I have a lot of respect for people that challenge the established norms in story telling to make you think more critically about what you are reading about. Sometimes it is small details like if you were to be ejected into space what would this physically do to the body. Suffocation and hypothermia (BSG) or would your eyes start to bulge out of your head (Total Recall). I like the idea too of challenging norms to make things more real. This is something Garth Ennis does exceptionally well. Crossed shows that there is no happy ending when the world ends. The Boys shows how Superheroes make more sense as giant dicks, then people with the destructive power of a nuke but with exceptional moral standards.
In "The Boys" heroes exist, but they are not the last son of a dying planet, or a person bitten by a radioactive spider but people shot up with a compound that makes them scary powerful. For the purpose of this blog though, that doesn't matter what does though is how the story is constructed. Firstly he takes the whole comic book hero lore and turns almost everything on it's head. The best part is that he has so much thought put into it, that thing that make superheroes unique he put a preversed twist on. Be it parodying the Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, Batman. It is all in there and twisted around into a beast that is highly entertaining.
So we have lots of thought into detail, but we also have a lot of thought into story structure. Crossed was a one off in Garth Ennis's eyes that has spouted it's own series. He wanted to make an extreme story that would go the distance. That would disturb and provoke thought. That would challenge the norm of what you expect from your characters, from the story itself. The characters in it are challenged and challenged, and breaking down and does it ever get better for them? Well you will have to read it to find out, but in short though no. He challenges what is acceptable actions for our protagantists. How fantastic ideas of salt and garlic can stop monsters. Of how scary and intelligent crazy can be. I highly recommend Crossed. From the content it is a hard read, I mean it puts Frank Millar to shame in terms of intensity but it is good cause it will stay with you. It's almost torture porn but it has too much of a point, too much thought put into it.
Then there is the Punisher Max. Slavers in particular is an amazing story that will get you emotionally involved with the story. It is violent and merciless, but in such a context where you wish it could be more violent. It is a story about human trafficers, abducting women, raping them drugging them and forcing them into prostitution. Frank shuts them down and in a meaningful way but what makes this story so good is it feels so real. It feels like it is telling a story of something that has happened, flesh and bone in our world, which it is loosely based on, and this is how it ended. If ever they make another Punisher feature this should be the source material. For the Punisher, Ennis challenges the norm of comic story telling by telling something that feels real, makes you scared, makes you angry. It is an awesome piece.
In Preacher, we have a man forced into religion by his crazy family, who accidently acquires the voice of god when it escaped from some angels, and him and his girlfriend and vampire friend are on a quest across the US to find God (whos in hiding) and get some answers out of him... Nuff said
**Reasons aren't in any actual order. I am not that OCD.
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