History ComicBook / TheBoys

** On the normal human side, [[spoiler: James Stillwell]], the Vought-American executive. He serves as the BigBad for the majority of the series, doing anything and everything in attempting to achieve his goal of having supes utilised in military service.

*** Later, it's ultimately revealed that the main reason Homelander went this way, was due to being gaslit by [[spoiler:Black Noir, who it's revealed was actually the real BigBad of the super storyline.]]
** After having killed [[spoiler:Mallory, Vas, The Legend, Mother's Milk, the Frenchman, and the Female]], as well as coming up with a plan to [[spoiler:kill every single person with a trace of V in their blood]], the final BigBad of the series is actually [[spoiler:Butcher himself.]]

*** Vought-American is, overall, a representation of a small but recurring theme in Ennis's work: the greed and carelessness of war profiteers (and corporations in general). While Vought's activities throughout history (as discussed in issues #19-22) are pretty ridiculous when you see them on the page, they're actually real a decent example of the same thing in real life is the shortage of body armor for American troops at the start of the Iraq War. Essentially, his theme is that such corporations are really only interested in bottom-line profit, not any moral concerns, and if there's a way for them to increase their profit without having to worry about such concerns as safety, morality or even whether the product works (such as, say, if they've bought and paid for all the lawmakers who might intervene and restrain them), then they won't hesitate to follow it.
* InstantlyProvenWrong: Just about every single attempt at VA(C) pushing their product ends up this way. New carrier plane for the Pacific theater? Suddenly the Japanese aren't retreating as fast as they were. Proving superheroes are the future of war? Decimated, along with their handler, by the Germans they'd accidentally lured back to the unprepared Americans. A revolutionary assault rifle? [[spoiler:The first 1000 troops it was issued to were found decapitated, their heads stuck on the worthless rifles.]] Prove that the supers can easily outperform a professional army? [[spoiler:Everybody aboard the flight dies when the supes botch the rescue. The plane even ends up destroying the Brooklyn Bridge instead of the WTC -- less densely populated but ''much'' more damaging to the city itself, both economically and psychologically.]]

** Starlight's reaction to the aforementioned "bikini" costume can be seen as a shot at quite a few RapeAsDrama plots in mainstream comics in the 2000's, particularly ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'' (the storyline, we were told, that involved DC editor Dan [=DiDio’s=] decree that "we need a rape") and Creator/KevinSmith's "The Evil That Men Do."

*** Later, it's ultimately revealed that the main reason Homelander went this way, was due to being gaslit by [[spoiler:Black Noir, who it's revealed was actually the [[HijackedByGanon real]] big bad of the super storyline.]]

* HijackedByGanon: [[spoiler:Black Noir, who's ultimately responsible for sending Homelander off the deep end by committing atrocities whilst dressed as him, and sending the photographs to The Boys knowing that they'd send them on to Vought, all in order to precipitate Homelander's breakdown, so that he can finally kill him.]]

* AnythingThatMoves:
** Tek Knight. He has sex with a male telepathic android, a cup of hot coffee, his Jarvis-Expy butler's ear, a watermelon, and (presumably) [[spoiler:his Nightwing-expy's mouth]]. It turns out this is because of a fist-sized brain tumor. Then again, many of the other supers have sex with anyone or anything and they don't have tumors.
** Terror, should his beloved Billy command it.

** Almost any notable super: Completely no-holds-barred [[TheHedonist hedonistic]] promiscuity, usually either with prostitutes, each other, or just about [[AnythingThatMoves anything else with a pulse]], consent not always a given.

* StrawmanNewsMedia: After the President has his face ripped off by a wolverine, Creator/FoxNewsChannel claims the parents of the kid who brought it were Democrats.

''The Boys'' is a series by Creator/GarthEnnis, with art by Darick Robertson and others, that debuted in 2006 and concluded in 2012 after 72 issues. It follows the namesake group, a CIA-sponsored team of EmpoweredBadassNormals which monitors, polices and (often) terminates corrupt superhumans.

** Issue 65. [[spoiler:It's revealed that Black Noir is a clone of Homelander, and the one who REALLY raped Becky. He also is the reason why Homelander became, "...a complete fucking psychopath by accident." The two fight, and Black Noir literally tears Homelander to pieces, before facing the military on the White House lawn, who unload an ungodly amount of firepower on him. ''This doesn't even kill him'', and he isn't done in until Butcher steps up with a crowbar.]]
** More like Wham ''Episodes'', between Issues 66-69. [[spoiler:Butcher kills Vas in a warehouse in Moscow, Hughie and Annie separate, and the Boys are disavowed by the CIA, before they discover Butcher's long-gestating plan to kill ''every person on the planet'' exposed to compound V, leading him to kill Mallory, The Legend, Dr. Vogelbaum, Mother's Milk, Frenchie and the Female, the latter two by ''blowing up the Flatiron Building''.]] In three issues, Ennis utterly shatters everything established in the series up to that point, turning everything on its head in the most horrific fashion possible.

