Butcher’s Powers in the Comics, Explained

Summary

• Billy Butcher from The Boys comics has superpowers and advanced tech, making him a formidable foe for Supes.
• Butcher’s greatest strength is his tactical brilliance and willpower, not just his superpowers.
• The Boys shows power’s corrupting nature through Butcher, who turns to hate when enemies are scarce.

While fans of The Boys TV show know Billy Butcher as a highly-trained “independent contractor,” the original comics paint a different picture of the violent Cockney as not just a canny, well-trained fighter who always plans ahead, but as a character with both the superpowers and the advanced tech to go toe-to-toe with any Supe in the business who steps out of line.

Created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys comics are shameless parodies of Marvel and DC properties, acting as a vicious critique of power-worship and twee tropes, while also offering a study of the corrupting effect of power, with Butcher as the object lesson on what happens when a man full of hate runs out of enemies. But just how powerful does Bill Butcher end up before the series’ ending?

Butcher Has All The Standard Upgrades Delivered By Compound-V

Enhanced strength, speed, reflexes, agility, and endurance

Like all Supes, Butcher’s powers come from Compound-V, a chemical created by Jonah Vogelbaum that’s more effective when administered at a young age. Using his black-ops contacts to get V shots for those members of his team who need them, Butcher is much stronger and more durable than a normal human, though having taken the shot late in life, he’s nowhere near on the level of big-guns like Homelander or Black Noir.

Despite this, Butcher’s training allows him to triumph in most direct combat with mid-level Supes, and he was able to crack Black Noir’s skull with a crowbar in The Boys #65 (albeit when the maniacal villain had already taken severe damage.) Alongside his teammates, Butcher used a shot of Compound-V on his impeccably trained bulldog Terror, giving him a super-powered attack dog who’s always at his side.

Butcher’s Superpowers Still Serve His Willpower

Billy wields his superpowers like a weapon, in ways nobody else can

An expert marksman comfortable with a range of weapons and trained by some of the best special operatives the world had to offer, the comic-book Butcher boasted super-strength, inhuman durability, the mentality of a killer, and ultimately a device capable of killing every Supe in the world, with massive civilian casualties. The TV adaptation seems to be veering away from the jet-black ending Billy Butcher saw in the comics, but the original version of the character was rightly treated as a terrifying force of will who could ultimately only be stopped by his own better angels.

Butcher’s first and greatest strength is his attitude to violence. When Jack from Jupiter killed Terror, Butcher cornered and brutalized the “hero” before he could use his magic word to become invulnerable, explaining, “It ain’t me, son. I’m somewhere else watchin’ it happen.” It’s a sentiment he repeats on multiple occasions, and something which gives him an edge, allowing him to commit instinctive violence without hesitation or conscience. This is especially effective married to Butcher’s titanic will. Recounting Butcher’s murder of shapeshifting Supe Malchemical, Hughie explains, “It was like he made up his mind in that one second: this guy’s gettin’ it. An’ after that it was a foregone conclusion. Like killin’ him was an act of will.”

Butcher’s Greatest Power Is Tactical Brilliance, Not a ‘Super’ Ability

Of course, Hughie also observes that Butcher is such an effective killer of Supes because he knows all about them before the fight even begins. Butcher cultivated multiple secret information streams during his time leading the Boys, most notably Supe pimp Doc Peculiar and “the Legend,” a former comic book writer responsible for selling Supes to the public, and the guardian of their dirty secrets. Like a proper black-ops agent, Butcher turns information into information, forcing compromised Supes to bug their own headquarters or offer up juicy information to save their own reputations.

The true extent of Butcher’s hidden network is revealed in “The Bloody Doors Off,” where it turns out Butcher tricked his former superior Gregory Mallory into thinking he’d executed Jonah Vogelbaum, when instead he’d kidnapped him and set him to work devising a biological weapon to exterminate everyone with any trace of Compound-V in their system, including untold numbers of innocent civilians who had never manifested powers.

Butcher massacred the rest of the Boys to spare them dying an ignoble death, only stopped by an act of instinctive love for Hughie, with the two falling from the Empire State Building as the man he thought of as a younger brother tried to stop his final, barbaric act of violence against the Supes he hated with every fiber of his being.

Butcher is Most Dangerous Because He’s Everything Supes Aren’t

Butcher is Possibly The Strongest Supe (In His Own Way)

A major theme running throughout The Boys comic (and TV show) is that superheroes really aren’t heroes at all. Completely lacking any strategy, skill, or willpower, most of the crimes stopped by the heroes are almost entirely staged by Vought. In the comic, Supes are portrayed as hedonistic animals, who really aren’t capable of saving anyone. The infamous airplace rescue turned tragedy is the perfect demonstration, where Homelander and the Seven are dispatched to stop a terrorist attack on New York. They end up completely butchering the mission, causing the plane to crash into New York and killing hundreds of civilians.

Despite having far greater powers than Butcher, neither Homelander nor any other Supe in The Boys universe has the will, or most importantly, the training, to effectively use that power. The specifics of how powers compare is hard to pin down, but the fundamental rule is clear: Butcher was a member of the military, possessed of an iron will. So even though his powers aren’t on the level of Homelander’s, he has more control, and vision to use them.

With Homelander both the most powerful, and mentally weak enough to essentially be tricked into turning evil by Black Noir, Billy Butcher can use lesser versions of those same powers to change the world.