The Boys - An Amazon Prime adaptation of the Ennis comic series

[God of Nothing]

Honestly its truly remarkable how Homelander is by far the most popular character. It's like nobody cares that much about the supposed heroes of the story.

Homelander is the one getting videogame cameos and fan animations (Black Noir and Starlight got one in Cod I suppose). Tough we were supposed to be cheering for Butcher, the female etc. Don't get me wrong it's not like they are unknowns, but Homelander clearly stole the show and became part of popular culture. The heroes are kinda forgetable outside the show.

Even edgelord Butcher who should be very popular, and the main character, is hardly ever mentioned when people talk about this show. He is likely behind both Starlight and Hugie in popularity. And I don't even blame Karl Urban as he does a fantastic job playing him.

they're cucks
butcher protects a child that isn't even his and hughie gets walked over by everyone
starlight sucked the most pathetic member of the cast's dick and that's all she'll ever be

homelander, despite being a manchild, is the only character beside his dad who has a spine
and unlike the dyke, it doesn't act like you should root for him, which makes people like him because he's an actual character rather than an archetype

 

[74164978231]

Ok, that was fucking gay. I suspect there is actual gay porn out there with a more coherent story.

Can I introduce you to the catalina collection?

https://youtu.be/NAbT3kJifW0

https://youtu.be/b6rQblANbSM?t=478

 

[TheHarbinger]

Even edgelord Butcher who should be very popular, and the main character, is hardly ever mentioned when people talk about this show.

they're cucks
butcher protects a child that isn't even his and hughie gets walked over by everyone

Butcher is the most inept character. Hughie is a dumb introvert who traumatically watched his girlfriend get splattered. He's a young kid who was selling DVD players a year or so ago. So you can understand him not being some Delta Force level operative genius who can go toe to toe with superheroes. It wouldn't make sense if Hughie was some one man Terminator against superheroes. Even his Compound V power is about running away.

Butcher is a decades long special forces soldier and CIA operative. Who now cucks for his wife's rapist son. And basically stopped killing superheroes, the entire point of his character, and ended up doing literally nothing for two straight seasons. He has more screen time working with superheroes than working against them. He even has sex with Maeve and shows zero control. He's not an 'alpha' written character. He's just a loser with plot armor (which honestly describes almost every single modern character written in the last two or three decades).

Butcher defending Ryan is Game of Thrones ending level bad writing. The character is irredeemable at this point. Beyond saving. Unless Butcher wipes out every superhero including the Boys and kills himself in the end so that his low points were temporary moments of insanity. His character is just ruined.

 

[Tepes Thot]

Wanna remind everyone that Eric Kripke is pro-Israel and the actor for Frenchie was an IDF squad leader. Weirdly, none of the people who’d usually be mad about this really give a shit, I guess screaming about media literacy on Twitter is more important.

View attachment 6105346

View attachment 6105351

View attachment 6105353

View attachment 6105355

View attachment 6105354


View attachment 6105356


View attachment 6105357

I was thinking this too. I know a lot of these people are latte activists, but they have a Palestinian child-mower right in the main cast and they’re clapping like clowns.

I guess the heccin chuds need to be owned more than they need to have principles.

 

[Breadbassket]

Butcher is a decades long special forces soldier and CIA operative. Who now cucks for his wife's rapist son. And basically stopped killing superheroes, the entire point of his character, and ended up doing literally nothing for two straight seasons. He has more screen time working with superheroes than working against them. He even has sex with Maeve and shows zero control. He's not an 'alpha' written character. He's just a loser with plot armor (which honestly describes almost every single modern character written in the last two or three decades).

Butcher defending Ryan is Game of Thrones ending level bad writing. The character is irredeemable at this point. Beyond saving. Unless Butcher wipes out every superhero including the Boys and kills himself in the end so that his low points were temporary moments of insanity. His character is just ruined.

All of the mystique around Butcher was undone in a mere few sentences of dialogue.

Spoiler: Compare And Contrast With The Boys Comic Butcher

 

[Mystery Spy]

I sorta get why they tried to make Butcher redeemable or at least not a complete monster because he doesn't want to hurt a child. But yes, it makes little sense for his character to suddenly be all heroic when he was just a broken man defined by hate.

 

[Liucage67]

LOL. Sure...

Spoiler: NSFW: The comics fucking suck

View attachment 6104733View attachment 6104734

I think the most frustrating part about all of this is the amount of wasted talent and creativity. Eric Jewpkike has so many talented actors and artists but he decides to waste them because "fuck le heckin chuds".

However, the people claiming that the comics were always better either never read them or are huffing copium.

I actually read them like six times and I can pull the scene of that termite scene blowing up that gay dude cock

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

I mean, yeah the comics are pretty much 50% "look how fucked up supes are in their day to day life" paired with gross out humor, 30% ultraviolence, 10% plot, and 10% feels.

