Highlights
- Homelander may appear strong, but he would be no match for characters like Superman or Wonder Woman in a face-to-face battle.
- Green Lantern’s ring and Zatanna’s magical abilities could easily trap or defeat Homelander, showing that physical strength isn’t always necessary.
- Miss Martian’s shapeshifting and mental powers could outmatch Homelander, proving that strategy and skill are key in superhero matchups.
Of all the different anti-hero takes on Superman, the most famous one in recent years has to be Homelander from The Boys. On the surface, he’s an all-American, friendly defender of justice. Underneath that carefully constructed image, he’s a twisted, self-obsessed, thin-skinned sadist who’s just as corrupt as the rest of his superhero team, The Seven.
The Boys: 9 Worst Things Homelander Has Done
Homelander is one of the most diabolical characters in The Boys, and these atrocious acts he committed are proof of his vile nature.
He caught on via Amazon’s adaptations of the comic books, where actor Antony Starr really brought out Homelander’s character as a weak bully putting up a strong facade well. While he’s perhaps the strongest hero in The Boys’ universe, he’s nowhere near as strong as he thinks, and he knows it. If he ended up in the DC Universe, he’d be in trouble, as these DC characters could beat Homelander easily.
1 Superman
The Original Article
- Advantages: Super-strong, stronger heat vision, stronger X-ray vision, faster flight and ground speed, more stable mind.
- Disadvantages: Weak to kryptonite.
At first, it seems Homelander has advantages over his inspiration. Superman is affected by multiple kinds of kryptonite, while Homelander is weak to nothing. However, all this would do is even the playing field. Using all his might, Homelander can lift roughly 480 tons, or “a dozen Mag trucks” according to Black Noir. By contrast, Superman has no limit on his strength beyond the writer’s imagination.
Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superman could juggle planets. Afterward, he could shift them out of orbit. All-Star Superman had him lift 200 quintillion (a billion of billions) tons with one hand. Homelander may share many of Superman’s powers, like heat vision, X-ray vision, etc. But even with kryptonite, he wouldn’t be walking away from a bout with the Man of Steel.
2 Wonder Woman
Bringing Homelander To Heel
- Advantages: Super-strong, combat expert, experience in bringing down stronger superhumans, access to magical and enchanted weapons and items.
- Disadvantages: Vulnerable to her own weapons, and isn’t bulletproof.
On top of everything else, Homelander is also a horrible misogynist who’ll do terrible things to women just because he knows he can get away with it. He could barely keep it together when he saw people online making memes about Stormfront in Season 2, Episode 4. Coming up short against a heroine like Wonder Woman would likely break him.
She doesn’t have as many powers as Homelander- no heat/X-ray vision, flight (usually), etc. Yet she’s still strong enough to carry cruise ships and has even defeated Superman on occasion. She’s also a highly skilled warrior, with access to a variety of enchanted weapons, whereas Homelander coasts on his superpowers. In a head-to-head contest, he’d be humbled quickly.
3 Lobo
Don’t Mess With The Main Man
- Advantages: Super-strong, strong healing factor and regenerative abilities, high intellect, immortal due to a technicality.
- Disadvantages: Their shared bloodthirst could see Lobo either befriend Homelander or kill him.
Before Homelander, there was Lobo. Only instead of being a twisted version of Superman, he was a parody of Dark Age edgy antiheroes (The Punisher and Wolverine in particular). Lobo was the last member of an alien race called the Czarnians because he killed off all the others. He works as an intergalactic bounty hunter to fuel his bloodlust and need for wanton violence.
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Strength-wise, he’s rivaled Superman on occasion. But even if he was more on par with Homelander, his regenerative abilities could heal him back up from a drop of blood. Even when he did die, he caused so much havoc in both Heaven and Hell that he was banished from both realms, effectively becoming immortal. Chances are he’d kill Homelander for annoying him, then find some other planet to torment.
In His Own Element
- Advantages: Super-strong, practically invulnerable and immortal, can shapeshift into any form, and form any element, including poisonous gases and liquids.
- Disadvantages: Becomes more vulnerable when he transforms, depending on the element.
Originally a mercenary, Rex Mason was betrayed by Simon Stagg when he tried to get him the Orb of Ra. He was knocked out and left for dead next to the radioactive meteorite the Orb was fashioned from. But, like the gamma radiation in The Incredible Hulk, or the toxic waste in Daredevil, the meteorite changed him from a human to Metamorpho, a hero who can transform into any element on Earth.
Homelander has no mineral weakness, though he can’t see through zinc, and could potentially be knocked out by extremely toxic gases like Novichok. Since Metamorpho can replicate any element and compound, he could test that hypothesis by giving Homelander plenty of Novichok to breathe in. Just in case his regular, invulnerable, super-strong, immortal form wasn’t enough to bring The Only Man in the Sky back down to Earth.
5 Green Lantern
The Power Of Imagination
- Advantages: The Green Lantern ring’s forms have a wide enough range to catch Homelander, and can form anything the user imagines.
- Disadvantages: The form’s strength relies on the user’s willpower. The users themselves aren’t necessarily super-strong.
