Amazon is dipping its hands into the superhero franchise with the production of their new super R-rated show The Boys that is based on the comic book series by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson. The series follows the sociopathic superheroes and their shady company, Vought, that financially backs them, giving them free reign to do whatever they want. The show stars Karl Urban, Chace Crawford, Jennifer Espositio, Dominique McElligott, Nathan Mitchell, Erin Moriarty, Jack Quaid, Elisabeth Shue, Antony Starr, and Jessie T. Usher with Seth Rogen, Eric Kripke, and Evan Goldberg as creators and executive producers. Kripke recalls the idea of the creation of show, “what would happen if you combine the worst of celebrity with the worst of politics and how badly that would screw over the common man.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Eric Kripke says that he is, “puncturing and deconstructing culture. Period.” However, even with the new roster of superheroes the dark satire still plays on the famous DC and Marvel heroes. For starters, Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, the leader of the superhero group Seven bears a resemblance to Superman and Captain America but with the development of a God complex.
Then, Jessie T. Usher, who plays A-Train, bears a resemblance to DC’s speedster The Flash.
Dominique McElligott, who plays Queen Maeve, resembles DC’s Wonder Woman.
Nathan Mitchell, who plays Black Noir, is a play on Batman.
Chace Crawford, who plays The Deep, is a play on Aquaman.
As Kripke describes the show in terms of DC and Marvel copies, “Marvel’s real and the superheroes they have and they’ve taken over the world and that’s the show. From Garth and Darick, I think even at that time, they were more interested in taking shots at DC than they were at Marvel. I think, even then, DC people were held up as these gods whereas the Marvel heroes were always regular people.”
Kripke continues to follow in Garth and Darick’s footsteps at taking shots at the superhero genre. According to Entertainment Weekly, superhero movies are the king in the current film climate meaning that Kripke can run rampant with gags that poke fun of the DC and Marvel blockbusters. However, the show is focusing more on DC than that of the Marvel universe. Kripke describes the show by stating, “Every time they make a superhero thing, they’re making a Zack Snyder movie. In the stuff that Vought makes, we were inspired more by DC than Marvel. The Marvel stuff is actually reasonably grounded, but the DC stuff tends to get a little pretentious, and we wanted the Vought superhero movies to be a little full of themselves.” Kripke focused on the DC world for the look of the show including Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.
Kripke states, “If you just want to watch a shocking superheroes-behaving-badly show, you can. If you want to get connected to the characters, you can. And then there’s also a lot of satire and commentary on the world we’re living in, on celebrity culture, on corporate culture, where celebrity intersects with power and politics to the disadvantage of the general public. The superhero metaphor turned out to be endlessly durable the more we explored it.” The Boys works to create metaphors about today’s world to mimic what a politician and celebrity is doing. He adds, “There’s been more than one situation where we’ve come up with a scene or storyline in the writer’s room and then something happened in reality that was crazier than the story we were pitching. So, we’ve had to erase stories ’cause reality outdid us in how insane things are.”
The Boys will be at San Diego Comic Con Friday July 19 from 3:30 to 4:30 in Ballroom 20. The panelists include Karl Urban, who plays Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid, who plays ‘Wee’ Hughie Campbell, Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, Erin Moriarty, who plays Annie January/Starlight, Lax Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk, Chace Crawford, who plays The Deep, Tomer Capon, who plays Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara, who plays The Female, Jessie T. Usher who plays A-Train, Elisabeth Shue, who plays Madelyn Stillwell, and executive producers Eric Kripke and Seth Rogen.
The Boys premieres on Amazon Prime Video on July 26 with eight episodes.