Even though The Boys’ Soldier Boy appeared to be a crude spoof of Captain America from Marvel Comics, the fake superhero ended up being better than the real one in one important regard—at least when it came to the live-action version.
Jensen Ackles’ character, Soldier Boy, from the Amazon Prime Video original series The Boys, is a Super Soldier who was created with a serum called Compound V that has the power to transform ordinary people into superheroes.
At first, Soldier Boy was only incredibly powerful and virtually unbreakable. However, following extensive testing in a Russian lab, Soldier Boy also acquired the capacity to eliminate the powers of other super heroes with a catastrophic blast he can produce from within his own body. The Boys’ Soldier Boy is more remarkable than Captain America, even though that depowering ability is impressive and something that Captain America does not have. The true motivation is something much more nuanced, yet vastly more practical in combat situations.
In Avengers #18 by Stan Lee and Don Heck, the Avengers receive a distress signal from a portion of the world that had been overtaken by communist rule—which was a big deal as this issue was released not long after the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States. After following the distress signal from a country in eastern Asia, the Avengers are received by the communist leaders of that area who were pretending to be people in peril to trick the Avengers into falling into their trap which was all a part of their scheme to prove that communism was superior to capitalism. Upon realizing their mistake in answering this call, the Avengers are immediately hit with a knockout gas that incapacitates every one of the members, including Captain America.
In The Boys season 3 episode 6 titled ‘Herogasm,’ M.M. throws a smoke grenade at Soldier Boy in an effort to knock him out, but Soldier Boy picks up the grenade and inhales the toxic smoke just for the head rush, proving that it has almost no impact on him whatsoever. Issue #18 of Avengers proves that Captain America’s body isn’t as strong as Soldier Boy’s because Cap is rendered unconscious by the same gas that knocked out Hawkeye, who is basically just a regular human. During a battle, being impervious to a sleeper gas is incredibly useful as that is usually one of the first things an enemy will try to use to attack a group of heroes they hope to capture. Soldier Boy can only be knocked out by a lethal nerve agent, so if he was in Captain America’s place in this Avengers issue, those villains wouldn’t have known what hit them.
Naturally, this comparison only applies to the live-action Soldier Boy and the comic book version of Captain America, as the comic book Soldier Boy is incomparable to all of the Captain Americas. After being routinely abused and humiliated by Homelander, Butcher promptly 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁s the Soldier Boy from The Boys comics. In terms of strength and fierce bravery, everything about the comic book character Soldier Boy is the opposite of Captain America. Even while the live-action Soldier Boy from The Boys is a darker version of Captain America, he is at least more powerful than the original because his body can withstand far more damage than Marvel’s top Super Soldier.
