Scene: A school playground near Belfast in the ’70s
Children: Do you love god?
Garth: No, I am terrified of him.
When you grow up on the fringes of ethno-nationalist conflict, an organised religion that can move people to unspeakable violence can be petrifying. If you stop to think about it, that is.
It’s something that The Boys creator Garth Ennis realised at an early age. Now a series on Amazon Prime, The Boys franchise began life as a 72-issue, 12-volume graphic novel series that Ennis and artist Darick Robertson created over six years between 2006 and 2012. In a genre fascinated with “origin” stories, the improbable origins of The Boys grant it greater significance in a time of social media.
Its influences are not of our time, but reverberate deafeningly today. To see it merely as another superhero fight fest is to deprive yourself of riding a rollercoaster in a…