G-Men/Comics

The G-Men are supporting antagonists in the Dynamite Entertainment adult comic book series The Boys. They were a corrupt team of supposedly "oppressed" superheroes based in upstate New York; just one of the many Supes owned by the entertainment conglomerate/biological arms dealer Vought-American. The group was created and managed by John Godolkin, who presented himself as a benevolent father figure taking in super-powered orphans and outsiders. This narrative proved so popular with the public that the group became Vought’s most bankable team, ranking in billions of dollars worth of merchandise and media globally on a yearly basis. However, what lay behind the G-men's facade of underdogism was perhaps the most horrifying and depraved "superheroes" in the Boys universe.
==History==
=== Creation and Team Management ===
The G-Men were founded by a man named John Godolkin sometime after 1984. Godolkin presumably either stolen or recreated the formula for Compound-V and secured a deal with Vought-American which allowed them full rights to marketing, so long as the company allowed the G-Men to operate with far more independence than their other teams. In his letter to the company written on March 31 , 1984, Godolkin explained to Vought that he felt there needed to be a new approach to superheroics, one that was more down to earth and relatable to everyday people rather than the perfect, god-like beings in Vought-American’s superhero line at the time. He argued that his new superhuman team, the G-Men, would generate so much money that they will even exceed the revenue made by their established, premier teams, such as Payback and the Seven. To create such a team, Godolkin personally lured six random children into his limousine with promises of toys and candy before taking them to his mansion in Nassau County, New York; where he refused their eventual requests to go home and told them lies that they would be trained to be superheroes. Eventually, Godolkin started injecting them with Compound V once a week, where they would either die or gain superpowers. Despite being given the drug so late in life being extremely dangerous, the process succeeded, and the children became Five-Oh, Silver Kincaid, Nubia, Groundhawk, The Devine and Critter, the members of the first G-Men team.
The G-Men were then introduced to the world, marketed as orphans, rebels and outcasts that had been rejected by society due to their powers but had been taken in by Godolkin, who raised them as his own children and now fight to protect a world that persecutes them (even though, according to Hughie Campbell, practically all of them are millionaires and live luxurious lifestyles, with Hughie joking that the only time they seem to rebel against anything is when they bail themselves out of jail). As predicted by Godolkin, this backstory made the G-Men instantly loved by the public and allowed them to become Vought-American’s most profitable superhero team as well as one of the company's most popular, second only to the Seven.
However, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, what went on behind the G-Mansion walls was something far more sinister: a debouched sex cult made up entirely of kidnapped children and run by a monstrous pedophile. When the G-Men were merely either nine or ten, Godolkin took to sexually abusing and raping them, whilst also brainwashing them into total obedience, and the ones that didn’t take to the brainwashing were bribed with the fact that if Godolkin was exposed, then their glamorous lifestyle would end. Because of this, despite the G-Men constantly mocking and deriding him behind his back, their loyalty to Godolkin was absolute, and they killed any fellow G-Man that either broke down from the abuse or would not be compliant to Godolkin's control. To further his influence over them, Godolkin also spoiled the G-Men with any indulgence they wanted and gave them little to no rules. As Godolkin's personal assassin, Silver Kincaid was often tasked with eliminating G-Men members that threaten in anyway the franchise's existence, garnering the deep hatred of her peers. Perhaps most disturbingly, older members would even be participants in some of Godolkin's abuses. Soon, the G-Men became so popular that Godolkin started making spin-off teams, who were also stolen from off the street and later sexually abused as children. The first of which was G-Force in 1989, abducted not long after the first team. G-Force were an instant hit, nearly doubling the sales of G-Men merchandise. Because of this, Godolkin continued to create more new spin-off teams, the next was G-Style, then various others, such as G-Wiz, G-Coast, G-Brits and Pre-Wiz (the team where all the new recruits/victims went to be injected with Coumpound-V and brainwashed). This constant desire to abduct and molest children later became an intense psychological obsession for Godolkin, as he began see his victims as his own "children" and (as implied by Godolkin's speech during the brunch scene) it appears that he even believed the team's fictional front as superpowered misfits marginalized by normal society, which he and Vought had created just for marketing.
