Tag: Boys

Another interesting difference from the show: Stormfront in the comics is a guy, and he must be quite old, as he’s met Hitler. He’s a Nazi version of Superman, basically, but with lightning bolts from hands instead of lasers from the eyes.

He isn’t a major character, though, and with the help of the Soviet superhero The Boys beat him to death, in an allegory to WW2.
I’m not sure what the authors tried to pull off with Frenchie and Female origin stories. Both are extremely weak. Mother’s Milk origin story is slightly better. Sickening, but that’s Garth Ennis for you there. In short: he’s called Mother’s Milk because he can’t survive without it. And he’s a grown up man now. As I said, Ennis is a sick bastard.

In the show, it’s Homelander who’s obsessed with breast feeding.
Actually, the further in the comics, around the 40s chapter, the less I understand where it’s heading. There’s an arc on retarded supes. Literally retarded. And besides adding the twist of Butcher suspecting Hughie to be a spy, I don’t see much point to that arc either.

Ok, so this blew my mind. In the show, Simon Pegg plays Hughie’s father. And in the comics, Hughie was based on Simon’s likeness.

One key character from the comics that is yet to appear in the show, if at all, is The Legend. He’s the local version of Stan Lee, a bit meta, I’d say. You see, he’s a comics author, and in the world where superheroes are real, this role is sort of a PR manager.
There’s an arc that takes a stab at X-men, called G-men.

Basically, the local version of Professor X is kidnapping kids, not picking up orphans. And “Professor X” is also a paedo. In a surprising turn of events, they are all wiped by PMC. Turns out enough firepower can be enough.

From the second arc the comics and TV series part ways so much I don’t see any sense to even compare them.
Second arc of the comics is dedicated to taking jabs at Batman, called here “Tek Knight”. At the relations with villains, at why he keeps a teenage boys around him all the time, and all that stuff. It’s a smart satire, but it’s a detour.
The next arc is in Moscow. There’s a pretty sophisticated story arc where The Corporation first gives some supervillains unstable Compound V. Then they give another supervillain a device that can remotely detonate any supervillain injected with it, telling her she’d be a hero. What they don’t tell her is that the device is fake, and the whole point is to wreak chaos and put a communist as the head of the state, so they could go back to Cold War. Other than introducing The Corporate Man, though, that plan doesn’t have much significance.
There’s also a strange plot about killed superheroes that come back as stupid zombies. I’m pretty sure it’s just an opportunity for Ellis to make jokes about literal shit and how brings back heroes in comics never works.
What you can’t take from Ellis, though, is how educated he is. Which doesn’t prevent him from being a sick fuck. But still, there’s a story about an aircraft for the navy that killed more pilots than it saved. Turns out, this is based on a real aircraft, Corsair, that was indeed a complete disaster.

Although I dislike Ellis style in general, I decided to give Boys a try. And they changed so much in the TV series.
For starters, Butcher works for CIA. And Kimiko was already part of his team.
The Hughie is Scottish. In the series he asks Butcher why he uses “cunt” so much, while in the comics he uses that and other Scottish words a lot.
In the comics, Janine, MM’s daughter, is this androgynous child. While in the comics she’s a rebellious and slutty dressing teenager.
It’s the Homelander that rapes Starlight in the comics, not The Deep.
The entire first season is dedicated to Butcher hunting for a Compound V sample. In the comics, he’s given it by the CIA Director he sleeps with, and he immediately goes on to inject Hughie with it.