Beware the power of the spreadsheet...
Hench is a 2020 novel written by Natalie Zina Walschots.
In a World… where supervillain organizations resemble a Standard Office Setting, Anna Tromedlov is a struggling young woman just trying to make ends meet in the "hench" gig economy. When the low-ranking supervillain she's doing data analysis for drags Anna into the field, she bears witness to her fellow henches being almost dismissively put down by a superhero and she herself is left severely injured as collateral damage.
During her long and painful recovery process, Anna becomes obsessed with the damages and harm (both to criminals and innocent civilians) caused by the carelessness of superheroes, even beginning a blog dubbed The Injury Report. The startling statistics soon garners her a following and Anna is shocked when she gains the attention of Leviathan, the most feared supervillain in the world.
Recruited into his organization, Anna begins a journey that will show how dangerous one can be with just numbers, data, and a well-executed spreadsheet...
Contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Anna is a seeming Punch-Clock Villain who bears no malice to anyone but simply wants to collect her paycheck. Later, she wants to get justice for the injuries caused by superheroes and collateral damage. Gradually, she devolves into Faux Affably Evil as all of her friendliness disguises her manipulative tactics and fanaticism to Leviathan.
- The Alcatraz: Dovecote is the newest and most secure super-prison with multiple security measures, and it even secretly includes a cell that can contain Leviathan. Anna is kept here by Supercollider and Draft agents before moving her to The Vet, its sister medical facility, for her lobotomy.
- And I Must Scream: Anna is kept awake, though drugged, during the procedure meant to lobotomizes her in order to question her and make sure her brain isn't too badly damaged. Fortunately, she's rescued, but she suffers brain damage requiring surgery and cybernetics, and is left blinded for several weeks.
- Supercollider suffers this thanks to Quantum Entanglement, having both his arms and legs fused into his body and his head fused into his torso, leaving him an immobile and unspeaking lump of flesh. And thanks to his powers, he's still alive and it's implied he's left in Leviathan's cell, deep underground where nobody will find him.
- Anti-Villain: Anna is a hench but she's not in it for the thrill of being a criminal or because she likes hurting people, she's just a woman looking to make a living. Even The Injury Report is more just a way to vent her frustrations and anger then anything else.
- Anti-Hero: Superheroes are not infallible and play it more than a little loose when it comes to minimizing Collateral Damage. Supercollider himself is a Well Intended Extremist that believes the bullshit he tells himself without taking any responsibility for the harm he causes.
- Appropriated Appelation: Anna points out her villain name "The Auditor" was just a joke that started up around the office after word of her telling off a superhero who was being a Casanova Wannabe and he called her a "a cold auditor bitch" because she ran a "data analysis" department. Keller, who told her she was now a supervillain in her own right with the name as proof, has this in response:Keller: All names start as jokes or insults until we own them.
- Arch-Enemy: Supercollider and Leviathan. Leviathan so hates Supercollider that he'll take any opportunity to screw with the hero and assigns Anna after humiliating Glassblower to do just that. Its not a case of Evil Is Petty, but because Supercollider murdered Leviathan's mother.
- At Least I Admit It: Keller states that the only difference between henches that work for supervillains and soldiers who do black ops and wet work for The Draft is that at least henches don't pretend they do it for "noble causes"
- Bad Boss: Electric Eel presents himself as a Benevolent Boss who cares about his employees' well-being but leaves them to fight a fruitless battle with Supercollider and fires Anna using her injury (which she got being at the battle he forced her to be at when she is specifically an office drone hench).
- Supervillains in general are considered this and it’s the exception, not the rule, that they take care of those who work for them. Henches are seen reacting with resignation rather than shock or dismay when their bosses leave them to fight superheroes just so they can pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left.
- Superheroes can be this too with their sidekicks: Vesper was a former Kick named Gloom who switched sides after being sick of being mistreated by the hero he worked with. Tardigrade, formerly Blast Furnace, quit and went solo after her ex-lover and the hero she was a Kick for blocked her admittance into the Super Team he was a part of.
- Benevolent Boss: Leviathan, which you wouldn't expect from the most feared supervillain on Earth. He not only hires Anna and gives her a couple months to recuperate from her injury, she's almost immediately moved into a new on-site apartment and given the freedom and time to figure out what her job is exactly.
