The Boys #19

[history79]

"To me they were just a bunch of irredeemable dicks. They’re supes to begin with, so they’re arrogant shits whose powers make them feel superior, but elevation to The Seven would make them a thousand times worse. I did go into the Homelander’s story a while back, and there’ll be more on him in #65 because his origin’s pretty important to the overall story, but with the rest I didn’t see the point. They are, when all’s said and done, a pretty obvious parody of the JLA."

- Garth Ennis

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

Not to question Garth Ennis, but if the Seven were "grown from the ground up," why ARE they as crazy/stupid as they are? I know part of it is Black Noir gaslighting Homelander, but that can't be all of it.

[thezmage]

Yeah, when you're raising the supers yourself, it's more cost effective to raise them so that you don't have to cover up their depravity than it is to cover up for them all the time.

[icon_uk]

Unless their vices are part and parcel of their genetic construction, are they predisposed to depravity perhaps?

[norj]

Supers with morals would shut the company down.

[night4345]

What else is the company doing that's so bad? If they made heroes instead of morons they have to keep covering up for would there be any problems?

[dcbanacek]

Apparently in this continuity, Vought American is a REALLY incompetent corporation. They give the Army Air Corps a plane so bad (an ersatz version of the Brewster Buffalo) that WWII is nearly lost for the allies. During Vietnam, American troops are given a weapon so poorly designed that an entire company (might have been more men than that) is massacred when the weapons failed, the VC then placed the Americans head on their rifles and leave them to be found. (an overexaggeration of the REAL problems the M-16 had when it first went into the field)

[q99]

It's amazing they survived to start making supers, it's amazing they survived peddling crap supers for so long.

[lucean]

I actually always thought that the Seven were clearly a parody of the JLA, but just that they weren't a good parody of the JLA, which took a way my enojyment of it. Andt I'm not even talking about the depravity, for example I absolutely loved the Top 10 version of the JLA, but rather because they really didn't have any character. For instance Green Lantern or Martian Manhunter didn't really do anything. Additionally to that, all of their depravities for sexual or stupidity, which failed to make them really stand out from each other.

[reveen]

Okay Ennis, while it's true that massive corporations will do fucked up shit if they can get away with it, the successful ones generally tend to not be this stupid about it. In the real world, corporations do things that are either passively evil and technically legal, like intentionally making highly unhealthy foods physiologically addictive, or shit that the average American won't know anything about.

This could work if the Seven, say, took their rapey escapades to some quiet little corner of Laos or something. But the Seven are doing their crazy shit on American soil, to Americans. They wouldn't be able to get away with this shit in the real world.

[q99]

Doing depraved crap, *and*, additionally, being crap at heroics. They don't actually do much to have return on investment of note worth covering up.

[silverhammerman]

Honestly I'm a lot more interested in reading about the Seven as presented here than I am in the Boys. I mean, sure that's missing the point of Ennis' opus, but there are actually some cool ideas here beyond manpain and hatred of superhero comics.

Like how the Seven wound up being so twisted and VA's culpability in that, as well as the extent to which the Seven could be seen as victims, could be fascinating. Hell, that would actually be a more interesting take on how superhero comics relate to corporations and trademarks. Even just seeing a bunch of mad scientists trying to keep a lid on scarily powerful developing superhumans could be a hell of a story. How do these characters relate to each other, given that their common experiences? What happened when A-Train came to join the group and replace someone who might as well be a brother to the rest of them?

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Are there any 'super' villains in the Boys verse, at all?

I know this is meant to be a parody and all, but it seems to miss 90% of the stuff that would make it an actual parody.

[lordultimus]

They exist, they just get jobs for stereotypically evil companies.

Which is basically every company in the Boysverse.

[dcbanacek]

There's actually ONE but if you haven't read or read about the series, revealing who it is would be a bit of a spoiler.

[flint_marko]

who?

Parody of Hollywood, maybe?

[7dialsmystery]

The Supes are less like Marvel/DC superheroes and more like A-list to D-list actors and actresses and Disney child stars. Huge entertainment business covering up the crimes, drug/alcohol abuse, and real personalities of big name stars because they're money makers ( Bill Cosby, Mel Gibson, Woody Allen, etc ).

Re: Parody of Hollywood, maybe?

[sagrada]

That's part of the 'joke', yeah. Think about how many terrible things pretty much all superheroes have done(Reed Richards turning sapient aliens into animals, Batman going in for child endangerment, etc), though inadvertently or thanks to bad circumstances, and how they're intended to come off by contrast. The supes are all just those bad decisions and potential ugliness made into the characters themselves, with the propaganda machine making them look like golden gods they aren't to all who don't know The Truth. Or are like Butcher, the Man-God whose eyes pierce walls and the minds of mortals.

[q99]

That much for even the normal Compound V...? Even with the immense popularity, how the *heck* are they making a profit?

It seems like a couple low-level supers costs more than major military contracts could give, let alone the Seven.