The Boys Omnibus vol 4 back

Collects what was The Boys vol 7: The Innocents and The Boys vol 8: Highland Laddie.

The Boys vol 7: The Innocents

You've got to worry with a title like that and I've been worrying about Wee Hughie and Starlight for a while now. Against all odds and following some serious personal nightmares, these two angels in a world full of self-interested, power-hungry and sexually depraved horrors have finally found love in each other's arms. But they haven't been straight with each other.

Starlight hasn't told Wee Hughie that she's a superhero in the top-tier team called The Seven. Wee Hughie hasn't told her that he's one of Billy Butcher's boys whose sole purpose it is to expose superheroes as the degenerate bastards they mostly are, or that The Seven are top of their quite literal hit list. Wee Hughie has told Starlight that his last girlfriend was slaughtered by a member of The Seven (hit-and-run-at-superspeed); she hasn't told him that she was forced to give that very member's member a servicing of sorts in order to join the Seven.

No one has told Billy Butcher anything, but he's about to find out.

'Traumatic' is the word I'd use to describe this instalment.

Meanwhile Starlight and The Seven's supercilious Homelander are press-ganged into appearing at Believe, a farcical faith festival designed purely to exploit gullible Americans' religious beliefs in order to extract money from them. Lord knows where Ennis dreamt that one up from.

SLH

The Boys vol 8: Highland Laddie

Change of pace and change of scenery for wee Hughie, who retreats home to the relatively tranquil Scottish seaside town of Auchterladle, in order to sort his head out.

His adoptive parents are both sound and doting and delighted to see him. His old friends too whisk him straight down the pub. Unfortunately Hughie soon realises that he'd idealised them in their absence* for they can't resist resurrecting old humiliations and it rubs him up the wrong way. Fortunately as Hughie wanders down the beach on his first night, he discovers a man painting the simmer dim - the evening's permanent summer twilight there - who turns out to be a very good listener, and as the days wander on Hughie finds he's drawn to the sympathetic stranger who lets him offload. But what was done in New York doesn't stay in New York and very soon there's a visitor…

There are some truly touching scenes here, particularly those involving Hughie's adoptive Dad, but also some early traumas as Hughie reflects not just on the circumstances of his leaving New York, but his childhood too. That's quite the tapeworm! But if you think Ennis has left the burlesque behind, think again: a mad Scottish vicar, an enormous woman which gardening sheers who's quite prepared to use them, a smuggling sub-plot and his two friends are… unusual individuals.

I've never seen art like this from McCrea: full of light and space and - thanks to Tony Avina - colour. He works well with Keith Burns. I wonder when Hughie's deception is going to catch up with him?