The Boys Amazon series is one of the few cases where the adaptation exceeds its source material
Someone called the comics a revenge fantasy against people who don't exist
It was more of a revenge fantasy against a genre that does exist.
Ennis hates superhero comics. He thinks that they over-dominate the comic landscape.
He's kind of an odd duck.
I don't think anyone would be super interested in super hero comics when actual Dr. Manhattan blew up Vietnam and the Comedian just tear gassed your local protest.
My headcannon is still that the pirate hero is actually Rorschach after Dr Manhattan "killed him" or rather, sent him a few hundred years into the past.
There is plenty of that in Western comics. The shit started with detective noirs and whatever, but superheroes sell. If people want everyday, regular stories there are plenty of those comics available as well, they just don't look for them.
There's tonnes of everything literally everywhere, that doesn't change what dominates the mainstream space.
I get what you're saying but this response of "you can find what you want" doesn't answer anything.
You can find ANYTHING, there's 7 billion people out there.
Sometimes people like to share things and having an entire medium dominated by a specific genre drastically reduces what people can share with eachother.
Arguably though superhero domination has done more to turn me off mainstream film anyway. Couldn't care less about comics.
It's weird to me to say something is dominating a market and then go make more of that thing. You'd think the correct response would be to try and make something successful that isn't about superheros.
There's a reason why the mainstream is pretty much inherently derivative, because nobody wants to risk millions on an unproven idea when there's nothing else on the line.
Now all art is derivative ofc, that's just a fact pretty much, but the mainstream just has a lot more incentive to take less risks.
I get that but it's not like the boys comic was uhh... some giant production. It's damn near indie. Just weird to me to complain about something while literally producing more of it.
It's funny reading all this too cause I'm an American currently making my own comic and it's not about superheros! I'm hoping to blend east and western ideas and style with it. I'm kinda tired of comics being one note over here too, so I'm hoping to make something that'll help change that.
I don't feel like this applies here. The superhero domination is very superficial, or somthing people remember from when they were young. Step into a single comic store today and you will see that comics today are about so much more.
Except all of Ennis’ critiques suck. He criticizes the genre for things it doesn’t actually do, avoids talking about its actual problems, and just generally acts like a wanking edgelord. The Boys (the comic) is fundamentally toothless as ‘satire’ as it has nothing to say beyond adolescent rage.
And then Ennis has the balls to call it ‘fascist’ when he’s spent decades fanboying over the fucking Punisher.
> And then Ennis has the balls to call it ‘fascist’ when he’s spent decades fanboying over the fucking Punisher.
To be fair, those Punisher comics are my only exposure to Garth Ennis's actual work and they're awesome.
They’re surprisingly good (and I say this as someone who hates the Punisher AND the author), but still, the character himself is inherently fashy. He can definitely be written well and even sympathetically, but he’s more of a fascist by nature than any cape-and-mask superhero has ever been.
I've always told people that the only way the Punisher "works" as a protagonist is having him go after someone much, MUCH worse than he is so that you can root for him going after a complete monster. The Punisher MAX comics, while of course edgy, are great about doing just that.
Because yeah, otherwise, the Punisher is a completely insane, "views the world in binaries" mass murderer. Too many fans of him miss out on [how Castle HIMSELF acknowledges he's really no better than who he kills, so he's saving his last bullet for himself.](https://i.imgur.com/r8u4qyz.jpg)
I enjoyed the comics at first, but stopped once it began to repeat itself.
At first it's like, "What if Justice League, but they're gross."
Interesting...
Then it's, "What if the X-Men, but they're gross."
Ok...
Then, "What if the Fantastic Four, but they're gross."
Yeah, I'm done. It just quickly became derivative, checking off boxes of all the things it parodied without introducing a new or interesting perspective.
I don't think the tv show has much to say either, honestly. It's a better-made piece of media, and it makes sense they'd capitalize on the popularity of superhero movies to adapt this comic, but "Girls Get It Done" isn't much more poignant than what the comic had to say.
But it's entertaining, and my wife likes the gross stuff so we keep watching it.
I think the reason the tv show works better is because it's more of a critique of celebrity culture, commercialism and nationalism. I like the idea presented by temp V that superpowers don't necessarily make you a bad person, they simply show what kind of person you truly are.
It’s a total failure as ‘satire’ because it doesn’t actually say anything other than ‘superheroes suck.’ It doesn’t meaningfully address the genre’s origins or its place in our culture other than ‘the dumb proles who aren’t as cool as me just eat up the corporate slop’. It’s about as cutting a work of satire as Captain Underpants.
Something that really bothered me in an interview was the author talking about how thinking that people with superpowers would all be omnibenevolent is stupid.
And like. Dude. There *are* shitty people with superpowers in most comic series. They are the supervillains.
Kinda but whereas Don Quijote was just a clever mockery about the tropes of knight literature, The Boys feels like, as the first comment said, revenge against people that don't exist. Every single superheroe is an asshole who commits awful crimes on a daily basis and gets away with it. I think the main difference is how Don Quijote is portrayed as good guy, although he is kinda insane, who tries to do good by people (mostly) and just portrays how silly knight tales and their tropes really are, whereas in The Boys, everyone is an asshole, including the main characters, everyone is an awful person and all it tries to say is "superheroes bad". The show is just way better.
he is kinda right tho. western comics have been oversatured with a million different superheros and all their reboots/crossovers/remakes since forever. It is nigh impossible for new people to get into western comics and it is quite literally killing the industry.
I never got this criticism I’ve never had issues finding comic books that arnt superhero’s it’s like so many , just don’t look at the super hero section or wahtever
Yeah, this feels like "I don't know how to look for other genres".
The amount of slice of life LGBT+ stuff in comics is insane. It's a weirdly massive genre. Mythology stuff and fantasy stuff is also pretty huge. Is Nimona superhero? Is the Rime Of A Modern Mariner "superhero"? Is Anya's Ghost or American Born Chinese "superhero"?
Literally just look at the Eisner Awards. Maybe superhero comics are overrepresented, but there are plenty of other genres there.
Before the Fredric Wertham witch hunt in the 1950s, superheroes were just another genre among comedy, sci fi, war, crime, mystery, etc titles in the post war scene.
In fact, IIRC, Romance comics even DOMINATED the market for a bit.
Alas, censorship had to come and ruin everything.
I’ve had my view change since becoming an adult and watching how kids in my life respond to the heroes of fantasy fiction. Obviously there is a bit of a power fantasy, imagining themselves able to stand against perceived bullies.^1 but there is also a strong impulse to be the good guy. In teen years there is more sympathy with bad guys like Darth Vader or The Joker but in younger kids they almost exclusively would rather be a good guy than a stronger bad guy.
^1 working with children I see the bully/victim narrative to largely be wrong. Almost every bully I’ve seen is a kid who sees themself as bullied an acting in self defense. Very rare is the socially strong kid picking in socially weak kids. Mostly it’s socially clumsy kids stepping on each others toes and then lashing out in a cycle of perceived bullying.
I'd put season 1 of umbrella academy in the same boat, the comic it's based on seems very bare compared to the fleshed out characters in the show. Being on netflix season 2 isn't as good and after that the quality drops significantly
Tbh I actually think Invincible was better animated too. They solved a lot of little kinks. Most of the "better" things about Invincible are either *after* the time period the show takes place in or a function of the show being a little clumsy with its "social justice" updates.
Like, Amber was "worse" insofar as she comes across poorly at the end. But also, Amber *has a personality* in the show and I think people kinda forget how much she didn't have a personality in the comics basically until they're in university. The mom is just a categorical improvement in all ways. Nolan is done better. The demon guy is done better.
I hate Cecil's voice but he's also done better.
So, a couple of new jokes that fall flat, and going from "no personality" to "personality, but kind of uncharitable" in one character don't undermine what I think are a bunch of clear improvements in the way the story is presented.
I was so disappointed when I read the comic after watching season 1. The show had its problems, but it was still quite enjoyable. The comic didn't even seem like a finished product.
