The Boys’ Version of Stan Lee Was Too Disrespectful For The Show

Warning! Spoilers for The Boys comic series below.

The Boyscomic book series was intentionally written to parody the world of superheroes, meaning many heroes and villains were satirized in the comic’s original run. One of the few real-life people who were parodied was the late Marvel icon Stan Lee, whose character the Legend was so offensive, there’s pretty much no way they’d ever appear in the popular live-action series without serious changes.

In both The Boys comic book and television series, Marvel and DC heroes are parodied into much darker versions of their original counterparts. For example, in the Amazon series, The Deep (Aquaman) is a sexual predator, Homelander (Superman) is an outright psychopath, and A-Train (The Flash) is a drug-addict with little remorse for killing innocent bystanders. In the comic, the Supes have even more messed-up backstories. One comic character who hasn’t yet made his television debut is the Legend, a parody of Stan Lee that probably will never be translated to the show in his original comic form.

First appearing in The Boys #7 by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the Legend is an old, bald man with glasses and suspenders who was a comic book creator who used to work for Vought as he helped develop the Supes’ backstory in comics starting in the 1950s. He played an important role in shaping the general public’s perception of superheroes through his comics, but the Legend is shown to be quite depraved. In his first appearance, he’s shown to be living beneath a comic store as a very racist, sex-hungry man, who serves as an informant for The Boys. His dialogue is downright vile and he’s seen partaking in (or often talking about) sexual acts with prostitutes. He even has sex with Queen Mauve in one of the weirdest scenes from the entire comic.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind, the Legend first appeared in the comics more than a decade before Lee’s death and while the pastiche wasn’t particularly kind, like most characters in The Boys universe, it was an extremely tongue-in-cheek take on the Marvel legend. All characters in The Boys were extremely exaggerated, versions of popular superheroes and in the Legend’s case, Stan Lee.

It would definitely make sense for The Boys to introduce a character like the Legend into the television universe but with that said, like most of the Amazon series’ versions of the comic’s characters, he’ll need to be toned down significantly – especially considering Lee’s death. It’s a great idea to have a character who helped shape the public’s perception of Supes via comics, but it has to be done in a respectful way if they intend on parodying Lee. In the comics, the Legend is intentionally disrespectful and a pretty harsh parody of Stan Lee – on the show, the same thing shouldn’t be done.

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Liam McGuire
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Lead writer for Screen Rant’s comic team. [email protected]. Find me on Twitter @LiamRMcGuire for comic news and reporting.

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