LORD IMPERATOR said:
That's even worse. There's the kind of cheap and easy crap that's just sort of bad for you, like fast food, there's the kind of cheap and easy crap that breaks easily, like mass-produced knockoff Chinese goods sold at small convenience stores, and there's that crap that GETS SOLDIERS KILLED. Say what you will about the Yankee army, but there's one constant in that they wanted good, high-quality stuff to be mass-produced and reliable. From the Civil War to WW2, even to today, their stuff might not have been the most expensive, but it was reliable, and usually safe to use.
If Vought's products got GIs killed, then not only would they lose support, they'd get fucking black-balled and nobody would do business with them thanks to all the ''they got my brother/father/son/uncle killed in [insert war name here]'' that would be circulating all over America. Nobody would trust them. It's like with the Army-McCarthy Hearings and how Joe McCarthy was damn near unstoppable, until he went after the army and lost. The military is absolutely the last group you want to fuck with in America's legal and corporate world. They can fight back, and nine times out of then, they will win.
I don't think they've yet made a rainbow reaction sticker big enough for how incredibly optimistic you sound.
The US government wastes money on faulty equipment that isn't fit for purpose all the time, you just don't hear about it, because why on earth would they want to advertise that fact publicly?
But then, I live in a country where the government wasted billions during a global pandemic on PPE that was literally unusable for medical purposes, and for decades, we were detecting bombs in luggage at our airports with non-functional plastic detectors that did nothing, so maybe I'm a bit more willing to be skeptical of such things.
LORD IMPERATOR said:
If Vought's Supes are just that much of a problem, another company would've come in, competed with them, done Supes better, and defeated Vought at their own game by just making Supes that aren't sexual perverts or irredeemable psychopaths. Corporate sabotage IS a thing. A disgruntled Vought employee, maybe even Vogelbaum himself, could've taken the Compound V someplace else and another company would've started making Supes just like Vought.
Except that the comic goes out of its way to explain that
no one can, NOT EVEN VOUGHT.
Vogelbaum is dead and his research died with him. No one else can produce as refined a doseage of Compound V to the levels required for another Homelander, and most of the population don't even know Compound V exists. Vought are the only game in town, and even they can only produce supes that are a fraction as powerful as the Seven.
All of this is basic worldbuilding shit that was explained to the audience by the Legend, in the comic. You know, during the boring bits you probably skipped because there wasn't any over the top violence or swearing.
Meanwhile, Ennis' comic can't even carry out its central theme of the Boys defeating strong but untrained supes, because the Boys themselves are just as much super-powered as their enemies, and they're usually better trained than them.
Have you considered that might
literally be the point?
That Billy Butcher is just as much of a dangerous sociopath as Homelander, and probably
worse, because whereas Homelander is vain and petty and a bit stupid, he's motivated, manipulative and highly intelligent.
I mean, there's a reason the two of them are drawn so similarly. Butcher isn't a hero, he's a villain.
None of the Boys are good people - not even Hughie, who is arguably supposed to be the best of them. The comic itself jokes about it. There's a scene where The Boys are interrogating a secret service agent who only agrees to cooperate with them in the end because, "You're the good guys, right?"
To which Butcher responds, "'Course we are, mate. Don't we look like the good guys?" Accompanied by a literal full page spread of The Boys all looking sinister as fuck.
Come on, guys, this isn't exactly subtle.
Luicage67 said:
nah the reason why is because the boys have refined compound v that puts them ahead of 90% percent of the supes. And the minute they step to someone that is actually competent and powerful ( stormfront) they almost nearly get killed
Thank you.
Most of the supes the Boys brutalise in the comics are disposable, D-list wankers who are in way over their heads - they go through Teenage Kixx like a knife through butter, but Stormfront, as mentioned, takes out The Female, the most powerful member of the Boys, literally the team's heaviest hitter, on his own. They only win because they all jump him at once, and even then, they have to call in backup from Vas to even have a chance at beating him.
That G-Men storyline LORD IMPERATOR mentioned earlier? The one where the supes all get wiped out in seconds by Vought clean up crews armed with missiles and flamethrowers?
Before that happened, the Boys were literally prepared to march to their deaths trying to fight all of them at once. If Vought hadn't turned up and cleared the board, they would have got torn to fucking pieces.
