Origin
The Female (Of The Species) is a member of The Boys and she acts as the “muscle” of the team together with The Frenchman. This muted Japanese girl possesses superhuman strength that can rip someone’s skin and limbs off. Although she appears to be ruthless and cruel to her enemies, The Female is a good person and she is The Frenchman’s best friend. According to Mother’s Milk, The Female was exposed to Compound V as a baby and it is implied that at this time some other things happened to her that contributed to her mental problems. The Female has an uncontrollable urge to kill and at times when she does not kill enough in her capacity as a member of The Boys she takes jobs with the local Mafia. Frenchman has tried to help her overcome this compulsion, with limited success. When Wee Hughie was introduced to The Female, he was strongly cautioned not to touch her. She is willing to harm even her friends when made uncomfortable.
According to CIA records, The Female’s tongue has been removed, presumably causing her muteness. It is not clear whether someone else or The Female herself is responsible for the removal. However, following Hughie’s revelation of a potential superhuman genocide by Butcher, it was revealed that she does have the ability to speak when she said, “I hate mean people.” The Female’s main power is her immense strength, as she regularly tears even super humans apart. She also has a talent for finding the weak spots on people. When fighting Stormfront, The Female damaged her hand scratching his face but successfully tore out his eye. After fighting Stormfront, The Female was unconscious in the hospital for awhile but soon recovered. When she awoke, she broke Hughie’s arm as he was trying to take some of her candy.
Creation
The Female is a Dynamite Entertainment comic book character who was created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson. The Female first appears in The Boys #2 released in 2006. Darick Robertson revealing a part of The Female’s creation process “The point was to make her small and insane. In the years leading up to actually having scripts to see these characters in action I didn’t fully realize what Garth (Ennis) was going for, and I think my first instinct was to go for sexy, like a ‘Kill Bill’ Tarantino-esque character. In a later sketch, I tried making her Japanese and thats when the character came to life for me. When I suggested a change in nationality to Garth, he lit up, and embraced the idea. I can’t wait for the origin story he said the change inspired” in The Boys Definitive Edition Volume 1.
Character Evolution
Deceptively small, the lone female member of the Boys is also its most powerful member. Displaying almost autistic like qualities the Female’s background was not expanded upon until quite some time after her first appearance. Despite being essentially silent as a character, the Female does develop and participate during stories and demonstrate emotion, occasionally relying on other characters such as the Frenchman to fill in gaps or by emphatic artistic references, like her expressions or body language. A regular subplot of the story that tends to rely more on visual cues is the friendship and bond between the Female and the Frenchman, with the latter evident to be one of if not the only person that the Female will allow to physically interact with her, as well as being a source of mutual friendship. The two regular playing games in the background of panels as well as usually paired together on missions and assignments. Also of note is the Female’s interactions with Butcher’s pet bulldog Terror, who the Female shows plenty of affection towards. To help maintain her mystique, the Female’s origin story wasn’t told until halfway through the series and it was retold by the Frenchman, the Female preserving her quiet characterization.
Major Story Arcs
Gathering the Team
Butcher Baker is reassembling the anti superhero team the Boys. He tracks down the Female in the United States where she is doing violent hired muscle work. The Female is introduced to Wee Hughie at the first team meeting The Female already knowing the rest of the team from past experience. Characteristically silent the Female does not introduce herself to Hughie with The Frenchman strongly cautioning Hughie on physically touching the Female. Butcher explains their first mission as blackmailing the superhero team the Teenage Kix. In the subsequent surveillance activities the Female isn’t too involved and when the Boys listen in on the Teenage Kix from planted recording devices the Female just plays with Butcher’s bulldog Terror on the floor ticking the dog. A member of Teenage Kix, Shout Out is forced by his team to announce publicly that he is homosexual or Butcher will make public the Teenage Kix’s various illegal or deviant activities. The Boys first mission draws complications when the Teenage Kix find out who is blackmailing them. Tracking down the Boys a fight between the two teams plays out almost immediately upon confrontation. Ignorant to who the Boys are, Teenage Kix are overconfident and arrogant, believing they are in for an easy time. They quickly realize they are mistaken, The Female is fast and brutal during the fight attacking Popclaw and in taking her out almost immediately by attacking her face. When Hughie discovers a hamster wrapped in duct tape crawling from Blarney Cocks body, the Female uses the claw on Popclaws wrist to help Hughie cut the small creature free.
Killing Again
Presumably hired by former contacts, The Female begins to stalk men again and targeting the ones identified in photos given to her. The Frenchman is aware of the Female’s extra curricular activities and attempts to intervene by both appealing to the Female directly and threatening and intimidating one of the criminals hiring her to kill. In one instance offering The Female chocolate limes and empathizing that he understands and knows that she cannot, not do what she does. He tells the Female its simply not good for her heart. The Female otherwise continues her quiet presence on the team. The Female and the Frenchman will occasionally play games they invented such as Reverse Strip Poker, Scrabble, among others. When Wee Hughie goes undercover as the Superhero Bagpipe, his cover is blown and the Female and the Frenchman are forced to step in and kill the entire G-Wiz eam, with the exception of Jamal also known as Dime-Bag. This almost creates a deadly situation for the Boys and the Female with all the various teams associated with the G-Men, like G-Force, The G-Brits, The G-Nomads, G-Coast and G-Style track them down after realizing Bagpipe aka Hughie was a spy. Vought-American would happen to intervene, already well aware of the increasing risk the founder of G-Men John Godolkin presented and brutally and efficiently assassinating the various G-Squads en masse.
