List of The Boys characters

The following is a list of fictional characters in the comic book series The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson.

The Boys are a CIA black ops team, initially created by Col. Greg Mallory to manage, police, and sometimes liquidate Vought-American's superhumans. While this is in part to help protect normal humans from the actions of the largely out of control "supes," this is also to ensure that the company lack the stability or the platform to push the use of superhumans in national defense. Over time, however, the team's focus was changed, due to Butcher's increased influence, from one of management and containment to one of direct confrontation. As Mallory notes in #55, 14 people were killed by the Boys from 1987 to 1995 and "nearly three times that number" between 1995 and 2002, when Butcher had gained more influence. This coincides with Mallory belief that in Issues #54-55 that in spite of the seductiveness of the concept of special forces teams, the application of them can often go wrong as they try to justify their budgets and create their private conflicts. As a result, Mallory feels that the original concept for the team has gone awry, and would never have created the unit as it currently stands.

The first iteration of the Boys were decommissioned after a disastrous confrontation with the Seven in 2001 that resulted in civilian casualties. However, the unit was reformed a few years later - indicated in #1 to be soon after the 2004 Presidential election - and have carried on where they left off. Due to the fact that direct confrontation may be needed, all the members have enhanced strength and durability due to injections of Compound V, and all (with the exception of Hughie) show no restraint when on the attack - although they avoid killing when it complicates matters in most cases.

A native Englishman and the leader of the current incarnation of the Boys, Butcher is the second most prominent character in the series, aside from Wee Hughie. He was the first member of the team recruited by team founder, Greg Mallory, and served as the original group's second-in-command until its disbandment as the result of events depicted in #50. It was he that coined the team name "the Boys" because in the East End of London "the boys" were who you said you'd send in to take care of troublemakers. At the beginning of the series, he works to reassemble the old team, with a new fifth member filling in for Mallory, whose leadership position Butcher takes for himself.

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