the meantime, here are some thoughts on a sixty year old Steinbeck novel and a terrible, terrible graphic novel by one of the best authors in the medium.