The Boys Diabolical is an animated anthology series set somewhat in the Boys universe that explores the characters and the Vought Corporation. The series is packed with Easter Eggs, hidden details and many things you missed that callback to the comic book series. Even the title Diabolical is named after Billy Butcher’s catchphrase and there are some major motifs they take from the source material.
This is seen early on in the title sequence for the episodes which heavily features Billy Butcher’s dog Terror. Though he appeared at one point in the live-action show he’s pretty much been missing from the main series. However, this little guy was in a lot of the comics constantly trying to f**k anything he could find which he does in a number of these openers.
Quick disclaimer, Amazon sent out the episodes for review earlier in the week in a slightly different order than the way they’ve been released. This review is broken down into two sections but will be slightly re-ordered from the way you probably watched them. So make sure you’ve seen it all before reading on!
Throughout this video, we’ll be going over ‘I’m Your Pusher’, followed by ‘An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents’, then ‘Nubian vs Nubian’ before finishing with ‘Laser Baby’s Day Out’. Our second post will cover the episodes that we don’t talk about in this one and you’ll still get everything broken down when you fix this damn door.
I’m Your Pusher
This episode very much feels like a love letter to the comics and each character here carries their original comic design, including Hughie who was based upon Simon Pegg. Pegg initially was going to play him in live-action but he aged up a bit and thus they cast Jack Quaid instead. However, Pegg appeared as his father throughout the series.
Like what we hear, Hughie in the comics is Scottish and Billy also doesn’t have a beard but he does have a much thicker cockney accent.
References to the Comics
They open in what I believe is Vinnie’s Comics which is where we met The Legend in the source material. A Stan Lee parody, this comic book creator pretty much detailed the entire life of the boys to Hughie including Homelander’s origin story.
Whilst doing this, he held up an orange-covered comic with the Seven on the front that is somewhat similar to the one The Legend held up to Hughie. In the background is a plane and it was during this moment in the comics that Legend told Hughie about what the Seven did on 9/11. Issue 21 detailed how they were sent in by Vought as a publicity stunt to help a hijacked plane but they ended up having no idea what they were doing and thus it crashed. The plane crash scene was of course referenced in the show but it’s way more messed up in the source material.
There’s also a one for the Boys graphic novel and amongst the books, we can catch the titles. This includes The G-men who are an X-men parody that has their own show coming up. There’s Cold Snap, a G-man member as well as Black Noir.
Sordid Supes
I’m your pusher, is playing on the song Pusherman by Curtis Mayfield. This appears at the end of the entry and it is about a drug dealer which sets the tone for what’s to come. We meet one called OD who runs narcotics for all the Supes, whatever you want, he got it.
In the comics, we learn that most of the Supes are sexual sadists that have sordid parties and we drop in on one. Butcher hired Hughie to run surveillance on several of these; early on, these were the missions that he tended to take part in.
We can catch several parodies including a Gemini Man kissing two people, pyro using his flame powers to spark up a strange substance under a spoon. Next is an elephant man, a Groot parody that grows weed and it seems like the kind of party you’d never want to leave.
Butcher
The next morning he opens the door to Terror and is greeted by Billy Butcher.
During their conversation, he brings up Jack From Jupiter and also A-train who speeds by and snags the packet that has a shark on it. This could also be a nod to the Deep though he doesn’t appear in the entry. Jack from Jupiter is a Martian Manhunter-esque hero that appeared in the comics and at one point during the porn parody that lamplighter watched. He shows up later in the entry and was a founding member of the seven.
There’s also a nod to Queen Maeve’s depression, and we catch her drinking a Martini which she constantly used to nurse in the comics. Butcher is interested in The Great Wide Wonder, for whom he’s cooked something up, using Frenchie’s help.
After hanging him out the window, Billy says ‘you’ll believe a c**t can fly’ which is playing on the tagline from the original Superman movie, “you’ll believe a man can fly”.
After convincing him to do it Hughie and Billy meet him at a park bench which is a location that appeared at several points in the comics. This was where the former met Billy and also Starlight.
The Great Wide Wonder
This town needs an enema and it comes in the form of the Great Wide Wonder who’s being inducted into the superhero hall of fame.
In attendance is Jack From Jupiter, Queen Maeve and also Homelander who introduces Iron Cast, who I believe is a play on the Superman character Steele with a name based on Iron Man.
Now the Great Wide Wonder has his own Superman moment as he jets up into space and then flies through the air. High as a kite, he creates deafening sonic booms and flies through Iron Casts stomach which is somewhat ironic as we found out that he used to drink the blood of kids who suffered from life-ending diseases.
Amongst the dead, we can also catch the Catwoman from OD’s party who looks like she’s based on Cheetah.
It’s a PR disaster but as with all things Vought, the Seven members play up that something else is afoot and they say that Galaxis has returned. Galaxis is a parody of Galactus, a giant space dude that travels through the cosmos feasting on planets.
Speaking of feasting we get Iron Cast’s blood everywhere and just in the way that he feasted on the blood of children, a seagull now feasts on him. This calls back to the beginning with Terror who grabbed a blood bag out the trash and it brings it all together to show it’s all connected.
Animated Short Where Pissed Off Supes Kill Their Parents
Written by Justin Roiland, this episode has the exact same animation style as Rick and Morty and Justin even voices a character called Papers later on.
As we learned from the comic and series, Compound V was used to try and give kids superhuman abilities but what they ended up being was completely random. The more useless ones were sent to the Red River Assisted Living for the gifted child centre. This is very much playing on Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters which is of course where parents that couldn’t handle their kids being mutants sent them.
