The Boys has in many ways evolved into Amazon’s Game of Thrones ever since the first season debuted in 2019. First of all, it is one of the most faithful comic book series adaptations that also departs greatly from the original material. Second, it has a truly worldwide reach and is by far Amazon’s most profitable intellectual property.
Third, and perhaps most significantly, the franchise can continue to thrive thanks to the strength of spin-offs because of its success! The Boys, it must be said, is miles ahead of HBO Max staff in that regard. The Boys Presents: Diabolical, an eight-episode anthology series, has already been released, whereas HBO’s Martin-curated universe is only now preparing for its first spinoff in the form of August’s House of the Dragon.
The Boys: Varsity, a full-length live-action spin-off series, was announced by Eric Kripke (pronounce: Crip-Key) in September 2020, and if their filming schedule remains on-time, we might get to see the series as early as 2023.
This means that we binge-watchers will not have to wait too long for new content to stream the life out of after that show ends. Moreover, even though you have not heard many overt references to the team of superheroes developed by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, it is planned to include them.
Perhaps that is for the best. Because The G-Men are the most lucrative and depraved group of Supers that Billy’s Boys have ever encountered, and that is saying a lot. Who are the G-Men, though? What role do they play in the Kripke universe? How unlike their comic book counterparts will they be? This is all you need to know about The Boys: Varsity, and we are here to tell you about it.
Godolkin’s School for Messing Up Supes – Who Are The G-Men from The Boys’ comics?
The superhero team known as the G-Men from comic books will serve as the “loose inspiration” for The Boys: Varsity, and you may have already guessed what kind of superheroes they are a spoof of. Yes, X-Men ’97 will be released this year, but we would rather the borderline Gladiator-style, rude, filthy version. We will temper our exuberance, but you get the idea, right? As their name suggests, the G-Men are a spoof of the X-Men, who are arguably Marvel’s most successful IP. One of the most well-known superhero franchises in comic book history, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-gene-powered superteam made its debut in 1963.
Basically, the X-Men were Marvel’s Avengers before the MCU, in that they were largely responsible for keeping Marvel’s mainstream appeal relevant before Kevin Feige re-invented Marvel Studios into the global juggernaut it is today. In fact, so popular were Xavier’s Gifted Children that it ended up spawning even more sister teams than the Avengers; X-Force, X-Factor, X-Statix, you name it folks!
Charles Xavier’s family of mutants have been through all kinds of struggles together; so naturally, Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson decided to take their “darker reflections” to the extremes that most people would only joke about on online message boards at the time. The G-Men are an exact facsimile of the X-Men in that they ape the mutant superteam at every step; the G-Men are counterparts of the X-Men, G-Force is a clear allegory to X-Force, G-Style pays homage to X-Factor and the teenage team of Supes called G-Wiz is basically X-Statix without adult supervision.
But as we’d mentioned earlier, everything in Ennis’ world is meant to be a “darker reflection” of popular characters and concepts from mainstream comics; and even though The Homelander does “Superman without morals or the Kents” the best out of any Elseworld story, we have to say that the G-Men are perhaps the true embodiment of depravity in the universe of The Boys.
Because while The Seven and the rest of the Supes contracted by Vought (pronounce- V-Ought) are beasts of their own creation, the G-Men aren’t, and somehow, their origins are much worse than anything we’ve covered about The Boys on our channel so far. Much like the X-Men, it all starts with the man who brings the team together; but the only way in which John Godolkin is similar to Professor X is in his lofty speech patterns; because the rest of his personality can only be compared with Jimmy Saville, and if that name is ringing warning bells in your head, you probably want to skip this next section.
Vought’s Most-Lucrative IP & John Godolkin’s “Children” – G-Men Origins from the comics
The G-Men aren’t exactly major players in Garth Ennis’ work. In fact, they only appeared for one storyline that ran from issue #23-#30. Titled “We Gotta Go Now”, it featured Wee Hughie breaking into the G-Men under the guise of “Bagpipe” in an effort to plant bugs all over Godolkin’s mansion and glean any secrets he could off of them in the meantime. It would take Butcher’s initiative in the end to bring the mission to a satisfactory conclusion, but the things we learnt cannot be unlearnt; and that’s the shame of it all.