- When Supercollider has her captured and intends to "dull her mind" i.e. a lobotomy, she assumes that Leviathan would just cut his loses like any other villain would. Not only does he arrange for rescue ASAP but was so pissed off that he had initially planned to personally "raze Dovecote to the ground and salt the earth" before being convinced to wait until Anna had been moved to a less secure facility for the procedure.
- Beware the Superman: Anna develops this attitude as she realizes how much Collateral Damage superheroes cause and hates when she's forced to not work while recuperating from her near-lobotomy. Not because she wants payback against the heroes, but because she's sick to her stomach over the hypocrisy.
- Blessed with Suck: June, Anna's Best Friend at the beginning of the story, has extra strong senses of smell and taste that makes her invaluable in sniffing out contraband and uses her skills to make packaging for villains looking to smuggle drugs. She also can't turn it off and has to wear nose plugs and the main reason she works for villains is because she couldn't stand being in an airport helping the TSA find said contraband.
- Body Horror: Anna suffers the realistic results of just being backhanded by someone with Super-Strength: she goes flying, lands so bad her leg is mangled and requires a titanium rod to replace her femur, and despite being a healthy young woman is left with a permanent limp and walks with a cane over a year later.
- Supercollider suffers this during the raid on Dovecove after Quantum Entanglement uses her powers to fuse his arms and legs into his chest, and lower his head until he looks like a turtle inside its shell. Worse because of his insane Nigh Invulnerablity, he's still alive, albeit immobile and unable to speak.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Accessing Leviathan's cell requires Supercollider to open a series of biometric locks. By that point, he's been reduced to a featureless blob of flesh, so it requires some inventive trickery to get through to Leviathan.
- The Cape: Deconstructed as Supercollider is presented as the world's greatest superhero, but his mannerisms are stiff and he comes off like he's just reciting lines off a paper. He's also a Well Intended Extremist who'll do anything to stop a potential threat, and the reason his Arch-Enemy hates him is because Supercollider may or may not have killed Leviathan's mother on purpose.
- Cape Busters: While Anna's department is all about humiliating and discrediting superheroes primarily through gaslighting most of the team do it because they, like their boss Leviathan, just generally dislike heroes because they're villains, and it's fun. Anna however never loses her primary motivation stemming from her Injury Report blog: that superheroes get away with causing too much Collateral Damage and harm so many people that it outweighs any "good" they might do in the process.
- Cape Punk: The story follows the perspective of a low ranking "hench" whose area of expertise is data analysis rather busting heads but is seriously injured by the carelessness of the world's greatest superhero. As it progresses, henches are shown to be mainly people looking to make money, cynical to the state of the world, and often a victim of Collateral Damage from Mook Horror Shows. Anyone with superpowers are forcibly recruited by the setting's Mutant Draft Board at middle school age and have little contact with their families, the same organization have performed murders, cover-ups, and their human experiments resulted in a powerful individual who became a the world's most feared supervillain after the before-mentioned hero and best friend killed his mother, a fellow superhero.
- Card-Carrying Villain: They literally have business cards, though its not so much for the villains directly but the corporate fronts they operate for Plausible Deniability.
- Charm Person: Supercollider is hinted at having some kind of charm effect power that even he may not be aware of, which helps him maintain his public adoration despite all the dirty laundry that Anna digs up on him. Doc Proton even implies that Supercollider is powered somewhat by the attention he receives.
- Collateral Damage: This is what happens when superheroes are not careful with using their powers when fighting villains and stopping crimes. This is the truly disturbing aspect of the Mook Horror Show Anna is part of: Supercollider either doesn't care enough to hold back using his powers on regular humans or just Does Not Know His Own Strength. He casually kicks one hench who is killed by the force and Anna is left with a mangled leg after he backhands her out of his path.
- Commonality Connection: Leviathan has a soft spot for anyone who suffered at the hands of superheroes and especially anyone who shares even a margin of hatred for Supercollider.
- Create Your Own Villain Supercollider has a nasty habit of this which he admits to while Anna is kept captive under Dovecote, something his mentor tried to warn him of. Anna freaks out internally when she realizes that she was thinking too small with The Injury Report and realizes the implication that heroes are responsible for both the villains they stop as well as the damage they cause doing so.Doc Proton: You create your own nemesis.
