Superheroes in Amazon Prime's 'The Boys' aren't heroic

You might have noticed that it's hard to find heroes in Amazon Prime's new series "The Boys," which dropped July 26. A look at the source material shows that this is by design.

"The Boys" began as a comic book series at WildStorm, an imprint of DC Comics, in 2006. After six issues, though, the anti-superhero slant — and no doubt the over-the-top sex and violence — gave DC cold feet, and it canceled the series. It was picked up by Dynamite Entertainment, where it ran until coming to a definitive conclusion in 2012.

"The Boys" is written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson. Ennis is infamous for the sacrilegious "Preacher," with artist Steve Dillon, which has been adapted to TV and is about to enter its fourth (and last) season on AMC.

The consistent run-through in about all of Ennis' work, as actor Simon Pegg says in the introduction to the first hardback "Boys" collection, is "signature gleeful moral depravity." He means that, of course, as a compliment.

Too harsh? Damon Lindelof, an executive producer on "Lost," says in his introduction to the sixth hardback that "The Boys don't play by the rules, and neither does Mr. Ennis." That's a nicer way to say that virtually every Ennis book is going to have bizarre sex, horrific ultraviolence and a cynical streak several miles wide.

Here's another take: "I believe that Garth, as rough as a lot of his material is, as brutal as his stories can be, is a romantic at heart," writes comics editor Scott Dunbier in the first "Boys" omnibus. "A romantic with a twisted side, sure, but still a romantic."

You get the picture.

"The thing is, due to a quirk of distribution and growing up in Northern Ireland in the '70s and '80s, I never really saw American superhero comics," Ennis said in an interview with Uproxx.com. "I think coming to them as pretty much an adult, I responded to them the way adults did in those days, which is, 'This makes no sense. This is ridiculous. This is silly.' That's where the suspicion and disdain arose."

All of which is on full display in "The Boys." Ennis imagines a world where superheroes are so commonplace that they have become celebrities and corporate brands. Coupled with their physical prowess, they are virtually untouchable and never suffer consequences for their actions — even the government is afraid of them.

And as Lord Acton reminds us, absolute power corrupts absolutely. That isn't just true in "The Boys." Ennis and Robertson absolutely rub our noses in it. The Supes in these stories engage in degeneracy that would make Caligula jealous.

Enter the Boys. Their job is to police the Supes, and they do so with far more zeal than is necessary.