The Boys Will Show You the Truth: Superheroes are Terrifying.

Imagine you are a criminal.

I know, I know. You’re not. You’re a good person with hopes and dreams and you pay your taxes on time. You never speed in school zones. But, just for a second, imagine it. Let’s say you and your crew (cause of course you have a crew) have decided to commit a standard starter-crime in a comic book universe. You’re going to rob a bank.

The reasons why you choose to rob a bank, or even why that particular bank on that particular day in that particular part of Metropolis/Gotham/Spiderman’s New York; don’t particularly matter. They matter to you of course. Maybe you are simply trying to feed your family. Maybe you know this bank has worked to cover up Nazi war-crimes and you want to expose it. Maybe you just really like money. You have your reasons is the point, and it’s quite possible they may even be somewhat justifiable. We have plenty of movies in which our protagonists feel they need to break the law and take up thievery in order to succeed. From Ocean’s Eleven to the Fast and Furious franchise (it’s about family) to The Great Muppet Caper, we know that good people (or at least not horrible people) are sometimes forced to do bad things. We know that everyone has their reasons.

The superhero who just fell through the glass roof of the bank (cause of course the bank has a glass roof) to superhero land in front of you doesn’t give a shit, however. He or she (although, let’s be honest, it’s most likely a white he unless their superhero name specifically references their gender or adds ‘black’ in front of whatever theme they’re going for) has their own tortured origin story and their own complicated series of reasons for putting on a costume so they can beat the hell out of criminals. And rest assured, beating the shit out of criminals is in their job description, and is most likely celebrated as justice by not only their fellow superheroes but also by members of local law-enforcement and by most of the local newspapers, provided they stop short of killing. It is very possible that the caped superhero about to break half the bones in your body actually works for a local paper as their alter-ego. Which probably makes for some biased reporting.

This man walking up to you speaking in a ridiculously growl-y voice about justice has about a 9 in 10 chance of being some kind of supernatural entity. Most likely they are so much stronger than you they could behead you by flicking you in the forehead. Or they could possess someone and kill you with the literal Wrath of God like Spectre, or they could burn your soul from inside your body like Ghost Rider, or he’s Ryan Reynolds playing Green Lantern which might be worse than anything else mentioned so far. If he’s not ‘powered’ then he’s just a crazy motherfucker whose ‘superpower’ is most likely billions if not trillions of dollars, a la Iron Man or Batman, and we know from reality how much power that can give a person.

This person will then use your body to work out all their angst and mental illness by (I can’t repeat this part enough) beating you within an inch of your life. They will be cheered for it as you lie on the marble bank floor, possibly already undergoing brain damage or becoming paralyzed from superpowered punches to the spine. Hospital bills can be life-ruining, and you know the dude who just beat you to shit isn’t going to help you out there. Most likely, as you are a criminal who was hoping to rob a bank, you will not have either the money or the insurance to deal with the myriad, possibly crippling or at least life-altering injuries dealt out to you by someone with no real legal authority. And that’s on a good day, with a good hero with a code. That’s essentially the best case scenario. You could get an anti-hero, or be the inciting incident for your good hero to create his good code. All for money that was not the hero’s, and will most likely be covered by the bank’s insurance.

You never had a chance. These people are literally not human. They are above both you and the law.

That’s kinda terrifying, isn’t it?

The Boys, whose first 3 episodes of their second season just dropped on Amazon Prime, understands that.

The show concerns a young man in love, Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), who then loses his fiance to a gruesome accident involving a Flash-analogue named A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). A-Train belongs to The Seven, which is a very clear Avengers/Justice League stand-in, all under the control of a giant mega-corporation by the name of Vought, essentially Disney with a tiny bit more of a world-domination kink. After the gruesome accident (and it is quite gruesome, the whole show is one of the most gory and violent things on air right now), Hughie gets tangled up with Billy Butcher (great name, played by Karl Urban with his brogue on full blast) and his crew, The Boys (hey that’s the name of the show!), as they set out to take both The Seven and Vought itself down.

