# The Name of the Game (comic book)

The Name of the Game is a two-part graphic novel written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson that was released in 2006 by WildStorm and DC Comics as the first volume of the American comic book series The Boys. It consists of the two-part The Name of the Game (from which the novel takes its title), of which Part 1, This Is Going To Hurt, was released August 16, 2006, and Part 2, The Frenchman, the Female and the Man Called Mother's Milk, was released August 30, 2006, and the four-part Cherry, of which Part 1, The Seven, was released October 4, 2006, Part 2, Teenage Kix Right Through the Night, was released October 25, 2006, Part 3, Life Among the Septics, was released November 22, 2006, and Part 4, And I Always Wanted A Little Brother, was released December 27, 2006.
The series follows Wee Hughie and Annie January as they are respectively recruited to the anti-"supe" CIA-affiliated black ops group codenamed "The Boys" (run by Billy Butcher) and the world's premiere superhero team "The Seven" (run by the Homelander), both encountering various hardships in doing so. Coincidentally meeting in Central Park, the two form a connection, each unaware of the other's affiliations on opposite sides of a war long-since on-truce.
After being cancelled after six issues by DC Entertainment, the series' rights were acquired by Dynamite Entertainment, who published the trade paperback edition of the volume, followed by the story arc Get Some. In 2019, the volume was loosely adapted as the first episode of the Amazon Prime Video streaming television adaptation of The Boys.
The series has received a universally positive critical reception.

## Publication history

The first six issues of The Boys were published by WildStorm, starting in 2006. On January 24, 2007, the series was abruptly canceled with issue 6, with the series' co-creator writer Garth Ennis later explaining this was because DC Comics (of which WildStorm was an imprint before it was disbanded) were uneasy with the "anti-superhero" tone of the work, with the planned collection of the issues also canceled, the series' other co-creator and illustrator Darick Robertson stating that "DC is being good about reverting our rights so we can find a new publisher and we're in the process of doing that now". Ennis then released a statement that some other publishers had expressed interest in reviving the series, and that issue 7 and a trade paperback of the first six issues would be available. While Robertson was on exclusive contract to DC, he was given special dispensation to continue working on The Boys, and in February 2007, the series was picked up by Dynamite Entertainment and it resumed in May. A collected edition of the first six issues, now titled The Name of the Game, was then published by Dynamite, including a foreword by Simon Pegg, the model on whom the character of Wee Hughie was based in the way he was drawn by Robertson.

## Reception

| Issue # | Publication date | Critic rating | Critic reviews |
| The Name of the Game |||||
| 1 | August 2006 | 7.3/10 | 18 |
| 2 | August 2006 | 7.7/10 | 13 |
| Cherry |||||
| 3 | October 2006 | 7.5/10 | 14 |
| 4 | October 2006 | 7.4/10 | 13 |
| 5 | November 2006 | 7.4/10 | 12 |
| 6 | December 2006 | 8.1/10 | 9 |
| Overall | | 7.6/10 | 79 |

## Collected editions

| Title | Material collected | Published date | ISBN |
| The Boys: The Name of the Game | The Boys (vol. 1) #1–6 | June 2007 | ISBN 1-93330-573-8 |
| The Boys: Definitive Edition 1 | The Boys #1–14 (The Name of the Game and Get Some) | December 2008 | ISBN 1-933305-80-0 |

## Adaptation

In October 2015, it was reported that Cinemax had greenlit a television series adaptation of The Boys, and that Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Eric Kripke were producing the series. In September 2017, Variety reported that Amazon Studios had picked up the series. The series premiered on July 26, 2019, with its first episode adapting The Name of the Game.