Why The Boys Parodies DC Comics Heroes More Than Marvel
WildStorm Comics' The Boys has become incredibly popular in the last few years, owing to the popularity of the Amazon Prime television show of the same name — but one quirk about both the show and the comics can't be overlooked: The Boys uses the Justice League as a baseline. The superheroes in the series, known as Supes, are almost universally awful; they are criminals, have God complexes, and are all beholden to a mega-corporation who covers up their crimes. They are also modeled after DC superheroes more than Marvel — but there's a very good reason why.
The series, spanning 72 issues, revolves around Hughie, Billy Butcher, and the other members of the titular Boys as they attempt to bring down the Supes who pretend to be public paragons while in reality are violent sociopaths. The villains of the piece are undoubtedly the members of «The Seven»: a seven-strong superhero team that is quite transparently modeled after DC's Justice League. The members include an Aquaman analogue (The Deep), a Wonder Woman-esque character (Queen Maeve) and a version of Superman in the form of the infamous Homelander.
Related: The Boys Reveals The Sad Origin Of Homelander's Catchphrase
In the comics, The Seven even meet on a floating base in the sky that serves as a stand-in for the Watchtower (but they mainly talk about merchandising and publicity instead of actually fighting supervillains). The question remains: why does The Boys attack DC with their parodies but rarely Marvel? The answer has nothing to do with the well-known classic Golden Age DC characters and everything to do with the Silver Age Marvel heroes — and the way they were written.
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