A/N: This chapter can be summed up as-- Why, just why? Why would Ennis come up with this shit?
This is a Regan chapter but centered around the background story of those minor "The Boys" characters who only ever appeared in the comics and not the TV show.
I think the reason why they didn't show up on the TV show is that they were errr… TOO MUCH, if you know what I mean. But I decided that I'd take on the challenge of retooling those characters and giving them a different background story that the TV show might give them instead of the super creepy and gross AF one that Ennis came up with for them. (Just why? Why, Ennis??!)
And my feelings of being offended by this shit only grew when I realized what they were Expies of.
Black Thugg was like the Luke Cage expy here…. How the F do you do a Luke Cage Expy dirty like this by naming him THAT? Racist much, Garth Ennis? I know he likes to push things far as he can because of his Edgelord persona, but this was going too far. Even for him. And this is coming from a person who read all of the Crossed series.
So as such, those characters will not be completely comic-canon-compliant, but rather a verison of what I think the TV versions might've been like. And in my verison they're a group I think Starlight would've strongly sympathized with, due to being forced to brand as something they didn't want to be. Also, they're from the 70s, but being immortal supers is a thing so they all age very slowly and would've been around for decades. So they're still around in the 2000s.
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The Superhero group, known as the Skorchers, was actually a sex-themed superhero group… though not out of choice. The truth was, every single one of them hated how they had been branded from the get-go, and had basically been coerced by Vought into accepting the offensive names and costumes they were given.
See, it all started back in the 70s when the sexual revolution was reaching its' peak. Also a time when racism, sexism, and so on were still rampant.
Thus, you got members like "Black Thugg", a black hero who was instructed to act as stereotypically thuggish as possible for the public because Vought at the time thought that was "Cool" and a good way to open the market to black fans, as they honestly thought that black people would respond more positively to a more "authentic" black man, never mind that most black people didn't act like this.
Rick Rogers, the real name behind the persona "Black Thugg", had been horrified by how Vought had wanted him to look and act. He wanted so badly to call Vought out on their racism back then and to stand up and educate them on how that's not how all black men were like!
But, the truth was that a part of him was cowardly, as he desperately needed the money to support his family during hard times. It didn't help that his parents, who were from a much older and more racist time and thus were far more desensitized to how racist the white executives could be, had told him to suck up his pride and do whatever it took to help out the black community.
So he had to go around acting like an uber-sexualized verison of a black thug? What did that matter if the millions he could make could build the community centers the black kids in his neighborhood so desperately needed and build a nicer home for his family?
So he sucked it up and acted as thuggish as the racist white executives of Vought wanted him to. He was thankful though when in the 90s Vought seemed to realize how racist this was and updated him slightly with the new name of "Urban Defender", which he would be known best as from then well into the 2000s.
Next up, Sex Vicar. With a costume that was ten times more revealing than Black Thugg's costume, as he literally wore nothing but a black bikini brief, white gloves, black boots, and a black mask. The only way to tell that he was a vicar was the white-collar thing around his neck. He didn't even wear a cross necklace or anything!
This theme confused Harry Gomez, as he had never been religious at all and was actually agnostic. He was Spanish-American though he was more American than Spanish considering that his ancestors immigrated here more than a dozen generations ago. So he barely spoke Spanish to start with, much to the shame of his Abuela.
Vought's logic was pretty shaky there. They wanted to honor his heritage, and the barest minimum of research they did on Spanish people was that they seemed to be very religious and had a shitload of movies about priests and vicars. It also probably didn't help that the best-selling movie at the time internationally was a movie called The Lustful Vicar, released on March 30, in the year 1970. It was a Swedish comedy movie that lampooned all those Spanish dramas featuring priests and nuns at the time.
Harry Gomez honestly thought it'd make way more sense to be a sexy male flamenco dancer and had suggested that, but the higher-ups in Vought had been "too inspired" by the Vicar look talking about how they could tap into the repressed religious people's desires and making religion itself sexy again.
So Harry just shrugged and threw up his hands. It helped that the money was pretty damn good, so he just kinda went along with it. It wasn't until the early 2000s that he finally got the rebranding of "Vigilant Vicar".
Loony Leftie and Prancing Poof on the other hand? They were WAY MORE pissed off about their brand names than the others were, save for Teen Temptress who had a far more legitimate reason for her personal grievances against Vought.
