While a relatively unmentioned character in The Boys comic, Eagle The Archer has a grim backstory just like every other cape wearing psychopath in the story. The superheroes in The Boys universe tend to be dismissive of humanity and Eagle the Archer is no different.
In the television treatment of The Boys, Eagle The Archer is introduced as a having found religion, faithful to try and convert an ousted superhero called The Deep. Eagle The Archer reveals that he lost sight of his duty as a hero when he showed up to a mass shooting. The hero lobbed arrows at the shooter only to finish with an empty quiver and the shooter still on a rampage. The comic however, highlights an even more brutal backstory for the small-time hero.
The Boys don't discriminate in doling out violent justice to both big-time superheroes and the less well-known rogues. Billy Butcher, who has a storied history of blackmailing superheroes with whatever grime cakes the underbelly of their shiny exterior, learned a dark secret about Eagle.
The superhero got extremely high on cocaine and laid into his girlfriend. The Eagle got so fired up he beat his girlfriend into a coma. Butcher discretely kept the ordeal quiet, but with a serious quid pro quo. A technique that became a staple in the comic—The Boys acquire dirt on a superhero in order to leverage intel on another more famous superhero.
In exchange for keeping Eagle the Archer's domestic abuse secret, he revealed plenty of skeletons in the closets of several other heroes on a super team. Butcher tells all this information to another superhero, Tek Knight, as an example of the Boys' blackmailing intent. Tek Knight has his own skeletons, and seemed shook by Butcher’s detailing of Eagle the Archer’s violent outburst.
Where the TV show opted to use Eagle's backstory as a fall from grace only to have a religious revival, the comic offers no redemptive qualities for the arrow-slinging hero. Eagle the Archer is later seen in The Boys #52, only to be killed in the next issue when he flies into a propeller and turns into bloody mist. While the character on TV appears poised to be a divine help to The Deep, his comics backstory is more sordid and serves as an example of The Boys' ability to make super heroes cower if their reputation is threatened.