I'm Your Pusher

Now, I have read "The Boys" from start to finish, so this episode was particularly up my street, inspired as it was by both the art style and the tone of those books.

Butcher (Jason Isaacs) calls in on OD (Kieran Culkin), drug dealer to the superheroes and threatens to kill him unless he spikes the drugs of Great Wide Wonder (Michael Cera), a high-profile hero but not one of the seven. OD reluctantly complies, but nobody could have predicted just how horrific the outcome of their actions turns out to be.

Interesting mix of voice actors for this one. Simon Pegg finally gets to play Hughie, the character he inspired. Jason Isaacs gets to play Butcher, in a performance that is much nearer to the voice that I heard reading the comics all those years ago, than Karl Urban's (not that I dislike Urban's performance, but a convincing English accent, it is not). Anthony Starr and Dominique McElligott reprise their roles as Homelander and Queen Maeve though.

The real selling point though is that animation style made to directly mirror the original look of "The Boys" graphic novels and is a story written by Garth Ennis himself. It's apparently supposed to be taking and canonically happening in the comics universe (pretty early in it, based on context) but it's a fairly short, standalone addition, as typically gory, violent and course as you might expect. Definitely entertaining though and a good addition to this series.

Garth Ennis comes back to the world he created for a gory short set in his comic universe. It's great seeing the characters from the comics animated, including a clean-shaven Butcher and a Hughie that looks like and is voice acted by Simon Pegg.

We get cameos from other characters that some might recognize as well, while Ennis weaves a disturbing tale that feels like a cut issue from the series. A gruesome, yet very Ennis-Esque ending closes the short out perfectly, making me hope if they do more seasons of Diabolical, Ennis comes back and writes more.

Michael Cera also did a great job voicing Great Wide Wonder, and while I did love Simon Pegg as Hughie, be warned it is more of a cameo than anything, hence why I hope we get more of this style some day. Check this episode out if you love The Boys comics as much as I do.

"The Pusher" was the first of these "Diabolical" eps that I felt was worthy. It was a good, self-contained tale of the supes' drug pusher, how he got compromised, and the catastrophic consequences. Still alot of cartoon gore but mainly limited to one scene.

What we're given here is a straight presentation of the original source material, written by the comic author Garth Ennis.

The plot is basic but solidly written, and the animation is straight heroic adult anime, no complaints there. Score and pacing are both fine, it's a very competent production.

Unfortunately, they couldn't get Karl Urban to voice Billy Butcher. Sure, he made a hot Shatnerian mess of it in the live action, but it was such a distinctive and enjoyably eclectic performance that Jason Isaacs can't come close to it here, and it's rather jarring.

Queen Maeve's presentation is also slightly divergent from the live action. She's blonde, has tired age lines, and while Dominique McElligott voices her, she gives it a much more openly weary performance. It's fine, it works well, it's just different.

So while this would have been near flawless as a standalone episode, in the context of characters that we already know, it's slightly dissonant.

Still a solid, enjoyable little ride, well worth the time.

It's too bad they didn't get Karl Urban too do Billy's voice. If they had, this would be a 10. Great revenge epic and the only episode that feels like it came from the comic or the series. Having Simon Pegg do Hughie's voice was a huge plus.