Diablo Ex Machina: Why You Don't Want to Live in a World Where "The Boys" Is a Hit

It’s no secret that I like comics and superhero stuff. So I’ve been puzzled as to why I so dislike The Boys on Amazon Prime.

I think it has to do with how much the comic book world revered Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. Like the superheroes in The Boys, the superheroes in these graphic novels also do immoral things. In Dark Knight Returns, it’s because the world has become a darker, more violent place, justifying a tougher, crueler Batman. In the original Watchmen, we gradually uncover the depths of immorality to which the book’s initially cheery heroes descended in step with that world, until an ultimate solution is needed to correct man’s (and superman’s) cruelty to their fellow humans.

However, while both books grapple with the question of just how much force is necessary and justified for their heroes to be meting out before the irreversible line between good and evil is crossed, The Boys pretends that line doesn’t exist. If the superheroes of The Boys’ world are using their powers to casually commit unspeakable acts of violence, then the show’s titular characters seem equally justified in returning the same, even reveling in it. That’s the trick in this story’s structure, the devil in the machine that gets you to think wanton carnage is okay, even as the spectacle of a woman getting her brain evaporated through her eye sockets by heat vision makes you want to vomit.

But it’s okay, we tell ourselves, because that world’s not real. It’s all make-believe.

But what if…?

What if, in addition to the hidden meanings that exist in the entertainment we’re drawn to, our choices reveal truths about ourselves? What if liking what we like says something equally profound about who we are? In his book, Superman on the Couch, Danny Fingeroth rightly points out that:

Given the ubiquitous nature of media and fantasy images, there is no longer a clearly defined dividing line between the two. Perhaps what superheroes really tell us about ourselves and our society is that reality informs fantasy, fantasy informs reality, and we have to be careful how we choose our heroes and our values.

So what values and heroes would a society be choosing if it embraces a hopeless world where Superman uses his powers to act out every single one of our darkest impulses—one where the only viable option is to hurt the powerful more than they hurt us?

To answer this, let’s compare two origin stories: The Boys’ Hughie, and The Dark Knight Returns’ Bruce Wayne.

In The Boys’ first episode, the Flash analogue, A-Train, recklessly kills the protagonist’s girlfriend, setting in motion the origin for The Boys’ protagonist, Hughie. Being the superhero team’s only African American, possessing the ability to run extremely fast, and obsessed with his own sneaker line, A-Train clearly mirrors our world’s sports stars. Wheaties box champions who cheat with performance enhancing drugs, abuse their spouses, and even kill innocents in DUI accidents. Seeking closure, Hughie finds footage of A-Train joking about his girlfriend’s death in a private superheroes-only club that confirms what we suspect about our own wrong-doing celebs. No matter how genuine their televised apologies may seem, we think, the bastard is secretly laughing about what he did. He’s too rich and powerful to feel remorse. He got off too easy. And so it goes: Hughie chooses vengeance and joins a group of superhero hunters, while the rest of us subscribe to TMZ, buy tabloids, and retweet anti-celebrity vitriol.

At first, I found the whole ‘superheroes as celebrities’ trope to be merely trite and tiresome. But then I realized it was more insidious. The real-world parallelism makes the heroes even more hatable, because our culture has no problem with tearing down celebrities. We ruin people we once worshipped, driving them to destroy themselves with our cruelty and the unrelenting savagery of our snark. After all, if the creme de la creme is actually sour, if our superheroes are really narcissistic, sociopathic, irredeemable super-villains, then why not fight fire with fire?

Because Batman, that’s why. While The Boys likes to pretend that good is a lie and only nihilism exists in order to allow for the gore and debauchery that ensues, The Dark Knight Returns presents an alternative path. Some five decades after his parents were murdered before his eyes, Bruce Wayne finds himself living under a Superman-backed tyranny. Crime is rampant. Gangs old and new roam the streets, a supposedly-reformed arch nemesis poisons TV studios full of innocents, while suits and shrinks try to cover up or explain away their villainy. Worse still, we discover that Superman himself was responsible for the deaths and maiming of the heroes who could have stopped this. Wading into the fray, Batman dishes out more pain and punishment than ever before in his career, even turning the Joker into a quadriplegic. But no matter how much more powerful, merciless or cruel his foes have forced him to become, Batman not only finds a way to triumph over them all—Superman included—he finds a way to keep his “no killing” rule intact. Because as naive and unrealistic as it may be to think that people can still change or that it’s possible to overthrow a dictatorship with zero deaths, it is even more childish to think that we can act just like our enemies without suffering the consequences. While we may no longer believe in souls and the invisible lines which, if crossed, will destroy them, we do know that monstrous behavior is what makes a monster.

While giving into rage and savagery may feel good now, as Fingeroth says,

Sooner or later, realities will confront us that we, both personally and as a society, will have to deal with on our own, with no superhero there to swoop in to save the day.

We each have to be our own superhero.

So whether our powers take on the form of flight and invulnerability or charisma and creativity, I would much rather choose a world that rejects the notion that all must be corrupted or destroyed by them. Instead we must strive with what meager powers we have to rise above our heroes rather than sink below them.

Because a world where everybody in it deserves to burn… is hell.