Description

Benjamin ## Personality In his cover story, Soldier Boy is portrayed as a patriotic hero who fought in WWII for justice and liberty and gave his life to save America from a nuclear meltdown in 1984. According to the Legend, however, Soldier Boy never really fought on D-Day and only participated in publicity shoots and propaganda films with the American military at the time. However others like former Vought CEO Stan Edgar claims that he did fight in war since he killed several Germans. During his younger years, as the leader of Payback, Ben was a very arrogant, macho, violent and reckless bully who was at times abusive to those who disagreed with him, and had no qualms with using his status and power to intimidate and manipulate others for his own ends, using Black Noir and Gunpowder as his primary punching bags, but being willing to beat on the others which makes him a child abuser since they were teenagers at the time. This is seen when he used his contacts to make sure Noir wouldn't get his participation in a movie for being "not good enough”, seeing Noir’s ambition as an attempt to usurp and outshine him. His behavior caused his team to despise him. He also placed a high importance on traditional masculinity and "being a man", belittling and sometimes abusing those who failed to meet or opposed his views and standards of masculinity; something he said, in his words, was to "toughen them up". He retained his attitudes even after The Boys freed him from Russian captivity, nearly forty years after he was first captured. As claimed by Grace Mallory during her recounting of the Nicaragua incident, Soldier Boy had a celebrity-like persona and was not used to people looking down on him, which led him to insult and belittle her when she refused his advances. He was also quite rash, as he nearly fired a rocket launcher without realizing he was aiming at a munitions dump that could obliterate half the camp and draw the attention of any enemy military forces operating nearby. He was a womanizer. According to Grace, Ben lacked the ability to "read the room", in that he always assumed that women were charmed by his machismo when they actually despised him for it. In spite of his hyper-masculine persona, Soldier Boy was capable of showing respect and gave Grace a small gesture of appreciation when she killed an enemy soldier who was about to fire on him from behind. Furthermore, despite his arrogance and machismo, Soldier Boy was the only Supe during the Nicaragua incident seen to be fighting effectively and maintaining total composure in combat against the enemy, which was seen again when he fought Homelander for the first time at Herogasm. This shows that he possesses much greater discipline and skill in wielding his powers in actual combat, in marked contrast to the general lack of tactical capability, panicking and cowardice associated with most Supes, which could possibly be from his time as a soldier during WWII before he became Soldier Boy. Even when enraged, Ben's discipline showed as he fought effectively against Butcher and the Boys when they tried to stop him in Vought tower. After returning home to the USA, fresh from captivity, Soldier Boy was shown to be very bitter and vindictive, immediately targeting his former teammates for death on a revenge rampage. For all his apparent homicidal tendencies, he does not seem to exhibit psychopathic behavior like Homelander and after he leaves Russia, he is shown actively avoiding taking civilian lives if he can help it (although he does avoid taking responsibility when he causes casualties). He showed remorse for the lives lost when he had unleashed his radiation blast, quietly admitting to Hughie that he wasn't a bad guy and he didn't mean to hurt them, though based off his later actions it is unknown if he was being genuine. He later killed a priest and nun that he was sure Mindstorm had brainwashed before even finding out if the priest had been brainwashed, as well as being prepared to detonate and destroy Vought tower, despite the civilians present, showing that he sometimes considers human lives a cost that can be paid. Soldier Boy also showed a lack of care for the casualties caused after his explosion at Herogasm, simply shrugging it off. In his younger days, he was not considerate of collateral damage and death and was sometimes quite negligent at handling problems, as seen when a group of kids stealing a Mercedes Benz resulted in Soldier Boy hurling said car through an apartment building and killing Mother's Milk's family in the process. While the deaths were an accident, they were directly caused by Soldier Boy's recklessness. He was not held accountable for the deaths. When Milk confronted Soldier Boys on the death of his family, Soldier Boy was nonchalant, claiming he's killed many families over the years.