Hughie said it best, “I’m no wiser than I ever was.”

The Boys 22 wraps up the all-too-long and all-too-convoluted  I Tell You No Lie, G.I. arch that was supposed to explain the background story of the newest series from Preacher creator Garth Ennis.

In a monthly book the tightly woven plot of the Boys has been harder to follow than Lost after a 6-week hiatus. Too much time goes by that what little history that has been established has been ripped from my memory more violently than Hughie’s girlfriend’s appendages.

The things that save this book and the reasons why I will continue to buy it are Darick Robertson’s fantastic pencils and the large dichotomy of moments in the book. We are taken from (yet another) rape attempt to a sweet conversation meant for a park-bench romantic comedy in only 10 pages. Robertson handles both with aplomb and neither look out of place.

Despite this complicated arch, I’m not dropping this book. The Boys is still more interesting than most of the other “gritty” comics that I’ve read. The next arch will deal with the G-Men, obviously the X-Men. I’m looking forward to this because of my deep-seeded love for the mutants. God only knows what Ennis has in store for us in the next issues but now that the exposition is over with, hopefully we’ll get back to the ultra-violent sexually exploratory fun of the first two archs.