The cast of The Boys may dish out violence to out-of-control superheroes on a regular basis, but how does each member feel about their actions? The world of The Boys is filled with superheroes run amok, and it’s up to an elite CIA task force to put the “supes” down when they step out of line. Each member has their own reasons for doing what they do, all of which is perfectly encapsulated in one specific image from the comics.
Once Hugh “Wee Hughie” Campbell joins the covert group, he struggles to cope with their violent acts. After his girlfriend is killed by an errant member of super-team The Seven, Hughie is recruited to The Boys by Butcher, the team leader. He soon finds himself in over his head among the crew and their take-no-prisoners attitude. Butcher relishes terminating super-people with extreme prejudice, and fellow team-mates Mother’s Milk, the Frenchman and the Female have no problem using a bit of the old ultra-violence on their enemies.
One image in particular highlights the varied reactions each team member has to violence. It arrives at the end of The Boys #61, the second part of the “Over the Hill With the Swords of a Thousand Men” story arc by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun. The story sees Seven leader Homelander striking back at the Boys by sending a random super team to their headquarters in New York City. The team in question is Paralactic, an obvious parody of early nineties super-groups. As the team burst in to confront the covert task force, Butcher and his squad get a brief moment of respite before the onslaught begins. In the final panel of the issue, artist Russ Braun perfectly captures each character by how they react.
Butcher’s reaction is classic Butcher, with Braun drawing the character looking down with a sly grin. Butcher knows the outcome of this particular fight before it even happens: the D-listers of Paralactic standing no chance against his “Boys.” The Female is perhaps the most inscrutable of the group, and her reaction is no different: her head bowed low, animalistic rage twisting her features in shadow. The Frenchman breaks into a big smile, gleefully pulling his goggles down in anticipation of the fight to come. Mother’s Milk is somewhat more reserved—ready to break out into violence, but taking no pleasure in the act. Hughie’s reaction is the biggest and the most comical, but it also highlights just how out-of-his-depth the character is. No matter how much violence and terror he’s exposed to in the Boys’ war on the Seven, Hughie remains the wide-eyed, sensitive soul he’s always been.
The image goes to show just how important the role of the artist in comics truly is. Without Garth Ennis’ expert comic book dialogue or narration to fall back on, Braun has to carefully draft each line of his characters’ faces, compose their body language in the frame to reveal their characterizations. That last panel could be shown to anyone who has never read the comic, and they would still walk away with some sense of what each character is all about. In a single image, each member of The Boys is captured in one picture-perfect frame, revealing just how far they’re willing to go in their war on the superheroes.
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