While each team brought more and more revenue to Godolkin and Vought-American, the company became deeply concerned about the G-Men, as they were fully aware of how Godolkin "recruited" new members and what often happened to them, as well as how he allowed the teams to operate. They were also worried about how unstable and reckless the G-Men were due to their harrowing upbringing, as several team members were experiencing mental breakdowns, starting feuds with other G-Men, constantly getting in trouble with the law, and often indulging in hedonistic behavior so perverted and extreme that it may have even eclipsed that from the rest of Vought's superhero line (which already had a sordid reputation within the company for being oversexed and morally uncouth). Inevitably, they grew to fear the ever-growing amount and rate of children that Godolkin was kidnapping, which ran the increasing risk of exposure, eventually ordering him to cease all franchise expansion efforts, to which Godolkin officially agreed, but secretly ignored.
At some point, a member of the G-Men or G-Force, 2-Kool, became close with G-Style and G-Coast. During an unknown incident, 2-Kool was killed, for which both teams blamed the other for his death and developed a hatred for each other so fierce that the other G-Men teams would dread when the two got together. 
At another point in time, an initiate of G-Wiz (where all young adult G-Men go before being sorted into another team) was tricked during a hazing ritual into thinking that to join G-Wiz, he had to shave the Snow Leopards at the Bronx Zoo and he foolishly believed them. The initiate was mauled and left with not just only one arm and leg (both of which were cybernetically replaced) but also brain dead. The initiate, who was given the title "The Dude With No Name", has since been taken care of by countless generations of G-Wiz, who see him as an "inspiration".
When founding G-Man Nubia started to question Godolkin's decisions and openly challenge his leadership, he sent Silver Kincaid to dispose of her during an incident near Three Mile Island, using her Pressure Control and Gravity powers to collapse Nubia’s heart in her chest, killing her instantly. Godolkin, unable to accept one of his "children" was dead and wanting her to be more obedient, demanded Vought use Nubia as a test subject for their new resurrection process alongside Lamplighter. Just like Lamplighter, the process did bring her back but left her almost brain dead, only with enough cognitive thought to beg those around her to kill her. This incident further damned Godolkin to Vought, as Nubia’s reanimation as a semi-conscious zombie and his obsession with his "children" caused them to begin wondering if the G-Men were really worth the risk, leading those in the company to begin preparing contingencies for the G-Men franchise's destruction and liquidation, in the event that Vought's higher ups decided that Godolkin and the rest of his disturbed "dwellers on the outside" were too much of a liability to continue existing.
===CIA Investigation and Silver Kincaid's Suicide===
After being forced to murder her own teammate, Silver Kincaid partially broke free of her mind conditioning and sought out government official and CIA director Susan Rayner for help, as the G-Men’s behavior was only becoming worse and were rapidly escalating in their crimes. Rather than help Silver Kincaid escape the G-Men, Rayner forced her to become her spy for three years, feeding her information about the G-Men. When Godolkin started becoming suspicious, the scared Silver Kincaid begged Rayner to help her, but Rayner coldly refused. Eventually, between the fear of being discovered, the ingrained loyalty to Godolkin which she couldn’t fight and the decades of sexual abuse, Silver Kincaid suffered a nervous breakdown. Out of her G-Men costume and dressed in civilian clothing, she made her way to a public park in her hometown of Cranbrook, Massachusetts sometime in 2007 (where she had been kidnapped nearly 30 years prior) before she used her powers to kill herself in front of dozens of civilians. Before the CIA could arrive in Cranbrook and investigate the incident, Vought somehow managed to beat them there first (possibly, according to Raynor, because of an undercover mole for Vought American working within the government or due to the fact that Kincaid's suicide was filmed by a local on their cell phone and uploaded to Youtube soon after) and had retrieved Silver Kincaid's remains by disguising themselves as government agents. 
=== The Boys Involvement and Infiltration of the G-Men ===
Silver Kincaid’s death forced Rayner to bring in Billy Butcher and the Boys (while not disclosing to any of them about her past interactions with Silver Kincaid and her role as an CIA informant) to investigate what exactly was going on within the G-Men. The Boys had their newest recruit, Hughie Campbell, infiltrate G-Wiz disguised as a supe under the false name “Bagpipe”, while Butcher looks into why Rayner was suddenly interested in the G-Men and Mother's Milk investigates the circumstances surrounding Silver Kincaid's suicide in Cranbrook. While with G-Wiz, Hughie sees how (due to the lack of rules they’ve been given) G-Wiz were sexually depraved and had little to no boundaries with each other, though sees the bond they shared and that they seemed like decent people overall despite this. They later take him to the G-Mansion where he meets Godolkin, who believes his story, though is irritated at how old he is, and Hughie plants bugs around the mansion.
