Just a couple days ago Amazon dropped their trailer for their upcoming superhero series, The Boys. This, like so many before it, is an adaptation of a comics series which was created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson.

Superhero fatigue? Well, though there are definitely supers in this, I wouldn’t call them heroes…

The Boys was a comic book series that ran from 2006 to 2007 moving from Wildstorm over to Dynamite comics where it lived the remainder of its run (up to 72 issues). Focused on a group of superhero haters coined, The Boys, the story takes us on their crazy and violent mission to put supers in their place. You see, in this world, the creators wanted to take a more nihalistic and harsh realist approach to what a society with superheroes looks like. So why should we be excited for this? Let’s take a look.

1: Best said in Wedding Crashers; It’s Sexual and Violent: Look, we all love Game of Thrones, but that show didn’t pick-up initial viewers with hard hitting story telling… Yes, the classic formula to bring television moths to the show’s flame- Sex and murder.

My GOD this comic is violent. Not even two pages into the first issue you have a super-villain throw at a woman who gets crushed on a brick wall while her hands are still attached to her traumatized boyfriend. I repeat, that’s two pages into the first issue!

The amount of blood and gore comes from every possible angle.  The trailer lets us know that the show is not going to shy away from these elements of the book. So, if you’re a fore fan, this is definitely worth checking out.

Also right out the gates? The universe equivalent of Superman forces the new “justice league” recruit to give him a blowjob. This of course, is not a positive. What it IS is a grounded take on what a world of supers would/could look like.

2: All the good questions from BvS with a Deadpool Execution: Think about it, we know that power corrupts. It’s the nature of it. In our actual world, full of ordinary people, we see every layer of corruption possible. We know sexual abuses happen in the work place, we know people live for their wallets doing whatever it takes to get richer, and we know we live in a culture where fame is more than a goal; it’s an obsession.

The comics don’t ask the god-like questions that Batman v Superman did, but it does show the answers? “If you can dodge bullets or outrun tachyons or swim across the sun,you’ve better things to do with your life than save the world for the two-hundredth fuckin time. One day you might twig what you’re invulnerable to is your humanity.”

We live in a world where the rich can get away from any consequences for their actions. What could supers do? The comic series lays this out so amazingly that it can strike as a bit depressing for the superhero genre fan.

As much as it does sting in my idealist heart to see their equivalent of the Teen Titans in a whorehouse swapping partners like musical chairs, I welcome the sobering story!

I think there are certainly still heroes in the story but they’re real people with layers and contradictions. I think not only will this series have tons of shock value, laughs, and gore, it might just even get us thinking about heroes; Do we really need them or can we be our own?

3:  The Quality looks DECENT: Something else that caught my eye to the series is just how good some of the special effects are looking! Amazon seems to really be putting some attention to this project.

I am curious to see if they will be going verbatim to the 72-issue series or if they will be taking more liberties with the narrative. Either way this looks promising and could be a good binge watch when it releases this July.