‘The Boys’ Has a Lot of Traumatic Backstories but This Supe Might Be at the Top of That List
Oh no. Please don’t make me get into this. After reading The Boys comic I really don’t wanna relive the trauma of Laddio. I’m gonna have bite this bullet. You wanna know the truth? I’ll give you the truth. But neither you nor I will like it.
Who is Laddio in The Boys?
Laddio is a young man in service to Tek Knight, The Boys‘ Batman counterpart. Officially, Laddio is Ted Knight’s sidekick. His “young ward” as it were. Unofficially, Laddio’s “service” to Tek Knight is entirely sexual. He’s essentially Ted Knight’s sex slave. It’s a long, f*cked up story. Here’s the gist:
Like many supes before him, Laddio was injected with Compound V at a young age and given up by his parents to be fostered by Vought International—the multi-billion dollar entertainment and bioweapons manufacturing conglomerate responsible for the creation and management of supes. Laddio was taken in by Tek Knight to be a sidekick, but the relationship between the pair quickly soured after Laddio once lied to Tek Knight. Tek Knight REALLY doesn’t like liars, and as punishment, Tek Knight imprisoned Laddio in the bowels of his Tek Cave where he subjects the young man to every sort of sexual torture imaginable.
Laddio is found by Hughie after The Boys member infiltrated Tek Knight’s mansion while wearing the disguise of the disgraced supe Webweaver. The Boys break Laddio free from his chains, and he helps them take sweet, sweet vengeance on his captor. Laddio helps the gang crack into Tek Knight’s bank accounts to give away millions of dollars to organizations that the supe doesn’t support. Laddio decides to remain behind well the rest of The Boys escape the mansion to watch Tek Knight be strangled to death by his own butler Elijah. The Boys give Laddio the laptop with access to Tek Knight’s bank accounts before they go. The young man is now set for life.
What are Laddio’s powers?
Like pretty much all supes, Laddio has super strength, which is a nightmarish fact considering that for all his power he was unable to break free from Tek Knight’s restraints. Laddio also has superhuman durability, which is EVEN WORSE to contemplate, considering that he could suffer and survive abuse that would kill a regular person outright. While we don’t exactly know what Tek Knight did to Laddio, one can only imagine based on the man’s penchant for sadism, narcissism, and that whole plan to build a nationwide internment camp. When it comes to supes, Tek Knight was truly one of the worst. Laddio saw to his end personally.
Does Laddio appear in the comics?
Oh yes, and it’s just as bleak. In The Boys comic, there are actually multiple Laddios. The Laddio title is the equivalent of the many Robins under Batman’s protection. Except Tek Knight didn’t do very much to protect his wards. The Tek Night of the comics was less of an outright sociopath like this TV show counterpart, but he was far from a good person. He and his original Laddio ended up having a deranged threesome with The Boys’ Catwoman counterpart Talon, which became a screwed-up sexual schism between the pair.
This Laddio went on to become SwingWing, a parody of DC’s Nightwing. SwingWing didn’t last long. He was a total sociopath, and his career was cut short after Hughie and Billy The Butcher had him crushed under the Staten Island Ferry.
The next Laddio was a young boy in Tek Knight’s service, a Boys equivalent of subsequent Robins like Jason Todd or Tim Drake. This Laddio’s career lasted for even less time. Tek Knight ended up developing a brain tumor “the size of a fist” that caused him to want to have sex with everything. Coffee cups. Cats. Everything. Including the young Laddio. Rather than give in to his urges, Tek Knight fled from the Tek Cave and went on to save the Earth from an approaching meteor by having sex with it. Or so he thought.
In actuality, his head was crushed after a pile of bricks fell on him, and he hallucinated saving the world from the meteor in his final moments. Unlike the Tek Knight from The Boys series, the comic book equivalent was just a normal guy. No powers, just gadgets. Well, almost normal. OK, not normal at all. Absolutely depraved. The second Laddio dodged a meteor-sized bullet.
(Prime Video)
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