While putting wiretaps in one of the bathrooms, Hughie screams when he’s suddenly confronted with the undead Nubia repeatedly begging him to end her life. When Godolkin and some G-Men arrives and has her escorted out, Hughie reveals info on the resurrection process, and when he questions Godolkin on why he allows Nubia to live such a hellish existence, he (as well as Frenchie and the Female, who are also listening in) are disturbed when Godolkin reveals his obsession with keeping his "children". While Butcher slowly discovers Rayner’s involvement with Silver Kincaid and Mother’s Milk discovers Silver Kincaid’s past before her kidnapping, Hughie begs Butcher for more time to spy, as after observing their depraved, but otherwise friendly disposition, he wants to save G-Wiz, and Butcher allows it.
At the G-Mansion, Godolkin has brunch with the G-Men and G-Force members where he offers a speech about the teams' fabricated status as outcasts and supposed discrimination by "humanity" (even though Godolkin has no powers whatsoever and Supes in this universe generally being far from oppressed) that causes G-Men like Five-Oh to jeer at their leader for thinking himself as one of them. During the brunch, Critter brings up the recruitment of Bagpipe, and the sheer number of G-Men there were now, warning him (like Vought before him) how the growing membership also brought the increasing likelihood of security breaches or a rogue G-Man exposing their terrifying secrets to the public. Critter then begs Godolkin to stop kidnapping children to create more spin-off teams, but he stubbornly refuses, stating “For good or ill, my children- - I just can’t seem to stop.”
While Five-Oh, Cold Snap, Critter and the Devine share drinks, Devine brings up G-Style’s arrival, to the detriment of his colleagues as they casually share racist remarks with each other about both G-Style and G-Coast. Cold Snap tells Five-Oh that Godolkin wanted the two of them to keep the peace, to the latter’s annoyance. Meanwhile, Critter reveals that Vought had sent an enquiry about Bagpipe, as they had no records of his existence. While Critter fortunately chalks it up to the security for the new G-Mansion being new and incomplete, Frenchie and the Female worry.
Butcher (realizing that Hughie was growing attached to G-Wiz and that his cover was about to be blown) told him his spying was over, but Hughie, feeling like G-Wiz could be helped, disobeyed and went back. Meanwhile, Cold Snap and Five-Oh observe how their attempt to prevent the feud between G-Coast and G-Style from escalating failed and the former tells the latter on how a year earlier, a member of G-Coast, Homefry, told a prostitute about the shocking reality of the G-Men, but Homefry was later beaten up by G-Coast in order to "teach him a lesson" while the prostitute was found by Vought's cleanup team and killed before she could tell anyone what she had learned. Cold Snap then questions Five-Oh if he wonders whether Silver Kincaid took the easy way out and if he felt sorry for G-Wiz, who were barely handling Godolkin's sexual abuse. Five-Oh stops Cold Snap from going further, telling him the lifestyle they had was mostly amazing and how it was worth what Godolkin did to them, and that Silver Kincaid deserved to die for almost ruining it.
During a phone call with Godolkin, James Stillwell refuses his request to put Silver Kincaid through the resurrection process, as Stillwell tries to explain to him that the procedure can never truly bring back someone from the dead without serious brain damage, though Godolkin refuses to listen. Suddenly, Stillwell hears the voices of children on the other side and realizes that Godolkin has started another Pre-Wiz team against orders. Godolkin ignores Stillwell’s anger and keeps demanding Silver Kincaid be brought back, though Stillwell coldly refuses and hangs up. Stillwell later sees a file about Hughie Campbell’s recruitment and realizes the Boys have infiltrated the G-Men.
At Silver Kincaid’s memorial service, she’s mocked incessantly by the other G-Men, who express their hatred for her, as well as mock her statue and the bouquet of flowers in her image. While eulogizing for Kincaid, Godolkin also gives another long-winded pretentious rant that leaves all the other G-Men cringing at how dramatic and nonsensical it is, while also expressing horror when he hints that Silver Kincaid might be brought back as a mindless zombie like Nubia. After Godolkin’s speech, he allows King Helmet of G-Style to say a few words, and while at first he brags of the supposed friendship he shared with her (which Five-Oh reveals that she actually detested him) he uses the speech as a chance to insult G-Coast, starting another fight between the two at the funeral. Hughie also learns that G-Wiz are terrified of losing their friendships when they join separate teams, and resolves to help them, though the other Boys learn that he disobeyed orders and rush to get him out.
