Summary
With every passing issue ofThe Boys’ original comic series,Butchercertainly lived up to his name, as he never hesitated to punish supes who he believed ‘needed a slap’ for even an instant - and those punishments were oftentimes gruesomely brutal. That being said, and contrary to his reputation, Butcher didn’t immediately jump to killing supes in the early days of hisThe Boyscareer, but he also didn’t pass up the opportunity when it presented itself, either.
Billy Butcher was the leader of the CIA-backed team, the Boys, and his job - first and foremost - was to observe supes who were ‘misbehaving’, and blackmail them into submission (as hurting a supe’s reputation was the only way to police them). However,Butcher, not-so-secretly, has a deep-seated hatred for supes, and by the end of the series, he commits truly atrocious acts in an effort to wipe them all out - and that was after he killed a fair number of them with his bare hands. Here areButcher’s 10 most R-rated kills inThe Boyscomic book series!
How Homelander’s Son Ryan Butcher Dies in the Original The Boys Comics
Ryan Butcher is a main character in The Boys live-action series, but what happened to Homelander’s son in the comics? Here’s how he originally died.
10Butcher Beat an Infant ‘Ryan’ to Death with a Lamp
The Boys: Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker#4 by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson
When fans were given insight into Butcher’s backstory in the form of the limited seriesButcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker, they learned that his origin was just as tragic and horrible as they’d imagined. Butcher’s wife, Becky, was sexually assaulted by Homelander (secretly Black Noir, Homelander’s clone in the comics), and became pregnant with his child. After unexpectedly giving birth to the child while in bed with Butcher, the super-infant tore Becky apart, and nearly killed Butcher himself. So,Butcher beat the infant to death with a lamp, partly in self-defense, but mostly for revenge.
The Boyslive-action Prime Video series adapted this storyline in seasons 1-2, allowing the infant and Becky (Becca) to live, and even developing their characters beyond simply being Butcher’s tragic backstory. However, in the comics, neither Becky nor ‘Ryan’ (who was nameless in the comic) were so lucky, with ‘Ryan’ being the first of many of Butcher’s supe victims.
9Butcher Massacred an Army of Super-Villains Working for the Russian Mob Boss, Little Nina
The Boys#14 by Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, and Peter Snejbjerg
When the Boys get wind that Little Nina, a well-known Russian mob boss, is gathering an army of villainous supes to launch an attack that will result in countless deaths, the Boys jet-off to Russia to stop her. Through a combined effort of covert-ops and hands-on violence, the Boys are successful, and Little Nina is taken down for good (in a truly shocking fashion). However, while their mission was technically complete, Butcher wasn’t done, as he figured the supes Nina was gathering, themselves, deserved to share her grisly fate.
To control the supes, Little Nina had bombs implanted in their skulls (akin to DC’sSuicide Squad), and after Nina was killed, Butcher found himself in possession of the detonator - and he was all-too happy to use it. What followed wasa truly grisly scene depicting a warehouse full of supes having their heads exploded, with a greatly satisfied Butcher standing among the carnage, admiring his brutal handiwork.
8Butcher Killed an Especially Cruel Supe, Malchemical, by Burning Him Alive
The Boys#43 by Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, and Richard P. Clark
During one of the Boys' more seemingly uneventful missions to monitor a relatively harmless gang of supes called Super Duper, they find that one new member of that team, Malchemical, proved to be a cruel villain of the highest order. The members of Super Duper were more victims of Vought than superheroes, as the Compound V left most of them with mental and physical disabilities, yet Malchemical thought it was funny to use his shapeshifting powers to torment them incessantly.
When Hughie went undercover within Super Duper, Malchemical tried to kill him by turning himself into a poison gas. However, the evil supe didn’t count onButcher arriving with a lighter, with which he used to set Malchemical’s gaseous form ablaze, burning him alive. Malchemical more than deserved his grisly fate, but it was still grisly nonetheless.
7Butcher Massacred an Entire Supe Team, Payback, After They Attacked The Boys
The Boys#32-33 by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, and Keith Burns
After one of the members, the Female, is injured and brought to the hospital, the Boys are attacked by the ‘superhero’ team Payback, which is the deadliest team of supes, second only to the Seven themselves. However, they still weren’t a match for Butcher, who used his tactical genius to kill (or otherwise incapacitate) each member one-by-one.
Butcher lured the Crimson Countess to the basement using his dog, Terror, as bait, where he strangled her with his belt. He then took a pickaxe to the back of Swatto’s skull, and decapitated Mind-Droid, all after biting off Soldier Boy’s nose before eventually tying him up and murdering him as well. It was a truly gruesome scene, to be sure, and one ofthe greatest examples of how deadly Butcher really isin a fight to the death.
