Talk:List of The Boys characters

Unnamed V-A executive
At this point, shouldn't the unnamed V-A executive be included in the character page? He seems to be shaping up to be the series's primary antagonist. 76.11.13.225 (talk) 05:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Condense character descriptions?
It seems like a lot of ink is spilled here on characters that aren't really important.

For example, lots of talk about the G-Men, most of it unnecessary. Other than Godolkin, none of them are individually important, and we don't really know much about them anyway. Could probably sum everyone up in about two paragraphs. Ditto for most members of Payback and Teenage Kix. And the Young Americans are such inconsequential background figures that it's hardly worth listing them at all, except maybe to point out that Drummer Boy is Starlight's ex.

Bottom line, can cover more or less the same ground in half the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.84.29 (talk) 07:53, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the Sherlocking
I've snipped all of the comparisons/jabs/analogues of mainstream comic characters, because it seems like a grand, steaming pile of original research, Without Reliable Sources to back that up,I'm going to keep removing any comparison. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 01:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It was original research and poorly written and I see you had to remove it again only recently. I understand why you had to remove it. I do think there was some good intent behind it, even if it went too far trying to draw weak comparisons and was far too speculative when it went beyond the Seven. The parodies aren't so important as the story of political and social satire they enable Ennis to tell.
 * Having said that I've already seen a few too many reviewers comparing Homelander to Captain America, which shows how much Marvel has won mindshare this past decade. I think that it would be worth mentioning briefly in the intro at least, that the main characters are a Justice League parody:
 * thin veiled take on the iconic Justice League, specifically the likes of Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Aquaman (The Radio Times).
 * a Justice League jab (Syfy)
 * The Seven, a Justice League-like team (Superheroyhpe)
 * The Seven (a satirical takedown of DC Comics’ Justice League) (Collider.com)
 * the Seven as an obvious analogue of DC's Justice League. A-Train has the foot speed of the Flash, and the Deep is Aquaman down to his friendships with dolphins; Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) are able stand-ins for Wonder Woman and Batman. (Wired)
 * Would a line or two in the intro be acceptable? -- 109.78.249.75 (talk) 03:18, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've added a line (with source) saying The Seven are analagous to the Justice League, and that Homelander is analogous to Superman. I think those two are important to mention, but for many of the other characters it is too much like explaining a joke, and it isn't in any way important to the story that you get the joke. -- 109.76.220.28 (talk) 02:42, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think I've clearly resisted the OR impulses to make the Justice League comparisons, and I find it disappointing that in the source you provided, the comparison is made...once. I am sure that Ennis intended the comparison, but one source isn't going to be enough for us to fill in all the comparisons. If it was so very, very obvious, everyone would be making Superman comparisons, and yet few have. I'd like to continue resisting the Sherlocky impulses a bit longer, when we have stronger sources saying so. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 07:33, 1 August 2019 (UTC)`
 * I searched for comparisons to the Justice League and found them, and the big three in the Justice League are Superman Batman and Wonder Woman. It was not my intention to fill in all the comparisons or to explain the jokes. That my search also included a direct comparison between Homelander and Superman was incidental, but if you really think multiple sources are necessary I'm sure I can find more.
 * Further to what I said before, it is about the story not the parody, Ennis said :"the idea is to play with the archetypes more than poke direct fun at the characters themselves" so what I'd prefer to do is have a shorter explanation near the start of the article rather than trying to make direct comparisons with each character, but I was disappointed to see some reviewers thinking Homelander was a Captain America parody (when Homelander is not even an amalgam), so what might seem obvious to some of us does need to be stated. Beyond the Seven and Homelander I don't intend or think it is necessary to flatly declare that each character is based on particular existing character.
 * More sources:
 * Superman-equivalent Homelander (Forbes)
 * an analog of the Justice League. The team consists of Homelander, a Superman-type character; (Comingsoon)
 * Everything You Need to Know About THE BOYS
 * "Homelander: A Superman/Captain America analogue"
 * "Queen Maeve: The Wonder Woman analogue"
 * "The Deep: Sort of like Aquaman"
 * Jack from Jupiter: The team’s Martian Manhunter analogue
 * If Superman was real, he'd be a megalomaniac (NYPost)
 * "Captain America's blowing Superman to try to switch teams (and failing), the X-Men are getting touched up by Professor Xavier, the Legion of Superheroes are retards. And so on." (CBR) Ennis saying Soldier Boy is Captain American and Homelander is Superman.

