Spoilering it just to err on the side of caution.

For all the digital ink that’s been spilled comparing Invincible and The Boys (subject matter, gore, characters etc.) I think there’s a key difference that the most recent episode highlighted.

We see humans in a universe of supes and we see a lot more of the human side of supes, especially Robot and Dupli-kate. They are both grappling with their own humanity in separate ways, with Robot >!learning about life in a new body!<, and dupli kate elaborating on what having multiple bodies feels like. Whereas in The Boys, you don’t have much of an “am I still human?” Question from a typical supe who learned about what compound v was, though kimiko does have something of an identity crisis in s3. Even supervillains like the mauler twins get that ship of theseus question as part of their identity.

In essence, there’s a human factor in Invincible that differentiates it from The Boys.

  • KingofTheTorrentine@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I blame Amazon for basically packaging the Boys and Invincible together. I get why they did it, they’re clearly wanting to subvert the Super Hero genre. But let’s not compare apples to oranges. Also, the boys series is good, I have nothing but love for the team behind it, and the writers for making Chicken Salad out of chicken shit.

    Even when the Boys comic came out it was bad, aside from a few edgelords, no one ever said the Boys was a masterpiece. It was a carbon copy of Garth Ennis other anti-super hero, anti-U.S. exceptionalism edge lord British deconstruction of the genre that prevalent at the time with The Authority, No Hero, Super Gods, Irredeemable, Black Summer, Kick Ass, Nemesis etc. The Boys was never seen on the same level as the Authority for that matter, for a comic that parodied Superman from the justice league there were two glaring issues.

    1. The boys themselves are the same shameless Garth Ennis “Guy in black trenchcoat whos’ a badass and kills people with guns” Punisher rip offs that he throws in every fucking comic he does. He threw them in preacher, he threw them in the Crossed, and the entire boys cast is that some Trenchcoat edgelord played unironically straight forward. All his MC’s are Frank Castle
    2. Garth Ennis didn’t really write characters. He only writes two things, his power fantasy and his victims. That’s the entire summary of Garth Ennis’ entire run on comics except for maybe Punisher Max, there is some heart in that one. Ennis fucking hates Homelander. He goes out of his way to humiliate and shame the most interesting character in his comic who’s only interesting because he’s the “EVIL SUPERMAN TROPE”. Nobody gave a shit about Billy Butcher when the comic came out, and nobody gives a shit about him now. How many people do you know who think Homelander is the main character and not Billy Butcher?
    • TheJoker1432@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Surprisingly the amazon show really made something great out of that source material

      I really like the show billy butcher in the same way stoic male MC like geralt (books, games not show) and joel (last of us) appeal to me

      • KingofTheTorrentine@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        The comic had a good premise but shit the bed at the ending. So I guess the twist was, “The Frontline was right the whole time, the new world order shadow government is out to get you, Carrick was actually the lesser of 2 evils” was basically force fed in the last issue. Carvers weird murder/suicide at the end made little sense unless he did it so the governments couldn’t get FX7. If it was the CIA and the government that fucked him up why did he kill Carrick?