In the comics, most Supes are contracted by Vought because they are created by Vought. V.A. control every aspect of their creation, from selecting the parents to tailoring their image, and finally “assisting them” with their celebrity lifestyle. That is, except for the G-Men. If you’ll recall, we said that the G-Men were not originally under contract with Vought, and that’s because they weren’t created by them.
They were created by a man called John Godolkin, who managed to get his hands on Compound V and began abducting children from all across America and administering weekly doses to them. That’s right, The Boys’ version of Professor X is basically that guy your mum warns you not to take candy from; and we do mean that quite literally because that’s the tactic Godolkin uses to “select his children”. As you all know by now, Compound V is pretty unstable and can have radically different results in different test subjects, so Godolkin would keep injecting his with weekly doses until they manifested a superpower.
This is actually quite similar to what Stormfront and Stan Edgar were doing with the Sage Grove Centre in Amazon’s The Boys, where they were using the mental institute’s patients as guinea pigs for Compound V experimentation. But the big difference is that Godolkin’s subjects were literal children, often ranging between the ages of 6-10, and that their doses weren’t given to them as part of an experiment; it was part of a bigger master plan that would see him become one of the richest people on planet Earth.
Once Godolkin had achieved stable results for 6 of his children, he banded them together and bound them to his will, giving them exactly one creed to live by; and that was to protect the G-Men’s secrets at all costs. He sent a letter to Vought in 1984 with a unique money-making proposition that ended up making a fortune for all parties involved; Godolkin suggested that he would give Vought the rights to market and make profit off of his G-Men so long as he was allowed to operate outside of their sphere of influence.
His marketing proposition was a smash-hit with consumers; branding his team as a rag-tag bunch of orphans, misfits and runaways, Godolkin had essentially struck entertainment gold, as the success of his team’s commercial ventures allowed him to create half a dozen sister teams, bringing nearly 80 Supes under his direct command. In fact, it was revealed that after The Seven, the G-Men were the most-successful Vought franchise, with their comic book sales alone racking up a billion dollars in revenue; annually.
Given that they were such a hit with the people, Vought decided it would be better to accommodate Godolkin rather than alienate him, which would turn out to be a disaster for them in the timeline of The Boys because, as we’ve already stated, he was basically Garth Ennis’ version of Jimmy Saville as well. And if you really don’t know who that is, Google him; you’ll get why we aren’t going too deep into this stuff.
Suffice it to say, the “father of the G-Men” used his, ahem, “inclinations” and a good-ol’ bit of brainwashing to make his children forget everything about their lives before he kidnapped them and turned them into his personal playthings and bodyguards.
Over time, he even invited top officials from Vought to join in on his depravity, which was probably the start of his downfall because it alerted V.A. to the possibility of John’s secrets being exposed to the general public; and the one thing they did not take lightly was a PR nightmare. And believe you us; if there was ever a walking, talking PR nightmare, it was John Godolkin. And so, he was always kept under surveillance in case “contingencies” needed to be put into place; and Butcher’s Boys proved all that and more.
What Happened in The Boys issue #23-#30 – We Gotta Go Now
So, the very reason that The Boys got onto the case of the G-Men was because Silver Kincaid- the in-universe parody of Jean Grey from the X-Men- ended up committing suicide in a city with no random connection to her official backstory, talking about an Uncle Paul that she never officially had. This sparks Susan Rayner to turn to Billy Butcher and his team, though Butcher is always one step ahead of his raunchy Deputy Director and knows why she’s really turning to him; Rayner must already have an in to the G-Men, and she needs Billy to do the muscle work for her. And turns out he was right because by the end of the story it was revealed the Silver Kincaid had agreed to become a confidential informant for the CIA, but she ended up killing herself before anything could come out of it.
Butcher stole all this data and more from Monkey and decided that he was going to send in his best man to scope the G-Men out; that man would be “Bagpipe”- aka Wee Hughie in the most-outrageous Supe costume this side of Polka-Dot Man. Hughie’s mission is simple; he’s supposed to infiltrate G-Wiz and plant bugs all over Godolkin’s mansion to gather intel on the man and anything that could give The Boys a leverage against him.
