Line #11 YMMV/TheBoys


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: [[spoiler: Why did Black Noir let Billy Butcher kill him? He still had more than enough power to kill Butcher in his last moments, yet he just stood there and let Billy finish him off. Was Black Noir not thinking straight because of his grievous injuries? Or did he want Butcher to kill him because he had already accomplished his life goal of killing Homelander and [[AndThenWhat had nothing else left to live for afterwards]]?]]
2	* AntiClimaxBoss:
3	** After he is revealed as [[spoiler: a clone of Homelander even stronger than the original and the one who committed all those horrible actions to frame him, including raping Butcher's wife, starting his whole crusade against super-heroes, Black Noir]] fights [[spoiler:Homelander]] completely off-screen [[spoiler:and is left mortally wounded and unable to react to anything that happens around him. Despite still having the power to theoretically cause mass destruction in his last moments, he merely stands still as Butcher comes to steal the kill from Homelander. This could arguably be justified by the fact that Black Noir [[TheBadGuyWins had already gotten what he wanted]] and fulfilled his purpose in life: to finally kill the Homelander as per the purpose of his creation. Therefore, it’s possible that, having accomplished everything he had set out to do in his life, Black Noir let Butcher kill him on purpose [[AndThenWhat because he had nothing left to live for]] and was satisfied with his life ending right then and there (see AlternativeCharacterInterpretation).]]
4	** [[spoiler:Homelander himself. Despite having a huge build-up, he is revealed to not be the true villain of the story, is framed by Black Noir and murdered off-screen by him. At least he deals enough damage for Butcher to finish Noir off.]]
5	* {{Anvilicious}}: The series is very upfront about its anti-superhero and anti-corporate messages, but even with the lack of upfront subtlety, it still feels overly preachy to many readers.
6	* AssPull: [[spoiler: TheReveal that Black Noir is an even more powerful clone of Homelander created just in case he ever went rogue is debated about how good and effective a PlotTwist it is among readers, but it's generally agreed it needed ''some'' {{Foreshadowing}} to really work, since Black Noir drops his backstory and motivation near the end of the comic in a few pages, and is quickly killed afterwards. Notably, the TV show [[AdaptationDeviation changes things so that this plot thread is no longer possible]].]]
7	* BaseBreakingCharacter:
8	** Readers are divided over whether Billy Butcher is a good deconstruction of the VigilanteMan or is unbearable due to Ennis being [[AuthorAppeal so enamored with the archetype]] that Butcher comes off as no less of an EscapistCharacter than the superheroes he despises.
9	** Black Noir, especially when compared to his version in the show. In the comics, Noir basically just shows up occasionally to do something extra shocking and horrible, like [[spoiler:sexually assaulting Hughie]], but what truly makes him controversial is [[spoiler:the reveal that he's not only a clone of Homelander, but also the one responsible for pretty much every horrible thing Homelander did, a twist that comes out of nowhere and absolves Homelander of most of his bad deeds, right before getting brutally killed by Noir, who himself is killed just a few panels later.]]
10	* CompleteMonster: Even in the twisted world of ''The Boys'', these two distinguish themselves as the vilest:
11	** [[spoiler:[[TheDreaded Black Noir]], clone of the Homelander, was made to destroy the original, but chafes under never getting the order. Deciding to [[{{Gaslighting}} drive]] the Homelander [[DrivenToMadness insane]], Black Noir goes on murderous rampages, killing sprees and rapes where he impersonates the Homelander, even [[WouldHurtAChild killing]] and [[EatsBabies eating babies]] to take photos and send them to the Homelander to drive him insane and make him become a monster so Black Noir can receive the kill order. Billy Butcher's wife Becky was also raped by Black Noir, leading to her death. Black Noir later helps manipulate Homelander into starting a superpowered rebellion to get countless innocents killed, having embraced his own sadism and madness long ago.]]
12	** [[WouldHurtAChild John Godolkin]] is a [[CorruptedCharacterCopy twisted]] [[AlternateCompanyEquivalent expy]] of [[Characters/MarvelComicsProfessorX Charles Xavier]]. The leader of the G-Men, Godolkin kidnaps children from their parents and turns them into superpowered ChildSoldiers that he raises to be loyal to him. Any children who prove troublesome are summarily murdered and stricken from the rosters. Worse, Godolkin is a pedophile who rapes the children after he has abducted them, slowly brainwashing them into helping him rape the younger children later, building an army of fanatical soldiers ready to die for him.
