DIAMOND: The original run of The Boys ended in 2012, after a whopping 90 total issues. Readers who enjoyed the pointed satire, emotional storytelling and brutal action of the book have been clamoring for more ever since. Now they’re getting the proper article. What’s it like returning to this world in 2020?
Garth Ennis: Originally I never intended to do more with The Boys at all, but for obvious reasons I’ve found myself thinking about the story and characters again over the past couple of years. There was one aspect of the original story, and one character in particular, that I never felt got a fair shake…
That character being Becky Butcher, whose demise motivates her husband Billy to do the terrible things he does—but who only actually appears in two issues of the original book. I liked writing Becky very much, almost as much as Butcher himself, and I wanted to look in greater detail at how her relatively brief appearance cast such a long shadow.
DIAMOND: Of course, this series will be perfectly approachable for new readers and the countless new fans of The Boys. However, for those who have been on this whole journey with you, Darick, Russ and co. or have caught up recently, how does this new series tie to the previous one?
Garth Ennis: So, 12 years after the events of the series, Hughie and Annie have come back to his hometown in Scotland to get married—about time, Annie might say, and she’d be right (Hughie has gotten no more decisive in the intervening period). Then a mysterious package arrives, apparently out of the blue, containing documents that shed new light on The Boys’ long-deceased leader, Billy Butcher. This is very dangerous ground for Hughie, psychologically speaking—he’s been living with the fallout of the horrifically violent times he spent with Butcher ever since. But now he has no choice but to head down the rabbit hole, back to the days when Butcher, MM, Frenchie and the Female were part of his life.
Hughie is going to find things out about Butcher that he never knew before, things that might get him looking at his erstwhile boss- and his own life, come to that—in a rather different light. But he’ll have to figure out who it is that’s trying to drag him back into the world of The Boys in the first place- and why.
DIAMOND: With The Boys back in town, exploding in the mainstream, Preacher wrapping up a strong run on TV, and Punisher books on the stands and in the works, have people finally caught up with the Garth Ennis flavor?
Garth Ennis: Long may it continue, I suppose.