I will keep looking for better sources but it seems unlikely I'll find better than a quote from Ennis. -- 109.76.220.28 (talk) 15:06, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes. Heavily citation is going to be necessary. I appreciate and applaud that you found sources for the comparisons, but before you came along to do so, people were using the Force or something to make these comparisons. That is precisely why they need multiple references (one from a comics-centric publication and one from a mainstream source). This will serve as a benchmark for anyone else wanting to add their wallaballoos about how The Beep in the series was a dark-haired man because of Momoa's casting as Aquaman. Set the bar high for inclusion, and the article grows and remains stable. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 16:05, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Adding another one for the record, because if we did want to list all the parodies (and I'm still not saying we do) this article compares the whole team LA Weekly even Jack from Jupiter. More interestingly though I think is the comment from Robertson: "I didn’t have any problem parodying them because what I saw very clearly is how the Homelander isn’t Superman. How Queen Maeve isn’t Wonder Woman. What’s really important to me is that, anybody can put on a superhero costume, but that doesn’t make you Superman." Again it explains that although the characters are parodies that isn't as important as the story they are being used to tell. -- 109.79.80.26 (talk) 01:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I've reverted another attempt to add unsourced comparisons for many of the characters. While I don't strongly object to the idea of including some information to help guide readers I do think it needs to be done carefully and I'd prefer to see it done using source and not original research. Claiming Black-Noir is analogous to Batman is one thing (and he isn't really in any significant way), but claiming he is analogous to some version of Super-boy is just plain unhelpful, and again missing the point that the parody is only a small building block to allow Ennis to tell a larger story. -- 109.76.158.143 (talk) 12:54, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've again reverted some more, but not all. (Anyone who actually made an effort to read this discussion could reasonably use the LA Weekly article as a reference to show the characters were parodies of DC characters.) -- 109.79.184.240 (talk) 11:20, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Please avoid adding phrases like "by at least one source" to the article text. If you feel more sources are necessary then use the citation needed tag (or mark a section using a template for "More sources" depending), but it is terribly clunky to insert caveats like that into the prose. Beyond the comparisons already being fairly self-evident, I thought this discussion had conclusively established that there were many sources supporting comparisons to the Justice League, including from Robertson and Ennis. I didn't feel it was necessary to WP:COATRACK and fill the article with excessive references. I know it is annoying to have to frequently revert over enthusiastic editors who don't want to provide sources but I did provide sources and they can be copied from the above discussion if needed.

TLDR I think the key point is that Robertson both acknowledges the comparisons but explains that it is not the point, they are parodies but more importantly they are telling another story. -- 109.79.69.228 (talk) 19:35, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Homelander
Is it "Homelander" or "The Homelander"? The article uses an inconsistent mix of both and I think it should probably be changed to "Homelander" in all cases. -- 109.76.220.28 (talk) 02:36, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it has, in all instances, been used as a name. So, Homelander and not The Homelander. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 07:17, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Having read some of the comics again I see they aren't entirely consistent either but I still think it would be better to just use "Homelander" in most cases. I'll get around to making the change at some point. -- 109.79.80.26 (talk) 21:50, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Characters from the television series
Most of the characters from the television series appear to based on the characters from the books. Translucent and the shape changing character "Doppleganger" seem to be a new characters. Any other new characters? -- 109.76.220.28 (talk) 06:21, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't consider Ezekiel to be a new character as he is merely a variation on Oh Father, although his having stretch powers is different from the comics.
 * How did I forget about Mesmer! Nice work by Haley Joel Osment.. Not really enough to create a subsection but maybe they could be added under the "Others" section. -- 109.76.220.28 (talk) 16:33, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe it might be helpful to creat a subsection of those characters which only appear in the series. As the season finale seems to deviate significantly from the comic source material, it might be prudent to differentiate between the two. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:33, 2 August 2019 (UTC)


 * It's a very short list so far, if you include only the characters new to the TV series. Including the characters with significant differences such as Stillwell, and Mallory would be a good idea? Or maybe try to split the TV details from the Comics details as much as possible?
 * I'm reluctant to start though because I think the article may need substantial restructuring. There's a lot of redundancy and repetition within the existing list. Another thing I've been considering is using lists for the smaller teams (this is a list article after all) instead of having subsections for every single character but I'm not sure that wouldn't just make the article even more inconsistent and messy. I was thinking of examples to follow and thought maybe the List of The Tick characters might be a good example, but it is full of tables which I don't think are an improvement. -- 109.76.147.161 (talk) 20:55, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think we'd be better off with listing the actors/characters in the tv series article. Redundancy isn't going to be an issue, as this article was built primarily for the comic book series. As there is significant departure, a simple section within the tv series article seems apropos. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 23:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Long
In July 2019 User:Rtkat3 tagged the article as being too long. (The tag was later changed to Template:Very long.)

