Get to Work, Hercules! is Book VII in Kate
McMullan's
Myth-O-Mania series, published 2003. Hades reveals how he helped his short-tempered, dim-witted nephew Hercules complete XII seemingly-impossible labors.
This book provides examples of:
- Adaptational Consent: Instead of having Zeus impersonate Alcmene's husband Amphytrion and impregnate her with Hercules under these circumstances, Alcmene is a princess who knowingly married Zeus before she became pregnant with Hercules, then marries Amphytrion later on.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: The NeMean Lion gets one when he steals some cows from Hercules' relatives, resulting in Hercules killing the Lion before Eury tells him to.
- Agony of the Feet: Hercules beats Geryon in wrestling after stomping on the latter's big toe.
- Bad Powers, Good People: The Hydra killed humans with her toxic breath by accident instead of malice, and turns out to be a good friend, helping Hercules clear the Augean Stables, although because of her Walking Wasteland powers she has to use sign language to communicate with the other characters.
- Cool Uncle: Hades becomes one to Hercules while keeping him out of trouble. Unlike Theseus, Hercules even calls him, "Uncle Hades".
- Dreadful Musician: Hercules can not sing.
- Dumb Is Good: Hercules seems pretty dense, to say the least.
- Edible Theme Naming: Amphytrion has a second cousin named "Humus," who married a woman named "Pita".
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Hercules has one.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the chapter titles contain the word "Big".
- Kissing Cousins: Hera tells Hercules that she will give him her daughter, Hebe, in marriage.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When Hades catches Theseus' friend Peirithous serenading Persephone, he makes the men sit in the Chair of Forgetfulness, which erases their memories. Theseus becomes freed with help from Hercules, but Peirithous gets left in the Chair for centuries.
- Meaningful Name: Hades tries to help protect Alcmene's and Zeus' son from Hera's jealousy by giving him a name meaning, "For the glory of Hera". Alcmene picks the Roman "Hercules" over the Greek "Heracles", so she wouldn't have to actually say the fearsome goddess' name when calling him.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The NeMean Lion's enslaved cousin, Cee, helps Hercules defeat him.
- Name To Run Away From Really Fast: Cee and Hades both emphasize the "Mean" in the aunt-killing, cousin-kidnapping, cow-stealing NeMean Lion's name.
- NeMean Skinning: Hercules dons the NeMean Lion's skin.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Hades and Persephone spend a romantic winter in the Underworld together, Hercules completes Labors VII and VIII without his help, with Hades learning in spring how exactly Hercules accomplished them.
- On the Next: In the updated epilogue, Hades proposes to Hestia a book about the tough, yet selfless, Atalanta.
- Quest Giver: As in the traditional myth, Hercules' cousin, Eury, assigns each of the Labors.
- Series Continuity Error: After Hercules and Cee beat the NeMean Lion and head for the Oracle, Hades goes back to the Underworld, but decides to help them again, and ends up meeting them just as they make it to Delphi. During the time in the Underworld, he claims he "helped Theseus out a couple of times". This is despite Theseus being two at Hercules' tenth birthday earlier in the book, and Hercules being eighteen now, and Hades, in any case, not meeting Theseus properly until he is already sixteen, and Theseus mentioning there that Hercules is already a great hero. In addition, the labors seemingly take place over roughly two years, yet Theseus appears with his friend Peirithous close to the end of them, and he remembers Hades. See Stop That Bull, Theseus!, and
Alternative Character Interpretation on this series' YMMV tab. - Speaks Fluent Animal: Hercules can speak cow, after spending his adolescence at a farm owned by his stepfather's cousins. This language is the same as, or at least similar enough to, the language of deer, which enables Hercules to later speak to Artemis' hind.
- Super Mode: Cerberus scares Eury by changing from a little three-headed dog, to a giant, spiked, red-eyed three-headed dog.
- Tempting Fate: Hercules remarks that Labor IX, borrowing Queen Hippolyta's girdle, sounds very easy. He doesn't expect Hera to frame him of kidnapping the queen, invoking the wrath of her Amazonian subjects.
- What Could Have Been: In-universe, some of Alcmene's rejected names for Hercules include "Chickapeckus" and "Duckawaddleus".
