When people watch The Boys, they can't get over how awful superheroes can be. But here's the catch. The Boys is a genre deconstruction. To begin with, the source material is pretty messed up. Homelander, believe me, isn't a hater of Marvel and DC heroes.
1. Tony Stark's armour tries to impose itself on him.
Tony Stark's new armour gains consciousness in Iron Man #26 and soon falls in love with its creator. When Stark puts on an older suit to fight it after it becomes violent, the armour feels betrayed because he believes Stark is cheating on him. So he drags him to a deserted island, ties him naked to a tree, and basically beats him up to admit his love for it.
2. Green Lantern dates a 13-year-old girl for at least two years after hooking up with her.
Arisia, a 13-year-old alien who was assisting in Earth's rescue but also has a crush on Hal Jordan, is the girl in question. She then transforms herself into a mature woman's body so that Hal Jordan will not refuse her. The two of them are apprehended by the other Lanterns, who are clearly upset, but Hal refuses to budge. Worse, Hal acknowledges her age even when they are in the midst of it.
3. Blob eats The Wasp for no apparent reason...
You might recognise him as the chubby guy from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Blob, in 2009's Ultimatum, stumbles upon the Tsunami's carcasses. This is where he discovers The Wasp's body, and because it's his superpower to be fat, he begins eating her corpse and then tries to compliment it by saying it tasted like chicken.
4. Superman transforms into a pornstar!
Technically, he wasn't of sound mind, and this wasn't entirely his fault.
In Action Comics No. 593, Superman and Big Barda are mind-controlled by a character named Sleez, who forces them to perform pornographic acts. Also, Darkseid gives the videotape to Big Barda's husband. If you're wondering why it was done to reinvent the character of Superman.
5. When she orgasms, Kitty Pride phases through things.
During Joss Whedon's tenure as director of Astonishing X-Men, he resurrected Colossus and made him a couple with Kitty Pryde. After Kitty seduces Colossus, the two naturally make love. When she climaxes, however, she falls through the floor, screaming 'OMG' the entire time. Imagine being a child and witnessing a naked person screaming 'Oh my god' as they fall from the roof.
6. Batman uses bleach to burn criminals while having sex with the Black Canary.
The Dark Knight apprehends a gang of thieves who are stealing bleach and decides to teach them a lesson. While the thieves are being burned by bleach canisters, Batman has sex with The Black Canary!
7. The Hulk commits incest and then devours Wolverine.
The Hulk decides he wants a family in Old Man Logan, and the only person who could survive his gamma radiation genes was his cousin, the She-Hulk. So they have sex and produce a slew of hillbilly Hulk children, all of whom grow up and murder Logan's wife and children. When Logan arrives at the Hulk's house to exact vengeance, the Hulk eats him! The incestuous one, on the other hand, is definitely a stranger.
8. Ant-Man tries until The Wasp, then sprays her with bug spray and laughs as she burns. Then he dispatches a swarm of ants to murder her.
Ant-Man, aka Hank Pym, is a wife-beater in the comics. This escalates into a full-fledged fight with weapons and everything in this particular series. The Wasp then shrinks to avoid her husband, but he uses insecticide spray on her and then sends a legion of ants to finish the job.
9. In some early Batman comics, he was shown throwing criminals into acid, claiming that they deserved it.
It turns out that one of Bruce Wayne's recurring habits is to burn people. During his first two years in Detective Comics, he killed villains in a variety of inventive ways, including punching them into a vat of acid.
10. In the comics, Wanda and her brother Pietro have a lot of sex. It's strange how much sex they have, even for a normal non-sibling couple! It's nothing to do with their abilities. It's just strange.
If only Magneto could see what his children were up to. Everyone else does, and it makes me very uncomfortable. But Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are unstoppable. It's also been suggested that Wolverine is their real father, and he still watches them do it.
11. Avirex has a dinosaur obsession.
TW: Cruelty to animals, rape
It's okay if you've never heard of this character. Because you're about to learn the most fascinating fact about him. In issue #12 of The Wanderers, his team discovers a planet where dinosaurs are dying as a result of a radioactive fog. So he uses his ability to transform into any bird at will to rape a dinosaur in order to give them his bird DNA and feathers!
12. Logan brutally murders his own son.
At the end of Uncanny X-Force (Uncanny X-Force Vol 1, The Wolverine drowns his son, Daken, in a puddle while contemplating how life might have been having he stayed and raised Daken. His son's final words echo in his mind as he accepts the worst killing he's ever committed.
13. Despite the fact that neither Lois Lane nor Lana Lang is actual superheroes, what they did here was truly messed up. It's messed up to the level of Homelander.
In Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #57, Superman experiments on himself and transforms into a toddler. As a result, the two of them brainwash the child into marrying them. This included forcing the baby to propose, kiss, and spank him in turns.
14. Marcus rapes his own mother, Carol Danvers, and impregnates her.
TW: rape, incestuous relationship
Yes, indeed! In one of the most bizarre events in comic book history, Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers is raped by her own son in The Avengers #200. She wakes up pregnant one fine morning. Marcus is born three days later and grows up quickly, telling his mother that the only reason she had him was that he was the one who impregnated her in the first place.
15. Wolverine tries to seduce a group of teenagers. A great deal. He also attempted to sleep with Mary Jane Watson, a 15-year-old girl.
Hugh Jackman's portrayal of Wolverine in the comics is vastly different from that of Hugh Jackman in the film. Jean Grey performs a Freaky Friday on Peter Parker and Logan in Ultimate Spider-Man #66-#67, swapping their bodies because Logan wouldn't stop flirting with her. She was only a teen at the time.
Later, as Peter struggles in Logan's body, Logan attends school in Peter's body and tries to persuade Mary Jane Watson, another adolescent, to give up her virginity to him.
16. Ant-Man uses his abilities to spy on women he meets.
Ant-Man has used his ability to shrink to such a small size that he can remain hidden and spy on unsuspecting women on numerous occasions. In Irredeemable Ant-Man #1, he dupes the women into paying for the food before going to her apartment for a cup of tea. He sneaks back in after she's gone to bed and watches her shower. This isn't the first time he's done something like this.
17. Plastic Man is so creepy that he once transformed into Barda's dress.
Plastic Man is an outright creep. He'd been caught peeing on Wonder Woman before. If that wasn't bad enough, he pretended to be a dress and presented himself to Barda, who, unknowingly, wore it. It's unsettling, to say the least.
Now you know why all nerds are becoming super-villains instead of heroes. We'll get seriously messed up!