They're all weird sex perverts because everyone rich and in powerful positions invariably is a sex pervert.

A lot of it is played for laughs or gross out humor though and just comes off childish but that's Garth Ennis in a nutshell.

I'm going to be absolutely fair, there were a few times, back when I was reading The Boys during its original run, where my eyes did roll a little bit and, though I was enjoying the series, I did find myself thinking, "Oh Garth, surely you're being a bit over-the-top now. That whole G-Men thing. That many people, involved in that kind of reprehensible shit, and it being an open secret and everyone knowing about it, but no one saying anything? That could never happen..."

And then Jimmy Saville died, and Operation Yewtree started kicking off, and it was revealed that practically everybody involved in showbusiness in the UK from the 1970s to the 1980s, possibly later, was part of a paedophile ring that included literal members of the sitting Conservative government, including a former Prime Minister, and that BBC children's television was basically a paedo's pick 'n' mix, where nonces could literally pick the kids they wanted to abuse backstage out of the crowd on Top of the Pops or whatever.

And then the story just died and everyone stopped talking about it. But I remember.

Then, a few years ago, Jeffery Epstein gets merked in prison, and the flightlogs come out, and lo and behold, it turns out to be exactly the same situation on the other side of the pond, just with a few details changed. Names get leaked. People freak out. "OMG, Steven fucking Hawking? Really?" There are memes galore.

For about a fortnight. Then everybody somehow forgot about it and moved onto the next thing.

And I just watched it all unfold and just kinda felt like Hughie reading through Butcher's files. So, no, I don't think it's unrealistic that every supe be some kind of deviant sex weirdo - if anything, I think Garth Ennis might have underplayed how debauched and degenerate people in power and in the public eye are.

I also think that people criticising the comic for not having any positive supe characters (despite the fact that besides the obvious one, Starlight, there are actually several supes in the comic who are shown to be, if not entirely decent, then at the very least, normal) are entirely missing the point of the comic. If you want superheroes who are good and decent and just and always do the right thing, there's LITERALLY EVERY OTHER COMIC BOOK IN FUCKING EXISTENCE.

 

[Caligura]

Yeah his name and character are clearly a dark parody of crack babies in 'urban' communities. In the comics he's born with V in his blood and has to continually breastfeed from his mother to sustain his life. It's typical over the top Ennis writing but hilariously politically incorrect. When South Park did it's Crack Baby Basketball episode they made almost all of the crack mothers White because they were huge pussies by then and could never find their cutting edge level of humor they used to have in the first couple of seasons.

So with The Boys on Amazon they either had to make MM White to keep the crack baby story. Or just keep him black and remove the more obvious references to him being the Compound V equivalent of a crack baby. At one point on the show they mention Operation Charly and the CIA running crack into black neighborhoods but it was dropped immediately after that conversation. They clearly wanted Soldier Boy to be more racist as well, like the references to fire hosing people at Selma, but they backed off of that as well.

What's funny is that Sister Sage is supposed to be some genius. But so far she's failed to spot the obvious surveillance van taking pictures of her. Has done everything Homelander wanted like a slave. And like a typical nigger has started a riot over nothing and killed three innocent people. These writers lean into the worst stereotypes, from a liberal perspective, without even realizing it.

They're too afraid to have Stormfront dropping the k-slur (or maybe obscure slurs only 1930s Germans would know) or Soldier Boy dropping n-bombs (even though it would literally be in character for him) because people would clip them for memes and these fucks hate people having fun.

I don't think the word nigger, kike or faggot are uttered even once in the show when there's obviously racist characters who'd say them. For a show that's supposed to be le heckin' grounded and realistic, it's definitely very immersion breaking lol.

 

[Count Grishnackh]

Got a little over half way in s04e01, and had to shut it off. The only show I liked on Prime is ruined!

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I don't think the word nigger, kike or faggot are uttered even once in the show when there's obviously racist characters who'd say them. For a show that's supposed to be le heckin' grounded and realistic, it's definitely very immersion breaking lol.

You do realize that the writers of this show would get triggered by those words, right? That's why they won't use those words even though people like Stormfront and Soldier Boy should be spewing them out like an MG-42.

 

[The Valeyard]

I was thrown for a loop for a second at the end of the esp but I think Sage also has some regen abilities? It looked like Sage gave herself a lobotomy to dumb herself down and relax for a bit (and put her at the same level as The Deep). Which would but the first smart/interesting thing the show writers have done with the character.

The writers think the audience is dumb, so there's a scene in the fourth episode where Sage explains this to The Deep and has him give her a frontal lobotomy before fucking him again.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

It also makes no fucking sense that the same team that made Homelander are still in the same lab together. Vought would've naturally split them up and had them work on different projects, or Stan Edgar would've had them moved to a different black site lab to create the next generation superhuman after Homelander started pissing him off. Hell, if they wanted to go with the whole "Vought is evil" route, Vought would've had the scientists bumped off so they couldn't replicate their work for some other company or entity. Just imagine how fucked Homelander would feel if he sought vengeance against these guys, only to find nothing and realize they're all dead.

