#the boys comics
The big problem with The Boys Amazon series is that it’s just spinning it’s wheels and nothing much is actually happening.
For all the trademark Garth Ennis Edge the comic has, it has a genuinely strong sense of character development and plot progression. The final two arcs of the comic are so well done that it makes all the edgy nonsense that came prior worth pushing through just to get to that amazing finale. Both Hughie and Butcher’s arcs end in a completely satisfying way while also managing to make a wider and genuinely touching point about masculinity that comes out of nowhere, but works perfectly. For all his problems, Ennis fundamentally knows how to make satisfying characters and use them to tell a satisfying story.
The first season of The Boyswasinitially better than it’s source material, and making The Seven into actual characters is a welcome change. Then Season 2 comes around and now they’ve displayed that they don’t know where they’re going or even why they’re changing so much of the source material in the first place. Ennis’ decent understanding of narrative and character progression is gone, and while starting out with The Seven was initially a good idea, once The Boys became Amazon’s Big Hit Cashcow, they’re now stuck with them.
In the comics The Boys were working up to The Seven until Homelander and Black Noir become the final super threats. Now that the show’s started with The Seven, they can’t escalate up from The Seven, and they can’t scale down to a smaller scaled antagonist either. Same thing with speeding through Hughie and Starlight’s relationship. It was initially great, but only if they were planning to do the rest of the story at that pace. The compression and then rapid decompression of the plot has completely paralyzed the characters and narrative. It’s been three seasons now and barely any of the characters are any different from the first season, the plot’s hardly moved, and the show’s been spinning it’s wheels for 2 seasons now.
The consistent sense of momentum and growth the comic had is completely gone. Even at it’s worst like a hamster being shoved up a man’s ass, a guy having a brain tumor that makes him want to r*pe things, or sexually abused X-Men children being dropped from a plane, the comic always moved forward and developed Butcher and Hughie’s character throughout everything they did. The best stuff in the comic is all character-based, like the ending and Butcher’s backstory, and there’s none of that in the show. Show Hugie and Butcher might as well be two completely different characters.
The best character in the whole show is Anthony Starr’s Homelander, and while he’s great, you know he’s not going to be allowed to develop until the final season (whenever Amazon lets that happen) where he’ll finally go off the rails and have his head bashed in. I can tell you right now that even if they try to directly adapt the comic’s ending, it won’t hit home in the same way at all.
The show lacks the comic’s heart and Ennis’ genuine resentment toward the superhero genre (I mean, it lost the latter once Amazon made it a franchise and turned the series into exactly what it was criticizing in the first place), all it has is the edge, and even the edge is so tame and watered down compared to the comic that it’s hard to even enjoy it on that level.
Anyway, the best The Boys content Amazon’s made so far is the first season of the show, and the I’m Your Pusher segment from The Boys: Diabolical anthology.
i dont know who makes me laugh more:
spn fans trying to gatekeep jensen like… CMON GUYS. after all these years, he’s finally fucking free and you should be happy he’s being appreciated by more people, praised cause he’s a good actor even outside his “comfort space” but no let’s be annoying and childish. this is backfiring i hope you’ll understand soon
or
the boys fans, acting annoyed cause the posts about jensen (and jensen’s ass) are all over the socials, overshadowing cooler scenes. i get it. i can be frustrating. (maybe it is) but if you complain about this after every episode you will not enjoy the season, i think. let it be, the spn fandom is known for its dramatic reactions and huge amount of posts
so, why don’t we all enjoy the show without ruining it for somebody else?
