Over the course of The Boys comics, the team took on plenty of heroes who parodied big names, from massacring the stand-in X-Men to blackmailing their equivalent of Thor, but while few “heroes” got off easy once they were in Billy Butcher’s sights, The Boys’ stand-in for Daredevil got it worse than most, and for a weirdly specific reason.

In the TV adaptation, Daredevil’s role was filled by the hero Blindspot – a ninja-like trainee clearly based on what viewers knew of Matt Murdock from the hugely popular Netflix series based on his adventures. There, it was Homelander who brutalized the hero – a show of force when he felt Vought International were attempting to dictate membership in the Seven. In the comics, however, the Boys’ version of Daredevil is dealt with even before the series starts, and was in fact one of Butcher’s first and most gruesome victims.

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The Boys actually details two attacks on Daredevil-alike characters, who may or may not be the same man. In the prequel miniseries “Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker,” the final issue sees Butcher setting about a rich Supe with a crowbar, mocking his pleas for mercy by saying, “I thought you was meant to be the bloke without fear.” It’s a clear reference to Daredevil’s “Man without Fear” moniker, and the victim is also implied to be connected with Vought’s actual business dealings, suggesting that – like Matt – he’s a lawyer. Butcher also reveals he’s attacking this Supe because his “antics” blinded a cop, asking him if he can still see as a clear meta-reference to the blind hero of Hell’s Kitchen.

This “Daredevil” suffers a brutal beating, partly to punish him for his sins, but mostly to send a message. This story takes place when Gregory Mallory and Billy Butcher were just starting the black-ops team that would come to be known as the Boys, and they leave the Daredevil stand-in with a clear message that when a Supe steps out of line, “We’re what happens. Spread the word,” before Butcher orders the hero to stretch out his arms so the attack can continue. But either this character didn’t learn his lesson, or Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s series features two versions of the devilish hero, because there’s another reference in The Boys #7.

Here, Butcher is taking Hughie to meet the Legend in a comic-book shop, the two killing time by Hughie selecting a hero displayed on one of the racks and Butcher revealing their dark secrets. Getting to a hero Butcher identifies as “the savior of Hell’s Kitchen” – again, a slight variant on a title Matt goes by – he reveals that following the hero’s criminally reckless behavior, Butcher “cut his d*** off, an’ to this day the Savior of Hell’s Kitchen’s been sittin’ down to p***.” This is an extreme punishment Ennis had used before in his Preacher series, targeting Herr Starr, a former Nazi whose increasingly severe injuries were a dark running gag in the series.

So why does The Boys single their version/s of Daredevil out for such specific attention? In the world of the story, his crimes are brutal and Butcher is looking to make a statement, but outside the world of the story, it’s likely Ennis was carrying over a grudge from his work at Marvel. There, Ennis spent a lot of time writing Punisher, casting the grim vigilante Frank Castle as a dark avenger cut from different cloth to the silly, moralistic heroes who populate the world around him.

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Given Daredevil’s prior links to the Punisher, he became something of a recurring example of why superheroes were too simplistic for Ennis’ dark take, most famously in a scene recreated in Daredevil’s TV series where Frank creates an elaborate trap where Matt will have to shoot and kill him to stop him killing a criminal, arguably exposing the failures of black and white morality in a more realistic world. It certainly seems like with all of Marvel and DC to parody in The Boys, Ennis couldn’t resist resurrecting this old grudge for his very own version of Daredevil… and then coming back for seconds.

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About The Author


Robert Wood
(398 Articles Published)

Robert Wood is a comics editor for Screen Rant and the author of ‘The False Elephant (and 99 Other Unreasonably Short Stories).’ He received his Master’s in English Literature from Lancaster University, and now happily spends his days applying it to Daredevil and the Hulk.

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