‘The Boys’ Destroyed the Myths I Love

I love hating these characters

You've heard about The Boys, right?

If you haven't, let me introduce you to them.

The Boys is a TV series originally produced by Amazon Prime Video. The show is based on an American comic book series written by Garth Ennis and co-created, designed, and illustrated by Darick Robertson.

We have a world where superheroes actually exist and are held as products by huge companies. They are looked upon as superstars and even role models. The problem is they are not good people — most of them at least — but this is not known by the general public.

The love for superheroes

For as long as I can remember superheroes have always been seen as big symbols of fighting for truth and justice. Of course, we've always had the anti-heroes — those who would not always play by the book but their ends would justify their means — but I could say that most heroes were the good guys.

Superbeings or not, there was always a sense of justice and morality around their actions, but this movement of analyzing heroes and putting them in the real world started in the '80s when Alan Moore wrote Watchmen.

What if all these good guys existed in the real world and had to deal with real problems, not only the ones coming out of a writer's mind. Would they actually be good? Should they be accepted as Vigilantes who would take justice into their own hands? Shouldn't they be accounted for all the destruction that their crusades against evil would leave on their path?

So if you look back at what The Boys and many other TV shows are doing right now we could say it's old news for comic book fans, right?

The heroes got popular

Suddenly the heroes got popular. Well, not exactly suddenly per se, it took a few years but they finally own their space in every media. Cinema, tv, books, games, they're everywhere. While writing this, there must be 10 different superheroes series happening.

And despite the overdose, I am glad this is happening. I don't watch all of them but I see the ones that have these different approaches. So what happened in the comics a while ago is now happening in all popular media.

It's interesting to see a Justice League parody where Superman is a piece of trash, Aquaman is mocked by everyone because of his connection to fish and there is a religion filled with blind followers making things a bit more interesting. I don't like The Boys because of its violence and bad words — I think these things help build a believable world — I like it for all of these things that are discussed and mocked.

It feels like someone put a magnifying glass on everything it's happening in the entertainment industry since always, and decided to aim at everyone. No one gets away. Big companies, governments, weird religious cults… I feel like it's The Simpsons of the superheroes tv shows.

I still love the classics

Although I really enjoy these twisted realistic characters I can't say they're my favorite ones. I believe it's a part of every cultural phenomenon the idea of being criticized and studied by future generations.

Batman is not the same character he was when Bob Kane and Bill Finger made him be back in 1939. He evolved into something else based on society, his later writers, the fans, the culture… Superman was always a symbol of something that, as humans, we may never achieve, and even he was changed to something else along the way.

With that being said I can say that my favorite ones are the ones who take us out of our reality. Those times when Superman saves people and tries to prove to them that it's possible to be purely good, and where did he get that from? From his human parents. The power that this kind of message sends is greater than we can ever know. I don't even believe that this is true but the possibility of it it's incredible.

To conclude

I believe we are still gonna see a huge load of these doubtful heroes but at some point, we will need to go back to the basics of someone who is considered old-fashioned like Superman, for example.

Someone who fights for freedom, equity, justice, respect, and all those good things the world is missing right now.