The Boys Series is Way Better Than The Comic

Garth Ennis and Derek Robertson's The Boys

has existed in comic book form for a long time. But let's be real, they're just not good

Dave Hartake, so long. The TV show is way better, and here's why

You might be hearing about The Boys for the first time, but they've been around for a long while

beginning in 2006 and running until 2012, they've had quite a life on the printed comic book page

These titular comic book characters ran for 72 issues with three spinoff miniseries to boot

The book follows a group of superhero hunters called the Boys. Yeah, that's right

They're normal people who perennially battle corporately controlled and owned superheroes. In the world of the comics

all these superheroes are owned and run by a megacorporation called Vought American

Their primary asset is a group of characters called the Seven, who are just obvious doppelgangers for DC Comics' Justice League

This is obviously writer Garth Innes' way of making a metatextual statement

around his views on superhero comics and superhero culture. Typically speaking, for me, this stuff usually falls flat on its face

Garth Innes is a great writer in some genres, but his distaste for superheroes just kind of rubs me the wrong way more often than not

which brings us to the first major difference between the comics and the TV show The Boys

Is The Boys TV show a bleak look at today through the lens of superheroes

Yes. However, that's kind of hard to articulate. The simple truth is that the comics are more concerned with Garth Innes being Garth Innes

and therefore The Boys just is kind of created to be cynical and mean-spirited

This is distinctly different from the TV show, which is far more concerned with actually interrogating ideas of power and superherodom and American culture

It's also worth mentioning that this was Innes' next big project after his award-winning and medium-pushing series Preacher came to an end

meaning this was going to be his spiritual sequel. It was going to be his, you know, casino to Preacher's Goodfellas

Unfortunately, unlike Casino and Goodfellas, this book was quite frankly just set up for him and Derek Robertson to try and out Preacher Preacher

If that's your thing, that's your thing. It's not really mine. Dave's heartache

So long. What does that mean exactly? Well, it was the mid-2000s and everyone was trying to out-edgelord each other

So, you know, that's how you get comics where superheroes have hamsters put up their butts

and, you know, dudes just punching through people's abdomens. Murder is cool

How did something like that get published by Wildstorm, which was owned by DC Comics at the time

Who knows? And after DC got wind of just how crazy the comic was well they canceled it in mid CANCELLED It was quickly picked up by Dynamite Comics land of weird nostalgia books that only balding dudes buy

and home of, look at these definitely-not-creepy-titty-variant covers. And the rest, as they say, is history

The comics are told from Huey Campbell's perspective, a dude whose girlfriend gets accidentally killed by a superhero

and then conscripted into the boys. In the book, he's drawn to look exactly like Simon Pegg, which isn't really relevant

It's just an interesting tidbit. The mid-2000s were really into the whole, let's draw a comic book character to look exactly like an actor

because then we can get a movie deal thing. Need examples? Okay. How about Sam Jackson as Nick Fury in The Ultimates

Or Eminem as the main dude in Wanted? Or basically like everything Mike Diodato's done since he stopped actually drawing and just started using SketchUp models

Looking at you, Tommy Lee Jones, as Norman Osborn in the Dark Avengers. I don't care

Despite my complaining that The Boys is a cynical take on superheroes, they really did find quite a following in the mid-2000s

After Dynamite picked them up, they found some solid sales numbers. Believe it or not, The Boys was a pretty successful title for Dynamite

which is honestly, like, a really low bar. But in September of 2007, The Boys number 10 sold 32,068 copies

Compared with June of 2009, the boys 31 sold 25,000 copies, which by today's standards would be just a runaway success

That's higher numbers than some lower tiered Spider-Man books and Batman family books

Granted, 2007 was a long time ago, but still, based off these sales figures, there were rumors of the book being optioned and almost being set up as a movie from basically the get-go

There are many contradicting stories about, you know, who was involved when and whether it was a movie or a TV show

but there is a lot of truth to multiple versions of these claims. Eventually, though, it was officially optioned as a movie

and rumors that Simon Pegg was actually going to play Huey bubbled up through the internet

However, nothing ever really came from this. This supposed big-budget adaptation of The Boys

just kind of sat on the shelf for a few years. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg eventually set it up as a TV show

with Supernatural creator Eric Kripke operating as a showrunner and acting as the kind of day-to-day supervisor of the project

He would also be the primary creative force behind it and the person who really kind of took it from being Garth Ennis Cynic Fest into having a little bit more of a heart

The primary difference between the comics and the show is a simple and yet very important one

The show, The Boys, is just about normal people. The boys are literally normal

No powers, no abilities, other than their wits and ingenuity. In the comics, they take Compound V in order to gain powers

and temporarily be able to hold their own against the Seven and other superheroes

In terms of a metaphor this doesn really work as well By keeping the boys as normal humans it draws an emotional line in the sand It says that the fragility of the human condition is what important It shows the will and internal strength of the characters