- Decon-Recon Switch: Hench opens with the idea of superheroes being Destructive Savior types and our heroine being a Punch-Clock Villain who suffered terrible injuries at their hands. By the end, we meet some genuinely decent heroes and our heroine has crossed the
Moral Event Horizon mutliple times. - Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: One way to interpret Leviathan's decision to shift his focus and hatred from superheroes in general and Supercollider in particular to The Draft. It's implied that now that his Archenemy has been permanently crippled into an And I Must Scream situation, Leviathan needed a new focus for his revenge.
- Destructive Savior: Superheroes are regarded as this from the perspectives of anyone who has suffered bodily harm or had their property destroyed during the course of their "good work". Incidents include when Supercollider tried to rescued a mind-controlled superhero from a villain; his carelessness caused an accidental explosion in a residential apartment that displaced hundreds of innocents, thousands of dollars in damages, a severely crippled hench, and the villain dying from their injuries. All to save one person, albeit a fellow hero.
- Dirty Cop: Two appear to interview Anna in the aftermath of the Electric Eel’s hostage situation. What makes them dirty is they brought Supercollider along likely as an intimidation tactic and tried to push the story that Eel was responsible, cutting it short when its clear Anna won’t play along. Later its revealed they left out her injury in the police report altogether. Although given what we see of Supercollider and the lengths he'll go to, its possible they weren't willing accomplices.
- The Dreaded: Leviathan the most feared supervillain on the planet and a personal enemy of Supercollider whom he hates with a passion. Supercollider is considered a heroic version to the villains as the world's greatest superhero to the point that Anna is considered a higher tier villain than most actual supervillains just by being in the same room as, and injured by, him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Anna shows repeatedly that she may work for villains, but she's not evil in the sense of being a sociopath or a monster. She's horrified when she realizes Electric Eel dragged into a kidnapping plot involving the Mayor's son and never intended for Accelerator to be killed after breaking him and Supercollider up.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even henchmen and woman have friends, families, and spouses…but unfortunately not all of them can handle the violence and dangers of working for a supervillain, not to mention the moral dilemma. After Anna is kidnapped outside her apartment, June can't handle the stress of her best friend being taken by Draft agents and breaks off their friendship. Keller reveals his husband left him when he switched sides and joined Leviathan, wanting him to do "noble" work even though it was no different from what he does now. He outright says the reason superheroes have the weakness of their love ones being targets and not villains is because they don't have any.
- Evil Is Petty: Leviathan has a distaste for superheroes but absolutely hates Supercollider and will take any chance no matter how small to hurt him. He assigns Anna and her department to find ways to unbalance the hero by going after his relationships and dirty secrets.
- Gaslighting: This is what Anna ends up coming up with in expanding The Injury Report and gets a team of her choosing to carry it out. They use the resources of Levitation's organization to mess with the personal and professional lives of superheroes, causing them to make mistakes out of stress.
- A perfect example is when they are able to bring down Glassblower by capitalizing on his progressing breakdown to goad him into a public fight with damage and injuries that the public can't ignore and gets kicked out of his Super Team, unlikely to work as hero anymore.
- Here We Go Again!: The novel ends with Leviathan revealing his plans to turn his vengeance towards The Draft after coming to the conclusion they are truly responsible for his suffering. Despite Anna well-aware their organization is nowhere recovered enough to take on such an enormous task anytime soon, she relents knowing there is nothing she could say to deter him.
- Hero with Bad Publicity Anna's job is to do this to the superheroes by airing their dirty laundry and embarrassing them, causing them to make mistakes which just hurts their reputation more. Quantum Entanglement suffers this when The Draft covers up her lover's disappearance and likely murder, framing her and throwing her to the wolves.
- Hidden Depths: Leviathan enjoys Coronation Street and has a Zune filled with Vengaboys, with his favorite song being ”We’re Going To Ibiza”. He also has a pet iguana named Shannon who he calls one of Inner Circle, and he is so protective of her that he once had the toddler of one of her caretakers kidnapped and returned a few hours later with a mild case of hypothermia, after the caretaker had left the heat lamps off too long which let Shannon get too cold.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Quantum Entanglement had the potential to be a stand-alone hero on par with Supercollider. Unfortunately she was forced into the role of what was essentially his female sidekick along with Accelerator and it fuels her resentment for the man.