** [[spoiler:Stillwell]], the Vought-American executive, delivers a major one to the Homelander in #64, pointing out that for all his [[AGodAmI raging God-complex]] and evil tendencies, he's done absolutely nothing worthwhile or original whatsoever and is ultimately just an insecure little speck desperately trying to find some way of impressing him. The Homelander... [[VillainousBreakdown doesn't react well]]]

Gritty, violent, and [[BlackHumor darkly humorous]], the series frequently veers into AuthorTract territory regarding its gleeful depiction of the majority of costumed supers as sociopaths, narcissists, perverts and child molesters, while attacking a lot of tropes that have long been a significant part of superhero comics, making for a DeconstructorFleet not unlike Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' in scale and focus. However, instead of attacking the the superhero genre itself, it goes after the sleazy corporate mentality that allowed it to flourish at the expense of other comic genres.

** Billy’s final victory over [[spoiler:Black Noir]] is clearly meant to show the ultimate superiority of MugglePower over superpowers, as [[spoiler:Noir]] is brought down by a hail of bullets from US Marines, with Billy landing the killing blow. However, again, the only reason that the Marines are even capable of hurting him is that [[spoiler:Homelander]], a superhero, had critically injured and half-killed him first, and Billy wouldn’t have been able to harm him at all if he didn’t have SuperStrength.

''The Boys'' is a series by Creator/GarthEnnis, with art by Darick Robertson and others. It concerns a CIA sponsored team of EmpoweredBadassNormals which monitors, polices and (often) terminates corrupt superhumans. Gritty, violent, and [[BlackHumor darkly humorous]], the series frequently veers into AuthorTract territory regarding its gleeful depiction of the majority of costumed supers as sociopaths, narcissists, perverts and child molesters, while attacking a lot of tropes that have long been a significant part of superhero comics. Much like ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' by Creator/AlanMoore, this series is a DeconstructorFleet. However, instead of attacking the the superhero genre itself, it goes after the sleazy corporate mentality that allowed it to flourish at the expense of other comic genres.

As with ''Preacher'', a few different limited series have been published. ''Herogasm'' is, for whatever reason, a six-issue limited series that's essentially an extra arc in the main plot, as Butcher's squad investigates the superheroes' annual island getaway. ''Highland Laddie'' follows Hughie during his absence from the main book, as he returns to his foster parents' home in Scotland. ''Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker'' is a six-issue miniseries featuring Butcher, reminiscing about his life after returning to England for his father's funeral.

In 2016, four years after the series' conclusion, it was announced that the comic would be adapted into a TV show on Creator/{{Cinemax}}. Eventually, it was announced that the TV adaptation would instead be aired on Amazon's Creator/PrimeVideo in 2019, under Creator/SethRogen and Evan Goldberg, the same production duo as the ''[[Series/Preacher2016 Preacher]]'' TV series. The first [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG1EByNnHUU teaser trailer]] was shown at New York Comic-Con.\\

See ''Series/TheBoys2019'' for tropes related to the adaptation.

A sequel series set 12 years after original comic titled ''The Boys: Dear Becky'' began June 3, 2020.

** Billy's dog Terror is trained to violently sodomize small dogs and cats. Billy and Hughie see it as the funniest thing ever. Later, we get a double-dose of it when [[spoiler:Monkey first gets his own dildo shoved up his arse after trying to use it on a far-from-helpless paralympian, and then gets buggered, mercifully off-screen, by Terror]].
** The reason for Monkey's nickname is immortalized in a bronze bust that shows him [[spoiler:getting his ''ears'' screwed by monkeys.]]

* KarmicButtMonkey: Rayner's assistant Monkey is constantly humiliated by Butcher (and got the nickname from an incident where a pair of monkeys had sex with his ears), and is shown to have a fetish for paraplegic athletes, to the point of going to an event with a popcorn box with a hole in the bottom. When he replaces Rayner as head of the CIA, he goes into full TyrantTakesTheHelm mode... which only lasts long enough for him to corner and try to rape a Paralympics competitor. Butcher steps in to save Monkey from a CurbStompBattle (a paraplegic athlete is still an athlete), explains that Monkey isn't right in the head ([[TakeThat and a Republican]]), and has Monkey raped by his dog.
* KickTheDog: After an failed attempt to engineer a confrontation between the Seven and the Boys, [[spoiler:one of the Seven kills Terror. As the Boys were investigating Jack From Jupiter at the time, Butcher has one of his periodic psychotic episodes and guts him with a carving knife. However, a MeaningfulLook in the previous issue implies that Homelander was responsible.]]

* DirtyKid: The Billy Batson equivalent apparently uses his magic word to "grow five times bigger and stick his dick and fingers in people who don't want him to". At age ten.

* KarmicButtMonkey: Rayner's assistant Monkey is constantly humiliated by Butcher (and got the nickname from an incident where a pair of monkeys had sex with his ears) and is shown to have a fetish for paraplegic athletes to the point of going to an event with a popcorn box [[ADateWithRosiePalms with a hole in the bottom]]. When he replaces Rayner as head of the CIA, he goes into full TyrantTakesTheHelm mode... which only lasts long enough for him to corner and try to rape a Paralympics competitor. Butcher steps in to save Monkey from a CurbStompBattle (a paraplegic athlete is still an athlete), explains that Monkey isn't right in the head ([[TakeThat and a Republican]]), and has Monkey raped by his dog.