There’s a lot more to it, of course. Hour-long dramas always end up expanding the cast, the plot, and the world well beyond what the initial premise would suggest. That’s simply how these sorts of shows work. Even without the tyranny of network television and 20-episode seasons, there’s just a lot of time to fill. The Boys fills its time quite well, building out the world enough to show the huge merchandising arm of Vought, making movies and action figures and streaming shows and everything else you could slap a brand and a superhero name on. It builds out the crew of The Boys beyond the gender specificity of its name and makes sure each member is a sharply drawn character with lives and wants outside the group. It has great action sequences and a very appreciated and fucked up sense of humor running throughout it. It even manages to make a pseudo-Romeo and Juliet romance between Hughie and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) work while still giving Starlight her own real journey that allows both her and Hughie to function as the show’s moral center.

The Boys (the show, not the group in the show) pulls off the same trick of real character development with The Seven as well, and not just Starlight. Each featured ‘Supe’ (slang the show uses for superhero) has their own history and support system and moral weaknesses. They are real, fallible people, given powers beyond normal human control or understanding.

And then there’s Homelander. Played to incredible, genuinely terrifying effect by Antony Starr, watching Homelander go through his day in the first episode of season 2 was the spark that started me thinking about all this. The Homelander Vought tries to sell to the public in The Boys is basically the answer to the question: what if Captain America had Superman’s powers? And Homelander himself does his best to help them. He is an expert at playing to the cameras, at creating the media narrative that most helps him and the mega-corporation that backs him. In the show, the public loves him, and thinks of him not only as the leader of The Seven, but as the de-facto guardian of the nation to the point that a major plot in season one was Vought’s attempt to make The Seven an official part of the military.

None of that is true. Homelander is an insane person with some of the worst mommy and daddy issues imaginable and seemingly without the ability to generate empathy for anyone. The glimpses we are given of his ‘childhood’ show abuse and neglect that are unforgiveable to visit upon a kid. At least partially because of this, he then abuses, attempts to control, dominate, and manipulate every person around him. He is an actively negative and frightening force in the lives of everyone connected to him.

Notice how I didn’t mention Homelander’s actual powers once in the preceding paragraph. It’s a fairly recognizable (if still frightening) psychology I’ve just described. A person with that psychology is likely to be an emotional if not physical danger to themselves and others and the damage they can do is quite real. But simply due to normal human limitations, the circle of people someone like that can hurt is generally somewhat small and they can be stopped (trying to ignore a certain president here).

Now give that damaged and damaging person Superman’s powers. This is what The Boys understands. Homelander has all the emotional weaknesses, triggers, fragile ego, and desperate need for adoration and love that any abused narcissist would have; but he also has the ability to literally rip your head from your body. He can burn your eyes out of your skull. He can liquefy your brain by clapping your ears. And all it would take is one wrong word. The people (powered and not) who work with him know this and they behave accordingly. You can see this in the utter fear in their faces, in their cowed body-language, in how carefully they speak to him.

And you can see it in the horrific, terrifying actions he takes (which, to avoid spoilers, I will not detail here) and the way he shrugs off nearly any civilian casualty.

At one point in the first episode of the second season, Homelander re-hires a new assistant. In an attempt to show her gratitude, the new assistant calls an up-and-coming young hero to tryout for Homelander to fill an empty seat on The Seven. Homelander does not appreciate her taking initiative. What he does next is such a sudden, cruel, and superhuman act of violence that anyone not completely desensitized will be shook for a long while. And the utter terror on his assistant’s face is something that I at least, have not been able to forget. Because in that moment, she realized something.

This man is damaged and is willing to lash out at anything or anyone for any reason.

And there is literally no one on the planet who can stop him.

That is terrifying. There’s no way to put the brakes on this guy. That’s what makes superheroes themselves inherently terrifying. The general public has absolutely no reasonable way to check a superhero’s power. Metropolis is at the utter mercy of Superman. All they can hope is they stay on his good side and he stays mentally healthy. And they would probably be willing to forgive a lot of his ‘mistakes’ to stay on that good side. If they don’t, and if he doesn’t stay sane, there is nothing they can do. They have to pray everyday that Superman’s stated good intentions are true.

I think the reality of 2020 America has proven how little stated good intentions are worth, and how profoundly scary it would be to know that public facade is all that stands between your city and destruction by a super-powered emotional man-child.

The Boys gets that. The Boys understands we are already a little too uncomfortably close to that anyway. Money is a superpower, after all. The Boys knows you should be scared. But The Boys also wants you to fight back.

It’s really the only option you would have left, even if it’s impossible.

If you enjoyed this article at all, please check out my New Adult Contemporary Fantasy Novel: Magic, Television, & Marijuana. Out now on Amazon.