The Boys is a comic series turned streaming show about a group of people who keep superheroes inline or kill them off. They’re a vicious bunch, totally messed up, and have ties to either the superpower-inducing chemical Compound-V or those who were given powers by it, claiming to be superheroes while not being very heroic. Not that you’d know that without a hint of research because all anybody talks about is Homelander, the evil Superman stand-in who might as well be DC’s Ultraman rather than Superman.
You can guess that this is not my kind of story. As someone who loves superhero stories and has since childhood, I’m not all that interested in superheroes that are evil…or as we used to call them, supervillains. The only reason I have Watchmen and two of its sequels is I won them in a contest last Free Comic Book Day. The problem is most of these stories come from a cynical place, the idea that the superhero universe couldn’t exist in real life not because the science is wrong but the morality is wrong.
Enter Garth Ennis, a creator whose work I’m not familiar with because he never works on anything I would enjoy. So I can’t judge the quality of his work, though he comes from a point in time where getting more work required talent (and the occasional “who you know”) than what could be a good news story whether they can make a good comic story or not. There’s a reason Amazon Prime chased this to make a series out of during the 2020s superhero craze. So we’re going to assume he’s a good writer and that everything I’m about to disagree with him on is opinion, taste, and preference. In an recent interview for the English version of El Paīs, Ennis joined interviewer Ángel Luis Sucasas Fernández (I had to copy/paste that) in a cafe to discuss why he created his comic, telling me why he’s not the best choice for superhero comics because he doesn’t really understand what makes the superhero story so beloved. Yes, The Boys has a strong fanbase behind it, but either they can accept the contrast or they just share his views on a superhero world. This is all personal perspective. I’m not trashing the man…but I really don’t agree with him.
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