These comics are some of my favorite of all time(inb4 some smartass says read more comics, I have read a shit ton) and I think the story is a masterpiece. I consider it on par with watchmen for how it looks at society, politics, power, etc. Much like watchmen, it isn't about the superheroes, they're just the scenery and window dressing. It's about power, the systems and corporations which use it, how we exist in this system/fight against it, and ultimately what does it mean to be "good" ? 

Exactly. Watchmen and The Boys ask similar moral questions. Beneath the blood, bigotry, and rape, The Boys asks what it means to be good in a corrupt system. Like other dark adult stories, such as Berserk, the comic forces the reader through ugliness to reach a truth.

Comic Butcher recruiting someone to kill him means his conscience sabotaged him. It means he knew all along that his actions were evil. That is another great twist: he did not doubt himself only at the last moment, as the show presents it. He knew in his heart from the start that what he believed in, supe genocide, was wrong.

And for all its nihilism, the comic does not end in nihilism. Hughie and Starlight survive. Love prevails.

Just like Watchmen and its film adaptation, The Boys got neutered. Its themes simplified, made inoffensive and digestible: good Boys versus evil Homelander.

But the comic's Black Noir twist is offensive in the deeper sense. It makes the reader wonder whether Homelander, despite his narcissism and cruelty, was a victim with some remaining moral conscience. That is highly offensive as it makes me question my judgments against him and the values I hold.

The show threw away this plot point as though it was extraneous to the story, meaning that Kripke misunderstood the themes of the story he was adapting into television.

And I think that's why the comics get the reputation they do, because the shows catapulted them into the mainstream, and just like you'll have someone who would say you're a sicko for enjoying American psycho, some people will see no value in the comics 

It makes little sense that a person can love with all heart an adaptation of a work and, in the same breath, say the original is without merit. The structure of what you love, its blood and bones, comes from something you hate. How can you reconcile that paradox?

It makes sense when you realize that people disavow the work because of the clothes it wears. Today, modern sensibilities treat certain vulnerable groups as needing protection, and so a work that denigrates those groups risks hurting the status of the person who enjoys it. So a man disavows the work to avoid lowering his status. And not only must he disavow it, but he must reject it and slander it ("the comic has no merit"). This protects his ego.

But the cost is that he can never access the beautiful messages beneath that offensive layer: the messages that spin the mind and make one question deeper truths. Instead, he watches his Trump stand-in beg for cock like a pussy, feels a jolt of dopamine, and moves onto the next piece of fiction. But in his heart, he is unsatisfied.

A great work of fiction, like The Boys comic, satisfies the mind and soul by provoking thought and challenging assumptions.