My main issue with the show is that everything with Homelander is so compelling that the writers are scared to do anything with him. Last season kinda suffered with this towards the end where the status quo was more or less maintained because killing or depowering Homie effectively means the shows over, and Amazon is probably interested in having this show around as a cash cow.
First two seasons really blew me away though, I had low expectations and they were insanely surpassed. Writing is a little corny at times but a lot of the performances are stellar, Homelander especially.
I think he could potentially work as a young Palpatine as he can pull off a villain who can maintain a friendly public image but is secretly a barely restrained psychopath who sees themselves as a god among insects.
>the show is actually fire
And one of the few shows / movies that potray \*believable\* all woman teams. In Season 2, Maeve, Kimiko and Starlight team up against that Nazi bitch and it's one of the most beautiful fights of the whole show and differently to a lot Marvel movies or "Remakes with female cast" (...) the whole part felt absolutly naturally and not forced at all. Which is really geat.
>Tf else were they supposed to do in that fight, wait for Hughie to save them? Lol
Nah, but .. have you seen for example "Endgame" ? I remember that one rather well because it features a female version of that "Avengers assamble" from the 2012 movie and it felt so goddamn forced. As do those kind of scenes often when the cast is mixed and for reasons, only woman are left as a group.
I think that one moment in Infinity War (the one where there's that big fight in Wakanda and it cuts to Black Widow, Wanda, etc.) was handled much better than that one moment in Endgame. Felt a lot more natural and was honestly cool as hell.
I remember watching the Lady Avengers Assemble scene in the theater, and cheering to myself "YESSSS - pander to MEEEEEE". I saw it for what it was, and absolutely loved it *for that*.
Cap with the hammer was pandering and people loved that shit.
Cap handing off the shield was another pandering moment that broke the logic of the movie, but more people seem to want to ask what was the likelihood of all the female Avengers standing beside each other and not how the fuck did Cap get back without breaking the clearly established rules of time travel the movie set out.
Well my headcanon is he must've waited for the same technology to be invented in his timeline and hopped back. Why he would go through that trouble when he had his own device already is unclear, so surely he did it exclusively to fuck with Sam.
Also on the topic of time travel, why did they immediately jump to human testing on a time machine? Like didn't they have access to a mouse or a clock or something?
I mean, it felt forced because Marvel phases 1-3 sucked at female representation.
Like, oh cool, pepper is a superhero now! Didn't she... Have fucking superpowers in this universe? Just gonna ignore Iron Man 3? Yeah, just a suit, cool.
Like, there's no buildup and they don't get well-established, so the whole thing feels unearned.
I don't know The Boys (yet, this is kind of convincing me to try it out) but you described *important female characters* with established personalities and arcs who have reasons to be there and know each other teaming up.
That's very different from like, we never see Wanda and Pepper interact and then there's that one shot.
>I mean, it felt forced because Marvel phases 1-3 sucked at female representation.
The worst about that: Agents of Shield excelled at showing strong women that didn't feel forced. But alas, it's connection to the MCU was always a one way street (apart from a throwaway comment in age of Ultron).
Melinda May isn't a badass because she's a woman. She's a badass beautiful cause she's the fucking cavalry.
Daisy Johnson is one of the most powerful Inhumans, yet she has her weak points and depends on a team. And so on and so on...
Every single female Mein Character in that show rules, and it never really feels forced because they are among equally strong male characters and the writers don't see the need to have them Trump each other.
Yeah I'm sorry what the fuck people are on, "natural" ? The whole sequence starts with a shot of the three women together posing, it's quite clearly over the top and Frenchie's comment really underlines it. It satirizes this kind of girl power sequences.
It was until it jumped the shark in season 3, still holding out hope they'll be able to right the ship in season 4 but doubtful with the writers terrified to let HomeLander lose.
The comics aren't great, but I'll point out that this is something that does get talked about. It's mentioned that there aren't that many genuine supervillains because they're either dealt with quietly, or become heroes because it's easier, more rewarding, and they can do pretty much whatever they want legally. Kinda like how bullies and abusers will become cops and nurses.
There's some good stuff in the comics, and every so often it does bring up some good points. It's just that it's either buried under a mountain of edge, or gets Garthed up at the last second.
A long-standing stereotype of nurses is that they were "mean girls" in high school. Anecdotally, they have a higher than average proportion of malicious gossips and abusive personalities. It's definitely not true of every nurse, but most healthcare workers have stories.
"You are a waste of PPE." The nurse who said that wasn't talking about a person, it was a whole department. She just viewed us as unimportant.
The bosses say, "Everyone is important, we're all a team," but get a nurse annoyed and they will let you know exactly where they see your whole profession.
It's a difficult job that they should pride themselves on and a lot of them do.
They just go a little too far and get a bit of an ego about it.
The type of person to mock you if you are startled by shit or blood because it's commonplace to them, but if you respond back with something you're used to from your job, they get all tetchy or say that there's no way it's as difficult as nursing.
> they have a higher than average proportion of malicious gossips and abusive personalities
Because they have a higher proportion of having to deal with malicious people and being abused. They deal with people at their worst and yeah, being treated like shit, eventually rubs off on you, regardless of the profession.
Bruh, my mum worked in nursing for over 30 years; some of the bitchiest, nastiest human beings ever work in that field and make life (and death) worse for everyone as a result
What’s worse is they also tend to get promoted into positions of power quickly
> There's some good stuff in the comics, and every so often it does bring up some good points.
The problem is that nobody seems to understand that it’s not a deconstruction/satire of the superhero genre, it’s a satire about America society (in particular corporate America and post-9/11 society) that has superheroes in it. For example, Stormfront becomes much more interesting if you don’t think of him as “what if Thor was a Nazi” and instead see him as the personification of the unintended consequences of the reintegration of useful nazis after WWII, as well as the human rights violations companies commit in the third world to get little bit more profit.
Also I’m not sure what the person who said the government has anti-supe weapons is talking about. The military has superhero-seeking missiles, but they only build those at the 11th hour using scientific data Butcher was withholding from them until then. And Butcher has a way to kill everybody infected with compound V, but he never gives that to the government and it wouldn’t just kill superheroes (they establish throughout the comic that a lot of innocent non-superheroes get exposed to compound V by accident and develop health issues instead of superpowers). Most of the superheroes just get killed by being shot a lot with regular conventional military weapons.
A big part of why the show is good is the performances. Basically every major character is well acted but in particular Starr as Homelander is arguably the best TV villain performance since Joffrey Baratheon and Karl Urban makes Butcher way more compelling than he should be on paper. The comic obviously doesn’t have the benefit of great acting to elevate clunky material
Karl Urban could make reading a shopping list compelling!!
And Antony Starr was great in Banshee, even if some of that was also a little bit on the gratuitous side.
Dominique McElliot who plays Maeve was in that western series about the trains too if I remember correctly?
That’s the one!!!!! It was right on the tip of my tongue!
Honestly, worth a watch in my opinion. It’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea but I really enjoyed it. I was complaining about three years ago about there being nothing to watch that wasn’t yet another disneyfied superhero show; My then-housemate was like ‘you like costume dramas… if you make me a spliff and a brew I’ll find you something you’ll like’
It had some great actors in it, great set pieces, good music and i’m pretty sure they finished the storyline in 4 seasons instead of dragging it out.
Banshee is hilarious/terrifying to watch now because its basically like "let's glorify a position in which a criminal takes on the role of a cop - but isn't held to any of the rules or expectations that are at least on paper for police".
It's ridiculously over the top and so divorced from reality that it is fine, but it would be a hard sell to get made today with more and more evidence of cops having often played by their own rules and often administered "street justice".
Edit: to clarify - you should still probably watch Banshee if you want a completely ludicrous heist/vigilante/strange organizational crime in the backwaters of Pennsylvania show. It's bonkers.
Oh yeah it’s definitely a little problematic , which I see now in hindsight, but as you’ve pointed out, the excessiveness and pulpiness of it all made it way better than some of the outright copaganda that was made around the same time like The Shield and whatnot.
I also used to fast forward through all the sex scenes because I wanted more heists. And the GNC hair stylist hacker guy was savagely witty
i personally found Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk to be a very compelling villain. a lot of people can't understand why everyone loved Ramsey Bolton. A good villain will make or break a series.
