Homelander Looks Absolutely Terrifying on The Boys Comic Book Cover

Fan Expo is celebrating Season 3 of The Boys with the release of special variant covers featuring a truly terrifying version of Homelander. The third season of the Amazon Prime Video series has already delivered for the streamer, with a fourth season of The Boys officially announced. The live-action series is based on the popular comic book series created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, so it only makes sense for the very first issue to receive reprints as fans of the show discover the comics that inspired it. Homelander serves as the main antagonist of The Boys, and the reprint of the first issue displays him even more ferocious than how Antony Starr portrays him.

The Fan Expo cover for The Boys #1 by prolific cover artist Francesco Mattina features a chilling version of Homelander. The leader of The Seven has a Joker-esque grin on his face and is surrounded by hundreds of human skulls. Fans can also see the Vought logo sitting high atop all of the skulls. It’s a really rather impressive piece of artwork, and one could envision Starr attempting to pull off the same look on the streaming series.

There’s also a second variant cover of Homelander by artist Inhyuk Lee that shows the character hovering in the air with his eyes glowing red and lightning cracking in the sky all around him. Homelander looks less demonic in Lee’s cover than in the one illustrated by Mattina, but they both do a successful job of getting across just how menacing Homelander can be to anyone he is intimidating.

Billy Butcher, Hughie, and the rest of The Boys have spent Season 3 looking for a weapon to finally kill Homelander. However, instead of finding a smoking gun or technological weapon, their search took them to Russia where they found a very-alive Soldier Boy. Portrayed by Supernatural alum Jensen Ackles, Soldier Boy awoke from his cryogenic slumber with revenge on the mind. He made it back from Russia to the United States and searched for his former lover Crimson Countess, who he murdered after she revealed she was aware that he was still alive. Now, Butcher is recruiting Soldier Boy in their plot to take down Homelander once and for all.

Showrunner Eric Kripke teased that life for Homelander will continue to unravel as Season 3 continues. “You could track the meta-mythology of the series essentially as the slow unraveling of Homelander,” the writer said in a recent interview for the WGA blog. “So the writers know—and Antony [Starrr] is a big part of this as well—that, eventually, whenever the series reaches its climax, this guy is going to go full sociopath, and he has to be stopped before some kind of apocalyptic event. That’s what we’re building towards.”

Some type of apocalyptic event is coming for Homelander, and Kripke and the rest of the writers are beginning to lay the groundwork for future seasons to explore.

“So then the question, when you back into that as a writer [is] what are the guardrails that are stopping him from doing that? Who is he, as a person, that he doesn’t just go off and destroy the world today? What are the things that he needs? And then how do we slowly peel those away from him one after the other, after the other?” he added.

What do you think of The Boys covers featuring Homelander? Let us know your thoughts in the comments! The covers can be purchased on Fan Expo’s website.