If you've been here before, you likely know some of my opinions about super hero shows. I figure The Boys is the best live action super hero show, ever. I think part of that is that it pretty much takes the traditional take on super heroics and spins it 180 degrees to show that the "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" maxim would hold true in a world populated by super heroes, just as it would ours.
I also happen to think that Young Justice is the best super hero animated show ever made. Considering that is a category that includes Batman the Animated Series and the Timm-verse Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, that's a VERY high bar.
I think I may need to start qualifying my picks. Young Justice is great. It is also a conventional take on the genre, with familiar heroes filling familiar roles. The Boys reaches greatness by intentionally defying that mould and it seems to me that I need to break down my picks a bit further. I think I need to have a "Best of" for both conventional and unconventional super hero shows, animated and live action.
So, The Boys tops the unconventional/live action category. I have yet to make the "conventional/live action" call, but I will.
Young Justice is my pick for "conventional/animated" super hero show.
The reason for this article is to tell you about my pick for "unconventional/animated" super hero show.
It's a natural consequence of the massive popularity of the super hero genre in movies and on television over the last decade or so that we're starting to see tales that put a spin or twist on the heroes we've come to love on screen. It happened in comics decades ago.
For years and years, after the initial explosion of the genre in the first half of the twentieth century, the self imposed "comics code" forced creators to blunt the edges of their craft until all we were left with was Marvel and DC Comics telling pretty vanilla Spider-Man and Batman stories. I'll spare you the history that brought independent creations and hardcore story telling to comic pages, but it happened. Today there are myriad great (and tons of not-so great) comic properties that have hacked the standard narrative and continue to do so. For decades, not all super heroes on the comic book page have been as good or super as you might expect. Now that spin is reaching theatre and television super hero stories in a big way.
The Boys is a prime example. Recently we've been gifted with another.
Amazon produced an absolutely spectacular adaptation of Robert Kirkman's Invincible.
If you're unfamiliar, the comic imagines a world very much like the DC Comics standard model, with a Superman (J.K. Simmons' Omni-Man) and a Justice League (The Guardians of the Globe) but from there it takes a sharp left. Imagine if after being on Earth for thirty or so years, Superman turned out to be a bad guy. At this point he's got a super powered son (Steven Yeun's Invincible), a wife (Sandra Oh) and a government handler (Walter Goggins' Cecil) who now have to deal with that revelation.
It's more complex than that, but that's pretty much as much as you get without massive spoilers. Let's just say it's easily the best "unconventional/animated" super hero story telling I've ever seen. Brutal, gory, complex, action-packed and despite its teen-centric narrative it manages to avoid dwelling on the teen angst. The voice acting is superb, the animation smooth and beautiful and the writing is crisp.
With one episode to go, season one has risen to the peak of the genre. Long may it reign!
*** UPDATE ***
Invincible has been renewed for Season 2 AND Season 3!
Of course, by "season", this show means 8 episodes, so probably a total of 24 by the end of season 3. Not exactly a massive library, but if they keep the storytelling crisp and tight, short seasons are fine by me!
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