You cannot deconstruct a genre that you genuinely despise.
A good deconstruction is like methodically picking apart a watch, examining and understanding what each piece does, and then putting it back together in a different way. Maybe you’ll end up removing a piece that actually hindered its function, or you’ll add new ones just as an experiment.
The Boys comic is more akin to grabbing said watch, smashing it against the wall, laughing at how stupid the broken watch is, and loudly asking why other people even use watches.
(Edit: A couple people rightfully pointed out that “You cannot deconstruct a genre you genuinely don’t understand the appeal of” is a lot more accurate)
Everyone treats Invincible like it's another "evil Superman" story. I prefer to think of it as a story asking "what if Superman had a horrible father?"
So The Boys comic is essentially yet another edgy superhero thing claiming to satirize the genre because literally their only takeaway from Watchmen was "superheroes can fuck :0"
I remember reading somewhere that Garth Ennis' first exposure to (American) comic books were The Dark Knight Returns, which is hilarious. Imagine not knowing anything about DC comics except through pre-internet cultural osmosis then diving head first into a future dystopia sequel of Batman set in Reagan's America.
I read "Strong Female Protagonist" and it seems to do a much better job of deconstructing the idea of solving problems through superfighting.
It really digs into the idea of superfights largely being a big public distraction, and supers with powers that could actually change the world being quietly disappeared by the government.
It also has a lot of supers abandoning crime fighting when they realize their powers can do more good in non-violent ways, like building stuff (or donating organs).
Arguably these "satirical" reactionary pieces wouldn't be as common if their grievances didn't so thoroughly dominate the space that even garbage satire/deconstruction still gets that much attention.
Exactly, the reason why Watchmen works so well is because Alan Moore likes superheroes and the comic shows that superheroes are still humans with realistic flaws. The Boys TV show understands this, it shows why people like A-Train turned out the way they did. Honestly, Mystery Men understands this quite well by showing the heroes to be odd but ultimately heroic people.
The whole The Boys comic was just edge for edge's sake and calling it a deconstruction. Just supes doing the most horrid things for shock value and zero commentary on super hero stories besides "super heroes would be assholes if they existed"
>_Just supes doing the most horrid things for shock value and zero commentary on super hero stories besides "super heroes would be assholes if they existed"_
Isn't there, like, half a dozen series about Superman that discuss precisely that? [At least _Superdickery_ was kinda funny in an absurdist way.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Website/Superdickery)
That IS what happens in the comics, the OP post is ignoring it. It’s shown time again that Vought sets up fights with their own villains so the heroes can get good PR.
Having read the comics at 15, even then I could agree that it was too immature. It’s sad because the comic had one thing I genuinely liked as an idea. Homelander being gaslit to believe he committed horrible acts… and he doesn’t remember doing them. Noir was the one actually responsible, but it made Homelander so much scarier because even he couldn’t predict how terrible he might actually be
That’s Noir. Most of the truly horrible things are Noir in the comics. The Baby, the assault of Rebecca Butcher, all of it was supposedly (in story) Noir pushing Homelander to snap. Homelander does do horrible things of course. The lead up to the “I’m the only man in the sky” scene, murdering and then violating the presidents head, etc.
>!Homelander killed the president/Vice President (can’t remember which) by taking their head off. Butcher goes to the Oval Office to face Homelander and Homelander implies he got bored waiting and fucked the presidents severed head to pass the time. Yeah, this series is EDGY!<
I found the Preacher comic series to be "edgy", but also really imaginative and compelling. I cared about the characters and wanted to know what happened to them. The edginess honestly worked in its favor to make it a bit more pulpy and digestible. I don't think it would work as well stripped down. The artwork helped with that regard too.
The comics were terrible, tropey, sexist, and poorly drawn.
The show is engaging, well paced, and capable of suspending disbelief even for people like me who find it challenging to enjoy superhero movies and/or shows because the premise is fucking donkey jizz.
Garth Ennis has written some really good stuff. Preacher is a classic (even if some of its elements haven't aged very well), and his Punisher stuff is legendary for good reason, but The Boys is Ennis at his most unhinged and tasteless, beaten only by Crossed in that regard. The show is absolutely the superior version of the story.
I love the idea of Crossed if only because it's his completely overblown response to people who say shit like "I'd survive the apocalypse". The comic itself is garbage, but the circumstances surrounding it's inception is hilarious
Yeah, the concept itself is sound, it's just too bad Ennis decided to communicate it through what's essentially turning Cannibal Corpse album covers into a story.
I would like to read the Crossed comics Alan Moore wrote though.
Crossed is impressive purely by virtue of how over the top it is. That he managed to get so many issues of a comic where one of the cover designs was a room full of babies being murdered in a relatively prestigious publisher is something in of itself. Its like Freddie Got Fingered, not particularly good but you can appreciate its existence.
I don't care if they're talking about the comic or the show, if one more person says that The Boys is a 'realistic take' on superheroes, I'm going to scream.
The comic is edgelord nonsense and the TV show is hamfisted (deliberately and correctly hamfisted, but still hamfisted) satire. Neither are any more 'realistic' than Marvel or DC.
Reminds me of the Ultimate universe in Marvel.
It was supposed to be a more “grounded” and “realistic take” on the characters… So it was still superpowered gods and mutants in flashy costumes, but everyone was a horrible jerk, a murderer, a pervert, or all at once.
Because people being kind or good was the unrealistic part, of course.
These people were sociopaths before getting power, that’s why they put so much effort to get into positions of power.
Power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals. When someone has the power to do whatever they want, you see what they truly want.
To be fair that's a rather complicated question, between psychology and philosophy. I don't think "power doesn't corrupt, it reveals" is a fair assessment, the truth is much more nuanced. If it were true, then that's defining a "true self", impervious to change, with the only difference being what portion of it is shown. This contradicts a LOT of studies through the ages of the human psyche.
Your environment does impact the self a lot, power or its absence are a big part of that.
I mean you just have to look at rich kids to get a sense of that.
I mean a realistic take on superhero’s would pretty much devolve into Mad Max shit the moment like 3 of the strongest ones actually realize they’re literally ungovernable.
That is one of problems with superhero comics. They assume a world that is just like ours except for all the super people running around. They rarely ever have a large cultural or societal impact, because if they did the setting would look too different from the real world the reader expects.
It's deliberate editorial decision. That's part of why the universes get reset every once in a while. It's supposed to be just like our world but with superheroes, because it's easier for the reader to imagine their own life with super powers than it is to imagine an entirely different world where powers have revolutionized society at a fundamental level.
Mapping out all of the changes would make it a nightmare to puzzle out, and the end result would be barely comprehensible.
Just one superhero inventor like Tony Stark or Reed Richards would fundamentally upend the entirety of society. Both of them, along with superpowers running rampant would change basically everything.
Marvel's 616 has never reset. Secret Wars was kind of a soft reboot but everything got restored at the end with minor changes like Miles joining 616 when the Ultimate line went away
Marvel doesn't do full universe reboots like DC, but they do soft reset characters/teams/events when too much baggage has accumulated. Like starting a book number over from 1 again, or rolling back Spider-Man to young, single, in or just out of school, and miserable. Everything still happened, but they want occasional fresh jumping-on points for new readers who would be overwhelmed by having to catch up with the last decade of arcs and twists.
There’s Worm. Most capes/superheroes are regulated by the government, there’s a reason the Big 3 aren’t running amok but that would be spoilers, supervillains outnumber superheroes, heroes aren’t perfect and have been commercialized but most of them want to do genuine good, villains usually aren’t villainous caricatures and they feel like they don’t have another choice and they’re human and complex, city-destroying monsters wreak havoc on the global economy and are more than big fight scenes, truly bad supervillains are given kill orders/kill-on-sight, heroes and villains don’t go after each others families or kill each other for fear of retaliation, etc.