Even if they all are foul-mouthed superhero assassins, that's the one change right there that just makes them

so much more deeply complex and courageous. And that helps the audience build empathy with them

and just generally relate to them more. In the comics, Butcher even injects

Huey with the drug Compound V against his will and takes him out on a raid against a team of teen

superheroes. Woefully underprepared and reeling from ostensibly being hit with superpowered PCP

against his will, Huey accidentally kills one of those teen superheroes by punching

through their chest. This isn't something that you, like, want in a main character

The key distinction for the boys' TV show is that they're always underdogs. This helps the

audience root for them, feel more sympathetic for their admittedly Herculean journey, and just

generally like them more. Having them consistently need to use their wits also makes all the characters

on the boys deeper and more complex. It shows them being more inventive because they have to plan ways

of taking the superheroes down with their brains and natural abilities. It also makes Huey more a

part of the team because he's actively choosing to be a part of it, as opposed to, you know

being conscripted against his will in a drug-addled murder spree. In the comics, Billy Butcher is a frat boy who has a sadistic sense of humor and a brutal mean streak

At one point, he sabotages a jetpack of a character that he could have easily turned into the police, but he didn't

Ostensibly, just murdering him for the fun of it. Because, you know, murder

At another point in the book, he also stabs Jack from Jupiter for literally hours

It's so extreme that Jack passes out, and when he wakes up, Butcher is still stabbing him

In the comics, the female ate Compound V from corpses of human bodies as a child

It's a disturbing and, quite frankly, needlessly over-the-top backstory. In the show, her story is thankfully changed

She was a child soldier who was given Compound V by guerrilla fighters who were backed by Vought American

It's way better. The subplots involving Vaught American are more complex and intricate in the books

but that could develop over the course of the show. James Stilwell is the primary antagonist of the boys in the comics

He's a corporate figurehead that they have to go against repeatedly. He's the puppet master pulling the strings of the seven

So some people have said he's just a psychopath and kind of one note as a character

However, most of James Stilwell's storylines are being repurposed during season two

and given to Giancarlo Esposito, Stan Edgar, the Vought American CEO in the show. James Stilwell

in the show is changed to be Madeline Stilwell, a darkly mangled person who has a more complex

relationship with Homelander It amazing It very apparent that he has feelings for her and that she manipulates him at every turn Their relationship is so weird he even gets jealous of her young baby because it takes attention away from him Additionally Homelander is far more complex in the show than in the comics In the comics he just kind of a

petulant baby. In the show, he just wants to be needed and liked and goes to extraordinary lengths

to prove his worth and value. He's so unstable that even his team members are scared of him

which is a great twist on the character. I mean, The Deep basically isn't even in the comics. He's

just a one-off joke character and a dude in an old school diving suit. But in the show, he's turned

into this kind of Aquaman-style character who becomes a sexual assaulter and then who's molested

and grapples with his past behavior. And then to make things even weirder, he gets conscripted into

a cult. In season two, the character of Stormfront was gender-swapped to be a woman, which is a great

addition. The original character is basically just Third Reich Captain Marvel, an OG superhero

Superman type guy made by the Germans. In the show, they update the character in a great way by

having her use memes and social media to accrue a large fan base and promote derision. You know

like how actual Nazis are doing right now in the real world. In perhaps the most subtle difference

but the best tweak to one of the characters from the original comics, A-Train. What the show does

with A-Train is just great. He's the superhero responsible for murdering Huey's girlfriend

Robin. In the comics, he's fighting a supervillain when he accidentally runs through her and kills

her. In the show, he's given a far more interesting backstory. He's addicted to Compound V. It's

almost parallel to a professional athlete who is addicted to steroids or performance-enhancing

drugs. He's constantly plagued by the possibility that he's going to be replaced by a different

speedster on the superhero team. In fact, he's actually running to get more V when he kills

Huey's girlfriend. This is infinitely more pointless and deeply human. It makes both Huey

and A-Train more complex as characters, as opposed to the comics version of the events

Overall, the show is constructed with both a sense of humor and a deep well of empathy for

all of the characters, something that the comics has in, quite frankly, rare supply

Full disclosure, as I'm sure you've been able to tell from this video, I don't really enjoy the

Boyz comics. I don't subscribe much to Garth Innes' worldview of superheroes, but that's just me. I like

chunks of his work, just not The Boyz. I like chunks of his Punisher and his war comics and even his

Judge Dredd work. For me, The Boyz comic is just too dang cynical and obviously frustrated by the

limitations of corporately controlled comics. It's a book written about superheroes because it's the

only way Innes could figure out how to pay rent, and it's something he's deeply resentful of. It

It comes through on basically every page. And it's just not something I'm interested in

The TV show adaptation takes this basic premise, changes a few key elements

and makes it instantly more accessible while still maintaining the core idea

And what is that core idea? That our heroes can't be trusted. What does it say about our culture

that we see Paragons of Truth, Justice, and the American Way as evil? It says we're in trouble