Loony Leftie was designed as a strawman character by Vought that they brought out to discredit liberals at the time, as during the 70s America was pretty much run by Republicans and so this was Vought's way of currying favor with the political parties.
Loony Leftie, or William Robinson, wasn't even a lefty to start with. He had initially gone with it thinking it was some great joke as he had liked to mock the leftists at the time coming from a conservative family himself. But as time went on, he stopped laughing once he realized that Vought had meant for this to be permanent, and not a few one-off acts that he put on for TV.
The more he protested this, the more he was punished. And to make things worse, at least in his own viewpoint, he found his political views being constantly challenged by both sides of the political divide to the point that he couldn't even call himself a conservative or even a leftie. There were just so many shitty and crappy people on both sides there that he found himself completely jaded to politics, or maybe burnt out would be an accurate way to describe it.
He consoled himself with the fact that at least he wasn't Prancing Poof, who had it even worse than he did!
He was only mollified when he finally got the rebrand he was pushing for in the early 2000s-- as "Militia-Man". Which was perfectly okay with him as he always supported the Army no matter what even as his political views shifted over time.
Next up, "Prancing Poof". The Superhero wasn't even gay to start with… he was actually a very firm Christian man who was happily married to a wife and had two kids.
But Vought during the 70s, in all their infinite wisdom, had latched on to the idea of diversity but were still racist, sexist, and homophobic. So naturally they had gone about it in all the wrong ways…
They needed a token gay man, so the idea of the Prancing Poof was born. The only problem was, that they couldn't find any openly gay Super, and the ones hiding in the closet were way too good at hiding in the closet. Even an intercompany personal ad sent out to almost all supers that might be interested didn't have any takers. Big surprise there-- not even superpowered gay people would want to be known as the Prancing Poof as that was an utterly offensive stereotype that Vought had come up with on their lonesome.
So they spun the roulette wheel there, and the wheel landed on David Thompson, who was able to make light constructions out of rainbow-colored light. Poor David didn't know what he was in when he came into the Vought building initially excited for his future. He had envisioned himself as a powerful Christian superhero that his kids could look up to and be proud of. He even had this whole spiel about how he could reclaim the rainbow from the gays and remind everyone that the rainbow represented god's promise and his might.
Oh, the look on his face when he was told that wasn't the case, that he was to act exactly the opposite of that… and that he had been chosen because he did have somewhat effeminate features in addition to the rainbow light constructions, which just seemed to clinch it for them.
So he wound up not even telling his wife and kids out of sheer embarrassment…. And now his marriage was on the rocks for a very long while there as his wife now thought he was sleeping around on her with another woman, and even his kids were starting to feel alienated by him as he couldn't explain all the times he disappeared and why he had been late to their school events.
A little too late, a decade after his wife and kids left him, he was finally rebranded as "Guardian Light". (think Green Lantern Expy, but with glowing rainbow light instead of green).
Finally, the worst we saved for last. Teen Temptress.
Nina Simmons at the time during the early 70s had actually been 19 years old. So she was actually a legal teenager, so the name wasn't inaccurate.
Still, Nina was keenly aware of the fact that as a Supe, she aged VERY SLOWLY. So while she was 19, she looked like she was 13. So naturally she was highly grossed out by Vought's suggestion that she brand herself as some slutty young teenage girl who went by "Teen Temptress."
They were very literally telling her to market herself to underaged boys AND predatory older men who liked them young. The two groups that she had zero sexual interest in to start with. She was the type who only ever liked people her own age… even though sometimes people her own age felt uncomfortable when she hit on them, as again, they only saw a 13-year-old girl hitting on 19-year-old boys.
She also had to hide how intelligent she actually was, the fact that she had two PhDs in both Computer Science and Linguistics apparently meant nothing to Vought as she was expected to act like a super dumb sexy bimbo.
They even had her hair done up in pigtails while she ran around in a super skimpy cheetah-print swimsuit set and an orange mask, complete with fishnet gloves and leggings.
She had hoped that they'd at least drop the "teen" part when she became 20…. But no dice. She was fuckin' stuck with that stupid name for a full TWO decades before they finally wisened up and rebranded her as "Velocita". They however did not change her stupid costume that much.