6Butcher (& the Rest of the Boys) Stomp Stormfront to Death
The Boys#34 by Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra
Stormfront was the one who led Payback in their assault on the Boys two issues prior, and after Butcher single-handedly killed his team, Stormfront decided to try to finish the job himself. Unfortunately for him, things didn’t quite turn out as he had hoped. With the help of his fellow members of the Boys (minus Hughie), along with the assistance of a friendly supe called Love Sausage, Butcher stomps Stormfront to death after sharing blows with the god-like superhero (villain).
Stormfront is one ofThe Boys' most heinous supes. Like his live-action counterpart, Stormfront was originally a Nazi who was taken in by Vought-American and rebranded as a superhero, which allowed Stormfront to continue his pursuit of fascist ideals with the full backing of one of the most powerful companies in the world. That is, untilStormfront’s brains wound up dirtying the sole of Butcher’s boot.
5Butcher Stabbed Jack from Jupiter to Death After the Seven Member Killed His Dog, Terror
The Boys#59 by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun
There are supes inThe Boyswho Butcher kills because they are cruel, corrupt, or all-out evil, but Jack from Jupiter faced Butcher’s wrath for another reason entirely: he was stupid. When there was a tenuous truce between the Boys and the Seven, Jack from Jupiter got angry that Homelander and the rest didn’t just crush the CIA-backed team. So, he took matters into his own hands to make them pay for messing with supes by killing Butcher’s dog, Terror. And what happened next was one of the most brutal moments in the entire series.
Upon seeing Terror dead,Butcher went into a dissociative state, tracked down Jack from Jupiter, and stabbed him in the stomach so many times that the supe was essentially cut in half by the end of it, muttering like an emotionless killer-robot, “Why’d you kill me dog, Jack” with every stab.
4Butcher Killed His Best Friend, MM, with a Grenade to the Face
The Boys#68 by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun
When the Boys discover that Butcher means to launch a bomb into the Earth’s atmosphere that would effectively poison every supe on the planet, MM takes it upon himself to personally try to talk Butcher out of it, and if that doesn’t work, to physically stop him. Long story short, it didn’t work, and they got into a violent altercation. With MM’s super strength (which he has by drinking his mother’s Compound V-tainted breast milk), he has a clear edge over Butcher, even with Billy being juiced-up by Compound V (‘Temp-V’) himself.
However, in the end, Butcher is just more ruthless and tactically savvy than MM.Butcher pulls out a grenade and pulls the pin right in MM’s face, killing his best and oldest friend just to ensure that every supe in the world shares his fate.
3Butcher Got Bloody Vengeance for Becky’s Death by Brutally Killing Black Noir
The Boys#65 by Garth Ennis, Russ Braun, John McCrea, and Keith Burns
In a moment of utter catharsis and gruesome vengeance,Butcher took a crowbar to Black Noir’s already-broken face, stuck it in his empty eyesocket, popped his skull open, removed his brain, and crushed it in his hand. This came after Butcher discovered that it was Black Noir, not Homelander, who assaulted Becky, and ultimately killed her. When Homelander took over the White House, Butcher went there to kill him, or die trying. Instead, Black Noir revealed himself as the real villain behind the curtain, and Homelander mostly took care of him by himself before ultimately getting killed by Noir.
What Butcher was left with after Homelander’s death was the hollow shell of the supe-clone Black Noir once was, but that was good enough for him, leading to one of Butcher’s most gruesome and satisfying kills in the entireThe Boyscomic series.
2Butcher’s Murder of Love Sausage was Unintentionally Slow and Painful
The Boys#66 by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun
After Butcher killed the main villain ofThe Boyscomic by ripping Black Noir’s brain from his skull, he became the new villain for the rest of the series. With the Seven gone, and his enemies destroyed, Butcher decided it was time to take out every supe in the world with the aforementioned ‘supe bomb’. While Butcher would slowly murder practically all of his friends and allies (including MM), the first to go was Love Sausage, and his death was slow and painful (albeit unintentionally so).
Being a supe, Love Sausage was as strong as a tank, meaning he wasn’t going to go down easy. So,Butcher hit Love Sausage with a bazooka, which blew off most of his shoulder. Then, Butcher hit him again with another rocket square in the chest. That one was supposed to be the end of it, but Love Sausage just wouldn’t die, making a death that Butcher meant to be quick, horrifyingly slow and painful.
1Butcher Decapitates Every Member of The Skorchers & Props Their Bodies Up in a Grotesque Fashion
The Boys: Dear Becky#7 by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun
The Boys is in no way a ‘Vought clean-up crew’, but in this case, the their priorities were aligned, and Butcher was given the green light to go absolutely crazy on the Skorchers.Butcher drugged each of the members, decapitated them, propped their bodies up around a dinner table(with an actual feast in front of them), and revealed their corpses to the media executive responsible for bringing the crew together. It was a truly gruesome scene, even forButcher, making this one of his 10 most R-rated kills inThe Boyscomic series.
The Boys
Cast
The Boys is a gritty and subversive take on the superhero genre, focusing on a group of vigilantes who confront powerful superheroes abusing their abilities, exploring themes of corruption and moral ambiguity in a world where heroes are not always what they seem.
