The third season of the Amazon Prime TV show “The Boys” came to a mind-blowing conclusion. The characters in the show are mostly responsible for the audience’s seeming engagement. Some are purely malevolent, like Homelander, while others, like Stan Edgar, inflict much more severe harm without the use of superpowers.
Garth Ennis expertly constructed the characters, fusing their past and present to create a challenging masterpiece. We will talk about Greg and Grace Mallory from the comic books and TV show in today’s video. In the comic books, Greg Mallory, a former army officer, finds the Boys and leads a war against Vought and its branded superheroes.
The female version of the comics is Grace Mallory from the TV series, who has a similar plot but a distinct set of circumstances. It is up to the audience to decide how to classify them because their actions frequently switch them between being heroic characters and villains. So without further ado, let us start with Grace and Greg Mallory’s history.
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WHO IS GRACE/GREG MALLORY?
COMICS
Greg Mallory was born in the 1920s and had been a very bright student with an Ivy League graduation. He joined the army, and in December 1944, he was made a Captain in his platoon. Greg and a few other gifted soldiers were chosen to battle the Nazi Army near Ardennes on the Western Front. The military also wanted to field test the superheroes presented by Vought American in this battle.
These superhuman individuals had no formal military training, and even with their superpowers, the entire procedure went catastrophic. Thanks to the Soldier Boy’s stupidity, a Waffen-SS platoon spotted the entire team, which jeopardized the whole operation with only one survivor- Greg Mallory. Greg was honored with medals for his bravery, but he was infuriated with Vought American’s audacious act of trying their untrained supes in a serious war.
Seeing how Vought American managed to walk away without being penalized, he allied with his friend Rick Burnham from the army and joined the newborn CIA to make Vought pay for what they had done. Greg was promoted to the post of Lieutenant Colonel, and he led his crusade against Vought. Upon meeting The Legend, a comic-book author whose role was to provide a fake origin story for Vought’s superheroes to hide the fact that they were just a result of Compound V, he learned about the drug and its creator- Jonah Vogelbaum.
Greg organized Vogelbaum’s kidnapping and forced him to develop a new kind of compound V that could be used on him and his black ops team that he made to monitor Vought’s superheroes. He then recruited William Butcher after hearing how his wife was raped and killed indirectly by Homelander and formed the team known as ‘The Boys’. William recruited Mother’s Milk, Frenchman and the Female, and started leading the team.
Things did not turn out according to what Greg had wished for, as he wanted William to be second in command after him, but William dragged the team to fulfill his own vengeance. The team managed to assemble enough evidence to bring down the Seven and convinced Greg to support them.
This, however backfired as one evening, Lamplighter followed Greg back to his hotel and burned his granddaughters alive. Greg was later made to accept a truce with the Seven in exchange for letting him shoot Lamplighter. After avenging the death of his grandchildren, Greg left the Boys but stayed in contact with Mother’s Milk to keep an eye on the team. Although the story implied that William Butcher killed him, nothing such was shown, as he completely disappeared.
THE BOYS SHOW
Although The Boys Tv show is an adaptation of the comics, Greg Mallory was replaced with Grace Mallory. Grace shared a similar story to Greg’s with some changes, like her gender. Not much is known about her childhood, but sometime in 1984, she had taken part in a discrete project initiated by President Reagan to aid the Contra Rebels in their fight against the Russian-backed Sandinistas in Nicaragua, known as Operation Charly. Grace supplied weapons to the rebels, bought with the money obtained from exporting and selling cocaine in the US.
The drugs were mainly sold to the black neighborhood, keeping them demoralized and away from the White neighborhoods. Operation Charly also included the superhero team Payback, and it was a test to see if Vought’s superheroes could be incorporated into the US military. Grace was extremely disappointed and upset with their joining, as they were reckless and lacked military training.
As predicted, their idiocy led to the revelation of their camps to the Russians and the Operation turned into a massacre. Payback’s help resulted in too many casualties as they attacked and brought death to several rebels. Grace lost 116 of her men and strongly disliked Vought and their superheroes. Unknown to her, this was all a set up by Stan Edgar, and their main motive was to take down Soldier Boy. She later informed William Butcher that Homelander raped his wife Becca, and Vought had been hiding her location since then.