===Destruction===
After the memorial concludes, Stillwell calls Godolkin and alerts him to Bagpipe’s true identity as Hughie Campbell, though rather than eliminate the spy, Godolkin decides to instead hold him to ransom, forcing Stillwell to bribe him with the possibility of resurrecting Silver Kincaid if he takes care of Hughie. After G-Wiz take Hughie outside the mansion, they reveal that Godolkin had outed him as spy, and their orders to kill him. Hughie tries to appeal to their good nature and their own secret hatred of the other teams, but they refuse to listen and attempt to kill him, though Hughie holds out long enough for the other Boys to arrive and butcher all but one of G-Wiz, though their deaths alert the other G-Men.
Jamal, the survivor, reveals everything to the Boys, from the kidnappings, the injections of Compound-V, the brainwashing, and the worst of all, the sexual abuse the G-Men endure, to the horror of Hughie. After exposing the truth to them, Jamal is killed by Europo and the Boys are confronted by the entire G-Men franchise, who profess their fanatical loyalty to Godolkin, shouting that none of them said no to the abuse and that they'd all die for him. Hughie, disgusted at what he’s learned, leads the Boys in a suicide charge against the G-Men, but before either side can attack, Stillwell arrives with Vought-American’s paramilitary, Red River, and the G-Men stand down, believing that Red River was there to deal with the Boys
However, unknown to Godolkin, his refusal to deal with Hughie Campbell, his start-up of another Pre-Wiz team against corporate orders not to and his desire to keep resurrecting dead G-Men despite even Vought finding the end result disgusting, sealed his fate as the company had finally decided that they couldn't afford the risk of the increasing instability of the G-Men any longer. To the horror of the Boys, Red River suddenly open fire on the G-Men with SAW's, RPGs and flamethrowers, slaughtering Godolkin and every single member of the G-Men before burning their estate to the ground. Stillwell allows the Boys to leave, warning them to not interfere in Vought’s affairs again, ominously telling Butcher and his team that Vought “can handle our own shit”.
===Aftermath and Legacy===
The massacre of the G-Men was soon cleaned up by Vought while the G-Whiz frat house was completely refurnished to cover up the group's dark secrets and the debauchery that took place there. Due to them not being present at the G-Mansion massacre, Stillwell has the members of Pre-Wiz put in a crate, loaded onto a plane and dropped to their deaths off the coast of Iceland in order to keep them from revealing Godolkin's crimes. The so-called "Dude With No Name" was also killed off soon after the incident in Nassau. After this, Vought-American begin actively looking for ways to eliminate the Boys, with their first attempt being sending the #2 superhero team Payback to kill them.
Stillwell and the Homelander meet where they discuss how the loss of revenue from the G-Men would positively affect the Seven. While the Homelander wishes to take the fight to the Boys, Stillwell reminds him that thanks to Butcher’s evidence, he couldn’t. Unknown to Stillwell, the Homelander becomes worried at how quickly Vought got rid of their most profitable superhero team, and begins questioning whether the same could happen to him, increasing the thoughts of rebellion in his head.
During one of their one-night stands, Butcher threatens to murder Rayner and her family if she ever went near a superhero team without his knowledge or endangered his team while withholding critical information again. This damaged the Boys’ relationship with the CIA and caused several problems for them down the road.
The G-Men’s death is used as the prime excuse as to why nearly all supes in the world suddenly disappear, with Homelander lying that the G-Men were killed by the ‘Battelite of the Marith’rai’, and that all superheroes were leaving to face the invaders, when in reality, the supes were just heading to the annual Herogasm event.
== G-Men Teams ==
Before it's destruction at the hands of Vought's Red River army, the G-Men had around a dozen or so smaller sister/spinoff teams, typically themed and named after the personal characteristics of their members (such as race, age, nationality, etc). Because of John Godolkin's obsession with endlessly expanding the franchise, the G-Men in total had 7 different groups and over 80 members.