- Implausible Deniability: Everyone, including heroes, know exactly what's going on with henches and the "companies" they work for and if caught the Mooks will just deny working for villains. Since law enforcement are more concerned with larger fish like the villains they work for, henches are often released without charges but are encouraged to try and go straight (which none will). Anna despite being seen working closely with Leviathan claims to work for a legitimate company when being kept captive by Supercollider and The Draft.
- Literal Metaphor: Between Supercollider and Quantum Entanglement, it's Quantum who does most of the actual work—her powers are stronger, she's overall more competent, and also, she's not a narcissistic monster. However, she's been forced into a secondary role while Supercollider takes the lion's share of the credit, both because he emotionally abused her into it and because their superhero org picked the charismatic white guy over the Maori woman. Later it turns out that Supercollider can't fly like everyone thought. Whenever it looked like he was flying, he actually "took off" by using his super-strength to jump really high, and Quantum levitated him the rest of the way. So she both figuratively and literally carried his ass.
- Lonely at the Top: After Anna and her team's success with Glassblower, Leviathan begins to give her more assignments and in particular brings Anna on business trips where he has "peace talks" with various superheroes for first hand experience dealing with them. For several months she's not in the office much and doesn't get to interact with her team as often; not only do they miss her and her brilliant ideas but Anna misses working with them and the fun they have doing so.
- Loved by All: Supercollider is the local Superman Substitute and is regarded as the greatest superhero on the planet, with many villains seeing it as an honor to do battle with him, even if their involvement is more along the lines of 'collateral damage'. Doc Proton confesses that this is more because he's a Charm Person that inspires awe and love in people, though its not clear if he's even aware of this power.
- Manipulative Bitch: Anna can be surprisingly manipulative, even vicious, when she wants to be. She takes advantage of the superhero Glassblower's spiraling meltdown and pushes his buttons until he snaps, setting up a situation where he's caught causing massive property damage and crippled/killed a couple henches in public. She later fakes a pregnancy during a "peace conference" with a Super Team, one of whom is really pregnant with her third child, to make them more willing to cease hostilities.
- The Mentor: Leviathan has the mask of his, a villain named Entropy, in the office he uses though won’t elaborate on the details on why he has it and discourages any curiosity.
- Doc Proton was this to both Quantaum Entanglement and Supercollider, and is one of the only people, if not only person singular, who knows about the latter's Charm Person abilities being the source of his One Hundred Percent Approval Rating.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The main reason most make a Heel–Face Turn is because of this; Vesper was a former (side)Kick named Gloom that got sick of being used by his hero and joined Leviathan (who is, ironically, a much better boss) becoming one of his pilots. Keller also worked for the government, possibly The Draft, was pissed when his team were sent after the villain over a test of a weapon and not an actual threat. When Leviathan offered him a job on a whim, he took it.
- Mooks: This is how henches are seen by both supervillains and the more careless superheroes. Its deconstructed as they're shown to be people the same as anyone else with feelings, loved ones, in need of financial security, and suffer greatly from the injuries and deaths caused by being forced to fight people with superpowers.
- Mook Horror Show: The story shows this from the perspective of a said Mook when Anna witnesses first hand Supercollider as he kills or cripple her fellow henches. She herself is causally backhanded by him which hits her like a truck and leaves her with a shattered femur. It emphasizes the fear and hopelessness of facing someone with superpowers regardless if they're heroes or villains. Not to mention the painful recovery process if you survive and Anna, despite being young and healthy, is left with a permeant limp and walks with a cane.
- Mutant Draft Board: The Draft is the central organization charged with identifying and training people with superhuman abilities with the specific purpose of having them become superheroes. They're also horribly corrupt; covering up and committing murder, performing human experiments on their trainees, and being responsible for the creation of the world's most feared supervillain.
- Never My Fault: Zig-Zagged. Supercollider admits that he considers every villain he faced that rose to power including Leviathan his fault. However, its because he didn't take the initative to stop them before they grew too powerful and not because of any actions he did that put them on the path to villainy in the first place. When speaking with Anna while she's being held captive, he never once acknowledges nor apologizes for severely crippling her, which led to The Injury Report and gaining a high rank within Leviathan's organization. Only that she's a potential Worthy Opponent that needs to be put down before Anna becomes too much of a threat.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Supercollider's main power, he's immune to almost all forms of damage, but it's implied he still feels pain.