Of course, Butcher would prefer to just straight up exterminate everyone from the G-Men, but he’s playing ball with Rayner for now. Hughie ends up going to the G-Wiz House which is more like a frat house than anything else, but he does notice something peculiar; the G-Wiz kids weren’t like the rest of the Supes. In fact, they were actually kind of nice, if not grossly inappropriate and lacking any concept of boundaries.
The G-Wiz kids actually thought of each other as family and shared a genuine bond with each other, which sucked because they were all destined to break up and move into one of the G-Teams “post-graduation”. But this was the first hint that there was something seriously wrong with the way the G-Men operated. Of course, you guys know what that was because we’ve already addressed it, but at this point in the comics, it’s left pretty vague.
In fact, nowhere is John Godolkin’s sexual preference mentioned in the comics but the nods to his heinous choices are more than enough to leave us thoroughly disturbed. Suffice it to say, every member of the G-Team has faced it, except Hughie of course, because he’s from the outside.
And that’s perhaps his biggest mistake, because when Hughie gets invited to the G-Men Mansion for Silver Kincaid’s Funeral Service, he lets slip the fact that he knows more than he should, which tips off Godolkin to his true purpose. He immediately contacts Vought about it and sure enough, his status as a spy comes to light rather quickly thanks to James Stillwell, but he isn’t exactly trying to help out Godolkin here.
Because as we’ve already mentioned, Godolkin is a time-bomb waiting to explode at the first expose´, and as of late, he had been pushing his hand a bit too much. First off, Silver Kincaid wasn’t the only member of the G-Men to kill herself after realising just what Godolkin had done to her- which was revealed by an excellent sub-plot that followed M.M. meticulously investigating her real identity.
The other person to check herself into an early grave was Nubia, but she was resurrected by Godolkin and now existed in a near-vegetative state only asking people to kill her and put her out of her misery. Vought was understandably horrified by this but he insisted that he needed her on the team because she was “his child”. They allowed it to happen the first time around but when Silver Kincaid died, they took no chances and immediately cleaned up the scene.
Secondly, Godolkin’s control over his Supes was iron clad, but their actions threatened to expose them anyway. For example, the G-Coast and G-Style teams were locked in an eternal feud over the death someone called 2-Cool, and their petty feud had blown up so much that they couldn’t be put in the same room together without the threat of either of them killing the other. In truth, this entire feud is meant to satirize the 90’s West Coast-East Coast feud in the hip-hop community, with 2-Cool probably being Garth Ennis’ ode to Tupac Shakur.
But if you were alive during that era, you can probably understand why this was an issue. The deaths of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. put a firm spotlight on gang culture in America and the violence that it perpetrators, perhaps even more so because the two bona fide celebrities had affiliations to major criminal organizations, which gave the entire music industry a bad name at the time, with Gangsta Rap being labelled a menace to society in the 90’s.
Parlay that media coverage into the universe of the Boys within the context of the formation of the G-Men, and you can see how this petty feud could end up exposing one of the many dirty secrets Vought has been hiding from the public about their founder. The last out-of-line act that Godolkin committed, which basically sealed his fate with Vought, was trying to create a team of toddler Supes that he dubbed Pre-Wiz. This is not something new, either, as Godolkin had asked Vought for permission to create the Pre-Wiz before and was denied on rather obvious grounds. But turns out, he neglected them and went on with their creation anyway.
Their public revelation would have meant the end for Vought, because they were keenly aware of Godolkin’s tastes and the fact that his brainwashing took time to take hold of its target permanently, and even then it wasn’t a guarantee. To thrust the Pre-Wiz into the spotlight would spell inevitable doom for their company, regardless of the immense amount of money the G-Teams brought in for them.
And so James Stillwell made the executive decision to pre-emptively take care of his problem. When Hughie inevitably screwed up the mission and got burnt as a result- because he just can’t stop his saviour complex from taking over in the comics, you guys- The Boys geared up to take down all of Godolkin’s children; and we do mean all, because every G-Team was assembled to take out Butcher’s Boys. But before they could even make a move, covert Red River operatives flooded the front lawn of Godolkin’s mansion and in a shocking betrayal opened fire on all of them.
