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.....
Again, if a company makes bad shit for the military, capitalism would just kick in and they'd get shut down or bought out by another company who makes better shit for the grunts. If Vought-American functioned in the real world, they'd eventually tank and get bought out by Lockheed Martin or some other military-industrial complex giant. Unless Vought had a monopoly over the military-industrial complex, or they ARE the military-industrial complex as a whole, their power would be limited. That, and if their crap gets soldiers killed, no politician would dare associate with them or vouch for them. Fucking with the military can get political careers killed. Just ask Joe McCarthy.
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.
The military buys shitty guns and vehicles from Vought and lets their men get killed by them, but then all of a sudden, says no when Vought wants to have super-heroes be cannon fodder joining the grunts in combat operations. The comic is so inconsistent with how powerful/influential Vought is. If anything, the grunts wouldn't like having shitty Vought guns or vehicles, but would welcome superheroes on their side so that the bad guys shoot at the morons with the colorful costumes while the real soldiers gun down the bad guys from behind.
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.
This makes it even more stupid that the people of that world idolize Supes like they're the next best thing since sliced bread. In the real world, people idolize superheroes because they're fictional beings, and as fictional beings, they kick ass in movies and impress the general audience. But if supes were crimefighting in the real world and were incompetent, degenerate baboons, you can bet your ass that MS-13 or La Cosa Nostra would be leaving corpses of Supes who tried to bust in on their territory as a warning on the road. Groups like the Albanian or Russian mobs would be putting out bounties on Supes and killing Supes as a hobby. People wouldn't idolize Supes, they'd either be laughing at them, or thinking about how that poor Supe who tried to investigate some crime-ridden neighborhood got captured and tortured by the local mafia don until they became a house pet or a sex slave for the gang. That shit that happened with Starlight getting gang-raped by Black Noir, Homelander, and A-Train would repeat all over the country, except instead of Supes raping other Supes, the rapists would be common gangsters or made men serving the local mafia don or gang leader.
What is it with British grimdark stories not making sense with the worldbuilding? First Watchmen, then Warhammer 40K, and even the Boys comic. People like Alan Moore and Garth Ennis really don't think things through when building their worlds. The Cold War wouldn't last if the Americans had a living teleporter/disintegrator who could make multiple copies of himself and teleport all the Russian nukes into outer space or shoot them down, and the Vought Supes wouldn't be hailed as heroes in a world where simple dudes with fucking guns could kill them. If a paramilitary squad working for Vought could massacre an entire school full of Supes, you can bet that your average mafia with sufficient financial backing could do so, too. And since the government already supports the Boys against the Vought Supes, you can bet your ass Uncle Sam can afford to ''misplace'' some military equipment so that some patriotic citizens could put the Supes down.
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.
In the show, it makes sense that the people idolize Supes, since they're actually effective fighters despite causing collateral damage. Someone like Starlight or Victoria can tank a shot to the face and melt you or make your head explode. But in the comics, dudes with guns kill them all the time, which makes no sense as to why people idolize them.
At least in our world, people adore superheroes because superhero movies have displayed them as effective fighters. But if the superheroes are a real thing and they're degenerate, clumsy retards that your average mob boss can kill, then nobody would be admiring them. Not only would you have so many stories of Supes being assholes that would be too numerous for even Vought to cover up, but even those who would sympathize with the Supes won't adore them like gods when the Supes are such clumsy clods that dudes with guns could kill them.
The only Supe worth a damn who wouldn't go down easily is Homelander, but then you can just have the Boys, who in the comics are super-powered, along with Starlight, gang up on his ass and whoop him. Shit, Black Noir does it for them in the comics, so that problem solved itself. If the Boys want a Homelander clone of their own, they can just have Starlight offer to fuck Homelander and then scrape some gunk off her for their DNA sample.
), who can, as he repeats to himself like a sad little mantra, "Do whatever the fuck he wants," but riddled with anxieties and mummy issues, deeply insecure and self-loathing underneath his posturing, constantly fighting his overriding need for everybody to like him.