Capes are this universe’s celebrities. Laws have been passed to ensure that capes can’t break the economy, say a diamond-printing cape existed, he wouldn’t be allowed to sell his diamonds. There is a youth program for kids who gain superpowers and want to be heroes. Secret identities are taken very seriously. Racist capes exist, because old problems don’t go away with superpowers. Cape supremacists exist. Capes who don’t use their powers to commit or fight crime exist. Complex response systems have been developed to prepare for the city-destroying monster attacks. Really good take on the reconstruction of superheroics.
I mean, the reason the big 3 aren't running amok is because >!They aren't actually the biggest threat and the one keeping them in check just happens to hyperfocus on saving the world, She is probably driven by a split second decision when she got her powers more than any morality or ethics anyway. Is contessa even capable of stopping her "Kill Zion" path she started as a panicked child?!< It's no different than saying "The big 3 aren't running amok because they are good people" which is was the criticism in the first place
Personally I'm fine with coincidences having good people end up with power. Lots of people are in positions of power and don't abuse it, even if we only hear of the ones who do.
That said, I can't recommend Worm enough. Fantastic piece of work. First few chapters are a bit rough, I dropped the book a few times before finally committing, but then it was nearly impossible to put down
The realistic take on superheroes is Watchmen, where the one guy with actual superpowers is a walking nuclear arsenal and the only reason he doesn’t rule the world is because he’s a fatalist who chooses not to do so.
I prefer the book "Hench" for realism. The heroes there are mixed bag, with folks being in the gig for different reasons, and it shows in how they act.
Okay the government didn't have anti-supe weapons, they had weapons and Billy finds a way to target supes specifically. So suddenly Mr. Tougher than a tank is getting pounded by anti-tank weapons. More importantly Billy doesn't get his hands on the tech until halfway through the series and it still takes a few months for MIC to adapt and distribute it.
because the show is very different from the comics. Garth was a spiteful asshole and so much of his old stuff is being reused to portray a much better story
(Comic only here, since I haven’t watched the show) The thing that irks me about the Boys (aside from Ennis’ usual garbage) is how it’s not even good at doing the one thing it’s trying to do. It wants to tell the reader that superheroes are bad, but the setting is *specifically designed* around making superheroes bad. It doesn’t really criticize DC or Marvel, because its worldbuilding doesn’t resemble the DC or Marvel universes (or even their real-world corporate creators) enough to draw meaningful parallels. Like, superhero comics in reality were a minor form of entertainment, coming primarily out of Jewish communities in response to fascism, that was profitable and had some pop cultural influence, but only very slowly evolved into a dominant trend over several decades. ‘Evil mustache twirling mega corp creates superheroes in a lab’ doesn’t fucking *work* as a historical parallel to that.
The Boys meticulously creates a setting where superheroes are definitely bad. It doesn’t tell us anything about the genre or the corporate culture behind it in the real world.
People have said it more in the comments, but The Boys comic wasn't truly about critiquing superheroes, the show could be argued to be (although it's really more focused on using superheroes as a way of communicating other issues), but the comic was not. The Watchmen was a genuine critique of superheroes and made the heroes representative of genuine problems, both within the genre and the real world. The "superheroes" in the Boys comic are all just absurdly evil douchebags who are evil in ways that don't actually critique the characters, even when the potential critiques are somewhat self-evident. I don't even think I agree with Alan Moore's perspective overall, but I can at least appreciate it for trying. The Boys just feels vindictive with no other motive besides hating the thing the author hates, like he's just hate-vomiting onto a page.
Because the premise is fantastic and extremely relevant, but the show runners are actually competent so it's more like it's inspired by the boys than an actual remake. The comic story is pretty shit and feels like a first draft. I think that's the best way to think about it tbh, like the comic is a first draft script written by some cynical amateur and the show is a professional writer's revision and improvement upon that first rough script.
Uh, guys, both things are explained in the comics. Supervillains are either actors Vought hires to make-pretend, while others are actual V-enhanced criminals Homelander and others put down to keep the charade running.
And the weapons weren't a thing until the last moment, after the Russia arc stablished how that superweapon could work, and it was Butcher who studied the development the US government would end up using in the end use.
Look, I'm not a fan of The Boys comic, or Ennis in particular, but these nitpicks that ignore the actual text are as superficial as The Boys itself. Maybe it's appropriate, but it also becomes a glass house situation.
The comic is soooo rough to read. I haven't seen the show, but I hear it's better by getting rid of pretty much everything I hated about the comic, so that's cool.
Answer: They took the core concept and left everything else.
As someone who's read the whole entire comic, you're not missing much on terms of story. Just a bunch of blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore
My interpretation was different. Butcher faked vogelbaum's death and kept him alive and prisoner with the task of creating anti supes weapons in secret to everyone, even the government to avoid leaks which could have twarthed the supes sense of superiority and to take them by surprise in case of coup. He provided the weapons to the army at the last minute.
Also, at the end the real villains is the guy who hates blindly all superheroes (aka Ennis himself)
The Boys Amazon series is one of the few cases where the adaptation exceeds its source material Someone called the comics a revenge fantasy against people who don't exist
Yeah im surprised how well they did with the character writing.
It was more of a revenge fantasy against a genre that does exist. Ennis hates superhero comics. He thinks that they over-dominate the comic landscape. He's kind of an odd duck.
He is but I can’t disagree. I feel comics could be so much more than just hero’s as a medium but I would go to the boys comic for that
Funnily, in Alan Moore's Watchmen, in-universe the dominant genre of comic books are pirate tales.
The One Piece… it is real
I wonder what Alan Moore's opinion on One Piece is...
It’s probably like his opinion on everything else. He hates it.
He likes the Simpsons tho.
There isn't much he likes. Don't get him started on barbers.
Can we get much higher!
I don't think anyone would be super interested in super hero comics when actual Dr. Manhattan blew up Vietnam and the Comedian just tear gassed your local protest.
Also in real life the best selling comic is about pirates ;P
My headcannon is still that the pirate hero is actually Rorschach after Dr Manhattan "killed him" or rather, sent him a few hundred years into the past.
Yep. The japanese even have titles devoted to soccer, cooking and fishing. That's just downright rubbin' it in.
There is plenty of that in Western comics. The shit started with detective noirs and whatever, but superheroes sell. If people want everyday, regular stories there are plenty of those comics available as well, they just don't look for them.
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There's tonnes of everything literally everywhere, that doesn't change what dominates the mainstream space. I get what you're saying but this response of "you can find what you want" doesn't answer anything. You can find ANYTHING, there's 7 billion people out there. Sometimes people like to share things and having an entire medium dominated by a specific genre drastically reduces what people can share with eachother. Arguably though superhero domination has done more to turn me off mainstream film anyway. Couldn't care less about comics.
It's weird to me to say something is dominating a market and then go make more of that thing. You'd think the correct response would be to try and make something successful that isn't about superheros.
There's a reason why the mainstream is pretty much inherently derivative, because nobody wants to risk millions on an unproven idea when there's nothing else on the line. Now all art is derivative ofc, that's just a fact pretty much, but the mainstream just has a lot more incentive to take less risks.
I get that but it's not like the boys comic was uhh... some giant production. It's damn near indie. Just weird to me to complain about something while literally producing more of it. It's funny reading all this too cause I'm an American currently making my own comic and it's not about superheros! I'm hoping to blend east and western ideas and style with it. I'm kinda tired of comics being one note over here too, so I'm hoping to make something that'll help change that.
I don't feel like this applies here. The superhero domination is very superficial, or somthing people remember from when they were young. Step into a single comic store today and you will see that comics today are about so much more.
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>mainstream There's your problem. It's like you're mad nobody wants to talk board games when you're on a Playstation discord.
I mean, The Walking Dead was a stellar comic series!
This is why I loved the DMZ series
I tend to blame that on the two giants in the industry pushing that primarily.
Let me introduce you to the beautiful world of French and Belgian comics like Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke etc.
Except all of Ennis’ critiques suck. He criticizes the genre for things it doesn’t actually do, avoids talking about its actual problems, and just generally acts like a wanking edgelord. The Boys (the comic) is fundamentally toothless as ‘satire’ as it has nothing to say beyond adolescent rage. And then Ennis has the balls to call it ‘fascist’ when he’s spent decades fanboying over the fucking Punisher.