* The G-Men (inaugural): The original six children that John Godolkin kidnapped and later (with the help of Compound V, bribery, sexual abuse, and brainwashing) turned them into a highly successful superhero franchise for Vought-American.
* G-Force: The second team of Supes created in response to the commercial success of the first G-Men.
* G-Wire:
* G-Wiz: a group made up of young adult Supes who reside in a fraternity house. Being the more hedonistic and impulsive of the G-Men groups, they were typically found engaging in various sex acts such as circle jerks while watching pornographic film in the G-Whiz home theatre and making disgusting prank phones calls to other Vought-owned superhero teams like the Seven. This is the last grouping G-Men members were brought into before being sorted for the main spin-off teams.
* Pre-Wiz: a preschool-like team comprised of Godolkin's newest recruits/victims.
* G-Nomads: A spin-off team briefly mentioned by Billy Butcher while providing background information on the G-Men with the Boys. Not much is revealed about them.
* G-Brits: a group briefly mention in passing by Susan Raynor while discussing the G-Men spin-off teams with Billy Butcher as well as shown on the G-Men hierarchy chart. They appear to be a G-Men team themed around British stereotypes, much like G-Coast and G-Style being based on Black stereotypes.
* G-Coast: a team made up entirely of African American Supes and rival of G-Style due to a years-long feud involving the death of 2-Kool. Their aliases and costumes seem to be mostly based on racial stereotypes of Black people.
* G-Style: another team also made entirely of African American Supes and rival of G-Coast due to a years-long feud involving the death of 2-Kool. They are also themed themselves around stereotypes of their racial group.
==Trivia==
*They are a thinly veiled satire of ' . They parody many aspects of the franchise, including: 
**The original six children that Godolkin kidnapped and molested are stand-ins for the X-Men's most famous members, with Five-Oh (), Nubia (Storm), The Devine (Angel), Critter (), Groundhawk (), and Silver Kincaid () mainly being a mixture of characters from both the original Silver Age - run and ones that first appeared in the issue of 1975.
**Godolkin's obsession with endlessly creating more G-Men members and teams satirizes the excesses of the X-Men franchise in that the X-Men has the greatest number of spin-off teams in all of comics. The entire X-Men are subdivided into smaller teams and then there are other teams such as , , , and to name only just some.
**Deceased G-Men members being reanimated as mindless, zombified versions of their former selves is a darkly comedic pastiche of a long-running cliche within the X-Men franchise (before becoming highly prevalent throughout the entire superhero genre) of writers essentially killing off prominent or popular characters (such as Nightcrawler and Colossus) in a "shocking" storyline, only to have such supposedly pivotal events be retconned and later brought back to life, justified by increasingly absurd and convoluted Deus Ex Machinas and plot contrivanceshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eegVnInQtfo. This trope has become so common and overused to the point that other Marvel characters (and even members of the X-Men themselves) have commented upon it, with Charles Xavier joking to Jean Grey in issue #70 of X-Factorhttps://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/X-Factor_Vol_1_70 that "in mutant heaven, there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book_death Wolverine (excluding all media adaptations) currently holds the record for most deaths of any X-Man, dying over 11 times throughout the comic books, followed by Charles Xavier (8) and Jean Grey (7); the later of whom has been resurrected so often that it has become a defining feature of her character archttps://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/jean-grey-deaths-list.
**Their manufactured backstory and status as a group of superpowered outcasts parodies the X-Men's allegory for real-world bigotry and civil rights struggles. Unlike the X-Men, not only are the G-Men's status as discriminated superhumans nothing more than a cynical corporate marketing ploy, many members of the team (such as Five-Oh and Critter) have shown to be deeply bigoted towards their Black and gay colleagues. Furthermore, it also appears that (with the exception of Nubia) the Black G-Men were racially segregated into all-Black teams (G-Coast and G-Style) after being phased from G-Wiz while groups like G-Force were comprised entirely of White members.
*It seems that Godolkin had no real preferences when it came to abducting children, as many of his victims come from a wide variety of socio-economic and racial backgrounds. It was most likely based more on opportunity and happenchance as well as taking any child he assumed was gullible enough to believe his traps, similar to "" tropes of creepy men driving windowless white vans around suburban neighborhoods to snatch children.
== References ==
Category:Teams
Category:Comic series
Category:Comic characters
Category:G-Men
Category:G-Groups
Category:G-Force
Category:Supers
Category:Vought-American