This almost slipped under my radar, but Newsarama recently interviewed Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson about my favorite comic, The Boys. I recommend clicking on each guy’s name to read their interview and decide what excites you the most, but here are what I felt were the high points.
Ennis plans on doing a miniseries in a few years featuring the story of Butcher and the original lineup of “The Boys”. In the meantime, everyone in the current line-up will have their moment in the spotlight.
“They’ll all get their turn. I’m enjoying writing MM at the moment; he goes off on a little solo adventure in the upcoming storyline, “We Gotta Go Now”. We get to see him do his thing in a way people might not be expecting.”
Also, though it seems obvious (at least to me) that Homelander was the super “hero” that raped Butcher’s wife, Ennis refuses to confirm this, saying only “Keep reading.”
In Robertson’s interview, he says that working on issue 21, where The Seven exacerbated the disaster of September 11, 2001, in an attempt to grandstand, was a somewhat difficult experience.
Issue #21 was a very powerful read for me. It made my stomach go into knots when that kid gets swept out the door. I have two small boys myself, so I couldn’t detach from that. Often I try to stay in touch with whatever feelings hit me when reading and try and bring that to the page. Garth actually wanted that scene played more for comedy, a “whoops” moment, so I redrew the panel and tried to bring that element to it, but I was surprised how many readers still felt the impact they way I did, and respected that the cover emphasized the tragedy.
Speaking of difficulty, Robertson says that Butcher and Hughie are consistently the most difficult characters for him to draw.
Butcher and Hughie still remain my biggest challenge, Butcher has to walk this fine line of being sinister, yet funny and likeable. I want the audience to feel like they’re in on the joke with Butcher. With Hughie I have to remain faithful to my homage to Simon Pegg, but Hughie’s his own face now too and I am learning his range of expressions without going back to the ‘Simon Pegg well’ as it were, for inspiration. Honestly, doing a monthly book, pencil and inks, I just have to trust my instincts most of the time.
The Frenchman came pretty naturally once I understood his personality. I originally saw him as aloof, Garth sees him as unassuming. They’re all memorized at this point and my consistency in the pages with their range of emotions is starting to gel. It takes a while. I’ll probably be getting them just right about the time the series is ending.
Both creators say that there is nothing new to report regarding the adaptation that Columbia Studios has optioned.
Technorati Tags: Darick Robertson, Garth Ennis, Newsarama, The Boys
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Posted by: Dustin Christian // Category: Dynamite, Small Press, movies
Finally there’s some progress on the film adaptation of my favoritest current series, The Boys!
…is a dead cape.