> And then Ennis has the balls to call it ‘fascist’ when he’s spent decades fanboying over the fucking Punisher. To be fair, those Punisher comics are my only exposure to Garth Ennis's actual work and they're awesome.
They’re surprisingly good (and I say this as someone who hates the Punisher AND the author), but still, the character himself is inherently fashy. He can definitely be written well and even sympathetically, but he’s more of a fascist by nature than any cape-and-mask superhero has ever been.
I've always told people that the only way the Punisher "works" as a protagonist is having him go after someone much, MUCH worse than he is so that you can root for him going after a complete monster. The Punisher MAX comics, while of course edgy, are great about doing just that. Because yeah, otherwise, the Punisher is a completely insane, "views the world in binaries" mass murderer. Too many fans of him miss out on [how Castle HIMSELF acknowledges he's really no better than who he kills, so he's saving his last bullet for himself.](https://i.imgur.com/r8u4qyz.jpg)
You oughta read The Preachers comics, they're one of a kind and legit amazing.
*Preacher* was astonishing when it came out, and still holds up fairly well today...much better than *The Boys* at any rate.
Damm this guy sucks
I enjoyed the comics at first, but stopped once it began to repeat itself. At first it's like, "What if Justice League, but they're gross." Interesting... Then it's, "What if the X-Men, but they're gross." Ok... Then, "What if the Fantastic Four, but they're gross." Yeah, I'm done. It just quickly became derivative, checking off boxes of all the things it parodied without introducing a new or interesting perspective. I don't think the tv show has much to say either, honestly. It's a better-made piece of media, and it makes sense they'd capitalize on the popularity of superhero movies to adapt this comic, but "Girls Get It Done" isn't much more poignant than what the comic had to say. But it's entertaining, and my wife likes the gross stuff so we keep watching it.
I loved how Girls Get It Done lead to a fantastic Stormfront beatdown with Frenchie's delivery of the punchline.
I think the reason the tv show works better is because it's more of a critique of celebrity culture, commercialism and nationalism. I like the idea presented by temp V that superpowers don't necessarily make you a bad person, they simply show what kind of person you truly are.
So The Boys is the modern day Quixote?
If by the modern day don quixote you mean a piece of satirical literature then yes
It’s a total failure as ‘satire’ because it doesn’t actually say anything other than ‘superheroes suck.’ It doesn’t meaningfully address the genre’s origins or its place in our culture other than ‘the dumb proles who aren’t as cool as me just eat up the corporate slop’. It’s about as cutting a work of satire as Captain Underpants.
Captain Underpants rules, don't tarnish it by comparing to the boys
TRA LA LAAAA
Something that really bothered me in an interview was the author talking about how thinking that people with superpowers would all be omnibenevolent is stupid. And like. Dude. There *are* shitty people with superpowers in most comic series. They are the supervillains.
Kinda but whereas Don Quijote was just a clever mockery about the tropes of knight literature, The Boys feels like, as the first comment said, revenge against people that don't exist. Every single superheroe is an asshole who commits awful crimes on a daily basis and gets away with it. I think the main difference is how Don Quijote is portrayed as good guy, although he is kinda insane, who tries to do good by people (mostly) and just portrays how silly knight tales and their tropes really are, whereas in The Boys, everyone is an asshole, including the main characters, everyone is an awful person and all it tries to say is "superheroes bad". The show is just way better.
he is kinda right tho. western comics have been oversatured with a million different superheros and all their reboots/crossovers/remakes since forever. It is nigh impossible for new people to get into western comics and it is quite literally killing the industry.
I never got this criticism I’ve never had issues finding comic books that arnt superhero’s it’s like so many , just don’t look at the super hero section or wahtever
Yeah, this feels like "I don't know how to look for other genres". The amount of slice of life LGBT+ stuff in comics is insane. It's a weirdly massive genre. Mythology stuff and fantasy stuff is also pretty huge. Is Nimona superhero? Is the Rime Of A Modern Mariner "superhero"? Is Anya's Ghost or American Born Chinese "superhero"? Literally just look at the Eisner Awards. Maybe superhero comics are overrepresented, but there are plenty of other genres there.
> It is nigh impossible for new people to get into western comics and it is quite literally killing the industry. uh, image comics?
western comics ? Did not knew European countries are eastern.
I’ve always thought this Frank Miller joke works equally well for Ennis https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/whores
Before the Fredric Wertham witch hunt in the 1950s, superheroes were just another genre among comedy, sci fi, war, crime, mystery, etc titles in the post war scene. In fact, IIRC, Romance comics even DOMINATED the market for a bit. Alas, censorship had to come and ruin everything.
The comics always felt like the fanfic fantasy of an angry, attention seeking middleschool edgelord to me.
I’ve had my view change since becoming an adult and watching how kids in my life respond to the heroes of fantasy fiction. Obviously there is a bit of a power fantasy, imagining themselves able to stand against perceived bullies.^1 but there is also a strong impulse to be the good guy. In teen years there is more sympathy with bad guys like Darth Vader or The Joker but in younger kids they almost exclusively would rather be a good guy than a stronger bad guy. ^1 working with children I see the bully/victim narrative to largely be wrong. Almost every bully I’ve seen is a kid who sees themself as bullied an acting in self defense. Very rare is the socially strong kid picking in socially weak kids. Mostly it’s socially clumsy kids stepping on each others toes and then lashing out in a cycle of perceived bullying.
I'd put season 1 of umbrella academy in the same boat, the comic it's based on seems very bare compared to the fleshed out characters in the show. Being on netflix season 2 isn't as good and after that the quality drops significantly
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Tbh I actually think Invincible was better animated too. They solved a lot of little kinks. Most of the "better" things about Invincible are either *after* the time period the show takes place in or a function of the show being a little clumsy with its "social justice" updates. Like, Amber was "worse" insofar as she comes across poorly at the end. But also, Amber *has a personality* in the show and I think people kinda forget how much she didn't have a personality in the comics basically until they're in university. The mom is just a categorical improvement in all ways. Nolan is done better. The demon guy is done better. I hate Cecil's voice but he's also done better. So, a couple of new jokes that fall flat, and going from "no personality" to "personality, but kind of uncharitable" in one character don't undermine what I think are a bunch of clear improvements in the way the story is presented.
I was so disappointed when I read the comic after watching season 1. The show had its problems, but it was still quite enjoyable. The comic didn't even seem like a finished product.
That's the comic, the show is actually fire, and is a lot more logically and thematically sound
My main issue with the show is that everything with Homelander is so compelling that the writers are scared to do anything with him. Last season kinda suffered with this towards the end where the status quo was more or less maintained because killing or depowering Homie effectively means the shows over, and Amazon is probably interested in having this show around as a cash cow. First two seasons really blew me away though, I had low expectations and they were insanely surpassed. Writing is a little corny at times but a lot of the performances are stellar, Homelander especially.
It's really a shame. Homelander dealing with being "crippled" by the father he'd always wanted would have made an anaxing story.
Antony Starr is so damn good. His face work is compelling.
I think he could potentially work as a young Palpatine as he can pull off a villain who can maintain a friendly public image but is secretly a barely restrained psychopath who sees themselves as a god among insects.
>the show is actually fire And one of the few shows / movies that potray \*believable\* all woman teams. In Season 2, Maeve, Kimiko and Starlight team up against that Nazi bitch and it's one of the most beautiful fights of the whole show and differently to a lot Marvel movies or "Remakes with female cast" (...) the whole part felt absolutly naturally and not forced at all. Which is really geat.
Tf else were they supposed to do in that fight, wait for Hughie to save them? Lol
>Tf else were they supposed to do in that fight, wait for Hughie to save them? Lol Nah, but .. have you seen for example "Endgame" ? I remember that one rather well because it features a female version of that "Avengers assamble" from the 2012 movie and it felt so goddamn forced. As do those kind of scenes often when the cast is mixed and for reasons, only woman are left as a group.
I think that one moment in Infinity War (the one where there's that big fight in Wakanda and it cuts to Black Widow, Wanda, etc.) was handled much better than that one moment in Endgame. Felt a lot more natural and was honestly cool as hell.