13	* ContestedSequel: Consensus on the ''Dear Becky'' epilogue miniseries is divided between those who find it an interesting retrospective of the titular team and SliceOfLife about how characters are faring after the events of the story, or a completely unnecessary continuation and that the original comic's conclusion already provided a satisfactory ending.
14	* DesignatedHero: Most of the titular group. Sure, they're certainly heroic [[ALighterShadeOfBlack when compared to who they're fighting against]], but that's really not saying much. They've got a lot of blood on their own hands and during the series, a lot of what they do can be considered morally dubious at best, and downright horrifying at worst. It doesn't help that their motivations for opposing and hunting down the supers [[NominalHero aren't quite altruistic]] and their methods for dealing with their enemies are... pretty creatively brutal, to put it mildly. This is not to mention the fact that despite their (particularly Butcher and Hughie's) ideological opposition to superhumanity as a whole, they themselves are superhumans. You could easily argue that their stated purpose would be just as well fulfilled purely through their surveillance operations: gathering sordid information on their activities for use as blackmail does a far better job of 'keeping the supes in line' than going around maiming them, but the latter seems to be most of what The Boys get up to.
15	* DesignatedVillain: Soldier Boy. His worst crime was being a coward and a PhonyVeteran. Despite that, he never does anything incredibly heinous, especially compared to his peers, but the story treats his torture at the hands of Butcher as well deserved.
16	* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: A common criticism of Billy Butcher is that [[spoiler:even though he turns out to be evil]], he's still an obvious [[EscapistCharacter power fantasy]]. He kills numerous villains who were designed to be hated by the audience [[spoiler:and after being revealed as a villain he kills most of the main characters and only loses because he allows it in a moment of redemption.]]
17	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Superduper, thanks to them being genuinely likable and sympathetic characters who have the misfortune of being stuck in a comic loaded with horrible people and horrible characters. What helps is that, for as ridiculous and almost pathetic as they are, they (for the most part) are aware of their limitations and handicaps yet continue to act like decent people towards one another and other people.
18	* EvilIsCool:
19	** [[{{Mundanger}} James Stillwell]]. He has proven to be a master of manipulation and is so terrifying even Homelander is afraid of him.
20	** Butcher. He's unrepentantly vicious in his methods [[spoiler:and turns out to be a genocidal maniac, and the final antagonist]], but damn if he isn't badass.
21	* GeniusBonus:
22	** In the last issue, a background character is reading a book by the disgraced superhero Shout-Out, which was co-written by Jayson Blair. The real Blair resigned from the ''New York Times'' in 2003 after his stories turned out to be largely fabricated and/or plagiarized. His name on Shout-Out's book is thus a subtle indicator to the reader that the book is at least 99% bullshit.
23	** Jack From Jupiter's magic word is "Carpo", which actually is the name given to one of Jupiter's moons. To emphasize how irrelevant Jack really is, the moon Carpo is one of Jupiter's smallest and least known moons.
24	* HarsherInHindsight: The G-Men, a thinly veiled Expy of the ComicBook/XMen, have their Professor X Expy, John Godolkin, [[spoiler:being a pedophile and the rest of the X-Men being his victims and/or brainwashed cultists]]. All of this is Harsher in Hindsight considering the most prominent director for the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'', Creator/BryanSinger, was accused of grooming underage actors and sexual misconduct, including by some who worked on the X-Men films.
25	* HilariousInHindsight:
26	** Being ThePollyanna, a former member of a youth team, and having light-burst powers and the word "star" in her name, Starlight could be considered an AlternateCompanyEquivalent of [[ComicBook/TeenTitans Starfire]]. At some point, the Vought-American PR folks decide to make her ''way'' more sexualized than she was before, because (according to them) that's what sells the merchandise. A few years later [[Creator/DCComics DC]] [[http://comicsalliance.com/starfire-catwoman-sex-superheroine/ did exactly the same]] to Starfire in ''ComicBook/RedHoodAndTheOutlaws''.
27	** Creator/SimonPegg being the basis for Wee Hughie becomes this when he was cast as the father of the character's live-action counterpart in the [[Series/TheBoys2019 Amazon Prime adaptation]], as well as actually voicing Hughie himself in WesternAnimation/TheBoysDiabolical, making this a CastingGag not once but twice.
