The Boys (2019 Amazon series)

Speaking of Garth Ennis, one of the episodes in The Boys: Diabolical is written by him and features Simon Pegg as Hughie. This is really cool because Hughie in the original comic was modeled after Pegg himself and to make up for not being able to be the character in the show, Pegg appears there as Hughie's dad.

Full circle, am I right?

It's going to be very interesting to see how much of the "original" flavour Ennis puts into his segment/episode or whether he matches the TV series' attitude/approach

Just finished watching The Boys: Diabolical, and I thought it was rather decent for the most part. First impressions (in no particular order):

• I would immediately recommend John and Sun-Hee out of all of the shorts, which is a fairly serious character story by Andy Samberg of all writers.
• Laser Baby's Day Out is a fairly amusing throwback to Tiny Toon Adventures-style humor and looks. Appropriately, it was co-created by one of the animators on Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The cartoon violence does get gratuitous, but it circle back to being appropiately absurdist.
• Boyd in 3D is another stand-out short, just from the visuals that oozes its French animation origins (Folivari, the studio behind Ernest et Célestine). In typical fashion of the live action adaptation, it's nice social satire on modern day relationships and media pressure.
• An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents is exactly what you get, combined with being a Rick and Morty episode in all but name. Weirdly, perhaps due to the pacing, but the meta-humor felt super surface-level and dragged at points. Still, Ghost's arc makes her an approachable character.
• I can't tell if Garth Ennis' I'm Your Pusher is more or less gratuitous than the live-action show, most of the anthology, or his comic. There's the inclusion of comic-accurate elements like designs, characters and even ideal voice actors. Though Homelander isn't a man child like his comic self.

So I watched Diabolical.

Pretty good overall I'd say, about the only short I didn't like was Awkafina's BFF's cause sentient poop was just too much, even more so than the ones about the supes killing their parents.

Holy fuck I feel bad for Groundhawk. Amusingly Nubia and Nubian Prince are pretty much what you get if you dial up Storm and Black Panther's existing relationship problems by like a hundred. Sure they look hot together and they are passionate but they also argue and fight a lot so its not a good relationship at all.

Really feel bad for the kid there having to grow up around their collective toxicity and narcissism. I mean the dude named his balls Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, what a douche.

Redband teaser

I really enjoy the music for this one.

Oh shit.

Billy gets powers!

Homelander milking a cow. 'Nuff said.

Ahaha a visual was recently unveiled with the tag line "Time to even the odds"

Now we see what they mean.

What's that song. It's catchy as all get out. Ah, it was listed in the video details. It's Bones by Imagine Dragons.

As to the events of the teaser, I wonder how long until Billy starts acting like Homelander, and how long after that before the gang sets his head straight.

Edited by Eagal on Mar 13th 2022 at 6:35:11 AM

Karen Fukuhara: The Boys star 'harmed' in racially motivated assault

Thankfully she's fine but screw the racist asshole who attacked her.

Need to address the clickbait in that, as far as I can tell from the article and her Instagram post, there's nothing saying it was racially motivated.

Even her post that mentions Asian hate also mentions violence against elders and first mentions violence against women. The read I would've gotten from her post is that there's pieces of shit that are happy to hurt people who can't hurt them back, be they women, minorities, or the elderly.

... also, super love that the most visible comment on it is "So the person who attacked you was black ? Which explains why you are not describing the skin color of the male." Good job, Instagram. You piece of shit site.

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 22nd 2022 at 3:14:37 PM

Season 3 official trailer

I feel like giving the Boys powers here weakens a core part of the appeal of the show. On the other hand while season one managed it fine, season 2 struggled doing “normies vs. Supes” without making it contrived, so maybe this is for the best.

I do think the trailer hits on one of the main things I was wondering about the show: It seems that there should be a definitive end date to the Homelander plot. The end of Season 2 established that Homelander WILL just destroy the world if he’s no longer able to maintain his beloved public persona and between his Sanity Slippage and our heroes trying air Vaught’s dirty laundry it seems like that moment should come sooner than later.

Edited by CheapMarzipan on May 16th 2022 at 3:15:31 AM

From the looks of it they appear to be handling it better than the comics as well. In the comics it was a permanent power up that everyone did, but here it seems temporary and only Butcher wants to engage in it which MM points out is a betrayal of their ideals.

I do like how it's a temporary thing, so it's still puts the boys at a disadvantage. As for a betrayal of their ideals, when has that stopped Butcher?

Oh, they're definitely taking shots at Falcon and Winter Soldier.

Would there even have been enough time for that? Factoring in lead time for the show's production schedule, I mean.

Edited by CheapMarzipan on May 16th 2022 at 7:35:15 AM

Season 2 of the boys was released in October 2020, while FATWS came out March 2021. That's plenty of time for the former to film a Take That! at the latter.

Looking a litle further into it, The Boys season 3 was shot between late February to early September of 2021. TFATW came out between March and April, so the season definitely wasn't written as a full rebuttal of it, but there's a solid chance it was written based on TFATW's existence and marketing (with possibly some minor additions have been made in filming and post).

My train of thought here comes from the shot of Soldier Boy beating a guy to death with his shield. It's a similar shot to the one in TFATWS.

To be fair that could just as easily be a shot at the OG Cap (who Soldier Boy is a parody of) and the fact F&TWS had a similar shot is a coincidence.

Soldier Boy is a parody of Cap, Walker was a Deconstruction. There's likely to be an amount of overlap.

Edited by jakobitis on May 17th 2022 at 6:18:35 PM

Which is interesting because comics Soldier Boy wasn't a parody of Steve Rogers so much as the very concept of WW 2 supers and legacy characters as he was supposed to be the third Soldier Boy.

This Soldier Boy seems to be a legitimate older than they look type like Stormfront and a character who will probably be contrasted with Homelander on somewhat more equal footing.

Yes, that's a fair point. The TV Soldier Boy does seem a lot more directly based off MCU Cap than their respective comic versions were.

It prolly helps that Soldier Boy in the comics is more directly a pisstake take done out of Garth Ennies hatred of WWII superheroes cause he finds them insulting to the soldiers who fought in WWII........ ignoring that the guy who created Cap Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were WWII soldiers and that his comics were actually popular with soldiers during the war.

Meanwhile show Soldier Boy seems to be an actual serious threat.

Edited by slimcoder on May 19th 2022 at 12:41:13 PM