The article was tagged before I made it even longer, adding details about Paralytic and Team Titanic, and there is still more detail that could be added about those teams and other characters. The article needs to be long since it is covering a series of more than 72 comics. Although it could be shortened a little bit and some repetition avoided and cleaned up with diligent copyediting, it is only slightly longer than it needs to be. If at some point in the future I was to go through the article to copyedit to reduce some of that repetition that would be enough in my opinion and I would then remove the tag.

Does anyone have any substantial proposals or specific plans of their own on how to better organize the article? Examples or comparisons to other lists of comic characters might be helpful. -- 109.78.244.26 (talk) 01:41, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If the page wants to be cut down, perhaps this can occur by having subpages made for the Boys and the Seven so that their full history and media appearances can go there. Any objections? --Rtkat3 (talk) 01:50, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Great to get a response so quickly (I was going to leave it a while and ping/talkback later). I don't happen to think splitting the page would be a significant improvement but others may have their own opinions. How would that even go? An article for The Boys, an article for the Seven, still a very long article for everything else? Are there guidelines or examples form WikiProject_Lists we could be looking at? Looking at List_of_Batman_supporting_characters I just see a whole lot of BOLD formatting and list items where we have section headings, which ends up with a much shorter table of contents, so IMO not any better in terms of navigation. (At least this article isn't using a big ugly table like others seem to do.)
 * I think the bigger underlying problem is that the structure of this article and the related articles is a little awkward. A list of characters was an easy way to start but it expanded into what we have now. If this was a TV show we'd have much less information listed with each character (and the associated repetition) instead we'd have and much more information in other separate articles for each season. The relatively short story arcs of a comic series don't lend themselves to that sort of splitting, even if we had six large articles equivalent to the collected editions I think we'd still end up with a lot of the same difficulties. I don't have better suggestions other than making small adjustments to what we have and trying to copyedit for greater brevity and less repetition.
 * I get that it is an article full of smaller details and to make it significantly smaller would necessitate losing a lot of that detail, (I haven't even added a proper description of weird characters like Muzzeltov, his Orthodox fashion sense and backwards talking) and I would prefer to keep more of details. But that's just my opinion, maybe we will come to a different consensus. -- 109.78.245.27 (talk) 05:23, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

If a character has it's own page, there is zero point in having a four to ten paragraph entry on this particular page.

Arcsoda (talk) 14:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, "analogous" comparisons are not going to work here
I've - yet again - removed all of the uncited comparisons for the various The Boys characters to more iconic superheroes. Understand that an editorial deduction (I call it Sherlocking) is not sufficient to make a comparison, as editors can't be cited. WIn order to compare, say, Lamplighter to Green Lantern, we need absolutely explicit statements from reliable sourcing that make that comparison. Without the source, we don't get to make the comparison. At all. As well, I've further noted that the comparisons between Homelander and Queen Maeve to Superman and Wonder Woman were made in terms of their tv portrayals, as opposed to blanket statements that they are analogs. Any questions? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 21:01, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I half agree and thought we were able to meet in the middle with the (Sherlocking) discussion above, but also think you're allowing yourself to get annoyed by all this having to revert poorly thought out edits, and as a result being a little bit harsh about it.

I think the key point is that Robertson (and Ennis) acknowledge the comparisons but that it is not the point, the characters are parodies but more importantly are being used to tell another story. -- 109.79.69.228 (talk) 19:35, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