Not a single G-Man survived that day, and even Billy was taken aback by the rank ruthlessness of the act, not that he didn’t approve. For him, that was 80 less Supes to think of, but he couldn’t help but think why Vought would do this, to which the V.A. exec in charge of the operation replies, “we can clean up our own messes too”; or something to that effect.
And with that, the world’s second-most-famous Supe team was extinguished in a single night by the very hand that financed their popularity, which just goes to show the levels Vought is willing to stoop to in order to protect their own interests. But all this takes place in the comics, which is a decidedly darker world than the one Eric Kripke has created for Amazon Prime Video’s subscribers.
Because by his own admission, The Boys: Varsity is only “loosely inspired” by the G-Men, and we’re going to take him at his word because some of the stuff that the G-Men were subjected to are too traumatizing to commit to film; yes, even for a TV series with exploding orifices and scattered body parts galore. But how, the, is he bringing in this Supe team to his expanded live-action universe? Well, he’s taking it all back to college; quite literally.
The Boys: Varsity – How Amazon’s The Boys Franchise Sets Up the College-Themed Spin-Off
If you want to get pedantic about things, then The Boys has technically been setting up this spin-off series from the first episode. If you’ll recall the scene between Madelyn Stillwell and the Mayor of Baltimore, they were discussing the transfer of Nubian Prince from Detroit to the Mayor’s city for a hefty contract no less.
Now, Nubian Prince is a show-exclusive character and is basically The Boys’ version of Black Panther, but the more interesting thing about him is his personal life. Because as revealed in The Boys Presents: Diabolical’s 6th episode- also one of the three canon episodes from the series- Nubian Prince was married to and had a child with Nubia, who as we’ve already mentioned was a major part of the G-Men storyline in the comics. As for the first overt reference to the G-Men, that would come as an Easter egg during a Season 2 news update that points out the #GToo Movement. This is significant for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it’s the first official reference to the G-Men team in Amazon’s The Boys; and secondly, it means that the spin-off will address the whole John Godolkin character in a more, shall we say, contemporary setting. Because we know that he is a vicious sexual predator in the comics, but his target of choice, so to speak, is not something any show-runner would even think of bringing up in one of their creations.
So instead, it looks like Eric Kripke & Co. decided to take the real-world route and intertwine that aspect of the G-Men’s comic origins with the Me Too movement, hinting that predatory behaviour will be addressed in the series as well, just not how comic book fans might have expected it. In fact, Amazon said as much in their official press release regarding the show, stating that it would explore the lives and consequences of the actions of teenage Supes in Godolkin University in a rather realistic college setting.
That’s one of the biggest things to look forward to with this series, because all three main Executive Producers- Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg- have expressed a desire to make The Boys: Varsity as realistic a portrayal of college life as is possible; and that includes all of the American Pie scenarios and a whole lot more. They also said that it would involve a Hunger Games-style televised death match, so we’ll see how realistic it ends up being overall.
But the one thing we can’t dispute about any of their claims is the fact that they have already started setting this spin-off up with some serious Easter Eggs being sprinkled all across their promotional and actual storyline material. The first time the Godolkin University is name-dropped is in the excellent Fox News parody web-series called Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman which you guys should definitely check out on the Vought International YouTube channel.
The January 2022 update saw Coleman bring up Godolkin University in reference to Vought’s Annual Hero Draft- which is their name for the Hunger Games-esque death match, we’re assuming- and rave about the lucrative contracts that await its young Supes. We find out that A-Train and The Deep are both graduates of the University and were drafted by New York and The Seven.
So was Queen Maeve (pronounce- May-ev), who also revealed to us through the TV show that Homelander was her batchmate, which could actually lead to a spin-off story based entirely on their time together in GU, but we’re less optimistic about that. What we are optimistic about is Patrick Schwarzenegger joining the cast of the extended Boys universe as Golden Boy, the top prospect from GU, and the person ear-marked to “win” the Hero Draft this time around.