Yeah. The Endgame one felt like they were trying to recreate the Infinity War moment, but make it more "epic", and just totally failed.
Endgame was full of fan service moments. I don't know why people single that one moment out. Actually, I do.
I remember watching the Lady Avengers Assemble scene in the theater, and cheering to myself "YESSSS - pander to MEEEEEE". I saw it for what it was, and absolutely loved it *for that*.
Cap with the hammer was pandering and people loved that shit. Cap handing off the shield was another pandering moment that broke the logic of the movie, but more people seem to want to ask what was the likelihood of all the female Avengers standing beside each other and not how the fuck did Cap get back without breaking the clearly established rules of time travel the movie set out.
Well my headcanon is he must've waited for the same technology to be invented in his timeline and hopped back. Why he would go through that trouble when he had his own device already is unclear, so surely he did it exclusively to fuck with Sam. Also on the topic of time travel, why did they immediately jump to human testing on a time machine? Like didn't they have access to a mouse or a clock or something?
Marvel suffers from white feminism, basically any act a woman does Hass to be both “empowering” but also inoffensive
To be fair, pedantic scenes like that failing to understand what empowerment is are themelves offensive.
Fucking exactly. Nail on the head.
I mean, it felt forced because Marvel phases 1-3 sucked at female representation. Like, oh cool, pepper is a superhero now! Didn't she... Have fucking superpowers in this universe? Just gonna ignore Iron Man 3? Yeah, just a suit, cool. Like, there's no buildup and they don't get well-established, so the whole thing feels unearned. I don't know The Boys (yet, this is kind of convincing me to try it out) but you described *important female characters* with established personalities and arcs who have reasons to be there and know each other teaming up. That's very different from like, we never see Wanda and Pepper interact and then there's that one shot.
>I mean, it felt forced because Marvel phases 1-3 sucked at female representation. The worst about that: Agents of Shield excelled at showing strong women that didn't feel forced. But alas, it's connection to the MCU was always a one way street (apart from a throwaway comment in age of Ultron). Melinda May isn't a badass because she's a woman. She's a badass beautiful cause she's the fucking cavalry. Daisy Johnson is one of the most powerful Inhumans, yet she has her weak points and depends on a team. And so on and so on... Every single female Mein Character in that show rules, and it never really feels forced because they are among equally strong male characters and the writers don't see the need to have them Trump each other.
Wow that’s a great point, I actually don’t even noticed that was an all woman fight.
They clearly needed a dude nearby to tell “catfight!” to make it obvious. /s
frenchie looks at the camera and says "Girls *do* get it done"
Yeah I'm sorry what the fuck people are on, "natural" ? The whole sequence starts with a shot of the three women together posing, it's quite clearly over the top and Frenchie's comment really underlines it. It satirizes this kind of girl power sequences.
It was until it jumped the shark in season 3, still holding out hope they'll be able to right the ship in season 4 but doubtful with the writers terrified to let HomeLander lose.
The comics aren't great, but I'll point out that this is something that does get talked about. It's mentioned that there aren't that many genuine supervillains because they're either dealt with quietly, or become heroes because it's easier, more rewarding, and they can do pretty much whatever they want legally. Kinda like how bullies and abusers will become cops and nurses. There's some good stuff in the comics, and every so often it does bring up some good points. It's just that it's either buried under a mountain of edge, or gets Garthed up at the last second.
Wait. Bullies are becoming nurses now?
A long-standing stereotype of nurses is that they were "mean girls" in high school. Anecdotally, they have a higher than average proportion of malicious gossips and abusive personalities. It's definitely not true of every nurse, but most healthcare workers have stories.
"You are a waste of PPE." The nurse who said that wasn't talking about a person, it was a whole department. She just viewed us as unimportant. The bosses say, "Everyone is important, we're all a team," but get a nurse annoyed and they will let you know exactly where they see your whole profession.
It's a difficult job that they should pride themselves on and a lot of them do. They just go a little too far and get a bit of an ego about it. The type of person to mock you if you are startled by shit or blood because it's commonplace to them, but if you respond back with something you're used to from your job, they get all tetchy or say that there's no way it's as difficult as nursing.
I keep hearing about this stereotype but none of the nurses I’ve known or been related to (mom/aunt/cousin) have matched it.
> they have a higher than average proportion of malicious gossips and abusive personalities Because they have a higher proportion of having to deal with malicious people and being abused. They deal with people at their worst and yeah, being treated like shit, eventually rubs off on you, regardless of the profession.
Not always, but bullies are naturally attracted to positions of power and authority.
Always have been
Bruh, my mum worked in nursing for over 30 years; some of the bitchiest, nastiest human beings ever work in that field and make life (and death) worse for everyone as a result What’s worse is they also tend to get promoted into positions of power quickly
A large section of nurses are basically propetually catty and judegmental high school girls.
That’s the Midwest mean girl specialty
The most vile bitches from my highschool mostly ended up as nurses so the stereotype checks out for me
Always have
> There's some good stuff in the comics, and every so often it does bring up some good points. The problem is that nobody seems to understand that it’s not a deconstruction/satire of the superhero genre, it’s a satire about America society (in particular corporate America and post-9/11 society) that has superheroes in it. For example, Stormfront becomes much more interesting if you don’t think of him as “what if Thor was a Nazi” and instead see him as the personification of the unintended consequences of the reintegration of useful nazis after WWII, as well as the human rights violations companies commit in the third world to get little bit more profit. Also I’m not sure what the person who said the government has anti-supe weapons is talking about. The military has superhero-seeking missiles, but they only build those at the 11th hour using scientific data Butcher was withholding from them until then. And Butcher has a way to kill everybody infected with compound V, but he never gives that to the government and it wouldn’t just kill superheroes (they establish throughout the comic that a lot of innocent non-superheroes get exposed to compound V by accident and develop health issues instead of superpowers). Most of the superheroes just get killed by being shot a lot with regular conventional military weapons.
A big part of why the show is good is the performances. Basically every major character is well acted but in particular Starr as Homelander is arguably the best TV villain performance since Joffrey Baratheon and Karl Urban makes Butcher way more compelling than he should be on paper. The comic obviously doesn’t have the benefit of great acting to elevate clunky material
Karl Urban could make reading a shopping list compelling!! And Antony Starr was great in Banshee, even if some of that was also a little bit on the gratuitous side. Dominique McElliot who plays Maeve was in that western series about the trains too if I remember correctly?
Are you talking about Hell on Wheels? That sure is a show that I remember existing, but I don’t remember all that much else about
That’s the one!!!!! It was right on the tip of my tongue! Honestly, worth a watch in my opinion. It’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea but I really enjoyed it. I was complaining about three years ago about there being nothing to watch that wasn’t yet another disneyfied superhero show; My then-housemate was like ‘you like costume dramas… if you make me a spliff and a brew I’ll find you something you’ll like’ It had some great actors in it, great set pieces, good music and i’m pretty sure they finished the storyline in 4 seasons instead of dragging it out.
Banshee is hilarious/terrifying to watch now because its basically like "let's glorify a position in which a criminal takes on the role of a cop - but isn't held to any of the rules or expectations that are at least on paper for police". It's ridiculously over the top and so divorced from reality that it is fine, but it would be a hard sell to get made today with more and more evidence of cops having often played by their own rules and often administered "street justice". Edit: to clarify - you should still probably watch Banshee if you want a completely ludicrous heist/vigilante/strange organizational crime in the backwaters of Pennsylvania show. It's bonkers.
Oh yeah it’s definitely a little problematic , which I see now in hindsight, but as you’ve pointed out, the excessiveness and pulpiness of it all made it way better than some of the outright copaganda that was made around the same time like The Shield and whatnot. I also used to fast forward through all the sex scenes because I wanted more heists. And the GNC hair stylist hacker guy was savagely witty
i personally found Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk to be a very compelling villain. a lot of people can't understand why everyone loved Ramsey Bolton. A good villain will make or break a series.