** [[spoiler:Except that one time she laughed at the notion that Hughie stealing Queen Maeve's file from Doc Peculiar's place in the hopes of [[ADateWithRosiePalms scoring some wank material]], may have helped them solve a major roadblock in their mission against the supes. Everyone else was as disturbed as you'd think by this.]]

** Also, it is mentioned that when Vought-American was looking for a vice presidential [[strike: candidate]] hand puppet, they went to the [[AcceptablePoliticalTargets Bush]] family, but the last son had managed to [[TooDumbToLive cut off his own head]] playing with a [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]].

* ArtisticLicensePolitics: [[spoiler:During the 9/11 attacks, Vic the Veep knocks President Shaefer unconscious with a fire extinguisher and orders the staff in the Situation Room to "tell NORAD to order weapons hold". Alan Blake, Vic's Chief of Staff, then demands that the others obey Vic's orders as "the V.P. has authority here". Under the 25th Amendment however, the Vice President can only be declared Acting President via two methods: voluntary transfer of authority by the President themselves, or by having the Vice President ''and'' a majority of the Cabinet members transmit a written declaration of the sitting president's inability to act directly to both houses of Congress. Vic the Veep would legally have absolutely no authority in this situation whatsoever.]]

* HotterAndSexier: In-universe, this is coupled with a DarkerAndEdgier retool of Vought's existing superheroes, mainly trying to convince Starlight to go along with RapeAsBackstory, wear a [[{{Stripperiffic}} slingshot bikini for a costume]], and [[BuxomIsBetter get breast implants]] (never mind that she already has the MostCommonSuperpower).

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: [[spoiler: Hughie throws Susan Raynor's attempt at political power and trying to make him feel guilty about his time with The Boys back at her face. He takes things further and calls Susan a loveless, spiteful woman, unlike Butcher, who, despite all his flaws, was able to find someone who loved him. Susan is so mad at Hughie that all she can do is throw a whiskey glass at him as he leaves her office.]]

* TheReveal: [[spoiler: The one who sent Hughie the diary was former Director Susan Raynor, all in an attempt to get him to feel guilty about what The Boys ultimately were and get him to expose everything to the world, to which she'd take advantage of and try for one last grasp at political power.]]

* TimeSkip: Dear Becky's setting takes place years after the end of the main series, starting roughly around the 2020s, as COVID-19 is still a problem.

** Overlaps with ArtisticLicenseMilitary[[spoiler: as, in addition to the reasons stated above, the Vice President is not in the military chain of command. The other officials and military staff in the Situation Room would be under no obligation to follow Vic's "authority" and would instead continue to follow Shaeffer's last order issued before he was rendered unconscious.]]

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: ''So'' many. Butcher [[spoiler:slowly gutting Jack from Jupiter with a cleaver]], President Schaefer [[spoiler:getting his face eaten by a rabid wolverine]], ''any'' of Frenchie and the Female's many kills, and of course, the incredibly horrific things that [[spoiler:Black Noir does to an ordinary family while pretending to be the Homelander]]...

** The events of [[spoiler:September the 11th, 2001 show exactly what would happen if a Justice League-esque super team tried to stop a mid-air plane hijacking (see DidntThinkThisThrough above.)]]

** But the Pièce de Résistance was the Seven's attempt to save Flight 175 on September Eleventh. Quite simply, they DidntThinkThisThrough beyond the general idea of Vought-American trying to boost supers for national defense. [[spoiler:Especially as they had their moronic man in the White House, Vic the Veep, ''knock out the president with a fire extinguisher'' in order to let the Seven make the attempt.]]

* The Female (of the Species): Despite being the only female, more of TheBigGuy than TheChick. She is however AxCrazy.

*** Vought-American is, overall, a representation of a small but recurring theme in Ennis's work: the greed and carelessness of war profiteers (and corporations in general). While Vought's activities throughout history (as discussed in issues #19-22) are pretty ridiculous when you see them on the page, they're actually AluminumChristmasTrees; a decent example of the same thing in real life is the shortage of body armor for American troops at the start of the Iraq War. Essentially, his theme is that such corporations are really only interested in bottom-line profit, not any moral concerns, and if there's a way for them to increase their profit without having to worry about such concerns as safety, morality or even whether the product works (such as, say, if they've bought and paid for all the lawmakers who might intervene and restrain them), then they won't hesitate to follow it.

** From the brief looks we get of it, Vought-American's M-20 assault rifle actually resembles a [[CoolGuns/AssaultRifles Enfield [=SA80=]]], specifically the [=L85A1=] variant that first saw action in the Gulf War, which had a wide range of serious problems and proved to be ultimately very poorly designed. Ennis simply implies that the M-20 couldn't even get through five rounds before jamming and was best used for impaling the heads of dead [=GIs=].

* PoisonousFriend: Billy Butcher to Hughie as of issue #46, in one of the scummiest ways possible.