In the real world, superheroes would suck. Their fights cause millions of dollars in property damage, can potentially cost thousands of lives, can trigger international incidents, and probably get away with it because who’s going to stop them? The Boys is about the people who do just that, and the comic is about to come to television courtesy of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Eric Kripke.
The series follows a CIA black ops team charged with keeping track of the world’s superheroes. If they get out of line, they get a bullet to the head, if they’re lucky. Because superpowers, and the resulting physics and anatomy, are in play, sometimes superhero fatalities can be rather, ah, messy, especially as you can sum up writer Garth Ennis’ opinion of the superhero genre in one image. Artist Darick Robertson was called on, over the comic’s six years in print, to draw some very messy gore and some very raunchy superhero sex, making this decidedly not a superhero book for kids. Appropriately, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have set the series up at Cinemax, home of ass-kicking spectacle Banshee and bloody medical period drama The Knick. If anything, Rogen and Goldberg’s upcoming Preacher on AMC will be a guide, as it’s also from Ennis and every bit as subversive.
Kripke, who created Supernatural and is currently writing the similar-in-tone Jacked, is handling the heavy lifting of writing the series, while Rogen and Goldberg will direct the pilot. Cinemax might be looking to make it of a piece with Outcast, their upcoming demonic possession drama from Robert Kirkman, but for now, it’s just in development. We’ll just have to leave the job of blowing people up in a shower of gore to Gotham.
(Via Deadline)
