Cool Stuff This Week: Spaced and The Boys

As Sheree already stated, Spaced is awesome. It's great that a show like this existed, and before I go on, I'd like to take you with me on an angry tangent about American TV. Okay, Spaced was on for two seasons (14 episodes), which is around the same length as some great American shows (Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, Firefly, Twin Peaks). The difference? All of the good American TV shows were canceled, whereas Spaced went off the air because the creators wanted to start making motion pictures. That being said, I'm glad that Spaced was birthed across the pond. Otherwise, who knows how many episodes might have been prematurely destroyed by a short-sighted American TV network?
Anywho, the show must really be seen to be believed, so here's a brief taste that Danny showed me a long time ago. Oh, and this quote's pretty good: "Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like f***king Shaft!"

On another, comic book related note, I recently cracked into a pretty good one by Garth Ennis called The Boys. In brief, it's about a semi-superpowered team of CIA spooks who make sure to hold superheroes accountable for the collateral damage that their exploits inflict on the innocent. Interestingly enough, artist Darick Robertson contacted Simon Pegg to use his likeness for a character named Wee Hughie whose girlfriend gets killed in a skirmish between a superhero named A-Train and some ignominious supervillain. As a way to deal with his grief, Hughie accepts an invitation to join The Boys from the aptly named team leader Billy Butcher.
Since it's a Garth Ennis tale, there's a lot of twisted stuff in here, most of it perpetrated by costumed superhero types. They're all about dogooding and justice while they are on camera, but in their secret fortresses and lairs they indulge themselves in bizarre excesses and deviant behavior that come as a byproduct of their apparent invincibility. So, you don't feel so bad when The Boys beat the snot out of a group called Teenage Kix directly after outing one of their principal members and ruining their public image. It's especially gratifying when Hughie, recently doped up on "super-serum" type pharmaceuticals, accidentally punches a hole through Blarney Cock's chest.
The action seems to be mounting up to a major confrontation between The Boys and America's leading superhero team, The Seven (Basically like the JLA, if the JLA let their celebrity status run away with them and turn them into a bunch of pricks). It's probably gonna be pretty messy.

How's that for a piece of fried gold?