The Boys (Amazon 2019 TV Series).
Review by Kerey McKenna.
Now to really go into the nature of the adaptation and how it relates to the original book series, I’m going to have to give more details about the overall plot of both works. So this week I will give my general thoughts on the series and next week I will go into a more spoiler-filled discussion of both the comic and TV versions.
I had a great time with the Boys television series. Revisiting the premise after so many years, with additional creators and artists, has built upon the strong framework of the books while adding contributions, insights, and revisions that make the work of adaptation transformative and not merely reproductive. Just as I had hoped.
Fittingly, as the original Boys was a comic book series about comic book superheroes, The Boys: the Amazon Streaming Show is an Internet TV series about TV, Internet, and movie superheroes. The series starts with a logo clearly spoofing that of Marvel Studios, and throughout the series a great deal of world-building is communicated through in-universe talk shows, movies, newscasts, sports promos, commercials, and trending social media videos. It’s very reminiscent of Paul Verhoven’s classic Robocop and shares a lot of Robocop’s cynicism about Corporate America. In this world, heroes are celebrities and, despite their incredible superpowers, have a tenuous place in the spotlight: one day they could be getting the key to the city, but the next a career-ending injury, a scandal, or just the fickle tastes of the public could “depower” them down to C-list celebrities cruising the convention circuit to make ends meet. In a great bit of stunt casting we see one of these sad sack conventions for has-beens. We meet a former child (super-hero) star next to an actor whose superhero movie failed to launch a franchise back in the 90’s...played by a real world former child star and the actual actor with the failed franchise playing themselves. In this world, bad publicity is every hero’s true kryptonite.
Beyond the tried and true device of exposition through broadcast media, many scenes are viewed by the audience through the lens of an in-world camera like candid cell phone, dash cam, or surveillance video footage. When we first see “Starlight,” the ingénue superheroine in costume, graduating from farm league to major league heroics, it is through the screen of a camcorder as she gives an audition for her place on the superhero team “The Seven.” Everyman Hughie works in an electronics store specializing in sales and home installation of entertainment and Internet appliances (which later grants him a role on “The Boys” as their surveillance expert in addition to wide-eyed audience POV character).
By leaning into the nature of the medium and how it is made, Amazon’s iteration of The Boys broadens the original comics’ critique of the superhero genre to an indictment of how mass media is produced and consumed.
In addition to the clever self-effacing use of its new medium, the tone, pacing and narrative of the series have been given a much-needed fine-tuning. The over the top violence, sex, pessimism, and dark humor are all still there, but they are deployed more carefully, always allowing a sense of normalcy to return or creating a slow burn of tension before things go shockingly and bizarrely sideways.
Characters are given more narrative arcs in the Amazon series than in the comics to develop (or degrade) as people over the course of the season. Information that was laid on the table quite early in print could therefore be held back, giving more mysteries and challenges for the characters and the audience to solve.
Is this the series that will cure your fatigue of a mediascape dominated by comic book superheros? Honestly, probably not. To recommend it as such would be like saying you should scratch at your mosquito bite, or perhaps a more apt metaphor in this case, recommend you stick it to “Hollywood-obsessed culture” by hoovering up celebrity gossip magazines and blogs: There is a visceral feel like you are relieving your irritation when in fact you are just prolonging the agony. It’s a novel and subversive take on the material but it is ultimately still a comic book superhero fantasy.
In my case, however, I don’t suffer from superhero fatigue and loved this series. It has a similar vibe to Deadpool but without all the winking at the camera and the knowledge that Marvel corporate signed off on every self-effacing joke. It’s an equal opportunity offender where a televangelist elastic man and the save-the-dolphins mer-man are both hypocrites behind their public personas. As dark, violent satire, it “takes the piss” out of the superhero genre, the entertainment industry, partisan politics, and perhaps, most importantly, the performative edgelord rebels snickering at the culture as if they are above it all. And there’s a serviceable thriller weaving all this together.
So if any of that sounds interesting check out the streaming series or take a peak at the comic (which is available at a discount through some digital distributors right now because of the series and may even be available through your local library) and join me next week for a deeper dive into the themes of The Boys when we will cover such topics as.
Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.
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