The Boys Comics Have A Telling Homage To A Classic Clint Eastwood Western
by Devin Meenan · /FilmThe comic book version of "The Boys" ran for 72 issues, but as issue numbering can often be, this is misleading. Writer Garth Ennis also penned three six-issue "The Boys" mini-series that are essential parts of the story: "Herogasm," "Highland Laddie," and "Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker." Counting these and the 2020 epilogue mini-series "Dear Becky," "The Boys" is really 98 issues.
When "The Boys" was collected as trade paperbacks, these miniseries were included as if they were part of the series' main run. ("Herogasm" was volume 5, "Highland Laddie" volume 8, and "Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker" volume 10.)
"Herogasm" is a business as usual arc of the Boys infiltrating a Supe orgy. ("Herogasm" later became one of the best episodes of the "Boys" TV series.) "Highland Laddie," meanwhile, is about Hughie taking a break from Supe-hunting and going back to Scotland, whereas "Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker" finally fills in the backstory of antihero Billy Butcher.
Called back to England for his abusive father's funeral, Butcher remembers his life story. It turns out he was a bad lad who enlisted in the Royal Marines to escape his family. After the Falklands War, however, he couldn't adjust to a life without killing until he met his eventual wife, Becca. Then one day when they were vacationing, she was raped by a Supe and died giving birth to the rapist's baby, making Butcher rededicate his life to killing every superpowered c**t on planet Earth. The mini-series ends with a title card quoting the ending of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" (see below). The words reflect Becca's sad fate and how that sent Butcher on a path she would've never wanted, implying she was wrong to think she could fix him.
This is a slight misquote (in the film it's "notoriously vicious and intemperate") but Ennis still clearly knows his "Unforgiven." Both that film and his comics explore similar themes about masculinity and violence, so Ennis invoking Eastwood to end Butcher's story is a fantastic denouement.
Unforgiven condemns Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name
"Unforgiven" centers on William Munny (Eastwood), an older man with two children and a failing farm to his name. In his youth, Munny was an outlaw and killer — apparently quite a ruthless one too — until he met and fell in love with a woman named Claudia. Munny tried to be a better man, one worthy of his bride, so he swore off killing and took to legitimate work. Now Claudia is dead, though, and the Munny family is in dire straits. Will, really needing the money, decides to pursue a bounty. On that journey, he learns that there's no redemption for him in his life, only damnation once he enters the next.
Eastwood has kept making movies 30+ years after starring in and directing "Unforgiven." (Read our review of his new courtroom drama "Juror No. 2" here.) When "Unforgiven" came out, though, it was proclaimed as a book-end to his career.
Clint became a movie star playing gunslingers in Westerns. "Unforgiven" is about the consequences of living a violent life like that; it's a spiritual epilogue to every Eastwood Western, from the "Dollars" trilogy to "The Outlaw Josey Wales." Think of how Eastwood's character in "A Fistful of Dollars" through "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is called "the Man with No Name." He's a mythic figure, an embodiment of the archetypal Western hero, a phantom who drifts from one adventure to the next. "Unforgiven" brings this hero down to Earth; William Munny experiences age, failure, and the other foibles that trouble us mortals.
The film's exact ending is this: Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), the tyrannical sheriff of Little Whiskey, kills Munny's partner Ned (Morgan Freeman). Munny then kills the Sheriff in revenge (note how he takes a swing of booze in this scene, having failed to stay sober). Munny then rides out of Little Whiskey on a pale horse like the Angel of Death in "Revelation," and not into the calm sunset but rather a dark storm. The film ends with a wide shot of Munny walking to Claudia's grave at his farm, with the following scrolling text:
"Some years later, Mrs. Ansonia Feathers made the arduous journey to Hodgeman County to visit the last resting place of her only daughter. William Munny has long since disappeared with the children.... some said to San Francisco where it was rumored he prospered in dry goods. And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs. Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
(For our more detailed dive into the ending of "Unforgiven," click here.)
The cover of "Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker" #6 is also similar to the ending of "Unforgiven." Butcher stands at Becca's grave, the orange sunset turning all the subjects into silhouettes. Compare the images below:
Bill Munny and Bill Butcher both remain Unforgiven
William Munny and Billy Butcher are like two rounds in a revolver; violent men who used a woman's love as a guiding light, but failed once she was gone and fell back into their old, murderous ways. In "Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker," Billy reads Becca's diary to learn what happened to her. It ends with her writing how Billy has put her on a pedestal and thinks she's "the greatest person alive" when really, "I'm just the girl who loves him, that's all."
He may write some of the most cynical and gruesome comics you'll ever meet, but there's a softie inside Ennis; he believes in the power of love to make people better. Some of Butcher's last words to Hughie (see below) are him encouraging Hughie to never let his girlfriend Annie go, because a man needs a woman to keep him on the right path.
Note, "Dirty Harry." Once more, Ennis is citing Eastwood as the model for men to follow, and not only in "The Boys." "Preacher" features an immortal cowboy called the Saint of Killers who resembles Eastwood:
"Preacher" lead Jesse Custer, an atheist who hates God despite his job, doesn't look to Jesus as his guide — no, Jesse Custer's guardian angel is John Wayne. Ennis' mini-series "Pride & Joy" is about a former gangster, now a family man, who similarly winds up on the run with his two kids. Told like David Cronenberg's crime thriller/domestic drama "A History of Violence," "Pride & Joy" is basically like "Unforgiven" if Munny's children had tagged along on his quest.
Besides his creator-owned works, Ennis is also a prolific writer of the Punisher. Billy Butcher takes after Frank Castle, a man who lost his family and now leads a one man vengeance quest that will, one day, destroy him.
Ennis admires old school machismo, but he's no Tony Soprano uncritically longing for the days of "Gary Cooper... the strong silent type." He understands that only being a rock-solid tough guy is no way to live, as cool as those men can often appear. If you try to live like that, you'll live no life at all. Garth Ennis and Clint Eastwood are both more introspective about the masculine characters they depict than a surface glance might reveal.