The Boys: Dear Becky #1 - Dynamite Entertainment

THE BOYS: DEAR BECKY No. 1, April 2020

What with Amazon Prime's Television adaptation of “The Boys” having recently been greenlit for a second season, admirers of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s “world where superheroes exist” probably weren’t all that surprised when the duo announced in January 2020 that they were going to produce a comic which would “focus on Becky Butcher, the wife of Billy Butcher, whose death sets off the events of the series’ original ninety-issue run.” But having “never intended to do more with The Boys” for so long, its arguably clear from the Holywood-born writer’s narrative for Issue One of “The Boys: Dear Becky” that the collaborative partnership were somewhat short on ideas when it came to bringing this “fresh material to the new readers as well as a treat for the original fans.”

To begin with absolutely nothing at all happens within this twenty-two page periodical until half-way through when a somewhat inebriated Hughie Campbell finally staggers home during the night and opens a mystery parcel sat waiting for him upon the kitchen table. Up until this point, all the multiple Eisner Award-winner pens is expletive after expletive, as his limited cast desperately try and verbalise every colourful metaphor known to humankind during an incredibly protracted, dialogue-heavy drinking session; “Ye’re no’ in any rush, then. Last one? What’ll we drink to?”

Disappointingly however, even this sudden change of pace is hardly for the better, as Ennis’ penmanship more than lives up to this comic’s “mature” rating, by depicting a hapless ten-year old boy having his tongue gratuitously cut out by the leader of the Boys with a razor blade in a restroom. So shocking a scene, absolutely thick with oily slicks of blood and the child’s anguished screams, is genuinely harrowing to read, yet appears to pale in its impact upon "Wee Hughie" when compared to the character’s paralysing realisation that the supposedly long-dead Butcher is directly addressing him through the pages of Becky’s diary.

As a result perhaps this book’s only saving grace is the excellent artwork of Russ Braun, whose marvellously clean-lined pencilling makes even the laborious discourses in McCluchs public house, and then later on the beach, bearable. In fact, it is clear from the former “Walt Disney” animator’s lay-outs just why Nick Barucci, “Dynamite Entertainment” CEO and publisher, publicly declared his delight that the illustrator would “return to draw the series too.”

Written by: Garth Ennis, Illustrated by: Russ Braun, and Coloured by: Tony Avina