Homelander vs. Homelander: The Villain That Was Turned Human and a Monster
So recently, The Boys has come to an end.
And the reception to it has.....not exactly been the best.
There's been a lot of criticism towards the final seasons for various reasons.
A rushed narrative, repetitive character arcs, and a finale that failed to live up to the massive stakes built up in previous seasons.
Along with neglecting any actual ties to the spin-off Gen V.
I can't say much for this final season since I haven't watched it yet.
But one major thing that has come from this was a lot of people starting to go back to the original Boys comic that started it all.
And this has lead to this major wave of people actually praising the comic and saying that it's actually a straight up masterpiece.
Not only that, but it's actually better than the show.
People can have their own opinions and what not, but I've recently reread the comic and I'm honestly wondering what the fuck are these people on.
Now The Boys comic isn't the worst comic ever.
There's definitely worse than it out there.
And there is a little more nuance than most people give it credit for, particularly with Butcher.
But with that said, this comic is not good.
The art is an.......acquired taste.
Though mostly kinda ugly.
And with the exception of Butcher and Hughie, most of the characters are unlikable and unpleasant, with virtually little to no depth to them at all.
The most frustrating thing about the comics is the fact that is has a lot of interesting things to say and a lot of genuinely good ideas.
But they're almost always butchered (no pun attended) by their shotty execution.
A) Garth Ennis' well-known hate boner for superheroes.
And B) The fact it's commentary is done with all the subtlety of a high-five from a polar bear.
But the funny thing I've been noticing is how whenever I see people praise The Boys, it's usually just for specific moments.
Not the overall story, the art, or even the characters.
Chances are most of your reading this have been seeing this GIF as of late.
And so, it's got me wondering if any of the recent praise of the comic is actually genuine, or just a massive joke.
It seems to be a mix of both.
As whenever people criticize the comics, I've seen comments saying how it's not only great, but how anyone who criticize it is a woke pussy who can't handle edgy stuff.
Additionally, they constantly treat PointlessHub like The Anti-Christ because of his video and Just Stop like The Messiah.
A lot of the praise for the comic from what I've seen is largely for the humor.
And I have no clue why because The Boys is genuinely unfunny.
Largely because it's just shock value.
I don't recall even so much as smiling at a joke.
The TV show isn't much better in this regard.
But at least they have Antony Starr's performance and this....
Plus the show at least has considerably most restraint.
In general, the recent praise for The Boys comic seems to come from either adults who never grew out of their edgy phases when they were teenagers, or.....genuinely some of the worst people out there.
Largely because of the comic's frankly gratitous use of slurs and frequent jokes about race and sexuality.
I swear, you will hear the use of the N-word with the hard R more from this comic than from an actual fucking minstrel show!
And given the Internet (especially on TikTok and Instagram) genuinely seem to love hateful content nowadays, this comic seems to be up their alley.
Plus this recent wave of praising and glazing reminded me of something I genuinely hate about the modern Internet (among many things).
How people will pull random ass revisionist history movements for things that were really not that good....and still aren't.
Good lord, any of you remember the revisionist history movement for Breadwinners?
Not only that, but actively hating and shitting on anything that's actually successful and popular.
Even if it's actually good or even great.
Often for very dumb and ludicrous reasons.
If you're a GLITCH fan, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
But anyway, it's genuinely funny how when people say the comic is actually better than the show, they never really utilize any of the actual substance.
Particularly with the characters.
One thing I will always give to the show is what they did with the characters.
Because with the exception of Butcher and Hughie, nearly all of them have literally NOTHING in the comics.
Hell, a decent chunk of them don't even have real NAMES!
The show really did a lot of very shallow waters.
And one of the best showcases of this is with the main villain of the series himself: Homelander.
One of the weirdest things about The Boys comic is how The Seven are depicted when compared to the TV show.
In the show, The Seven are all complex characters in their own right, and we get to see both how they each ended up the way are now and even some of the little bit of humanity they have.
In the comics, they get none of them.
Yeah, despite being the main antagonists of the comic, they're essentially glorified background characters.
As the comic focuses more on the case by case missions of The Boys and the one-off supers that get killed off.
