US army apologises and deletes post comparing themselves to violent superhero parody show The Boys

Warning: This article does contain spoilers for The Boys.

The US Army has apologised and deleted a tweet where they compared themselves to the violent superhero parody show The Boys.

As reported byVice, on Monday 21st June, the XVIII Airborne Corps tweeted an image asking their followers which branch of the army had the ‘coolest patch.’

They added: “Every day during this week we’ll showcase 4 unit patches. At 8pm EDT every night, we’ll let you vote on the coolest patch [and you know this account loves Twitter polls]. Each night’s winner will move forward to Saturday’s final vote!” This was also retweeted by the official US Army Twitter account.

However, the patches they included for the first vote were, for some reason, superimposed onto the head of ‘The Seven’, the main superheroes from the Amazon Prime show The Boys.

If you haven’t seen The Boys, let's just say these aren’t The Avengers or the Justice League and are definitely not the sort of superheroes anyone should be comparing themselves to.

Most of the heroes in the show are actually villains and, despite presenting themselves as protectors and champions of justice, the vast majority of them are violent killers, sex pests, drug dealers and above all else vain celebrities obsessed with their own image. It’s a very clever parody based on the work of author Garth Ennis whose comics predominantly appeal to an older audience.

All in all, you should probably be aspiring to be Captain America or Superman rather than Homelander who in one episode allows a plane full of people to crash because it would simply be too much hard work for him to fly the passengers back and forth to safety.

Journalist Kelsey Atherton noticed this rather misguided photoshop and queried this in a DM to the Airborne Corps. In a screenshot that was shown to Vice’s tech desk Motherboard, the corps wrote in response: “We humbly apologise about that, sir. Bit of a mix up with that graphic. We really meant no offence by that at all.”

Not the biggest controversy but hardly the first time the US military has accidentally compared itself to bad guys from pop culture. Earlier this month images emerged from a Space Force swearing-in ceremony where onlookers were dressed as Darth Vader and Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

Still, it does appear that the XVIII Airborne Corps has continued their patch combination but have removed the superhero references.