It might be because Alan Scott and Hal Jordan didn’t conjure up the most imaginative things with their rings, but Green Lantern’s powers are actually quite broken. Previously, the only way someone like Homelander could’ve gotten around the Men Without Fear was to paint himself entirely yellow, as the Lantern’s projections did not affect the color.
But with Parallax’s defeat, the Green Lantern rings can now hit anything and everything. Instead of physical strength, they rely on the strength of willpower, and none of the Lanterns from Scott to Kyle Rayner have been lacking in that department. If they’re not trapping Homelander in a bubble, they could swat him down with anything they could conjure up.
6 The Flash
A Speedy Victory
- Advantages: Super-speed beyond Homelander’s ability to keep up, can phase through his grip.
- Disadvantage: Isn’t super-strong, and so would have to maintain a constant barrage of hits on Homelander.
A fight between the Flash and Homelander wouldn’t so much be a slugfest as death by a thousand cuts. Whether it’s Barry Allen, Jay Garrick, Wally West, etc, the Flashes have never been known for grand feats of strength. If they got in Homelander’s grasp, they’d potentially be in trouble. Or at least they would be if it weren’t for the Speed Force, which would keep Homelander from grabbing them to begin with.
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They’re the fastest heroes alive, able to inflict multiple blows in fractions of seconds. The Speed Force also allows them to vibrate fast enough to phase their atoms through objects, so even if they were caught, they could escape and continue to subject Homelander to a constant barrage of attacks. Then, with the Speed Force’s momentum, they could build up a Superman-caliber punch to put him down.
7 Zatanna
Magic Can Just As Easily Defeat Homelander
- Advantages: Strong magical powers and vast knowledge of magical spells from elemental powers to dimension warping.
- Disadvantages: Ordinary human strength and magic can be nullified if her mouth is covered or otherwise kept from speaking.
The DCU wouldn’t need to call out big hitters like Superman or insane characters like Lobo to deal with Homelander. In fact, they likely wouldn’t need someone physically strong to sort him out at all. They could get a powerful magic user instead, like Zatanna. A master of both stage magic and real magic, she has a library’s worth of techniques to handle threats like Homelander.
With her Logomancy, where she can conjure spells by speaking backward, she could freeze Homelander in place, shrink him to the size of a pea, trap him within forcefields, reflect projectiles, or mess with his mind directly. Even if he got to lay a finger on her, she could use Antipathy to reverse the damage and place it on him instead. If worst came to worst, she could send him off to another universe with a single sentence.
8 Miss Martian
Guaranteed To Blow Minds
- Advantages: Can shapeshift to ambush Homelander, or use her mental powers to affect his mind.
- Disadvantages: Strength is on par with Homelander, and she’s weak to fire.
DC’s Martians are underrated in terms of their strength. J’on J’onzz, or the Martian Manhunter, is comparable to Superman in strength and powers. He could handle Homelander easily, but so could his younger, female, White Martian counterpart M’gann M’orzz, aka Miss Martian. Strength-wise, she’s closer to Homelander’s level in being able to handle hundreds of tons in weight than billions.
She can tank hits via her invulnerability and shapeshift into all sorts of forms to get the drop on her foes. That is if she doesn’t make herself invisible or intangible. Her big advantage over Homelander is her vast range of mental powers. Like Zatanna, she could twist his memories, blind him with illusions, control his mind directly, or simply send him to sleep.
9 Black Canary
Victory Screech
- Advantages: Expert tactician, studious mind, supersonic Canary Cry.
- Disadvantages: Ordinary human strength, wouldn’t last long in a direct encounter.
Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary, is an odd one to put up against Homelander. She’s an expert hand-to-hand fighter, a great tactician, investigator, and biker. But she isn’t super strong and doesn’t have a multitude of magical abilities like Zatanna. If Homelander struck her by surprise, he’d probably make short work of her. Or he would if it weren’t for her main power.
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Like Superman, Homelander has super hearing, except he can’t turn down its sensitivity, let alone switch it off. The Boys used this knowledge to play a high-frequency sound to irritate him long enough to save Becca and Ryan. Combine that with Black Canary’s supersonic Canary Cry, which is strong enough to shatter skulls, and Homelander would end up with a headache from hell.
10 Batman
The Importance Of Prep Time
- Advantages: Expert tactician, a vast array of gadgets, and has experience bringing down stronger superheroes.
- Disadvantages: Ordinary human strength, Homelander lacks the weaknesses his counterparts have.
After years of memes about Batman and his prep time, it would be easier to give the Dark Knight superpowers than act like he’s a normal guy in a Batsuit. He has beaten foes who were a thousand or more times stronger than him thanks to his quick thinking, like Superman and Marvel’s Hulk. Even so, since Homelander isn’t vulnerable to kryptonite or regular sleeping gas, he’d need another plan to take him down.
Maybe he could use his chunky Bat Armor and sonic devices to wear Homelander down. Or replicate Soldier Boy’s power-removal ability. Better yet, since Homelander relies upon the false image Vought made for him, Bruce Wayne could buy Homelander and become his boss instead. This wouldn’t keep the so-called World’s Greatest Superhero under wraps for long, but it would be long enough for Batman to prepare a contingency plan for him.
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