Let's talk about this show. I hope this is still /co and not entirely /tv, sorry. I read the comics a few years ago and mostly enjoyed them for what they were. I've only just watched the first 3 episodes of the adaptations and here's my info dump. Let's discuss the changes and if the improve upon or detract or are just okay for the adaptation.
>The guy who plays Homelander, Anthony Starr, is actually really good as him. He's like the love child of Chris Pine and Bradley Cooper. Does a great job of being the insecure, impatient Superman.
>There are story elements that have changed of course. Primarily the fact that The Boys aren't nearly on the same threat level that they are in the comics. They don't even have Compound V at the beginning, nor have they even heard of it. Mallory is mentioned though. But I guess Butcher didn't pretend to kill and force the inventor of V to make a bunch of doses for Butcher himself like it's later revealed in the comics.
>Stillwell is obviously a woman now. Big change. Before watching the show, I thought that probably wasn't a good idea because Stillwell sort of represented the typical corporate man archetype. In the show, they use Stillwell pretty early on as the main individual who forces Starlight to switch to the sluttier outfit. And I think this scene in particular is largely why they made Stillwell female in the show. So it doesn't just seem like a bunch of men telling her how she should dress, ya know? They try to tie in her female identity (and her being a mother of an IVF relative newborn at late age) to mommy issues with Homelander to tie the two characters closer together. There are a few scenes where he's watching her (through the walls with x-ray vision) milk herself into bottles, etc , and he mentions to Queen Maeve that he can't deal with babies almost out of jealousy or something.
>Starlight is a little tougher from the outset. She only blows The Deep (who is now white and is basically Aquaman in terms of the fact that he can talk to sealife and costume, etc) on her entrance. She mentions that she used to have a crush on The Deep and that's when he drops his pants and basically tells her that he's Number 2 so if she doesn't blow him, then he'll tell people that she assaulted him (using her powers fucks with electronics so there's evidence) and have her kicked out as quickly as she joined. It's also worth noting that Starlight did NOT have a history with her old group with Drummer Boy, etc and never found him banging some other girl like in the comics. She seems to have been raised by a single mother who raised her like a beauty pageant. Except the super version of that. So the mother just desperately wants her to be part of the Vought superhero community. Anyway, the point is that Starlight is immediately tougher at the point of the blowjob scene. She was already threatening to blind The Deep.
>Compund V seems to be just steroids for super heroes, at least early on. A-Train has a lot of anxiety issues about a big public race between him and some other super-speed hero and thinks that he needs to jack up on V to guarantee the win otherwise he believes he'll be fired from The Seven. He's in a sort of secret relationship with a D-Lister hero Popclaw (sort of like Marrow/X-23) who somehow gets shipments of Compound V at her apartment and trades it with A-Train for sex. >A-Train is black, by the way. Not that it matters I guess? He's definitely not one of the guys who Starlight blows though. So no Jew inter-racial conspiracy here. The main thing I guess is that the guy who kills Hughie's old girlfriend is now not one of the guys that Starlight had to blow.
Nathan Baker
>He's like the love child of Chris Pine and Bradley Cooper. Does a great job of being the insecure, impatient Superman. literally a crime that no one has seen Banshee.
Aaron Nguyen
>That invincible guy on The Seven (Jack From Jupiter) does not exist. He's been replaced by a guy called Translucent. He can turn invisible when he's naked. But he can also make his skin diamond hard. Hughie is tasked with bugging the headquarters of The Seven (which is now a tower instead of a flying fortress) while he agrees to sign the paycheck/waiver/apology thing because A-Train killed his girlfriend accidentally. Butcher basically catches wind of the situation and makes Hughie do it. Anyway, Hughie is in the bathroom pulling his phone apart to retrieve the bug that Butcher hid there. He narrowly misses meeting Starlight (who he has already met on the park bench in her civillian identity immediately after she blew The Deep) in what seems to be a unisex bathroom. He retrieves the bug and heads out to the meeting room where he's meant to place it. Little does he know that Translucent was just hanging out in the bathroom nude the whole time because he's a pervert and it was established in an earlier scene that he just sorta likes to chill there on the regular. Translucent is like wtf. Turns out he finds the bug and follows Hughie to where he's working as a tech guy in a Dick Smiths or Harvey Normans or whatever electrical store you're familar with. Translucent (while naked/invisible) starts to fuck with Hughie but Butcher seems to have been keeping tabs on Hughie after dropping him off after the bugging job and smashes his car through the store, hitting Translucent. Turns out Translucent is basically invincible so the resulting fight scene doesn't turn out so well until Hughie electrocutes Translucent with a cable which was exposed during the brawl. They both think Translucent is dead and shove him in the boot and take off before the cops show up.
Nathan Smith
>But he isn't dead. Just knocked out Butcher mentions he knows a guy who can deal with this so they meet The Frenchie who is an eccentric arms dealer by trade who has apparently killed one or two supes in the past with great difficulty. He's just a guy. No powers. Butcher gives him the task of killing a super. There's a time limit though because they know Translucent has a GPS tracker implant or something. La de dah, They go through a lot of attempts but Frenchie eventually clues on to the fact that maybe only his skin is immune and his insides aren't. So he zaps Translucent unconscious and shoves some plastique explosives up his ass. There's a small distraction with Homelander trying to sort out the issue of the missing Translucent himself to impress his mummy Stillwell, but eventually it comes down to Hughie to pull the trigger on the explosives and he makes a great fucking mess of Translucent. Much like Breaking Bad though, they have to deal with cleaning the mess. And it's a right diabolical mess. Turns out a portion of the remains still retain the invulnerability power so they can't just dissolve/burn it. So they try to hide it from Homelander by putting it into a zinc (Homelander can't see through zinc) chest and tossing it into the river or something.
So that's my summary of the first 3 episodes. From a slightly drunk guy. I would probably encourage people who liked The Boys graphic novel to give this a try. I'm totally not a shill or whatever.
I think the first couple episodes are similar to the structure of Breaking Bad. They sort of capture a guy and then spend the next couple issues dealing with killing the guy and then dealing with the remains. Hughie isn't scottish and Simon Pegg is his dad. They live together from the start and Hughie is kind of a man-child of sorts (his room is filled with The Seven merchandise like a typical Pokemon fan or Pop toy collector etc)
Mason Brooks
>It's also worth mentioning that Queen Maeve is not the totally jaded alcoholic bitch. In fact, I don't think I saw her drinking anything in the first 3 episodes at all.
Sort of implied that she maybe bangs the male athletes she spars with? But she doesn't quite have the same history with Homelander. They used to be together but they split up for some reason. Maeve doesn't seem to really like him, but I don't think Homelander tagged out with Black Noir and had the whole session photographed like in the comics.
Juan Lopez
Please validate my existence by shitting out opinions with me.
