Spoilers for The Boys comic series below While you’d think The Boys’ biggest target of commentary was Superman with Homelander, Thor actually received much harsher criticism through his parody hero. dark Stormfront. While Homelander is more of a general critique of superheroes as a whole, Stormfront is a direct critique of Thor and the more damaging aspects related to the character.
The bread and butter of the boys in the comics parody superheroes with over-the-top, childish, and gross parodies that are gross, crude, and ultra-violent. The Supes weren’t real heroes, even though the world believed they were. Among the heroes parodied in The Boys comic book series were Superman with Homelander, The Flash with A-Train, Martian Manhunter with Jack from Jupiter, and Aquaman with the Deep. However, The Boys of the Marvel Universe spoof, which featured spoofs of Iron Man with Tek Knight and Soldier Boy with Captain America on Super-Team Payback, includes the show’s most biting parody. The comic called out Thor for the symbolism that Nazis are obsessed with in real life.
While writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson have parodied just about every major DC and Marvel character at some point, Stormfront’s characterization as the universe’s Thor is rooted in critical criticism. most important of Ennis with regard to the superhero. When writing Thor in the past, Ennis made a point of observing how real-life Nazis and white supremacists co-opted Viking symbolism and Norse mythology. In Thor: Vikings (with artist Glenn Fabry), different generations of an ancient Druid’s bloodline are brought together, with Viking Sigrid seeing a swastika on a time-displaced Nazi plane as a Triskele, the Norse symbol of death. and rebirth. In response, the pilot informs his ancestors that these symbols were stolen by “a maniac who sold [the country’s] soul to hell. In Ennis’ handling of Thor, it seems like the writer is trying hard not to ignore the modern cultural context of Norse symbolism and mythology — in The Boys universe, there’s even a group known as The Boys. name of Children of Stormfront, consisting of what Butcher calls, “Scandi, Viking, Nazi” themed Supes.
Homelander is a murderer, but Stormfront is a Nazi
While Homelander, a parody of Superman, is obviously The Boys’ most important villain, he’s also a more general critique of the larger idea of superheroes. Ennis portrayed Homelander as a teenager, acting as a metaphor for undeserved and unbridled power, while Stormfront takes calculated steps to commit genocide and represents a specific ideology. While Marvel’s Thor obviously offers many different readings, Ennis and Robertson take every opportunity to call out the most problematic or laughable aspects of all of Marvel and DC’s heroes, and for Thor, that means not allowing potential symbolism of an imposing god with blond hair. shrouded in Viking imagery not to be questioned.
The Boys turning Thor into an unrepentant Nazi makes a statement about how the Marvel character could be dangerously and wrongly misinterpreted by bad actors. While Stormfront isn’t the only in-universe parody of Thor, he’s certainly the boys’ most specific and biting criticism of an individual Marvel or DC character – much more than Homelander removes the specific idea of Superman.
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