The team of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (producers) and Garth Ennis (comics writer) has given us AMC’s “Preacher,” the most inventive, audacious and purely entertaining comics-based series of the past few years. With “Preacher” on the way out — its final season begins Aug. 4 — the three are getting right back in the game, with a new show based on an Ennis comic, “The Boys,” coming to Amazon Prime Video on Friday.

“The Boys” is not pitched at the feverish level of “Preacher,” in terms of either mayhem or dark comic style — its showrunner, Eric Kripke , is the maker of network series like “Supernatural” and “Timeless,” and the eight-episode “Boys” is like a high-end, more thoughtfully assembled, slightly bloodier and sexier version of one of those conventional shows. (“Preacher” is overseen by Sam Catlin , whose previous writing and producing experience include s “Breaking Bad.”)

“The Boys” is also a little more of a known quantity because it’s a superhero show. That it’s an anti-superhero show — in which the costumed crime fighters are the bad guys, arrogant and corporatized and heedless of collateral damage to innocent humans, and the Boys of the title are a motley, disreputable bunch who take them on — doesn’t change the basic equation. The visual takeaway is still people in tights who can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes, the wrinkle being that we’re rooting for the guy fighting back with his wits and a crowbar.

All of that said, the series is quite enjoyable, particularly in a fast and clever first episode (written by Kripke and directed by Dan Trachtenberg ) that introduces us to the show’s world — marginally exaggerated from our own — and gives the show’s real hero, the distinctly non-superpowered electronics salesman Hughie (Jack Quaid ), a reason to hate the supes. In a judiciously horrifying scene, we witness the accidental obliteration of Hughie’s fiancée by an out-of-control Flash-like character, A-Train ( Jessie T. Usher ), who’s a member of the Seven, America’s premier superhero team.