The Boys Omnibus vol 3 back

Giant, multinational corporations: it's all about the money, and there is no one they won't steal from or tread on to maximise profits. The public, their workers, suppliers and governments are all just outsiders the accountants can avoid and the lawyers deal with. That's what's actually at the heart of this book (and indeed the real world around us), even if the blood it pumps out is what keeps you all coming back. And the good news is it's spraying all over the place in the first half of this volume as Vought-American, the particularly callous corporation which makes its money from superheroes and their attendant comics and merchandise, sends in a derisible bunch of nob-heads led by a genuine Nazi, A-list superhuman to deal with Billy Butcher and his Boys once and for all. The mistake that's made is the hospitalisation of The Female first, because that's really going to piss Billy off.

However, if that's all this kept on being - carnage and cussing - I would have lost interest a very long time ago, just as wee Hughie has. So the best chapters for me by far were the two in which Mother's Milk contemplates the building and rebuilding of the Brooklyn Bridge and confides in Hughie in order to get him back on side. He tells Hughie of his childhood, his mother, father and brother. You learn how he acquired his peculiar nickname and exactly how they suffered under the heavy heel of Vought-American and its legislative back-up, then how Billy looked out for him when it came to his ex-wife and child. I'm relieved that Darick was back for that because his Brooklyn Bridge is a magnificent monument which will impress you as much as it does Mother's Milk. Frenchie's 'secret origin' on the other hand is a gleeful pisstake of French stereotypes (not the French - this isn't Mark Millar) by embracing them, exaggerating them then taking those who perpetuate them to task. Clearly Frenchie is making it all up for his own and the others' amusement. Lastly you finally learn about the fractured human being that is The Female whose mother had not one ounce of maternal instinct and which climaxes with a scene straight out of Alien! The question is, is this enough to keep Hughie on board or will he and his lady love abscond before, I fear, she inevitably gets dragged into Billy Butcher's personal vendetta?