Every member is some variation of being incredibly shallow and one-note.
It's night and day when you compare them to how they are in the show.
Especially for characters like A-Train.
In the show, we see A-Train feel genuine guilt for his terrible actions and eventually go on to redeem himself by leaving Vought and helping The Boys.
He even shows remorse for his accidental killing of Robin and makes amends with Hughie.
And although he meets his demise at the hands of Homelander, he at least dies a true hero.
In the comic, A-Train is portrayed as an arrogant, hedonistic jerk.......and that's it.
There's nothing else to him.
No struggles as an athlete with a drug addiction.
And no tenuous relationship with his family, particularly his brother.
And when it came to his death, comic A-Train met it at the hands of Butcher and Hughie.
But whereas TV A-Train died with his head held up high and getting to Homelander's core (which we'll talk about more later), comic A-Train died crying and actively begging for his life like a coward.
But in the case of Homelander himself.
In the comics, Homelander is the only member of The Seven to actually be something of a character.
Hell, he's literally the only member to even have a real name: John Gillman.
However, his character is very much flat.
For starters, just like all the other members, we get little to nothing on his actual past.
Homelander was created via the injection of Compound V into an embryo. His DNA was mixed with Stormfront's (who in the comics is a man), and the embryo was implanted into a mentally disabled woman. He was born in a Vought lab, immediately killing his mother by eviscerating her with his heat vision while still tethered to the umbilical cord, and even eviscerated the other doctors as well.
After his birth, Homelander spent the next 18 years in an underground Vought laboratory located in a silo in South Dakota.
Homelander's past is virtually glossed over.
But in the show, that past is far more focused on.
As a child, Homelander was constantly studied, prodded, and treated as a weapon and a corporate asset.
And most importantly, the show, well, shows how this upbringing affected him.
Which leads us to our next point: their personalities.
In the comics, Homelander is far more passive and shallow.
He's more of a "tool" of Vought than a self-starting political mastermind, acting mostly as a menace when his base urges aren't kept in check by corporate leadership.
Also, much like nearly every male member of The Seven, Homelander behaves essentially like a reckless, entitled college frat boy with superpowers. He enjoys indulging in drugs, reckless partying, constant sex with women and men alike (though often not consensual), and sadistic power trips simply because......he can.
Homelander has no real goals or motivations. He's just simply coasting off his global fame and fortune and doing whatever he wants.
The TV show, Homelander is a far more complex and layered character.
He's a deeply insecure, narcissistic, and mentally-unstable man-child with a major Oedipus complex.
All of this being the result of his upbringing.
Homelander's most consistent driving force is the desperate need to be loved and worshipped by the public. He constantly craves genuine affection due to how he was robbed of that during his childhood, but is ultimately incapable of forming real human connections because of it.
As you can see, the show actually gave Homelander some genuine humanity, while not shying away from how much of a horrible person he really is.
A major contrast to comic Homelander.
Additionally, despite being a narcissistic, show Homelander has also showcased the capability of being able care about others....in his own twisted way.
Probably the best showcase of this is with his own son Ryan.
Homelander genuinely wants to be a father to his son, largely because Ryan is a physical extension of his ego and a fellow superhuman. However, this care is highly conditional. The dynamic is toxic and possessive; when Ryan pushes back or expresses his own agency, Homelander's controlling and violent nature takes over.
This gets even worse when he's confronted by the terrifying realities of aging and mortality, Homelander becomes fixated on his legacy. And so, he starts trying to pour intense, often destructive effort into grooming and shaping Ryan to be a continuation of his power and ideology.
Contrast that to comic Homelander, who literally cares about no one other than himself.
God helps if this man actually had a son.
Anyway, both versions of Homelander eventually reach a climax/breaking point that leads them to decide to essentially take over the country.
But the way they get there are drastically different.
In the comics, Homelander receives photos from a mysterious source of him supposedly committing horrific atrocities.
Killing innocent people, sexually assaulting multiple women, and even eating literal BABIES!
This genuinely shocks him to his core.
Not just because of how horrific these were (even to him), but because he has no memory of doing any of this at all.