- Leviathan is also similarly indestructible, revealed to have survived multiple execution attempts.
- Orcus on His Throne: Its been years since Leviathan had actively taken any action or open hostilities with heroes or the public, preferring spending his time expanding his operations from the shadows. The only interaction he has with them now is when he has "peace talks" to call a truce between himself, his associates, and certain heroes of his choosing.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Anna equates Supercollider to a natural disaster and calculates that his continued activities would the equivalent of a 6.5 earthquake that left tens of thousands displaced, injured or dead along with billions of dollars in property damage.
- The Reveal: The Leviathan Protocol orders his execution after two days, not twenty-one like Quantum Entanglement said. This means that while Anna was lying to her about who killed Melting Point, she was lying right back to Anna. Quantum Entanglement's terror at seeing Leviathan alive confirms her subterfuge; she did not expect to see Leviathan alive and quickly teleports away.
- Standard Office Setting: Supervillains have corporate fronts through which they hire henches and they not for show either. Anna works in an office doing data analysis and her friend Greg does IT work, memos and meetings are hold, and more established and successful villains will offer things like medical benefits. Anna's story almost reads like a young woman's rapid rise in a company, going from a near-broke temp worker to the head of her own department in a major corporation…just one that's run by a supervillain and her department's job is ruining gaslighting superheroes and ruining their reputations.
- Start of Darkness: Anna eventually admits that she never though of herself as villain or evil when she was a low ranking hench, just an office drone who did data analysis for supervillains. Supercollider shattering her leg with a casual backhand is what starts Anna on her path to becoming the trusted lieutenant of the world's most feared supervillain.
- Superhero Paradox: Anna brings this to the spotlight thanks to The Injury Report, pointing out that many times heroes get involved in stopping villains and crimes they cause equal, if not more, damage then the criminals. When Supercollider mentions how Create Your Own Villain trope, Anna has a horrified Oh, Crap! reaction as she realizes the implications that superheroes are to blame for the very villains they fight, including Leviathan.
- The Unreveal: Anna is revealed late in the story to have powers as well, undetected until Leviathan orders tests calling the doctors who work for The Draft as amateurs in this regard. When being treated for her near lobotomy, Leviathan takes the opportunity to have some unspecified procedure done to active them. What those powers are is never specified and Leviathan refuses to elaborate, which leaves Anna to suspect even he might not know.
- Tomato in the Mirror: After everything she goes through by midway through the book, Keller points out something she been ignoring or unawares. She works closely with the world’s most feared supervillain, survived two encounters with world’s greatest superhero, inspires enough fear in said superhero to try and lobotomize her to nip a Worthy Opponent in the bud, and even has a supervillain name. In other words Anna is no longer a simple hench but now The Auditor, a full blown supervillain in her own right.
- Transhuman Treachery: Leviathan’s appearance and abilities is the result of some unexplained experiment The Draft performed on him as a teenager, turning him into the Humanoid Abomination he is today. This and the fact his best friend Supercollider accidently(?) killed his mother following their orders is what caused him to become a supervillain.
- Villain Has a Point: The crux of The Injury Report, in which its pointed out that Supercollider, and other heroes like him, are as responsible for the collateral damage from fighting criminals if not more so for property damage, grievous injuries, and even deaths both villains and civilians.
- June is correct to worry that stirring up shit about the recklessness of superheroes and especially Supercollider can have serious consequences. Like Supercollider having Anna kidnapped and almost lobotomized and her retaliation against him unintentionally gets Accelerator killed.
- Vitriolic Best Friends: Anna and Quantum Entanglement seem to develop a bond despite being hero and villain as well as disagreeing about everything. Subverted in that they were both manipulating the other.
- Weird Trade Union: The unnamed Temp Agency for henches, they help unemployed criminals get contracts with more established villains who are in need of workers ranging from the typical like muscle and getaway to more mundane jobs like IT support (like Greg) or data analysis and organization (like Anna).
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Supercollider proves far too willing to do anything to stop criminals, and even people with the potential to become criminals, to the point that he kidnaps and attempts to have Anna lobotomized when he believes she is too great of a potential threat.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: The plot of the book is kicked off by the fact that it is from the perspective of a female henchman who is put through a Mook Horror Show by the setting's Superman Expy.
