The way I see it, trying to make it just like the 2020s makes no sense. If superheroes were a real thing, not only would that cause a culture shift, like how Dr. Manhattan's existence jumpstarted a scientific and cultural revolution in the Watchmen world, but there's no way in Hell Uncle Sam would allow private entities to wield Supes that can be as threatening as a nuke. They'd nationalize that shit and keep the formula for Compound V locked up in the Pentagon or some secret base, and only companies who have ties to the Feds could use it. Vought perhaps would still operate as it would, but they'd hardly be the only company, since the Feds would also have other companies around that they can use to also make superheroes or super-serums.
Someone like Homelander won't be wasted fighting criminals, but rather, fighting wars. They'd send his ass to Iraq or Afghanistan, and more than likely, the Boys version of America would win those wars just like Watchmen America won Vietnam thanks to Dr. Manhattan. Someone like Homelander flying around like an angel of death vaporizing enemies with his heat vision and disemboweling terrorists while tanking bullets to the face would cause the enemy to have a morale breakdown. Especially if they're superstitious; such a being attacking their forces, tanking all they can throw at him, and crushing them severely would cause them to believe that either God has abandoned them, or has sent that being to punish them. Homelander would be to these terrorists what Attila was to the Ancient Romans, the Scourge of God that has come to punish the sinners. You might even see these radical jihadists defect to Yankee Christianity because Vought programmed Homelander to appeal to American Christians and he's one of them on paper.
Iraq and Afghanistan would become American protectorates a la Puerto Rico, North Korea and Iran would flatline, while Russia and China would be experimenting on their own citizens to try and create their own supermen. And ideally, the Americans won't stop at just creating one Homelander or Soldier Boy; they'd have clones of those heroes waiting around like a Seal Team. If, by some joke of fate, the enemy manages to kill the hero, the Feds would just have another one take said hero's place and pretend like the hero never died.
Maybe they're also supes. I can imagine an alternate world where Supes can be made through serums, and some figures we know now could be made into Supes.
Agreed. Unless Pewdiepie and Kanye took V as kids too, I don't think they'd be able to stay relevant.
It's the same problem Alan Moore failed to solve with Watchmen. The USA has a superman with godlike powers of matter manipulation, teleportation, multiplication, he could just enter the USSR incognito, teleport all their nukes into space, then the Yanks could invade and take control without much of an issue. But for some reason they're still afraid of total nuclear apocalypse.
Every time they try to make superheroes fit in the real world, it doesn't work, because realistically, a superhero-infused world would not be the same as ours. Not only would the culture not be the same, but law enforcement, military, and the general feel of society would be different.
The comic addresses a lot of the stuff you talk about in this post plus the show DOES address some additional stuff:
1. Voight is super fucking corrupt and basically is Evil-Corp incarnated. It's stated that they have insane amount of power to basically buy and sell Congress five times over PLUS have been working on the long game to get one of their own (Vic the Veep, the comic version of Victoria) into the White House as President.
They have enough power, politically, that they never face any consequences for their military weapons malfunctioning in the middle of battle or their military vehicles being literal death traps (once case in particular, that the comic mentions, is that the helicopters they sold to the army during Vietnam were so fucked up that they were literal death traps due to the ejector seat not working in them). Let along the crap that their super heroes do carnage-wise. It's also why they manage to keep the government off their backs about seizing V for themselves or nationalizing the company and handing out the formula to rival companies to maximize creating super heroes for the army: which leads to.....
2. the fact that a major part of The Boys is Voight WANTS to get super heroes in the military and part of the reason for their quest to put Vic the Veep into the Presidency, is to have Vic do so. In the show, they fuck up the storyline by way of Homelander getting this done but in the comic, the military successfully cockblocks having super heroes in the military. This also ties into why there are no super cops and shit, because cops, first responders, and firefighters, and the military in general have threatened to go on strike ala the Police Strike in the backstory of Watchmen, if Voight or local/national government started replacing regular people in these jobs with super powered beings.
3. Which in turn leads to the fact that Voight EXPLICITLY keeps their super heroes dumb, useless, docile, and undertrained to keep them under their thumb. 99% super-heroes in The Boys are fake heroes who do everything but fight crime and the few that DO get to do shit, are 100% strictly limited to first responder shit (and even that's basic bitch training they get) and even then, only in instances of extreme danger are they deployed. Voight spoils their super powered manchildren with money, liquor, hookers, etc to keep them from getting ideas and even then, will tolerate a shockingly high amount of perversion and depravity before they'll even think about killing a super-hero for line stepping. It's shown, with the plot oint about what happened when capes were used in WW2 (getting killed and a lot of innocent soldiers killed/placed in POW camps in WW2, as was the case of one particular character in the comic, who spent all of WW2 in a particular brutal Nazi POW camp because, first mission in Europe after arriving there as an 18 year old draftee, Voight forced his squad to take on a super-hero member for publicity purposes and the cape, within hours of being put in the group, retardedly did something that gave away the squad's position, resulting in the guy spending about 3-4 years being tortured and brutalized in said Nazi POW camp and then being forced, when he was let go when the war ended, into staying 100% silent about how Voight's cape fucked up lest he get shot in the head and buried in an unmarked grave near the prison camp and his family never being alerted to the fact that their son was alive after all.
As for culture shit, there is the fact that The Boys is a world forever obsessed with capeshit super-heroes. And there is a lot of stuff where, in the comics and TV show, they explore the idea that if you are pretty and have basic bitch talent, Voight will fund your non-cape dreams so long as you do it for a Voight subsidiary.
Case in point, Soldier Boy and Starlight both had exs who had singing careers. Black Noir was an actor who had enough major credits to his name and popularity, that he was seriously in the running for the lead in Beverly Hills Cops. Tek Knight, in the TV show, has his own Dateline TV crime documentary series, and the entire "Capes For Christ" thing. The implication being, that super-hero culture is like teenybopper culture and most are flash in the pan shit for young kids and 20-something manchildren and while popular, only a handful IE the Seven, have any real staying power in the world of pop culture.