Everyone in the group had high hopes when they all had finally gotten the rebranding that they had been demanding for so long. And that they all could finally become somebody that the public and by extension themselves could be proud of, instead of being the butt of so many jokes out there.
But no. Vought didn't let them. Instead, they seemed intent on dropping them all off into the middle of nowhere and pretending like they had never made a mistake when it came to naming them such offensive things. They were actually treating the Skorchers like some embarrassing dirty secret that they didn't want to be laundered and hung out for everyone to see!
They were even going so far as to blame the Superhero group for their mistakes, claiming that they had gone along with it and thus had wanted those embarrassing names to start with! Classic victim-blaming and gaslighting, when they had been the ones who forcefully coerced and threatened the group into taking those culturally insensitive names to start with.
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So everyone had one unanimous thought on their mind as they sat around a table inside a bar together.
"Fuck Vought and may all their buildings burn!" everyone cheered as they clinked their glasses together and drank their shitty beers.
The Skochers held a sort of emotional support group here at this bar every week, as they liked to get together, get drunk, and then rant about how badly Vought had shafted them.
Guardian Light, aka David, was drunkenly admitting that he had stalked his two very adult children on the social media FaceLook and TwitterBird to find out where they lived. His wife, who he still held a flame for, had died a long time ago.
"I just found out that my daughter got married 20 years ago and she now has kids attending college! And nobody ever told me. Because they all thought I was a cheating scumbag of a father who flaked on them all the time. Do you think they would've accepted me back then when I told them I was Prancing Poof? That I wasn't really gay… that I was only pretending to be gay for pay?" David was drunkenly rambling, tears falling down his face.
"From what you've told me about them," Urban Guardian said, "I think they would've accepted you regardless. Would definitely treat the Gay Poof thing like a dirty little secret though, the same way you did and do their best to ensure that nobody else ever found out."
Milita-Man and Vicar nodded at this.
David shook his head. "God. I was way too embarrassed to swallow my pride like a real man and tell them what was really going on. And now it's too late for me. My children are getting so old, they'll be grandparents any day now. And look at me. Seemingly the same age I am all those years ago."
Velocita/Nina snorted loudly. "At least you got to age up to an adult quickly before you started aging slowly. I wasn't so lucky on that end…"
She then gestured to herself, finally looking like she was a very young 20-year-old woman in the year 2006… when in the 70s she had looked 13 despite being 19 years old. So that was 36 years of looking like a teenage child despite the fact that she was 55 years old now.
She then groaned. "You have no idea the disturbing amount of men well into their 60s wanted to sleep with me. At least the teenage boys were excusable there, as their minds probably couldn't register the fact that this hot young thing in front of them was much older than they were. But the adult men had no excuse at all, espeically when they didn't know my real age beforehand and thought I was a young thing. Thanks to seeing thousands of those creeps, I'm now convinced that the majority of the male population are secretly pedos, and that the only thing that stops them from going out and grooming girls is the law itself. I'm sure they'd all go hogwild on having child brides if it was made legal."
"Well….at least those ones uphold the law? Most Chomos wouldn't care about the law, they'd break it regardless." Urban Defender tentatively pointed out, before saying, "Not all men are like that. Look at me, I wouldn't diddle a kid even if you paid me a thousand bucks."
Velocita/Nina scoffed loudly at that. "Don't even get me started on the Chomos. A long while ago, Vought had one of the rare good ideas they had and decided to license me out to this organization dedicated to catching child predators during the 80s to 90s. I made for a very effective trap considering my looks, and it's one of the few times I was actually proud about my work. But it's the kind of work that'll make you hate men forever. Guess how many Chomos I caught during that time?"
"400?" Milita-man guessed.
"800?" Urban Defender spoke up.
"289." Vicor put his number into the pool for good measure.
David, aka Guardian Light, was the only one who remained silent.
"Fuckin' 7,800 convicted child molesters I put away into jail for good, while some of them got away on a technicality!" Velocita yelled, making the other people inside the bar stare at them. "Most of them were respectable men you'd see every day in life… teachers, fathers, doctors, cops. Even a few supers but they were the ones who got away. I even caught a priest too once."
David gasped at the last part. "No!"
Velocita nodded. "Fuckin' yes. And sometimes it wasn't just men… I would come across the occasional woman who loved children not in a motherly way at all but instead in a very warped way. If you get my drift. Sadly, they were one of the ones who got off on a technicality and because society at the time refused to believe that women could be chomos for real too."