28	* JerkassWoobie:
29	** Queen Maeve can be a genuinely unpleasant person who doesn't seem to care about anything that doesn't involve alcohol, but it turns out she was more or less traumatized by what happened on 9/11 and before then is implied to have genuinely wanted to be heroic. She became a BrokenBird in order to cope with her guilt, and has also been raped thanks to Homelander tricking her into having sex with Black Noir.
30	** A lot of the capes and supers, including The Seven. Sure, they’re mostly assholes and murderers (or sometimes even worse), but a few of them have so many issues and lives that are so screwed up that sometimes you can’t help but feel a little sorry for them and you understand why they became the assholes they are today. [[spoiler: A good example of that would be Homelander, especially after you find out how and why he became what he is today, thanks to what Black Noir did to him. Even ''Butcher'' is utterly appalled at Black Noir's revelation, and seems to feel a tiny bit of sympathy for his sworn nemesis]].
31	* MagnificentBastard: [[VillainProtagonist William "Billy" Butcher]] leads the titular squad, [[StartOfDarkness driven to hatred against superheroes after one raped his wife]], later causing her death. Ruthlessly efficient in his operations, Butcher will take any means necessary to achieve his objectives and constantly shows his brilliance in taking down the legions of superheroes of the Vought-American, using a detonator to kill 150 before they can launch an attack and holds the Vought's most powerful group, the Seven, at a standstill with photos for {{blackmail}}. Personally defeating most of the high-ranked group Payback with pure tactical acumen, Butcher also devises a plan to respond to the Homelander's uprising by recommending specialized warheads to the American military, killing scores of superheroes with targeting devices. After [[spoiler:avenging his wife, Butcher puts forth a plan to eradicate all superheroes via bioweapon, coming to [[NearVillainVictory near victory]] before foregoing his chance to instead save his protégé, dying happy to instead save someone he loves]].
32	* MemeticLoser: Homelander and by extension his [[Series/TheBoys2019 TV show]] counterpart can be considered this, though not in the stories themselves. Rather, despite being the most powerful character in-universe, Homelander is deliberately written as being much weaker and ''definitely'' [[UnskilledButStrong much less skilled]] than Superman. As a result, whenever Homelander is depicted in crossover verses fan art or stories with Superman or a SupermanSubstitute (good or evil), Homelander will typically be shown on the losing end of a CurbStompBattle and whenever someone posts on forms asking who would win between Homelander and one of any other Superman expies, expect them to be swarmed with comments about how Homelander has no chance. Case in point, when the verses web show ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' announced they would be pitting Homelander against Omni-Man of ''ComicBook/{{Invincible}}'' fame, almost everyone [[spoiler:correctly]] predicted it would be a complete stomp in Omni-Man's favor[[labelnote:spoiler for the battle]]Omni-Man turned out to be 60 billion times stronger than Homelander[[/labelnote]]. In fact, [[FandomHeresy it's one of the only Death Battles where everyone can agree on the result and contesting it is one of the worst ideas you can do]].
33	* MoralEventHorizon:
34	** [[spoiler:Homelander]] casually kills the Muller family, who had won a car and a dinner with him, by dropping them from the sky, while belittling their beliefs, and telling them that the contest they won was a farce. [[spoiler:This is the first important horrifying crime he actually did himself.]] He's later shown eating babies and hearts, though that turned out to actually be [[spoiler:Black Noir]].
35	** [[spoiler:Black Noir]] crosses it by [[spoiler:by being the real rapist of Butcher's wife and eating babies, all to frame Homelander.]]
36	* {{Narm}}: The superhero parodies can be pretty hard to take seriously since most of them just are some DC or Marvel hero, except they are some kind of deviant/has embarrassing powers/is dumb. Probably the worst is Groundhawk, who's literally just Wolverine with hammers for hands and a one-word vocabulary because Garth Ennis hates Wolverine.
37	* NarmCharm:
38	** Superduper. While they're majorly incompetent as heroes due to the wonkiness of their abilities and the fact a few of them may be mentally handicapped, their earnest desire to be good people and varying degrees of self-awareness over their lot in life makes their silliness a bit pitiable and endearing.
39	** The entire comic runs on this. It's a relentlessly edgy parody of superheroes, written by a guy that despises superheroes, absolutely chock full of gratuitous gore, sex, swearing, and focused on a secret team of brutal killers dressed in black leather trench coats.
