Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsThe Big Crawl.
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2012
Nine volumes into "the Boys" and what seemed like a series destined to become one of the truly greats of comics is limping toward the finish line with a barely coherent plot and nothing new to offer about the characters. Long and meandering, "The Big Ride" would probably be more accurate if it had been titled, "The Big Crawl." With pages and pages of repetitive exposition, hardly anything happens in this volume that substantiallly advances the overarching plot. In two separate episodes, the titular "Boys" and the "Seven" have a literal standoff, in which nothing actually happens. The characters talk, of course, but by the end of both meetings, nothing has changed. The meetings are therefore a kind of metaphor for where the series is as a whole - in a holding pattern, with plenty of posturing on all sides but nothing significant taking place.
It's an unfortunate creative rut for what started out as a promising book. The creative team seems to have decided when they started that there was an arbitrary point at which the series should end, but they didn't have enough story to take up all the issues between launch and conclusion. And lets face it, it hardly ever happens that the writer who draws a story out unnecessarily ever finishes strong. We're probably looking to an ending more like a whimper than a bang. Which is unfortunate. The artists on the book are consistently wonderful and are pitch perfect for the series. But they're given so little to do it must be a real labor of love for them to get through the pages. Too bad it's just mostly labor for us...