"Jesus. I hate to admit it… but that's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if there's even a God, sometimes." Guardian Light murmured, "But that just reminds me to go to church more often to reaffirm my faith. There's got to be a reason for everything otherwise what's the point?"
"It makes me wonder if the Catholics were actually right." Vicar/Harry murmured. "If all of humanity was born with sin and evil in their hearts and that's why humans in general just suck, and why people have a hard time rising above it."
David laughed rudely. "Pfft. Catholics. Let me tell you a few things they got wrong…"
The others at the table groaned loudly. For a supposed agnostic, Harry sure liked to bring religion up a lot. He and David often got into high-spirited and positive debates over it, as that was one of the things they bonded over despite having vastly different beliefs. They even had a podcast together online, which netted them a few followers.
But, man, they did it so much while drunk that sometimes the others were sick and tired of listening to them.
"Right, I'm not drunk enough for this shit." Urban Defender spoke up. "Bartender--"
>>BONG!!<<
https://the-boys.fandom.com/wiki/The_Skorchers Roll 20
The Skorchers is a comics-only (so far) Superhero group that starred in the Dear Becky side story of the The Boys comic series. They're a group of sex-themed superheroes, based on uber-sexualized archetypes who eventually got killed off by Billy Butcher.
But suppose had they shown up on TV instead? Then all of them were Supes who got screwed over by Vought in the 70s, and not in the fun way at all. One of the most offensive and non-politically correct names ever that were forced on them when they were starting out, which ruined their super career publicly and stopped them from ever getting off the ground. All because some stupid PR man thought it'd be great to try to buck the non-traditional archetypes by being sexist and racist as much as possible without thinking about how that would look to others.
As a result, they all have a secret grudge against Vought but are forced to keep on working for them as this is the only way they can earn a living. At least all of them finally got the rebranded names they were constantly pushing for….. Two decades after their debuts tanked hard.
This TV verison of them I came up with is way less offensive as they went under more appropriate rebrandings. Their backgrounds were also altered for the TV AU verison I came up with, to make everything less gross. F you, Ennis for coming up with this offensive shit. Black Thugg?? For what was a Luke Cage expy?? Really. -_-
Effect: The Skorchers are summoned from the TV verison of The Boys where they totally did (not) exist at all, and permanently added to Regan's party until he wills them away. |
"-- bring us something stronger!"
All of them suddenly found themselves falling onto dirty ground as their chairs, the table, and the entire bar vanished around them only to be replaced by lush green forest scenery that had an old pavement road running through it that looked as if it hadn't any construction work on it in decades.
Also, there was a junkyard off there in the distance.
"The fuck?!" || "What…?" || "Huh?!" || "Cripes!"|| "Argh!"
All of them yelled out in unison, as their butts hit the ground hard.
There were loud animal noises and the sounds of fighting, which had them instantly on their feet thanks to muscle memory and decades of honed reflexes.
They promptly formed a circle, back to back as they scanned the area for danger in all directions.
"Hey, you! Over here! Help us!" a black-haired and green-eyed man was waving them over while keeping himself half-hidden behind a badly damaged black car, while a very familiar-looking man was now wrestling with what looked like a… massive dinosaur and his mate out in the front of it.
Not the scientifically accurate dinosaur type with the fur-like protofeathers that many were said to have, but the stereotypical ones that you usually saw in comic books and some kids' movies.
"Hey, is that… The Deep?!" Vigilant Vicar pointed at The Deep currently wrestling the male dinosaur, "He was one of the Seven until recently!"
The recognition of a famous hero was enough to galvanize them all into action.
Guardian Light flew up into the air, a rainbow aura engulfing him as he used his colorful light to create a jail cell-shaped construct around the dinosaurs, safely containing them and firmly securing them in place no matter how much they struggled against the hard light bars.
Urban Defender moved fast, using his superstrength to keep the dinosaurs pinned in place by holding on to their tails which poked out of the cage.
Vigilant Vicar and Militia Man flew over to the black-haired man cowering by the car, while Velocita herself super-sped over there to the same spot.
"Hail there, citizen! Do you need help getting to safety?" Milita-man asked.
The black-haired and green-eyed man smiled. "Not really, and I'm not a citizen. I was the one who summoned you here, so technically I'm a super like you are."
