‘The Boys’: What Powers Does Homelander Have vs the Comics?

Amazon

One of the main characters in The Boys on Amazon is the very overpowered Homelander, who seems like a Superman of sorts. Just what are his powers and how do they compare to the comics? This post has minor spoilers for Season 1. 

In The Boys, Homelander is the most powerful of all the Supes. He basically has the powers of Superman. He can fly, he’s bullet-proof, he has X-ray vision (but he can’t see through zinc), super speed, super strength, and he has laser/heat vision. His senses of hearing and smell also let him tell when someone’s adrenaline is racing or when their heart is beating extra fast.

He’s basically invincible, with all the traits of Superman.

In fact, Homelander’s laser vision is terrifying in the series. The way they portray him sometimes stalking in the dark, only his red eyes visible, gives a better idea of how powerful and horrifying laser vision would actually be in the real world.

Homelander has a lot more powers that might be tougher to remember. They include super stamina and reflexes, super agility, super hearing, super smell, and leadership. He’s also very intimidating, but that’s not really a power per se. He’s intimidating because of his charisma and because of how very powerful he is.

Of course, as Homelander would say, his greatest power is his mind. And there’s actually a lot of truth to that. Homelander is an evil genius, and you might not realize just how smart he is until later in the season. Some fans like to think of him as a combination of Superman and The Joker, and others say he’s more like Superman-meets-Lex Luthor.


How Does He Compare to the Comics?

On Reddit, u/TimIsColdinMaine had a great way of describing how the TV show version of Homelander compares to the comics. He wrote: “Without spoilers, he’s an improvement on the comic book version. The comic version THINKS he’s the type of man portrayed on the show, but he’s somewhat incompetent, and not as intelligent as he thinks he is… In the comic he is terrifying because he is simply far more powerful than every other supe and you don’t know what he is capable of… he seems to be as calculating as he is powerful.” 

In the comics, he’s also shown to have a sonic scream, which I don’t recall seeing in the TV series yet. But he’s similarly seemingly invulnerable in the comics and one of the most powerful superheroes of all. He’s super fast when he flies, has super strength, heat and X-ray vision, just like in the TV show.

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