Believing he had committed these depraved, unspeakable acts, Homelander experiences a total psychotic break. He starts conversing with his own reflection in a disturbing, two-way mirror, hallucinating another persona as his mental state completely unravels.
Convinced that he is an irredeemable, bloodthirsty monster, Homelander gives up entirely on trying to maintain his public image. His inhibitions completely fall away, and he begins to actively fulfill the dark, twisted persona he thinks he already embodies and realizes that thanks to his power, he can do anything he wants.
Completely detached from reality and convinced he has nothing left to lose, Homelander completely snaps. He leads his fellow superheroes in a full-scale, bloody uprising, slaughtering heroes who refuse to join them and violently overthrowing the US Government at The White House.
In the show, Homelander's breaking point becomes a gradual process.
Throughout the series, various events and people contribute to Homelander's mental deterioration.
The death of Madelyn Stillwell, who was the closest thing he ever had to a mother.
The vicious rejection of Soldier Boy, his own father.
The exposure of some of his terrible actions to the public, leading to opinions on him becoming splintered.
Stormfront installing a supremacist mindset into him, now believing that non-powered humans are beneath Supes and need to be dominated.
And physical confrontations that led him to getting hurt and almost dying, making him realize he isn't the invincible god he thought he was and that he is very much mortal.
As for his take over of the country, instead of being done with essentially a war, Homelander does so through a meticulously orchestrated political coup with the help of Sister Sage.
Sage orchestrates a plan to assassinate the incoming Vice President, Victoria Neuman, and frame President-elect Robert Singer for it.
After Singer is arrested, the Speaker of the House, Steven Calhoun, is sworn in as President. Calhoun pledges his loyalty to Homelander and gives him command of all Supes in the entire country.
The administration’s backing allows Homelander to openly hunt down, imprison, or silence all of his perceived enemies.
Made only worse now that he has backing of all law enforcement in the country and the entire US military.
And now, we come to their respective defeats.
And this leads us to finally talking about the elephant in the room.
In the comics, shortly after taking over The White House, he's confronted by Black Noir, who reveals himself to be a clone of Homelander.
Black Noir reveals that he was created by Vought years ago as a contingency plan to take out Homelander if he ever went rogue.
But since he never did, Black Noir's existence became pretty much meaningless.
And as a result, he would start to go insane and develop an immense hatred for Homelander.
This led him to start posing as Homelander and start committing horrific crimes.
Including the ones Homelander would find out about.
Additionally, it's revealed that he was the one responsible for raping Becky, Butcher's wife.
This was all done as a plan to make Homelander lose his mind and go ballistic, finally giving Black Noir a reason to commit the very thing he was made for.
As you would expect, Homelander is hit with the shocking realization that he basically threw his entire life away for nothing.
Soon enough, he flies into a violent rage and attacks Black Noir.
The entire fight is completely off screen.
And by the time we see both of them again, Homelander is already DEAD.
Yeah, let's talk about giant black elephant in the room.
Black Noir being a clone of Homelander.
Now the concept isn't inherently bad at all.
And his motivation is fairly solid.
But the problem comes in the execution.
To be frank, this twist is a full-on ass pull.
Because it literally misses the most obvious and basic rule of setting up a twist villain: SETTING UP THE TWIST!
There's no foreshadowing or hints at Black Noir's true identity whatsoever throughout the story.
And I don't even recall the comics ever really mentioning the concept of cloning in general.
I find it baffling how people genuinely praise this twist as being great, when it's literally on the level as the twist villains from 2010s Disney!
So yeah, that's the story of comic Homelander.
And to be honest, it's pretty disappointing.
Despite being the main villain of the comic, he really didn't have much going for him.
Definitely more so when compared to rest of The Seven, but still not a whole lot.
Overall, Homelander was a pretty flat and passive character.
There was nothing about him that stood out from....literally most of the other Supes.
He only really became interesting when he started to find out about the terrible things he supposedly did and not having any memory about doing so at all, and ultimately becoming the monster he thought he was.
But that unfortunately got thrown out the window with the Black Noir reveal.
In the end, he was nothing but a pawn and victim to a villain who literally had no presence whatsoever until the very end.
Hell, even his death in the comic is pretty anticlimactic.