"Really. I've never heard of any super who could summon things." Velocita replied skeptically.
"Here, let me prove it." The young man said, while mumbling under his breath, "I hope I get another vehicle since this one got totaled…"
>Bong<
https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Hayes_Autos Roll 13
Hayes Autos is an auto repair garage appearing in Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online, located on Little Bighorn Avenue, South Los Santos.
The garage is quite small and is normally inaccessible in free roam, although it can be entered after finishing the first and third car theft missions for Weston. The exterior is in a noticeably run-down condition, and many wrecked vehicles can be found here.
Effect: A run-down, ruined verison of this is placed right next to the car junkyard, giving Regan and or any other person a space to work on fixing up wrecked cars into something workable. |
All three of the supers were startled as a building by the junkyard in the distance (which actually wasn't that far away) suddenly appeared.
Regan sighed and groaned. "Damnit, I wanted an actual CAR, not a car garage. Hold on, let me try again."
Vicar and Milita-man looked at each other at this.
>Bong<
https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/RCV 12
The Brute RCV (Riot Control Vehicle/Van) is a law enforcement truck featured in Grand Theft Auto Online as part of The Doomsday Heist update. The RCV is heavily based on the INKAS Armored Riot Control Vehicle, sharing the overall design and purpose, albeit with a wider body, flatter roof and vertically mounted headlights.
Effect: As this was a pretty low permanent roll, the RCV Regan gets is pretty battered and old, with the engine barely working. But hey, it still runs! And the armored feature of this RCV is intact. |
"YES!" Regan cheered as what looked like an old beat-up RCV appeared next to the black car a foot away.
Velocita then commented, "I take it that you aren't in complete control of your summoning abilities, then? Would explain why I haven't heard of you at all."
Vigilant Vicar and Milita-man's confusion cleared up at that.
Of course! Vought wouldn't have any use for a Super who couldn't even control his power at all, much less what kind of thing he'd get if he summoned something. No wonder they hadn't heard about somebody like that, he was effectively a useless person who most likely had been discarded by Vought.
The Deep finally killed off the predatory dinosaur couple, and with that, the three of them went to join the main group standing by the black battered car and the newly summoned old RCV.
"Regan, you alright? I see you got us a new ride." The Deep replied.
Regan nodded, and with that, he turned to the Skorchers and said, "I believe introductions are in order now that the current threat is dead."
At this, everyone took turns introducing each other… and man did it feel so good to be able to introduce themselves to a more famous super using their newly minted rebranded names instead of their old embarrassing ones. Even if that famous super had recently fallen from grace due to a certain scandal.
No longer would they get *THAT LOOK* from the rest of the superhero community for having names like Black Thugg, Teen Temptress, or even Prancing Poof. Those names no longer existed, as far as the Skorchers were concerned.
Now Velocita, Urban Defender, Guardian Light, Milita-man, and Vigliant Vicar always existed forever.
"So where are we currently? I don't recognize this place." Vigilant Vicar asked.
"We're currently in Montana near the old ruins of Great Falls," Regan answered.
"Montana? Huh, that's a far distance from Iowa." Milita-Man replied, "You can summon things from that far away? That's pretty cool."
The Deep snickered, as he realized that the new Supers here really had no idea what happened. He then turned to Regan, saying, "Mind if I do the dramatic reveal? I've always wanted a moment like this one but the assholes in the rest of the Seven always stole my thunder at times like this."
Regan smiled. "I don't mind. They're from your world, so it's only right that you break the news to them."
The Skorchers looked at each other with vaguely puzzled expressions over this exchange.
The Deep cleared his throat as he stepped forward striking a suitably dramatic and heroic pose. "I know this might come as a huge shock. But I swear to you upon my mother's grave that I am speaking the truth. We are no longer on the Earth we were born on, but rather an alternate Earth! Congrats, for alongside myself you are now part of history in the making."
"Nice." Regan nodded approvingly. "When they make a movie about you, they'll definitely put that in there."
The Skorchers blinked. Huh. what??
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A/N: Again the summoning parallels seem to pop up again. Karina summoned a super-garage, and then now Regan summons what is a super shitty garage. Hmm.
Anyway, I hope I successfully retooled the Skorchers in a way that seems less offensive and how the TV show would reimagine them.