Also, instead of attacking Firecracker, Starlight could've just gone to her followers and made a pity speech about how she didn't take that abortion lightly. Or just tossed shade at Firecracker for stealing confidential information, saying that if Vought and Homelander's side could do that to her, they can do it to anyone. Instead, by attacking Firecracker, Starlight acted like what a stereotype of a woman according to so-called "misogynists" would act; emotional, illogical, driven more by vengeance rather than logic.

 

[Commander X]

The first season at least has some cohesion when it comes to what they’re trying to say, which is less tackling IRL culture-political stuff and more adapting the idea of superheroes existing into a modern setting and what that would actually entail. I think after season 2 Eric Kripke got mad that people were making Homelander memes or something and replaced the comic’s commentary on superheroes with SNL-tier stuff about how stupid Drumpf is and then doubled-down on it afterwards.

People can't even think the show is less good than it was before because you have a lot of losers - including people who work on the show, more than likely, who view everything through the lens of wanting to own racists online, they don't even care if the show is actually entertaining at this point.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Starlight's actions come off as even worse when her first instinct is to deny it, as well as revealing that she never really thought about the people she'd hurt. It puts that carjacking scene from season 2 into more perspective.

I like how they find out that Firecracker molested a teenage boy, but it's her revealing that Annie had an abortion that gets them peeved off at her to the point Starlight was willing to beat her to near death on live tv.

The Smartest girl alive trusts the Deep to give her a lobotomy.

I find it funny that a supe going on a rampage and almost murdering someone makes people against the bill that wants to regulate supes. And apparently it's more because of the abortion and not her brutalizing a public figure.

"Why don't you take some V, Butcher? I'm sure the chemical that caused your cancer will somehow cure it."

The first season at least has some cohesion when it comes to what they’re trying to say, which is less tackling IRL culture-political stuff and more adapting the idea of superheroes existing into a modern setting and what that would actually entail. I think after season 2 Eric Kripke got mad that people were making Homelander memes or something and replaced the comic’s commentary on superheroes with SNL-tier stuff about how stupid Drumpf is and then doubled-down on it afterwards.

Far as I know, the showrunner changed after season 1.

 

[Breadbassket]

The Boys showrunner had an intterview.

Here are some excerpts:

And as you’ve said, “The Boys” has become increasingly political. At what point did you realize that that was an intrinsic part of the show?

Very early. When we first pitched the show, it was before Trump was elected. And the idea that a celebrity would actively want to turn themselves into a fascist autocrat was kind of a crazy idea. I mean, it still is. But it turned out to have happened?

We sort of lucked into a show whose metaphor is really about the moment we’re living in, which is the cross-section of celebrity and authoritarianism. And so once we realize that, we’re like, “Well, we have to go all the way.”

And so every season we’ve just pushed it a little bit further, but it’s all over. I mean, it’s all over Season 1. I mean, he’s giving very George Bush speeches. He’s being praised by throngs of devout followers. It is there from the beginning.

Do you ever worry about being too political? I mean, Liberty was a literal Nazi in Season 2. Or is it just something you lean into?

I’m just going to lean into it, and then the audience can sort of decide whether they want to watch or not. I mean, it’s almost become like “South Park,” you know what I mean?

There’s just so few shows that can directly comment on the world we’re living in, and they get to do it as a cartoon. We get to hold up a mirror as a fantasy genre show. But again, because we’re just like, we’re right there. I mean, it’s all in the original comic. The comic is really political. It just, it’s political about the post-9/11 George Bush era.

“The Boys” is a show that examines, and very much damns, toxic masculinity. There’s a theory of the “bad fan” — people who root for villains just because they like the bad things that they do. Do you ever think about The Boys’ fandom and wonder about the ratio of bad fans?

I have to believe that the “bad fans” are a very small minority. Because I don’t know how you root for Homelander. When the guy is slurping up breast milk, and being the weakest character in the show over and over and over again and being like — he’s not even particularly macho. He’s weird. He’s weird and thin-skinned, and I don’t know how you look at that guy and you’re like, “That’s my guy.”

The show’s not subtle. It wears its politics on its sleeve. And it’s funny to rip on the madness on the right, and we get some shots in on the left of all the performative wokeness and everything. So I’m hoping that that’s the vast majority?

Introducing brand-new supes to the Seven — Sister Sage and Firecracker. How did you create those specific characters?

Sage came out of the conversation of one weakness that Homelander really has is he’s generally surrounded by idiots. And so if we gave him someone truly brilliant, that makes him much more formidable. It turns out that that’s a really hard character to write!

