The Boys has become one of the most popular superhero franchises, which is hilarious considering how much both the show and the comic book it’s based on absolutely hate superhero franchises. But, nevertheless, The Boys is certainly a superhero franchise that’s here to stay, something that became clear with the spin-off series Gen V, and with the announcement of a new spin-off prequel series, Vought Rising. And in the latter series, The Boys finally has the chance to explore one particular team of supes that not even the comic fully went into.
In The Boys #54 by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, and Keith Burns, Hughie Campbell and Greg Mallory (the original founder of the Boys) are discussing the history of supes. Specifically, the two are talking about how Vought-American’s supes once fought in the military, and how they didn’t last very long at all. After completely botching a military operation that resulted in dozens of American casualties, supes were quickly pulled from the military by Vought-American, and rebranded as domestic, crime-fighting superheroes. Vought-American even came up with the perfect team-name for them: Crimefighters Incorporated.
Crimefighters Incorporated would eventually become the superhero team Payback (The Boys’ parody of Marvel’s Avengers). However, in The Boys’ comic book continuity, this team wouldn’t take that name for some time, meaning they operated as Crimefighters Incorporated throughout at least the 1950s. Not only that, but Crimefighters Incorporated is the second generation of these heroes, as every one of them – including Soldier Boy – died alongside the American soldiers they got killed. That means there’s an entire supe team in The Boys’ history that fans have never met.
Who Are the Crimefighters Incorporated?
The Boys’ Mysterious Supe Team, Explained
The Crimefighters Incorporated members were: Soldier Boy, The Steel Knight, Laddio, Eagle the Archer, ManBot, The Buzzer, and Crimson Countess. They made their debut in The Boys on the front page of The Washington Post, which Mallory was reading in disbelief, as he previously watched every one of those supes die right before his eyes. However, he quickly realized that these were new people who had inherited these superhero identities, and their mission was going to be much different from that of their predecessors. Crimefighters Incorporated strictly operates as a superhero group in the United States, not soldiers fighting overseas.
In fact, this team was the first of its kind in The Boys universe, paving the way for the likes of Payback and the Seven under the Vought-American umbrella. While little is known about this team in terms of specific missions and stories, it’s easy to surmise what Crimefighters Incorporated was like just by looking at the more recent superhero teams in The Boys canon. In other words, it’s fair to say they were a corrupt group of phonies who only did Vought’s bidding in-between not doing anything at all.
But, that itself leaves fans with nothing but questions. There wasn’t a version of the Boys back then (Mallory was still trying to get that off the ground). So, did Crimefighters Incorporated operate without opposition? The supes certainly weren’t fighting real crime, and were more than likely drug-addicted, sex-crazed, violent lunatics like the other supes in The Boys. So, what did they do? And who did they fight? This is an entire chapter of The Boys history that fans know nothing about, and while there will certainly be some changes, that’s something Vought Rising is finally free to explore.
Crimefighters Incorporated Consists Entirely of Legacy Heroes, Mocking a Common Comic Book Trope
The supes on Crimefighters Incorporated like Soldier Boy and Eagle the Archer are clear parodies of characters like Captain America and Hawkeye, and that includes the fact that those characters are a part of a chain of legacy heroes. The Soldier Boy and Eagle the Archer in Crimefighters Incorporated were second-gen, as the original heroes died during WWII. Similarly, both Captain America and Hawkeye have passed the torch to the next generation themselves, with characters like Sam Wilson and Kate Bishop taking their respective mantles.
In The Boys, the act of one supe passing their moniker to a successor is far less heroic than in Marvel Comics. In Marvel, a hero will recognize a rising hero’s potential, and give them their superhero name, creating a legacy character that honors the original. In The Boys, legacy heroes are created as a means to preserve Vought-American’s IP, banking on name recognition to maintain a specific supe’s profitability. Which, in the meta sense, is exactly what Marvel does, just not within its stories.
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The Boys’ Creator Has a Clever Cameo in the Series That Takes a Shot at Stan Lee
The Boys creator, Garth Ennis, gives himself a cameo in his series, and he uses that opportunity to take a shot at Stan Lee with an insulting parody.
Crimefighters Incorporated is The Boys calling out comic book publishers’ use of legacy characters as a way of selling the same ‘product’ with old superheroes, rather than coming up with new heroes/stories. That makes the team even more interesting, as not only is this a corner of The Boys universe that’s unexplored, but it’s also another chance for the series to take a jab at the ‘superhero genre’ establishment – in both the comics and the films. And now, The Boys’ prequel series will have a chance to explore those aspects of Crimefighters Incorporated the way the comics never did.
The Boys
The Boys franchise is a satirical and dark superhero series based on the comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. It explores a world where superheroes, or “Supes,” are corrupt, violent, and morally bankrupt, all controlled by the powerful corporation Vought International. The story centers around two opposing groups: The Boys, a vigilante team aiming to expose and defeat the corrupt heroes, and The Seven, Vought’s elite team of Supes led by the ruthless Homelander.