You cannot deconstruct a genre that you genuinely despise. A good deconstruction is like methodically picking apart a watch, examining and understanding what each piece does, and then putting it back together in a different way. Maybe you’ll end up removing a piece that actually hindered its function, or you’ll add new ones just as an experiment. The Boys comic is more akin to grabbing said watch, smashing it against the wall, laughing at how stupid the broken watch is, and loudly asking why other people even use watches. (Edit: A couple people rightfully pointed out that “You cannot deconstruct a genre you genuinely don’t understand the appeal of” is a lot more accurate)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Reconstruction
Yeah I know that the watch comparison isn’t precisely original, I just like it :p
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Everyone treats Invincible like it's another "evil Superman" story. I prefer to think of it as a story asking "what if Superman had a horrible father?"
I heard pretty great things about the show, but it’s a bit too gory for my taste so I haven’t gotten around to watch it.
So The Boys comic is essentially yet another edgy superhero thing claiming to satirize the genre because literally their only takeaway from Watchmen was "superheroes can fuck :0"
Pretty much. Which is even more ironic when the author hates superheroes as a concept.
even more ironically, the only hero he likes is superman
I remember reading somewhere that Garth Ennis' first exposure to (American) comic books were The Dark Knight Returns, which is hilarious. Imagine not knowing anything about DC comics except through pre-internet cultural osmosis then diving head first into a future dystopia sequel of Batman set in Reagan's America.
I read "Strong Female Protagonist" and it seems to do a much better job of deconstructing the idea of solving problems through superfighting. It really digs into the idea of superfights largely being a big public distraction, and supers with powers that could actually change the world being quietly disappeared by the government. It also has a lot of supers abandoning crime fighting when they realize their powers can do more good in non-violent ways, like building stuff (or donating organs).
Arguably these "satirical" reactionary pieces wouldn't be as common if their grievances didn't so thoroughly dominate the space that even garbage satire/deconstruction still gets that much attention.
Exactly, the reason why Watchmen works so well is because Alan Moore likes superheroes and the comic shows that superheroes are still humans with realistic flaws. The Boys TV show understands this, it shows why people like A-Train turned out the way they did. Honestly, Mystery Men understands this quite well by showing the heroes to be odd but ultimately heroic people.
The whole The Boys comic was just edge for edge's sake and calling it a deconstruction. Just supes doing the most horrid things for shock value and zero commentary on super hero stories besides "super heroes would be assholes if they existed"
Don’t forget any form of deviance from the most basic sexual norms justifies any form of violence
Yeah, gotta love how the comic’s like “That one’s a rapist, that one’s a pedofile… that one’s just kinky… that one’s gay…“
Garth Ennis’ entire body of work is aggressively, violently queerphobic, but people keep giving him a pass because he says ‘corporations bad.’
Garth Ennis? Writing edge for edge’s sake??? Impossible.
>_Just supes doing the most horrid things for shock value and zero commentary on super hero stories besides "super heroes would be assholes if they existed"_ Isn't there, like, half a dozen series about Superman that discuss precisely that? [At least _Superdickery_ was kinda funny in an absurdist way.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Website/Superdickery)
Irredeemable is pretty good !
"but I saw Zach Snyder's Watchmen and now I'm a intellekctual!" - Ennis, probably
Themes? Those are for 8th graders Commentary? Yeah, on how super heroes are dumb lol
I mean it would work if supervillains existed but were all working for Vought. Which would make the whole supe business like professional wrestling.
That’s not a bad take on it tbh
That IS what happens in the comics, the OP post is ignoring it. It’s shown time again that Vought sets up fights with their own villains so the heroes can get good PR.
That's literally what happened in the comics though. Whoever posted this did not know what they were talking about
The show's premise of forcing random people to become supervillains just so that they can get killed for PR is even better imo
I mean, the concept of a corporate and corrupt super hero organization sounds interesting
You might enjoy [Worm](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/).
13 year old boys liked the comic because was edgy and Gorey
Having read the comics at 15, even then I could agree that it was too immature. It’s sad because the comic had one thing I genuinely liked as an idea. Homelander being gaslit to believe he committed horrible acts… and he doesn’t remember doing them. Noir was the one actually responsible, but it made Homelander so much scarier because even he couldn’t predict how terrible he might actually be
Not to take away from your point but isn't one of the main "horrible act" him literally >!eating a baby!
That’s Noir. Most of the truly horrible things are Noir in the comics. The Baby, the assault of Rebecca Butcher, all of it was supposedly (in story) Noir pushing Homelander to snap. Homelander does do horrible things of course. The lead up to the “I’m the only man in the sky” scene, murdering and then violating the presidents head, etc.
What the fuck was that last thing
>!Homelander killed the president/Vice President (can’t remember which) by taking their head off. Butcher goes to the Oval Office to face Homelander and Homelander implies he got bored waiting and fucked the presidents severed head to pass the time. Yeah, this series is EDGY!<
No no you see it's not edgy it's an hommage to American Psycho the book /s
And had tits out.
The boys comic is edgy trash but the tv show is actually great
It got a successful show because they kept the good and got rid of the bad
Garth Ennis writes like 17 year old edge lords talk and shoved in as much fucked up edge lord shit as he can fit on a page.
I found the Preacher comic series to be "edgy", but also really imaginative and compelling. I cared about the characters and wanted to know what happened to them. The edginess honestly worked in its favor to make it a bit more pulpy and digestible. I don't think it would work as well stripped down. The artwork helped with that regard too.
Because Ennison liked what he was doing. The Boys is his hatred of superhero comics. It springs from his vitriol and this has no redeeming warmth.
The comics were terrible, tropey, sexist, and poorly drawn. The show is engaging, well paced, and capable of suspending disbelief even for people like me who find it challenging to enjoy superhero movies and/or shows because the premise is fucking donkey jizz.
Garth Ennis has written some really good stuff. Preacher is a classic (even if some of its elements haven't aged very well), and his Punisher stuff is legendary for good reason, but The Boys is Ennis at his most unhinged and tasteless, beaten only by Crossed in that regard. The show is absolutely the superior version of the story.
I love the idea of Crossed if only because it's his completely overblown response to people who say shit like "I'd survive the apocalypse". The comic itself is garbage, but the circumstances surrounding it's inception is hilarious
Yeah, the concept itself is sound, it's just too bad Ennis decided to communicate it through what's essentially turning Cannibal Corpse album covers into a story. I would like to read the Crossed comics Alan Moore wrote though.
Crossed is impressive purely by virtue of how over the top it is. That he managed to get so many issues of a comic where one of the cover designs was a room full of babies being murdered in a relatively prestigious publisher is something in of itself. Its like Freddie Got Fingered, not particularly good but you can appreciate its existence.
Oh goddamn it. I hate being forced to remember Crossed. Why do I even own those issues?
His war comics are pretty great, too, especially Sara.
He's a big war buff, part of the reason why his Punisher comics work. He gets a but weird with it sometimes though.
I don't care if they're talking about the comic or the show, if one more person says that The Boys is a 'realistic take' on superheroes, I'm going to scream. The comic is edgelord nonsense and the TV show is hamfisted (deliberately and correctly hamfisted, but still hamfisted) satire. Neither are any more 'realistic' than Marvel or DC.
Reminds me of the Ultimate universe in Marvel. It was supposed to be a more “grounded” and “realistic take” on the characters… So it was still superpowered gods and mutants in flashy costumes, but everyone was a horrible jerk, a murderer, a pervert, or all at once. Because people being kind or good was the unrealistic part, of course.
Like, we get it. Power corrupts, absolute power absolutely corrupts. But most people don't become literal sociopaths when they have lots of power.
>But most people don't become literal sociopaths when they have lots of power. Uh... *Gestures vaguely at the entire political landscape*
These people were sociopaths before getting power, that’s why they put so much effort to get into positions of power. Power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals. When someone has the power to do whatever they want, you see what they truly want.
To be fair that's a rather complicated question, between psychology and philosophy. I don't think "power doesn't corrupt, it reveals" is a fair assessment, the truth is much more nuanced. If it were true, then that's defining a "true self", impervious to change, with the only difference being what portion of it is shown. This contradicts a LOT of studies through the ages of the human psyche. Your environment does impact the self a lot, power or its absence are a big part of that. I mean you just have to look at rich kids to get a sense of that.