Oh really?

It’s really hard to write the smartest person in the world! Because you have to write things that the smartest person in the world would think of and we’re not the smartest people in the world, so that’s really difficult. And then Sage became a really interesting character, because someone came up with the notion of, “Let’s make her an African American woman who nobody listens to.” And so here she is, the ability to save all of mankind and everyone just kind of thinks she’s invisible, which I thought was a super interesting social commentary on top of that character. And then Susan brings it to life, and is just so smart.

Firecracker came from like, “Hey, isn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene scary?” And just that type of personality. Like, you had Trump, but now you have these Trump spawn that are trying to outdo each other for how outrageous and sexualized and gun-toting and slavishly obedient they can be. And just that idea — it wouldn’t just start and end with Homelander, he would start to create these spores that would grow into these other characters, and she’s a version of that.

From the beginning of “The Boys,” the show really has deviated from the comics. Did you go in saying, this is going to be very different?

For sure. The comic itself is really episodic. I always used to say it would really work in a rated-X CBS. It basically works as a procedural, where every two or three issues is its own story, and then they move on and there isn’t an incredible amount of building. And look, the necessity of streaming, especially at that time, was I needed a story that could support eight hours. And the books simply didn’t have that.

So I knew from the very jump, so my attack was, I said to Garth Ennis, “I want to get the characters and I want to get the tone right, but are you okay if the story isn’t the same?” And he was great. He totally got it. It’s funny, what he always says to me is, “Just get Butcher right.”

 

[Commander X]

Then, a few years ago, Jeffery Epstein gets merked in prison, and the flightlogs come out, and lo and behold, it turns out to be exactly the same situation on the other side of the pond, just with a few details changed. Names get leaked. People freak out. "OMG, Steven fucking Hawking? Really?" There are memes galore.

For about a fortnight. Then everybody somehow forgot about it and moved onto the next thing.

Again, I think the comic is one of Ennis' weaker works but...

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I like how they find out that Firecracker molested a teenage boy, but it's her revealing that Annie had an abortion that gets them peeved off at her to the point Starlight was willing to beat her to near death on live tv.

Well, given that half the country hates abortion, I can see that as a mobilizing cry for the right-wing audience that Homelander and Firecracker are sticking with. What is weird is that Starlight didn't just use that to mobilize her left-wing audience given that the Left believes abortion to be a constitutional right.

The Smartest girl alive trusts the Deep to give her a lobotomy.

It's like me trusting a complete dipshit to do heart surgery on me. But I suppose Sage has enough of a healing factor that she can regenerate no matter how much damage the Deep does.

I find it funny that a supe going on a rampage and almost murdering someone makes people against the bill that wants to regulate supes. And apparently it's more because of the abortion and not her brutalizing a public figure.

If anything, Starlight's rampage would've gotten people to support that bill even more. But they'd just add Starlight to the list of Supes that the Feds need to keep on a leash alongside Homelander and A-Train.

"Why don't you take some V, Butcher? I'm sure the chemical that caused your cancer will somehow cure it."

Given how capeshit science works, that can probably succeed.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Well, given that half the country hates abortion, I can see that as a mobilizing cry for the right-wing audience that Homelander and Firecracker are sticking with. What is weird is that Starlight didn't just use that to mobilize her left-wing audience given that the Left believes abortion to be a constitutional right.

I was more talking about the fact that the molestation was casually just something they were perfectly fine with keeping hush and just using as a threat, but the abortion leak is what gets Starlight into a murderous rage. Just more examples of 'It's only when it fucks with us specifically that we actually care' mentality.

It's like me trusting a complete dipshit to do heart surgery on me.

I still wonder how the Deep is still alive by this point when he has no uses, only draws more controversy to Vought, and Homelander clearly hates how brain dead retarded he is.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Again, I think the comic is one of Ennis' weaker works but...

View attachment 6107245

The thing is, if the comics were set in a pre-9/11 world, I can buy Vought just having a legal battle with the Feds after Homelander's failed revolution. But in the post-9/11, Patriot Act world, James Stillwell and the top corporate officials at Vought would probably wind up getting waterboarded in Gitmo because their "products" killed the President of the United States, while all the assets of Vought would get liquidated and nationalized.

I was more talking about the fact that the molestation was casually just something they were perfectly fine with keeping hush and just using as a threat, but the abortion leak is what gets Starlight into a murderous rage. Just more examples of 'It's only when it fucks with us specifically that we actually care' mentality.

Which just goes to make the good guys look even stupider.

I still wonder how the Deep is still alive by this point when he has no uses, only draws more controversy to Vought, and Homelander clearly hates how brain dead retarded he is.

Any half-competent evil organization would've either fired him or killed him and made it look like their enemies did it. The fucking Mafia would've had his brains blown out by now.