The Boys (2019 Amazon series)

A second season has been picked up.

Edited by Soble on Aug 2nd 2019 at 10:17:56 AM

Oh boy, time for Garth Ennis's latest hateboner against superheroes to be on the screen.

I have watched one clip though, of the plane scene, which genuinely upset me because of the acting (in the form that it was quite visceral in an emotional way and not the Black Comedy level of fail that it was in the comics).

5 episodes in and the series is great and intense, much better than what Ennis did in the comic series.

What was better?

The writing and that the show has an idea as to where it's going unlike the comic which had a lot of cringe writing and that Ennis didn't really have a plan and just made it up as went.

Yes, as a fan of the comics, I can say the show is better in almost every way possible.

Tighter plot, a lot of backstory stuff moved to the present day where it has more impact, less awful treatment of women (and less awful stuff for its own sake in general).

Who'd have thought Rogen and Goldberg would be the guys to make not one but two great Ennis adaptations?

I just remember in the trailer there was a woman accidentally killing a guy during sex, and if that's indicative of the rest of the series I have no interest in it.

Ok, cool.

You don't have to tell people what you do not want to watch, particularly when they haven't asked you.

I was more looking for someone to tell me I'm wrong and it's awesome for x and y reasons.

There's two posts preceding your original comment that highlight exactly what you're looking for.

@ The Librarian: Where does his hate boner against superheroes and George Bush come from anyway?

I have no fucking idea, apparently it's because he thinks superheroes don't care about the common people or something?

The simplest answer is that he simply didn't grow up on superheroes. As a kid he read war and anthology comics and broke into the medium with those kinds of things, hitting it big with Judge Dredd in Britain and Hellblazer in the US. It's just not a genre that interests him that much except for the fact that it's as pervasive as it is.

That said, I found The Boys one of his weaker books. I like a lot of the changes that the tv series has made.

The tv show is a vast improvement.

The Boys was originally under a DC imprint, and then canceled before revived by Dynamite so it was more creator controlled.

This was...not a great thing. Editorial influence gets an intensely bad rap, but sometimes its needed.

Yeah, I don't think we needed a superhero dropping the N-word as a swear at any point.

Yeah I wonder how racist Stormfront will be, since he"s been confirmed (and genderswapped) for season 2.

Given the superheroes as celebrity thing they're doing, making her racist 'off camera' so to speak would be a very topical move.

Ennis hates superheroes because he feels like they prevent him from making stories in other genres. (Seriously, the guy made a romantic comedy comic).

I feel like once again, the TV writers distilled a good idea and cut out the excess fat to make something far more compelling.

Edited by Beatman1 on Aug 3rd 2019 at 11:07:01 AM

Comic book writers can be very self-indulgent. Ennis is not unlike many of his peers in that regard.

I felt that the biggest problem with The Boys (the comic) was that it cannibalized much of its material from Hitman and Kev, but without the warmth and humanity of those titles.

I'm four episodes into the tv series and it does a lot of things I like. It makes the various super more fleshed-out beyond being one-note assholes. It also solves the problem I had in the book of "why is Hughie with this group?"

But the additional material actually fits the tone of the book very well. Stuff like the dolphin rescue and Popclaw's, uh... thing with the landlord. That feels like something that would've been in the book, despite being original.

But I especially love the changes to Homelander. He's more interesting and entertaining here than he was in the book.

It'll be interesting to see the Stormfront thing in the show. I just read "The Self-Preservation Society" arc the other day and it was, well, not the best arc.

Edited by Pannic on Aug 3rd 2019 at 9:04:57 AM

Half-Ennis is about 2000% better than Full-Ennis.

One of my only complaints about this season was A-Train's story, and just for meta-reasons.

A-Train's brand of celebrity being 'aging athlete worried about hungry, younger competitors', is a fine story line.

But it feels shaky because the actor, Jessie Usher, is 27 and could probably pass for five years younger. But the character is supposed to be 34. Not a huge difference, but in the world of athletics, 34 is considered "old" in a way that early to mid twenties is not.

Its by no means a huge deal, but it did sort of niggle away at the back of my brain during some of his scenes.

Speaking of Stormfront I’m pretty sure Love Sausage is not going to appear, so whatever they do with her will probably be very different.

Well she wont be an actual member of the Hitler Youth, that's for sure.

The show has moved away from the Nazi super science stuff, which is good cause it's simply not practical anymore. Vogelbaum would have to be pushing 90s to be comics accurate.

I wonder if this will also have a different ending, considering that at the end of the comics Vogel-American is basically just doing the Super Klan.

I mean that doesnt seem out of character for Vought at this point and it would be naive to say that wouldnt be bankable for them.

But I think we're gonna get a very different ending in any event.

Especially given that Stillwell dies in the show. Which sadly means we won't get the scene where Stillwell is extremely unimpressed by Homelander's threats.

Also it occurs to me that I am slightly tipsy right now, as I was tipsy when I wrote my review of the comic series on this very website. How funny.