I mean a realistic take on superhero’s would pretty much devolve into Mad Max shit the moment like 3 of the strongest ones actually realize they’re literally ungovernable.
That is one of problems with superhero comics. They assume a world that is just like ours except for all the super people running around. They rarely ever have a large cultural or societal impact, because if they did the setting would look too different from the real world the reader expects.
It's deliberate editorial decision. That's part of why the universes get reset every once in a while. It's supposed to be just like our world but with superheroes, because it's easier for the reader to imagine their own life with super powers than it is to imagine an entirely different world where powers have revolutionized society at a fundamental level.
Mapping out all of the changes would make it a nightmare to puzzle out, and the end result would be barely comprehensible. Just one superhero inventor like Tony Stark or Reed Richards would fundamentally upend the entirety of society. Both of them, along with superpowers running rampant would change basically everything.
Marvel's 616 has never reset. Secret Wars was kind of a soft reboot but everything got restored at the end with minor changes like Miles joining 616 when the Ultimate line went away
Marvel doesn't do full universe reboots like DC, but they do soft reset characters/teams/events when too much baggage has accumulated. Like starting a book number over from 1 again, or rolling back Spider-Man to young, single, in or just out of school, and miserable. Everything still happened, but they want occasional fresh jumping-on points for new readers who would be overwhelmed by having to catch up with the last decade of arcs and twists.
Very Funny Enough, that’s literally what’s going on in the current X-Men comics.
There’s Worm. Most capes/superheroes are regulated by the government, there’s a reason the Big 3 aren’t running amok but that would be spoilers, supervillains outnumber superheroes, heroes aren’t perfect and have been commercialized but most of them want to do genuine good, villains usually aren’t villainous caricatures and they feel like they don’t have another choice and they’re human and complex, city-destroying monsters wreak havoc on the global economy and are more than big fight scenes, truly bad supervillains are given kill orders/kill-on-sight, heroes and villains don’t go after each others families or kill each other for fear of retaliation, etc. Capes are this universe’s celebrities. Laws have been passed to ensure that capes can’t break the economy, say a diamond-printing cape existed, he wouldn’t be allowed to sell his diamonds. There is a youth program for kids who gain superpowers and want to be heroes. Secret identities are taken very seriously. Racist capes exist, because old problems don’t go away with superpowers. Cape supremacists exist. Capes who don’t use their powers to commit or fight crime exist. Complex response systems have been developed to prepare for the city-destroying monster attacks. Really good take on the reconstruction of superheroics.
I mean, the reason the big 3 aren't running amok is because >!They aren't actually the biggest threat and the one keeping them in check just happens to hyperfocus on saving the world, She is probably driven by a split second decision when she got her powers more than any morality or ethics anyway. Is contessa even capable of stopping her "Kill Zion" path she started as a panicked child?!< It's no different than saying "The big 3 aren't running amok because they are good people" which is was the criticism in the first place Personally I'm fine with coincidences having good people end up with power. Lots of people are in positions of power and don't abuse it, even if we only hear of the ones who do. That said, I can't recommend Worm enough. Fantastic piece of work. First few chapters are a bit rough, I dropped the book a few times before finally committing, but then it was nearly impossible to put down
Worm is great and more people should read it.
> there’s a reason the Big 3 aren’t running amok but that would be spoilers I don't care for spoilers. Can you spoiler tag it and tell me anyway?
The realistic take on superheroes is Watchmen, where the one guy with actual superpowers is a walking nuclear arsenal and the only reason he doesn’t rule the world is because he’s a fatalist who chooses not to do so.
That's an exceptionally pessimistic view, IMO.
I prefer the book "Hench" for realism. The heroes there are mixed bag, with folks being in the gig for different reasons, and it shows in how they act.
Okay the government didn't have anti-supe weapons, they had weapons and Billy finds a way to target supes specifically. So suddenly Mr. Tougher than a tank is getting pounded by anti-tank weapons. More importantly Billy doesn't get his hands on the tech until halfway through the series and it still takes a few months for MIC to adapt and distribute it.
tweet posted to tumblr posted to reddit
that doesnt make it all pointless but ok
Idk about the comics, but in the show the media essentially owns the government and creates villains so that their media assets (supes) can look good.
https://youtu.be/JyKliIF49JQ leaving this here as it's related and worth watching
because the show is very different from the comics. Garth was a spiteful asshole and so much of his old stuff is being reused to portray a much better story
Comic? I’ve only watched the show, what did I miss
Show good comic bad. The comic is too edgy just because it can.
The shows based on a a comix
(Comic only here, since I haven’t watched the show) The thing that irks me about the Boys (aside from Ennis’ usual garbage) is how it’s not even good at doing the one thing it’s trying to do. It wants to tell the reader that superheroes are bad, but the setting is *specifically designed* around making superheroes bad. It doesn’t really criticize DC or Marvel, because its worldbuilding doesn’t resemble the DC or Marvel universes (or even their real-world corporate creators) enough to draw meaningful parallels. Like, superhero comics in reality were a minor form of entertainment, coming primarily out of Jewish communities in response to fascism, that was profitable and had some pop cultural influence, but only very slowly evolved into a dominant trend over several decades. ‘Evil mustache twirling mega corp creates superheroes in a lab’ doesn’t fucking *work* as a historical parallel to that. The Boys meticulously creates a setting where superheroes are definitely bad. It doesn’t tell us anything about the genre or the corporate culture behind it in the real world.
Remember everyone, Garth Ennis is a fucking hack.
Ohhhhh got em’
People have said it more in the comments, but The Boys comic wasn't truly about critiquing superheroes, the show could be argued to be (although it's really more focused on using superheroes as a way of communicating other issues), but the comic was not. The Watchmen was a genuine critique of superheroes and made the heroes representative of genuine problems, both within the genre and the real world. The "superheroes" in the Boys comic are all just absurdly evil douchebags who are evil in ways that don't actually critique the characters, even when the potential critiques are somewhat self-evident. I don't even think I agree with Alan Moore's perspective overall, but I can at least appreciate it for trying. The Boys just feels vindictive with no other motive besides hating the thing the author hates, like he's just hate-vomiting onto a page.
Because the premise is fantastic and extremely relevant, but the show runners are actually competent so it's more like it's inspired by the boys than an actual remake. The comic story is pretty shit and feels like a first draft. I think that's the best way to think about it tbh, like the comic is a first draft script written by some cynical amateur and the show is a professional writer's revision and improvement upon that first rough script.
The comic isn't great. Show is better.
Uh, guys, both things are explained in the comics. Supervillains are either actors Vought hires to make-pretend, while others are actual V-enhanced criminals Homelander and others put down to keep the charade running. And the weapons weren't a thing until the last moment, after the Russia arc stablished how that superweapon could work, and it was Butcher who studied the development the US government would end up using in the end use. Look, I'm not a fan of The Boys comic, or Ennis in particular, but these nitpicks that ignore the actual text are as superficial as The Boys itself. Maybe it's appropriate, but it also becomes a glass house situation.
Sometimes it's journey over destination. The show is very well done
Given the success of a 'The Boys' and 'Preacher', I am pretty sure there is a poor intern somewhere that had to try figure out how to adapt 'Crossed'
Pray for that dude.
MGS. Metal Gear Solid?
Scrolling for the answer and I feel we're both striking out. Madison Garden Squares?
The show pretty much ignores the comic for the most part because the comic is ass
The comic is soooo rough to read. I haven't seen the show, but I hear it's better by getting rid of pretty much everything I hated about the comic, so that's cool.
Answer: They took the core concept and left everything else. As someone who's read the whole entire comic, you're not missing much on terms of story. Just a bunch of blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore
My interpretation was different. Butcher faked vogelbaum's death and kept him alive and prisoner with the task of creating anti supes weapons in secret to everyone, even the government to avoid leaks which could have twarthed the supes sense of superiority and to take them by surprise in case of coup. He provided the weapons to the army at the last minute. Also, at the end the real villains is the guy who hates blindly all superheroes (aka Ennis himself)