The comparisons are inelegant but they're obvious and people and going to make them. Editors have shown they want to include them in the article, and will continue to add them. I think it will be easier in the long, if instead of trying to revert misguided edits, we can discuss and add a better thought out version. -- 109.79.69.228 (talk) 19:57, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I apologize if my reverting of the connections various contributors made (perhaps thinking this was a fan forum and believing that drawing such connections, or being the first to do so, was of any value whatsoever here in Wikipedia) came across as harsh. Of course there is going to be a little annoyance when you clearly spell out what someone has to do for it to be included, and they keep failing to do so. Thus the tone of my post.
 * The comparisons can be as 'inelegant' and 'obvious' as they want, so long as a RS makes that connection and not us. We work within a framework here that absolutely requires us as editors to avoid original thought and to instead bring across what RS sources say. The more exceptional the source, the more explicit the source needs to be. We do that for articles about historical events and BLPs, and the same applies to every other article in Wikipedia. Its what we must aim for, or its all a thinly-disguised list of fan-gushing.
 * I do agree that perhaps a different approach is needed, to satisfy that Homelander is explicitly (as per the source you provided) not Superman, any more than Maeve is Wonder Woman. Perhaps finding a source that notes what the iconic characters from DC and Marvel would be like in a universe where icons are veneers or clever marketing ploys. I welcome suggestions towards this end, despite having re-added the caveats about sources speaking in reference to the tv show as opposed to the comics. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 01:57, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Those caveats are incorrect. There is no shortage of sources, so the text should not say "by at least one source". I thought it was already clear from the many sources I provided in the previous discussion, and I've added more of those sources to the article directly to make it clearer, and I can add more. The comparison applies to both the comics and the televisions series, so the text shouldn't say otherwise, I've added sources for that too, if you want included in the article just ask, there is no need to add caveats and qualifications.
 * I've also tried to make it doubly clear that the direct analogies are beside the point. Beyond comparing the team to the Justice League and the Homelander/Superman, Queen Maeve/Wonder Woman comparisons, to provide a simple overview, any further comparisons are less and less helpful (and the attempts trying to directly compare Black Noir to existing characters have been actively unhelpful).
 * Instead of adding any caveats or qualifications please discuss further if you think something is missing or needs to be reinforced with more sources. -- 109.79.65.37 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:07, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your taking the time to post your thoughts here; please leave the article be until we arrive at a satisfactory consensus or agreement.
 * By noting that"at least one source" says something, that is factually correct. There might be two or three, or there might be naught but a huge pile of fanbased Sherlocking going on. I am going to absolutely remove any of that comparison that is not explicitly made by a reliable source. Your most recent source notes that Homelander and Maeve are not Superman or Wonder Woman. I am not weighing in on the value of that non-comparison, or of other comparisons. As an educated adult, I completely understand the need for context, but - and this is vital - we cannot be the ones to decide what the context is. We operate solely'' on sources; anything more than that treads into OR territory, and that is what I have been removing. I am making it clear that the series stands on its own without the comparisons to the Justice League or the Avengers, or any other team. Ideally, we wouldn't need to make any comparisons, but - again - that would be an editorial overreach.
 * If you think an alternative is needed, let's talk about it. Reverting isn't going to do anything but get the matter escalated. Lets talk instead getting petty, okay? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 00:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

First please show WP:GOODFAITH and restore the edit about Mister Marathon. That is a totally unrelated edit and there was no reason to revert it. -- 109.78.209.246 (talk) 11:03, 11 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't see it, probably because of it being tucked away in the edits found to be a bit contentious. Done. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 16:10, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

The problem with adding caveats and qualifications "at least one source" is that it is like scare quotes and is an an Expressions of doubt, deliberately undermining the source, instead of taking an objective neutral point of view and objectively presenting the source. See MOS:ALLEGED. It is the very editorial overreach you say you are trying to avoid. -- 109.78.209.246 (talk) 11:15, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that is an interestingly flexible interpretation of ALLEGED, but not one I would subscribe to. In point of fact, not all of the sources are making the comic comparisons; most are focusing om the show, not the fan-inspired allegory of what they represent. A great many consider Homelander to represent the very worst of America and Americans (1) or the Trump-era version of a superhero (2)). These same sources note a comparison to Superman, but as through a mirror darkly (if I may wax poetic).
 * See, the point I am trying to make is that we are not a fannish database, talking about what established superhero The Boys is copying; thats Ennis using the comparison to make a far larger - and, imo, far more significant - point. I personally despise fan worship and the Bodyy Fansquishy; eveary other editor knows this, and I fully own it for the contempt it is.
 * That said, there is more to these characters and to the series other than as a representation of established supers by a guy intent on burning all comic books down. We have an obligation to write about what the sources are Really saying, not just topically saying.
 * I hope that explains my point better. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 11:27, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

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Way too long entries
Butcher has his own page. The entry here needs to be cut down to size. Some phrases/full sentences are unintelligible. Arcsoda (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

"Jess Bradley" listed at Redirects for discussion
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Stormfront
mafioso is a singular and mafiosi is the plural form 174.82.163.106 (talk) 06:19, 2 January 2024 (UTC)