I don’t know if we can show cartoon boobs on Youtube, so I’m not going to, but there are several comic book parodies including a quote-unquote Reverse-Flash that moves at super slow speeds. There’s a beast boy that can turn into any animal but he also gets their brain too. There’s Aqua Agua a water-based character parody that’s of course playing on Aquaman, Sunspot from the New Mutants and X-men except this guy melts stuff with his balls, a hulk figure, the human tongue and Ghost who’s probably playing on Ghost from the MCU.
Telling us all of this is slick Narrator who’s voiced by Christian Slater.
After learning the truth about Compound V they seek revenge on their self-centred parents and head out on a killing spree. This is to the sound of Hootie and The Blowfish, I only wanna be with you which we learned at the start was the only song that Boom Box could play.
The Parents
We see Slo-Mo choke his dad and there’s actually a picture of him crossing a finish line at a race which is a bit ironic as his son movies so slow. Fang’s dad has a cap that says Fang’s dad, behind him is a poster for A-train and we can also see that Ghost’s parents have several Queen Maeve wine bottles in their fridge.
After murdering her dad in a very brutal manner, Homelander shows up, probably to take the milk from her parent’s fridge, and he spam-attacks his eye lasers wiping everyone out except Ghost.
She swears to her mother she’ll be back and we close out with the narrator narrating his dad’s death and how he scooped his face off with a spoon before wearing it. We cut to his baby pics with a smile being put across with a blood stain like the joker.
Joker is known as an unreliable narrator and is that…is that an easter egg…let’s move on before we think too much.
Nubian Vs Nubian
Now that takes us into Nubian Vs Nubian, both of which are major parodies of Storm and Black Panther.
In case you don’t know the pair are actually married in the comics. In this, they even put on the African accent at points from the MCU movies. She appeared in the comics whilst he showed up in season 1. They are voiced by Aisha Tyler and Don Cheadle respectively.
We open with Ground Hawk robbing a bank and if you’re familiar with the source material you’ll likely recognise him as being the leader of the G-Men. Like the comics, he has hammers for hands and can’t even play his VS5 which is of course a Vought games console. Voiced by John Dimaggio, aka the man behind Bender in Futurama, we learn this opening is a staged PR stunt carried out by Vought.
Nubia and The Prince fall in love whilst fighting him and we find out that they had a daughter together. Over the last 8 years, they’ve slowly fallen out of love and she goes to Ground Hawk to ask for him to fight her parents once more to stop their divorce.
At night, the prince reads his daughter a story and this somewhat feels like it’s in the same vein as the opening of Black Panther.
In her mother’s phone, she finds Ground Hawk’s number and amongst the contacts, we can see A-Train and Big Game both of which appeared in the comics.
There’s also Gunpowder, a retired Supe that was once a member of Payback.
At one point Nubian Prince mentions The Young Americans, another team from the graphic novels who like to have their buttholes finger popped.
She goes directly to Ground Hawk and after convincing him to save her parent’s marriage the beat the SEVEN shades of s**t out of everyone.
They bring up that they’re not even in the same continuity this season and it’s kinda a joke at this point how convoluted everything seems to be with there being multiple versions of the same characters across different timelines.
Beating the crap out of him makes them fall in love and due to Nubia’s weather powers she causes a storm that night. In the morning they get handed their divorce papers after arguing about buying coffee, bringing the episode to a close.
Laser Baby’s Day Out
The final episode we’re breaking down this video is a Looney Tunes knock-off that seems to be pulling on the cartoon Buddy’s day out. This was later adapted into things like the Tom and Jerry Episode Busy Buddies and the movie Baby’s Day out.
Initially, we follow a Vought worker who attends a lab where the super kids are created. Beside his bed, we can catch a Vought-a-Burger cup and he goes past the adoption centre into one of the labs.
A similar environment popped up in the first season and much like what we have here, there was a baby that could shoot lasers out of its eyes.
Behind the holding doors, we see an electrical kid, one that can spray poisonous gas and the titular baby.
This is the final day of her trial and he concludes she has no control over her powers. In his office, we see a poster for Starlight and after finding out the baby is due to be terminated he launches a rescue attempt.
The villain of this episode is a Supes with a giant brain that feels like he’s based upon the Hulk character The Leader.
He also wears an outfit similar to Darkwing Duck which if you’re a 90s baby you should recognise.
If you don’t you had no childhood and I don’t want you to watch this video. Get out of my sight.
After going to the Zoo, the swat team aim their guns at her but she goes atchoo and fires the lasers at…atchoo.
Best jokes around.
Inside the zoo, we see crocodiles based on the one from the Disney Peter Pan film and also Pirhanas that look like Flounder from the little mermaid.
There’s a cardboard cut-out of The Deep and a Gorilla which kills some of the Vought Soldiers. The baby in Baby’s Day Out also got in a Gorilla Pen and this helped out which I think this ending could be a homage to.
One of the swat team members ends up burning themselves with a flamethrower and they come out looking like Wiley Coyote who also used to have it happen to him quite a lot.
Things culminate at a construction site which is where a lot of these sorts of episodes often tend to wind up with the baby crawling across a steel girder similar to Baby’s Day Out.
She wants the big jitter bean ball which is a coffee company that appeared in the previous episode and it shows up throughout these.
The leader arrives to kill them and the kid finally gets control of her powers and she cuts his head in half. Calling him Dada the pair take down the forces of Vought with her being aimed like Billy used the baby in the first season.
That’s all boys and this concludes the first part of our Diabolical breakdown. Have to say I really really enjoyed it and obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on the show below.
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