Series Season 1: A Different, but Amazing Adaptation
Something you should know first and foremost: The Boys is far and away not a 1:1 adaptation of Garth Ennis's 60-issue work. There are characters replaced or missing, races lifted, contexts changed for certain scenes, and so on. It's also a fair bit less insane and debauched than the comics, in both its characters and events.
That being said, holy shit is it incredible.
When I first heard about the casting, I was a bit wary - Karl Urban as Butcher? Someone other than Simon Pegg as Hughie? But, as it turns out, everyone in this show is cast perfectly; Quaid completely sells Hughie's naivety and optimism about his new line of work while adding a new twist of underlying anger issues to the mix, Urban truly feels like Billy brought to life (and looks a hell of a lot like Hugh Jackman in Logan), and major, MAJOR props to Antony Starr for quintessentially capturing the fucked-up Superman that is Homelander, toned down a bit as he is - the slow transition from "hero with a dark side" to "genuine unnerving threat" is fascinating to watch unfold, and his physical look perfectly matches his character in a way I didn't know was possible. Mother's Milk, Frenchie, and the Female may not look exactly like their original counterparts, but they completely sold me with their performances, and I don't have a problem with any of the nationality changes or character replacements either because they are all great.
And the content? Hooo-BOY, they may not be adapting all the crazy shit from the comics completely intact, but there's no doubt this is a Garth Ennis work. The first 5 minutes brought me right back into the twisted world of Vought and its Supers, and it never let up from then on. For every straight event adaptation like the girl-splattering or the plane-hijacking, they add something new and hilariously awful like a poor sod getting his dick snapped off by an ice Super or someone being killed by eating ass. In the hands of any other writers and actors, this could come off as silly in addition to being over-the-top, but all the comedy is very much counterbalanced by the genuine drama and pathos on display. Knowing everything from the comics as I do, I was still fully invested through all eight episodes.
The Boys comes at perhaps the perfect time for its subject matter - the MCU is on the rise and only looking to get bigger in the comings years, and really superhero movies and TV shows have become one of the biggest brands in media in the last several decades, so as much as I love "traditional" super shows, this deconstruction and parody of so many of them really is refreshing and perhaps necessary, as it allows people to take a step back and really think about what it is they're consuming - in-between laughing at a baby laser-visioning some armed guards in twain, that is. Highly recommend if you're at all invested in superheroes, or just want to watch something good not made by Disney.
Series Might Need to Grow Up
What if superheroes where assholes? As a premise for a tv show, The Boys feels a little behind the curve when we've already had Watchmen, Hancock, Kick Ass, Super and even Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog asking that same question. But The Boys shows us a specific kind of asshole superhero we haven't had too much of yet. With that, we've got something that is not quite fresh, not quite stale.
In The Boys, we are shown a satirical version of the Justice League, "The Seven", with superheroes living as celebrities in a heavily commercialised do-gooding industry. Their image is meticulously managed by corporate types and camera crews, their life carefully scripted to maintain the company brand. Joining The Seven is Annie, a superhero pageant winner who quickly discovers the secretive, ugly side of the business. That's one half of the story. The other half follows salesman and nobody, Hughie. Hughie joins up with some shady characters to get revenge for his dead girlfriend, who was obliterated by a careless passing superhero. Hughie is one of the few, ordinary people getting a peep behind the curtain, seeing first hand the kind of collateral damage superheroes shrug off.
So super heroes are assholes. As a I said, we've seen that. To spice it up, The Boys tries to be as contemporary in its satire as possible. We see a boss discuss the cross demographic appeal of her employee, "Nubian Prince", a Black Panther copy. There's a strong #metoo reference built into the plot early on, and a couple of episodes in I'm curious to see if it pays off. The danger with this kind of strategy of baking in these modern issues is that they risk getting cross-contaminated with Garth Ennis's own peculiar writing quirks, such as his fondness for writing bad guys as perverts and his focus on sexualised violence towards women.There's a danger of undermining the banal reality of #metoo by presenting its perpetrators as cartoonishly evil characters or Freudian headcases. His other Amazon Prime adaption, Preacher, had to write out or compensate for a lot of Ennis' creative decisions, and I expect there is a ton of that going on in The Boys too.
At this point I'm only a couple of episodes in to The Boys. I am interested enough in the characters and plot to wonder where it is going, but I'm wary about the haphazard comic satire and the show's ability to handle its mature themes. I remember the film Watchmen having a similar excess of lurid violence and grim darkness, and that ultimately undermined a lot of the cleverer points it had to make. The Boys is a mercifully lighter, but I'm not yet convinced it will be able to balance its tone or justify it going to such dark places.
Series So, SOOOOOOO much better than the source material
I've been pretty open about my dislike of Garth Ennis' material, as I've made clear in my review of his series Crossed. So when I heard that The Boys was getting an adaptation, I was ambivalent for the most part. While it wasn't the worst thing Ennis has churned out, it still took a titanic amount of effort for me to just read the first volume of the comic before I just gave up entirely for the sake of my sanity and stomach. The story was just plain grim, the characters unlikable (with the exceptions of Hughie and Annie), the art was painful to look at, and the usual Ennis trademark of juvenile shock humor and the way the story was written in such a way to justify his hate-boner for superheroes made it fall utterly flat as an attempted deconstruction of superheroes.
That being said, I'm glad I gave the show a chance thanks to the recommendations of my friends, because it is way better than the comics.
Karl Urban's Billy Butcher is less of the borderline Punisher-style Gary Stu of the comic and is actually treated realistically. The other Boys are also given much more room to breathe and better character arcs, especially Mother's Milk, whose comic storyline just felt so needlessly over-the-top (ex-wife doing incest porn with their daughter, excuse me while I barf), and The Female, who's given much more agency and character beyond "borderline mindless killing machine". I also love that the Supes themselves are given more depth beyond just being Hate Sink caricatures like they were in the comics. Homelander especially is a highlight, and Anthony Starr's performance is absolutely perfectly chilling. The team being Badass Normals rather than being empowered with Compound V was another welcome change, as it keeps the story and stakes much more interesting beyond the usual "super tough guys duking it out", as well as allowing for much more creativity in the team's schemes to bring the Seven down.
But the biggest improvement for me is the show's more nuanced and genuinely deconstructive take on superhero media. While the comic mostly just felt like an exercise on Ennis' part to piss all over superhero comics, the show feels more methodical and a better indictment of the corporatism and commodification of the present superhero scene, as well as of celebrity culture in general, such as its incorporation of things like the "Me Too" movement and even occasional tackling of racial issues. The Stormfront plotline was especially well done in how her and Homelander's relationship is a perfect metaphor for present-day America.
I'm looking forward to Season 3 and see where it goes from here.