Gritty, coarse, and uncomfortable, The Boys, an Amazon Prime Original, surges with success as the latest superhero satire.
To paraphrase IMBD's official synopsis, The Boys is placed in a universe in which superpowered people are recognized as heroes by the general public and owned by a powerful corporation called Vought International. The band of "heroes," known as the Seven, whose attitudes are most arrogant and corrupt, is led by the egotistical and unstable Homelander (Antony Starr). The series primarily focuses on The Seven, as well as the titular 'Boys': vigilantes looking to keep the corrupted heroes under control, led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), who despises all superpowered people.
The Boys host 23 executive and co-executive producers, including Seth Rogan, and is based on a 2006 comic book series of the same name that was published first by Wildstorm Productions for its first six issues. Dynamite Entertainment took control of the publication after its sixth issue. The comic was also nominated for three awards between 2008 and 2010. The show seems to be garnering high praise, too, as IMDB gives the show an 8.7/10, just barely beating out the highly acclaimed Netflix superhero show Marvel’s Daredevil by a whopping 8.6-star badge.
It seems the general populace agrees with IMDB that The Boys is a "better" series about "supes." On the website analytics, they’ve crafted a chart that compares hit titles against the average demand of a television show and found The Boys is 45.6x more in demand than the average; which puts it in the top 0.2% of all shows. Compare that, again, to Marvel’s Daredevil (top 2.7% of all shows) which is only at a 12.7x demand.
The Boys can also be put in comparison to the performance of DC’s much older Young Justice, which was at 14.1x demand (also top 2.7%). That being said, the top 2.7% of all television is nothing to look down on, but the top 0.2% is an impressive feat indeed. It puts The Boys on par with The Flash (46.2x demand) and The Umbrella Academy (53.6x demand) at the very top of quality and popular television.
What do you think? Do you think The Boys deserves to be a top dog in the superhero genre? Have you watched it and loved it or hated it? If you haven’t seen it, do you feel it’s worth a watch? Let us know in the comments below! You can watch The Boys on Amazon Prime and it’s currently partway through its second season.
By Nicholas James
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