It will be very interesting to see Arnie’s son navigate his way through the R-rated mine-field that can be The Boys, and just to see his portrayal of the literal Golden Boy trope in general go off the rails, as things are wont to do in this universe. This news update was followed by a slew of character cameos and Easter Eggs, all of which happened in the first three episodes of Season 3.
We got to see the show’s version of Silver Kincaid- who’s a Muslim from England and very much alive-; Nubia, who was dropped from the American Hero finals presumably because Homelander didn’t want her; Cold Snap, Stacker and Airburst were all rounded up by Victoria Neuman’s Federal Bureau of Superhero Affairs, and Europo was referenced on Mother’s Milk’s investigation board in the first couple of episodes. Finally, when Hughie visits the Red River Institute- an orphanage for the Super-Abled in the series as opposed to being a rip-off of Black Water- we see him scroll past a list of names which also includes a girl called Marie M., who is portrayed by Jaz Sinclair, one of the confirmed cast members of The Boys: Varsity.
Red River doesn’t have a huge role in the comics; they serve as the private military wing of Vought and are generally only called in for “clean-up ops” and the occasional liaison with the American military. But the TV show has already made this obscure outfit way more integral to the story by not only turning it into a Supe-orphanage, but also making it the origin point for several enigmatic characters from The Boys.
We’ve already mentioned Jaz Sinclair’s upcoming character, but we can’t forget our favourite Head-Popping Red River Alum Victoria Neuman- aka Nadia- and possibly the world’s next “fastest man alive” in the form of Teddy Stillwell; the infant son of Madelyn Stillwell. So it looks like instead of being sent in to exterminate the G-Men, Red River will actually act as a feeder system for the team, which reverses their comic book dynamic in a rather intriguing fashion. But that is all we can say about the way in which The Boys sets up its college-based spin-off. As for when it comes out…
The Boys: Varsity might come out as early as the first quarter of 2023
This might make fans of the comics and the TV show sceptical because it took the original series a whole decade before even getting off the ground properly. But Amazon, much like Vought International, was happy to fast-track their most lucrative property into diversification when they announced a spin-off series 2 seasons into the original show thanks to the latter’s wild success. The Boys: Varsity began filming earlier this year at the University of Toronto and is on-track to wrap up shooting by October 2022.
If they stay on-schedule, we could get the series as early as the first half of 2023, which a trailer drop at the end of Season 3 being a likely possibility. As for an official release date, though, Amazon remains tight-lipped, which makes sense, honestly, because it took them 2 years to get the first season out; and then season 3 got delayed thanks to COVID-19, so who knows what might happen when, eh?
But all this is to say that the series might just come out sooner than you think it will. Early-to-mid 2023 would be our guess, but don’t blame us if Amazon decides Season 4 of The Boys is more of a priority and pushed Varsity back to late-2023 or early-2024. Regardless, we should have an update pretty soon.
Marvelous Verdict
At first, when we heard about the G-Men spin-off, we were concerned because we know the source material and rendering a faithful adaptation of half the stuff The Boys do in the comics would land the entire production staff in jail. But then we realised that we don’t need to worry about how accurate the show was going to be, so long as it maintained the core principles and facets of the G-Men storyline.
Now, admittedly, there is already very less scope of that given that Eric Kripke has said that no major characters from The Boys will spin off into Varsity and the We Gotta Go Now storyline basically featured the whole gang plus Terror; but the fact that the G-Too Movement is a thing gives us hope that the biggest issues surrounding the G-Men will still be addressed. It will also be very interesting to see who lands the role of John Godolkin himself, purely because he is one of the purest villains in the Boys universe even by Vought standards.
I mean, James Stillwell directly moved to exterminate him and all his teams, something he didn’t do when he found pictures of Homelander eating babies and messing with dead bodies on his desk. So whoever lands that role has to be a particularly preachy type of greaseball aristocrat, and we can’t wait to see who it will be. Regardless to say, the hype is very much real for The Boys: Varsity. If Amazon plays their cards right, it can be the new High School Musical for an entire generation of children; except it’ll be much less pleasant, much more sexual, and far too gratuitous in its violence. And we can’t wait to see it all!