As Robertson recalled to Rolling Stone, Ennis’ first pitch for “The Boys” was about a team of private investigators living in the DC Universe and investigating the messes left behind by superheroes. If this version had been made and incorporated into the DC Universe, then the real “Superman” and “Batman” comics would be reframed as the equivalent of the propaganda Vought International puts out to sanitize the Seven. Superhero fans had only ever gotten the prettied-up versions of their favorite characters, which “The Boys” would peel back.
Ennis has written similar comics to the one he pitched as “The Boys.” His “Hitman” series stars Tommy Monaghan, a superpowered criminal living in Gotham City, and features occasional DC cameos; issue #34 guest stars Superman, and surprisingly enough, Clark and Tommy hit it off. In Ennis’ 1995 “Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe,” Frank Castle’s family is collateral damage in a superhero battle, not a gangster shoot-out, so the Punisher’s vendetta is against superheroes instead (making him basically a proto-Billy Butcher).
By the time “The Boys” #1 hit shelves, the comic had already been reworked to use parody characters; Robertson claims he felt the initial idea was “unworkable” and convinced Ennis to revise it. DC Comics did publish the first six issues (under its WildStorm imprint), but “The Boys” then moved to Dynamite Entertainment for the rest of its run. According to Ennis, DC ultimately decided that even the final version of “The Boys” was a step too far:
“When you have comics that — even superficially — look a bit too much like the company’s regular output, and the characters in them are doing the most ghastly things and behaving in the most awful way, and blaspheming and swearing and so on, that creates a real problem.”
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