40	** Tek Knight's death. He saves the Earth from an asteroid by ''literally'' having sex with a it until it explodes, dying in the process. Utterly ridiculous, but also one of the few examples of genuine superheroics to be found, not to mention this was done by one of the only non-powered Supes. [[spoiler:It's also all a DyingDream, as he was actually killed by a load of bricks... though he ''still'' died heroically, as the bricks only hit him because he'd pushed a woman and her baby out of the way.]]
41	* NightmareFuel:
42	** The very idea of corrupt, foolish superheroes being used for corporate goals with no regard for innocents.
43	** Issue 63: Homelander's [[SlasherSmile face]] after he [[spoiler:kills Queen Maeve and has Annie in his sights as a possible next target]]
44	** Homelander [[spoiler:really Black Noir]] ''eating a baby'', in graphic, blood-soaked detail.
45	** The [[SlasherSmile manic grin]] given by [[spoiler:Black Noir during TheReveal of his true nature as a clone of the Homelander created to kill him is pretty damn unsettling]].
46	** [[spoiler:The birth of the baby resulting from Black Noir raping Becky. Unlike Ryan in the show, Black Noir's baby just violently rips itself out of Becky while she's sleeping. It's not a regular baby either, it's a levitating, red-eyed abomination who ''immediately'' tries to kill Butcher, before Billy beats it to death with a lamp stand.]]
47	** [[spoiler:Black Noir sexually assaulting Hughie during Herogasm. Especially because of how especially pointless it is, the fact that it happens in a dark sewer, and because the normally mute Noir whispers "good soldier" during the act, before just leaving Hughie there.]]
48	** [[spoiler:What happens after Homelander and Black Noir fight. The former is ripped apart and the latter is [[PyrrhicVictory graphically, severely damaged]].]]
49	* ShallowParody: While some of the satire of corporate sponsorship and their control and manipulation of superhero identities for ugly and nefarious processes is valid, a lot of it does fall flat in the takedown on specific targets.
50	** Soldier Boy is a CaptainPatriotic a la Steve Rogers, presented by Garth Ennis as a mockery and insult to TheRealHeroes of World War II. The problem is that Captain America was a PropagandaHero created by Joe Simon and Creator/JackKirby ''before'' America entered World War II and was a bold anti-fascist gesture in context, especially since Simon and Kirby received threats from Nazi sympathizers, who hated the Captain America comics. Likewise, Kirby, who drew Captain America and later revived him as a soldier out of time in ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'', served as a soldier in the US Infantry during the war; more specifically, he served as a draftsman for reconnaissance maps. Joe Simon, meanwhile, enlisted in the US Coast Guard during the Second World War, making ''both of them'' former military personnel. The comics that Ennis mocks were popular with American servicemen of the time as well. To many readers, the entire thing comes across as hypocritical, given some of Ennis's own comics (particularly ''Adventures of the Rifle Brigade'') feel ''far'' more insulting to servicemen.
51	** The G-Men, a thinly veiled expy of the ComicBook/XMen, is more or less [[spoiler:Professor X[=/=]Godolkin being a pedophile and the rest of the X-Men being his victims and/or brainwashed cultists]] without any engagement with legitimate avenues to criticize the X-Men, namely the debate on the "Mutant Metaphor" and [[AngryWhiteMan how the X-Men]] actually work as a representation of minority rights advocacy. Likewise, the parody also involves JiveTurkey riffs on West Coast-East Coast hip-hop rivalries, making the whole thing come off as tin-eared, racist, and not something that either X-Men fans or critics can really recognize.
52	** There's a great deal of linking between Conservative Christians and superheroes, coming up in the ''Believe'' arc and also playing a big role in [[Series/TheBoys2019 the TV adaptation]], where they portray superheroes as advocating Evangelicalism (while also portraying them as hypocrites using religion to manipulate people) and act as if superheroes as a whole encourage hardline Christian values, which is... weak. While Superman ''has'' some Christ parallels that are played up in some works, most superheroes' religious beliefs ''rarely'' come up, to the point superheroes who ''are'' religious end up being notable ''because'' of it, and their religions tend to vary from the strict White-Protestant faith portrayed as the norm in ''The Boys'' [[note]](for instance, ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} is the most prominent Christian hero, but he's a Catholic, and religious cultural beliefs more come up with characters like Magneto, ComicBook/KittyPryde and [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Ben Grimm]] (who are Jewish), or [[ComicBook/GreenLantern Simon Baz]] and [[ComicBook/MsMarvel Kamala Khan]] (who are Muslim); Evangelicalism like the kind portrayed in ''The Boys'' is mostly limited to The Purifiers, a ''supervillain'' entity)[[/note]]. This sort of uncritical evangelical Christian superhero is limited to Christian media like ''Series/{{Bibleman}}''. In other words, Ennis appears to have mistaken TheMoralSubstitute for actual superhero media.