Payback
After a successful mission with the Boys where the Female ripped off the hands of one Supe and the face of another, the Female continues her side work as a hired arm. Unfortunately she is lured into a trap by powerful Payback member Stormfront . Considered by some to be the second most powerful superhuman in the world after the Homelander. The Female finds herself in the unusual position of being the underdog as she is also quick to evade Stormfront’s lethal lightening breath. The Female manages to tag Stormfront across his face shredding his skin with her fingernails. The Female is out powered none the less and Stormfront delivers a vicious beating only the Female’s ferocity allowing her to gauge out Stormfront’s right eye before he beats her unconscious. Unbeknown to the Frenchman who actually injured her so severely, he reports her injury to the rest of the Boys team who follow the Frenchman to the Clinic she is being held at. The Female in a coma the rest of the team discuss her injuries outside her room, before Mother’s Milk grows suspicious about the Hospital and its facilities. Realizing they had walked into a trap, Butcher order’s the Frenchman to get the Female out of the building. Payback arrives on the scene tearing through a brick wall and the two teams engage in a violent brawl. Butcher manages to knock Mind Droid out off the start but the Boys are still outnumbered and out powered with their two most powerful members. Stormfront toys with MM, while Butcher fights off Soldier Boy, and Hughie and terror fend off Crimson Countess. The Boys characters resort to sheer ferocity, Butcher tearing off Soldier Boys nose and MM attacking a distracted Stormfront’s testicles. This distraction gives Butcher the chance to tell Hughie to leave with MM and find The Frenchman and the Female. Meanwhile the Frenchman has gotten the comatose Female to a proper genuine hospital where she is checked in.
The Female Awakens
The Boys have successfully dealt with Payback, however the Female still lays in a coma. Despite attempting to maintain post at her bedside, Butcher finally convinced the Frenchman to get a warm drink. Hughie sits in beside the female in the mean time and takes the opportunity to talk to her candidly knowing she can’t hear him. Wee Hughie notices the Female’s chocolate limes and innocently attempts to eat some of the sweets before realizing that the Female has grabbed his arm and subsequently breaks it. As Hughie has some down time, and goes about finding about his fellow team members backstories, due to the Female’s lack of speech, the Frenchman obliges by telling Hughie The Female’s life story. The Frenchman would tell a tragic tale of a woman who had taken her daughter to work for the day, and how her daughter unattended and still so young as to only be able to crawl would find herself exposed to dangerous and toxic chemicals, Compound V. Falling into a bucket of the dangerous drug researchers at the facility would find themselves overwhelmed and killed by the small child and the situation would quickly escalate with many bodies left at the hands of the Female. Although only an innocent child, she wold prove very deadly and lethal. Caught she would imprisoned and treated like an animal. Heavily drugged and tranquilized the young Female would still manage to escape her confines every so often, escaping to the outside world where she would get glimpses of what an ordinary life might entail.
What I Know
The Frenchman’s continued efforts to lead the Female away from a life of violence leads to him surprising the Female with a box of 2000 AD comics he brought on Ebay.
Powers and Abilities
The Female is incredibly strong and incredibly brutal, even among her team of super strong brutal powerhouses and even in a world filled with super powerful beings. She has a tendency to rip apart her enemies. Even extending as far as to skin and or rip off body parts such as the face of foes. The Female possesses the level of strength that she can easy crush machine guns with her bare hands, as well as rip the ends of shotguns off with her teeth. The Female has demonstrated extraordinary levels of speed and agility, even as a young girl, being able to evade and wound several armed and trained gunmen. The Female appears to have the distinct ability to hit a person at their most vulnerable spots, and demonstrates efficiency and effectiveness when wounding such spots. The Female’s prowess is evident in encounters such as when Butcher brought her along to keep Tek Knight in check. The armored member of Payback has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in his technologically advanced power suit, yet it took the Female mere moments to tear apart his suit and leave him incapacitated. Although she was unable to defeat Stormfront, the fact that the Female was able to contend with him briefly single handily speaks highly of her ferocity. The Female possesses particularly keen senses, able to catch snowballs thrown at her by the Frenchman with her fingers without viewing where the projectile was coming from.
The Female’s relative superiority in power compared to most of the superheroes in the world come by virtue of such a heavy exposure to Compound V as a baby, not even able to walk yet. The highly potent toxic waste she found herself in giving her extreme powers that even as a toddler she could overpower and kill adult men with ease.
The Boys Series
In the series, changes were made to the Females character. One of them is that she is named “Kimiko Miyashiro”.
When The Boys first meet Kimiko, they at first think she’s a victim, but soon discover that she’s a dangerous superhuman. After a while, Frenchie manages to cal down and befriend Kimiko. After a mind reading session with Mesmerizer, the Boys learn that Kimiko was part a terrorist group, and that Vought has been trying to make supervillains to justify having Superheroes in the Military. Kimiko is eventually reunited with her brother, but he is killed the Stormfront. She later take part Stormfronts beating along with Starlight, and Queen Maeve.