Why 'The Boys' Will Ignore The Comics For Their Captain America Character

The Boys isn’t exactly subtle with its superhero parodies. Every single character in The Seven—their version of the Justice Avengers—is clearly based on a DC or Marvel character. Homelander is obviously Superman, Maeve is Wonder Woman, and Black Noir is so much Batman that they even gave him a nut allergy to make it physically impossible for him to perform oral sex (yeees, your boos sustain me.)

BTW, in the comics, Stormfront, the Nazi super and the Thor/Shazam expy, is a man. So, if you heard a loud, weird noise while watching Homelander and the live-action, gender-bent Stormfront get it on, it was all the fanfic writers groaning about the show being made by a bunch of cowards.

Anyway, in Season 3, The Boys plans to introduce their take on Captain America, a military-themed hero known as Soldier Boy, played by Jensen Ackles. Pics of him in costume were recently released, and the character does look somewhat like the Soldier Boy from the comics. But that’s where the similarities between the two will surely end. There is just no way that Ackles’ version will be faithful to the source material because the comic-book Soldier Boy was a joke character who seemingly was only created for Garth Ennis to work out some dark, pent-up frustrations concerning Steve Rogers.

In the comics, there are actually two Soldier Boys. The original one fought in WWII … for exactly a few hours. During which his complete ineptitude led a Waffen-SS platoon to a US Army camp, resulting in a bloody massacre. I guess that’s why you don’t see more people dressed like S&M clowns in active warzones. And all this time, I thought it was because so few wars were fought inside sewers. Live and learn! Unless you’re Soldier Boy. Cause he be super dead.

The second Soldier Boy is a legacy character who honors the memory of the original hero by being even dumber and more embarrassing than him. This Soldier Boy is basically the human version of the scene from Avengers 2 when Steve scolds Iron Man for cursing. He’s “wholesome” to the point of child-like naivety, which technically makes Homelander a pedophile since the two are banging in the comics (anyone else hear that loud, weird noise just now? It sounded like… “ducking forwards”?) It’s nothing romantic, though. Comic-book Highlander seems to enjoy tricking Soldier Boy into sex, which the latter thinks is all part of some secret test to get into The Seven. Hell, even if it was, he still wouldn’t get in on account of being a massive coward who at one point pisses his star-spangled undies.

You don’t get the guy who played the best Robin in the best Batman movie ever made for a joke role like that. Obviously, this Soldier Boy will be more complicated than in the comics, which The Boys already did for many characters, including Frenchie, making him one of the most interesting people on the show. In contrast, the most memorable thing he did in the comics is losing his dad in a baguette-jousting competition, which, weirdest of all, is not a euphemism for anything.

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Top Image: Amazon Studios