As it literally happens off-screen!
But then there's TV Homelander.
One of the funniest things to think about is despite the show being considerably more tame than the comics, TV Homelander is ironically the more evil of the two Homelanders.
Now before going crazy, comic Homelander was just a douchebag and a degenerate.
But TV Homelander is a legitimate sociopath!
He's done infinitely worse and more evil things than comic Homelander has.
-Murdering Stillwell while she was with her baby.
-Letting an entire plane full of innocent people crash to protect his reputation.
-Lasering down a private jet with the mayor and his prepubescent son on board to hide the secret of Compound V.
-Murdering Black Noir, his most loyal teammate, after finding out about his secrets, particularly keeping the fact that Soldier Boy was his real father.
-Crushing the ears of a blind hero candidate just to prove he wouldn't accept "disabled" supes.
-Repeatedly mentally and psychologically breaking Starlight, forcing her to choose between her dignity and the lives of innocent people.
-In fact, he constantly belittles, threatens, and gaslights The Seven for them to stay loyal to him and follow what he says.
-Murdered a shapeshifter who was only trying to please him.
-Purposely distributing Compound V globally to terrorists to spark a war just so he could be the "solution."
-In a mirror monologue, he promises to "wipe the map clean" aka commit GLOBAL GENOCIDE if the public dares to turns on him.
-Verbally, mentally and physically abused Ryan into following in his ways.
-Bullied a suicidal teen into jumping off a roof.
And most importantly (given this was the catalyst for the show).....
As you can see, Homelander is a MONSTER.
And additionally, a far more effective and stronger villain.
Given he's such a major focus in the show, he's a much more proactive character than he was in the comics.
And what makes TV Homelander's villainy so much better than comic Homelander's villainy, besides the focus on him as an actual character, is the fact that everything he does is 100% his doing!
Yeah! There's no cop-out at the end to reveal that everything he did was the result of a clone.
Everything Homelander has done throughout the show is wholly HIS fault.
And this is makes his defeat much more satisfying.
Even though the finale may have not been the best, the way Homelander died was honestly perfect.
Thanks to a concentrated radiation blast from Kimiko, Homelander is stripped of his powers.
Which he gradually finds out when he attempts to fly, and laser and punch Butcher.
Soon enough, Butcher lies a no-holds barred beatdown on Homelander.
As Homelander lays on the ground, he starts to beg for his life, trying to offer Butcher anything in order to be spared.
From offering to give him Vought, to having a shapeshifter pose as Becca, to most famously, offering to suck his dick.
But Butcher ultimately refuses and ends Homelander once and for all by splitting his skull open with a crowbar, just like how he did to Black Noir in the comics.
There are three reasons as to why Homelander's defeat is so much better than in the comics.
1#) Given this Homelander has actually done many terrible things, it made his downfall much more satisfying and deserving.
2#) Butcher was the one to kill Homelander, which just fits much more thematically given he was the one kickstart his crusade against the Supers! Made much better since Homelander was the one to actually rape Becca and not a random clone.
and 3#) It perfectly encapsulates one of the main thematic pillars of the series. That being that without his powers, Homelander is truly NOTHING.
At his core, Homelander is a fragile, manufactured weapon raised in a sterile Vought laboratory with no genuine human connection or normal socialization. His god-like powers are the only thing protecting him from confronting his profound inner emptiness.
His arrogance, dominance, and fascist control over society are entirely dependent on his powers.
You remember how I said A-Train got Homelander’s core just as he was about to die.
Well as Homelander is beating him, A-Train drops this hard-ass line.
"You're just an empty fucking suit. Take away these powers and what are you, huh?"
Along with calling him, as quoted…..
"A pathetic, weak, snivelling fucking loser"
Not only is this a great scene because it perfectly showcases how much A-Train has truly grown, but also because (as far as I know) it’s very first time in the series that anyone has truly gotten down to what Homelander has always been.
And overall, it’s genuinely fascinating what they did with Homelander.
Admittedly that can be said for nearly everyone, but it’s especially apparent with him given he’s one of the most important characters.
The show took a character who really didn’t have a whole lot to him, and simultaneously made him more human and into more of a genuine monster.
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