The Boys/Headscratchers
Vic.
This guy just totally destroys suspension of disbelief. A borderline retard who can barely speak coherently and can't even put on a condom? That's something you'd expect in Preacher (Comic Book), in a locked basement somewhere, but absolutely not in politics. There are political offices where an idiot who can read lines convincingly on camera is all you need, but the Vice-President of the United States actually does have a real job -- he presides over meetings of the Senate. Which means this moron would have to be on camera all day every day on the floor of Congress, reading not only from prepared scripts but also holding the gavel and enforcing Robert's Rules of Order. IOW, no way.
- The Vice-President is also the guy traditionally sent out to make appearances at ceremonial events (funerals of world leaders, the Olympics, etc.) overseas, whenever they're important enough that simply sending the local US ambassador wouldn't be enough but its not quite important to absolutely demand the President's personal attention. Which again is a job you can't give to a complete idiot, because while he's not doing anything more strenuous then diplomatic cocktail parties with other world notables, you still have to be able to talk and charm people to do cocktail parties and no one wants an embarrassing yahoo being the guy that vice-ministers and etc. from forty other nations are watching jack off into the swimming pool or whatnot.
- But that part where he attacks the President with a fire extinguisher? Why didn't they shoot him for high treason and then tell the fighters to shoot?
- Vic didn't personally attack the President. No one saw who did (although it was presumably one of the subverted Secret Service guys). Admittedly, the ease with which the attack was smoothed over and the extinguisher removed from evidence strains credibility, but with nothing to connect Vic to the attack, they had no choice but to accept his order as acting President. (I'm not sure this fits perfectly with American constitutional law as it stands -- that is, in Real Life there may have to be some sort of official declaration of the President's incapacity before the Vice President can assume his powers -- but don't quote me on that. It's not quite my field, or at least not my specialty.)
- There is. The 25th Amendment lays out the specific procedure; the President must either submit a written letter to the Speaker of the House and President Pro Tem of the Senate that he is incapacitated and unable to perform his duties (this is intended for things like notification in advance if the President has medical treatment scheduled, or resignation in case of poor health, or etc.), or the President's incapacity must be confirmed by a majority vote of the Cabinet. In this specific instance, Vic would be the President as the prior President's incapacity is blatantly obvious and the Cabinet can't help but admit it... but then should have immediately lost the Presidency himself once the Cabinet took official notice of the fact that the dude can't even speak right, because 'mental defect' would qualify as 'incapacity' as well and they can medically DQ him from the office, even over his objections, by a majority vote. Should the disqualified President then disagree with this and assert his alleged competency, the 'is he or isn't he' question then becomes a matter for a joint session of Congress, which has 21 days to investigate the issue and perform a final ruling. During the disputed interim executive power would be temporarily asserted by whoever was next up in the line of succession behind Vic, as acting President.
- Vic didn't personally attack the President. No one saw who did (although it was presumably one of the subverted Secret Service guys). Admittedly, the ease with which the attack was smoothed over and the extinguisher removed from evidence strains credibility, but with nothing to connect Vic to the attack, they had no choice but to accept his order as acting President. (I'm not sure this fits perfectly with American constitutional law as it stands -- that is, in Real Life there may have to be some sort of official declaration of the President's incapacity before the Vice President can assume his powers -- but don't quote me on that. It's not quite my field, or at least not my specialty.)
- I read the condom scene more as him getting a thrill from asserting his authority over the poor, traumatized Secret Service agent than anything else.
Why the HELL didn't someone at Vought, especially Stillwell, not consider the possibility that the photos of Homelander raping and murdering a family might have been of Black Noir?
I mean, given what we've found out about Homelander in issue #65 and assuming people with access to knowledge of the contingency plan had all the details, it's something they should have looked into. I mean, why have a clone of The Homelander that's even MORE powerful if you're worried that the first one might snap?
Fuckin' idiots.
- It's pretty much the whole point of the story. The whole theme is 'Competence Vs Incompetence', and the fact that Voight, despite having so much money, power, and pull, still has people make the most head-deskingly stupid decisions because, well, they have so much money and so much power that they think they don't need to do things like think ahead. Or think at all.
- Even still, I expected better of Stillwell, who said the most important aspect of preparation is "Everything". Looks like he should have been following his own advice.
- Until the final arc plays out, perhaps we could say he still IS...how? Guess we'll find out.
- It's even outright pointed out in the issue, how stupid was to build a contingency plan that ended actually causing the problem that it was built to contain.
- Even still, I expected better of Stillwell, who said the most important aspect of preparation is "Everything". Looks like he should have been following his own advice.
Since Vought wants to weaponize superheroes, and Black Noir proves that they were able to successfully clone The Homelander, why haven't they produced more clones of him instead of relying on lesser powered heroes?
Okay, Black Noir proved to be insane, but that was because of the specific mental conditioning he had undergone to serve his role. So why doesn't Vought produce more Homelander clones and train them into super soldiers?
- Because it would have been hard to market them as unique "heroes" without concealing their faces. Or because the cloning and enhancement processes may be as expensive as producing Compound V. Or they actually DID and they were just saving them until after they could shift their business away from Superheroes and towards defense contracts. We have some more issues to see what happens, and one of those 3 seem likely to me.
- In issue 64 The Homelander claims to Stillwell that the last of these is the case: "You're growing the new me right now. Some camo-clothed tactical genius version that does exactly what it's told." He cites this as the reason for his rampage.