53	* {{Squick}}: Assloads of it. For starters, we have a lot of gruesome violence and one of the characters is a grown man who needs his mother's breast milk to survive.
54	** Said grown man is also the father of a daughter who despite being a child has the body of a grown woman, and whose drug addicted mother eventually tries making [[spoiler: an ''incest porn movie'' with her]].
55	** The entirety of the ''Herogasm'' miniseries is this in it's purest, as the titular setting is literally a massive drug-fueled superhero orgy, with ''very little'' of the deviant sex acts being left to the imagination.
56	** ''Soldier Boy''. He literally pisses himself when scared, in full detail, and eventually [[spoiler: gets his entire nose bitten off by Butcher before being tortured to death]].
57	* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks: Some negative responses to the series argue that older comics such as ''ComicBook/MarshalLaw'' or ''[[ComicBook/{{Bratpack}} The Brat Pack]]'' did it all before (and, arguably, did it better). [[https://twitter.com/PatMillsComics/status/1299450839220867073 Pat Mills]] himself ''implied'' (without actually saying it) that he felt directly plagiarized and contemplated legal action.
58	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
59	** Starlight and Superduper never got the spotlight that might have acted as a counterpoint to the story's narrative of superheroes all being incompetent and destructive bastards who are more trouble than they are worth, [[spoiler:especially Billy's [[WellIntentionedExtremist belief on eliminating Compound V that would prevent people like BlackNoir and the Homelander]]]].
60	** The TwistEnding [[spoiler:that is to say, [[CorruptedContingency Black Noir being revealed as having deliberately engineered Homelander's]] SanitySlippage to have an actual reason to kill him and thus for his own existence]] could have been a very interesting plot to explore, focusing on their reason for doing so, [[spoiler:as well as Homelander's deteriorating sanity]]. It could have even been the main focus of the comic. As it is, it comes across as a TwistEnding for the sake of having one, not made any better by the fact that [[spoiler:Noir murders Homelander immediately after the reveal, only to be killed by Butcher right after, ultimately shifting the role of main antagonist onto Butcher himself before anything was done with Noir's character after the reveal]].
61	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: When the BlackAndGrayMorality taken to the point that the closest thing to 'good guys' amounts to "every faction is a bunch of amoral killers, but when ''that'' bunch of amoral killers are tearing people into chunky salsa, it's to people worse than themselves often enough that they ''sometimes'' seem like the lesser evil," and every issue trying to out-horrify the last, is it any wonder why audiences can't care about the story. Admittedly, this is why many preferred the [[Series/TheBoys2019 TV show adaptation]] as while it still has the gratuitous violence and sex of the comic, it at least had meaningful social satire, likable characters, and nuances.
62	* TheWoobie: All of Superduper. Every other superhero group comprises assholes, rapists, and murderers, but Superduper is more or less a halfway home for disabled kids. The kicker is that all of them want to be superheroes and use their powers, limited though they are, to try and help people. [[spoiler: And then they get stuck with Malchemical for a leader, who almost rapes Auntie Sis, Stool-Shadow, and Ladyfold before Butcher kills him. And then Butcher almost kills them when Klanker, who has Tourette's, screams "Fuckingcunt" at the worst possible moment. It takes Hughie begging Butcher not to for him to back off before he hurts one of them. The worst part is, most of them don't understand what's going on except for Auntie Sis. And most everybody either thinks they're a joke (like Malchemical) or will inevitably become just as fucked up as the Seven (like Butcher, who doesn't even really care that Malchemical was going to rape and torture them).]]
63	* WhatTheHellCostumingDepartment: Done intentionally. Most Supe costumes are as ridiculous and garish as humanly possible and are almost all meant to further ridicule the Marvel or DC character the Supe is based on. For example, Soldier Boy's embarrassing Captain America parody outfit, complete with extra short short-shorts, Jack from Jupiter parodying the Martian Manhunter by going around naked, except for boots, briefs, a cape and a red dot on his chest, or The Deep, who for some reason has an unwieldy cape and a huge old-fashioned diving helmet like those found in fish tanks obscuring his face.

Context YMMV / TheBoys