Grace and William recruited Frenchie and Mother’s Milk form ‘The Boys’ team to keep a check on the superheroes and essentially take down Vought. In 2015, they blackmailed Lamplighter with footage of him committing a crime and making him spy on the Seven.
This backfired as Lamplighter followed Grace to her hotel and accidentally burnt her granddaughters alive instead of her. This drove Grace desperate to seek vengeance from Lamplighter. She later got the opportunity to shoot him down, but she didn’t, as they still needed Lamplighter’s help. Post this, she gave up her path of vengeance and decided to live a life in solitude in the woods, either birdwatching or drinking.
THE BOYS SHOW VS COMICS
The Boys tv show made several changes in its plot. These changes provided more details and thrill to the comic book adaptation. One notable change out of the many was in the character of Greg Mallory, who was replaced with Grace Mallory. There are similarities between the two, like how they both despised Vought and their brand of superheroes, but the changes gave the TV show a completely new direction. They both had a disastrous experience working alongside superheroes, but the battles were different.
For Greg in the comics, the battle was against Nazis during World War 2, whereas for Grace, from the TV show, it was a war between the Contra Rebels against the Russian-backed Sandinistas. Greg managed to kidnap Jonah Vogelbaum and make him engineer a version of compound V for him and his teammates, whereas no such thing happened in the tv show, and temp V or V-24 was supplied to William by Queen Maeve.
In the comics, Greg shot Lamplighter on his head and got his revenge for killing his grandaughters, but Grace in the show controlled her rage and did not shoot Lamplighter. In the TV show, the rape child of Homelander borne by Becca survived, but in the comics William killed it the moment it was born. Grace, throughout the years, protected Ryan from Homelander.
In the comics, Greg achieved superpowers as he injected himself with a version of compound V that he made Vogglebaum create. Due to this, he did not age much, whereas no such thing happened to Grace Mallory. Greg’s character disappeared in the comics and is believed to have been killed by William Butcher. Grace, on the other hand, stayed alive till her demise in season 4.
THEY’RE BOTH MENTALLY THE SAME VINDICTIVE CHARACTERS
The best part of the Boys series is that it showcases different shades of traits and complexities within each character. It is open-ended to its audience. Greg or Grace Mallory does seem like good characters as they form a team to stop the reckless and corrupt superheroes produced by Vought. Even with the differences between the comics and the tv series, the Mallorys can easily be put on the list of low-key villains.
They weren’t really fighting to make the world a better place. It was their vendetta against Vought for getting all their soldiers into the war. The two wars from the comics and TV series are different, but the outcome was the same, and it was because of the idiocy of Vought’s reckless team of superheroes led by Soldier Boy. The events in the comics during the war with the Nazi army were terrible but what happened to Soldier Boy was horrifying. Soldier Boy was also alive along with Greg after the Nazi attack, but he was in terrible shape, unable to move.
He kept asking for help which Greg noticed. Upon seeing that there is no one left to see them, he took the opportunity to take his revenge by blasting Soldier Boy and killing him. Grace from the series might not seem so ruthless, but she actually is. In the plot as shown in the TV series, Grace was helping the Contra Rebels against Russian-backed forces.
To provide weapons to the Rebels, she helped smuggle cocaine into the US, which would then be spread in the Black Community to keep them demoralized and away from the White community. That is ruthless too. Both versions formed a team to pursue their vendetta – teams where all of the members were affected someway or the other by the superheroes, followed by Mallorys’ thirst for revenge. They both manipulated them into a life-risking and nearly suicidal journey.
CONCLUSION
The reason why The Boys is thrilling and entertaining is because of its characters. No one is clean in Garth’s universe, and every character is dark in its own way. There are many twisted minds in the series who end up causing the worst but in a prolonged process, like Jonah Vogelbaum. His actions changed the world and in a terrible way. It is difficult to place these characters in a list of good and bad personas, and Greg/Grace Mallory in today’s video is certainly one such individual. Vindictive, selfish, ruthless ex-army, whose main objective is to take down Vought.
In a world where superhumans are taking lives, being reckless with their powers, one ex-army stands up to take the initiative to form a team good enough to counter the superhero team, ‘The Seven’, and that is what is needed. Without the Boys’ team, Hughie would have lived in depression, and Butcher would have made suicidal attempts to bring down Homelander, rushing to a quick death. Malory’s role is essential, which leaves it open for the audience to conclude about the character. Write down your thoughts about Greg and Grace Mallory in the comments.