Invincible and The Boys

In a world that is dominated by both Marvel and DC superheroes that preach morality and the human struggle, other superhero projects show us an arguably more realistic perspective of superhero life. Invincible and The Boys both satirize popular superheroes and offer a different viewpoint on what it means to be powerful.

Keeping a secret identity is normally a benchmark of superhero stories, at least in the universes we are used to but in the worlds of The Boys, superheroes are marketable and arrogant and therefore don’t really feel the need to keep who they are and what they can do a secret. In fact Homelander is so open with who he is because he knows no one would dare challenge him. They operate in an entirely different reality, one closer to our own. When people think they are untouchable they wouldn’t feel the need to protect themselves. Power breeds arrogance, arrogance breeds carelessness. If someone thinks no one can touch them and that they can do anything, they really wouldn’t think twice about putting their loved ones at risk by not having a secret identity.

Violence is a part of all superhero media, it has to be but both the Boys and Invincible are far more graphic and I would argue, real about what that violence looks like. Marvel and DC keep the blood and body parts relatively PG because they would like to market to children and make as much money as possible. However, set in worlds away from the big two The Boys and Invincible are allowed to do things that most superhero media wouldn’t dare to do. So we see far more blood, broken bones and decapitations.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely”

We would all love to think that superheroes, if they were real, would fight for truth, justice, honor. That superpowered beings would protect us. But unfortunately the reality of the situation is that people with power more often than not, abuse that power. Now again, no one embodies this more than Homelander, but all the heroes of the Boys to an extent demonstrate that they will use their powers selfishly at some point. In Invincible Omniman clearly demonstrates this as well. I mean the whole first season plot revolves around why Omniman would kill the rest of the team, fellow heroes. Yet even without that plot line, it's very clear that Omniman operates under his own rules, and he can because no one can stop him. When Cecil reveals that he knows that Nolan is the one that murdered the Guardians, this point is solidified even further.

The world of Marvel and DC is great but it really doesn't shed a realistic light on how a world with superheroes would be. It humanizes them and tries to ground them as much as possible because for the most part audiences want to see themselves in the heroes on screen. But the reality is that even living in a world where superheroes don’t exist we have hard proof of what power and the need for it does to people. How it changes their priorities and causes them to treat others. So we know that the world of Marvel and DC where heroes are all kind and altruistic is nothing more than a fairytale. The Boys and Invincible shows us what our world would look like if we had heroes, on a much more realistic scale. From the new forms of oppression to the new and graphic levels of violence that would be expected (that the Avengers are inflicting too by the way, they just can’t show it).