Hench

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Hench

Written by:	Natalie Zina Walschots
Central Theme:	Thanks to Black and Gray Morality, Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil. The gig economy and office politics still suck, though.
Synopsis:
Genre(s):	Superhero
First published:	2020

Although she tackles serious issues like how women are treated in the workplace, or how friendships might splinter under the weight of fear, Hench is steeped in the glorious campiness of Golden and Silver Age superheroes. There are lava guns! Mind control devices! Costumes! Lairs! Supercars! Awe! Names like Doc Proton, the Accelerator, the Tidal Four, Electric Eel, the Cassowary, the Auditor. It's fun. It's emotional. It feels like a friend. But it's not comforting. —Jessica P. Wick, NPR, "'Hench' Counts The Cost Of Those High-Powered Superhero Battles", September 26, 2020

Hench is a 2020 novel by Natalie Zina Walschots (her first novel), set in a world of metahumans with Black and Gray Morality.

Anna Tromedlov starts the story as a temp Hench - barely one step up the ladder from a Meat in that she isn't expected to do fieldwork, but she's still a non-powered temp with all the job insecurity and lack of benefits that that implies. Her job is data correlation, compiling a database of superheroes that her employer might end up facing. The first few scenes are relatively lighthearted - but then the plot goes dark when Anna's permanently crippled by a superhero because she was in the way of said hero reaching her boss. And then her Superheroes Insurance claim is refused because she wasn't injured by the supervillain and thus wasn't named in the police report. Needless to say, this pisses her off, and she starts doing research into how many other people's lives were ruined or ended by collateral damage caused by heroes. Her blog on the subject brings her to the attention of the most powerful supervillain on the planet... who offers her a full-time Hench job compiling data on violent heroes in order to bring them down. Then life starts getting intense for Anna.

The novel was one of the books discussed in the 2021 edition of Canada Reads, making it to the final three in competition.

Tropes used in Hench include:

• Black and Gray Morality: On one side there are superhumans who are quite willing to permanently cripple or kill bystanders, use their powers to attack people who are simply defending themselves, or throw each other under a bus at the slightest hint of negative publicity. On the other side ... are the villains.
• Have You Tried Rebooting?: At the beginning of the story, IT specialist Greg is on retainer to a supervillain who has trouble with basic computers (and taking a call from said supervillain means he misses a temp job where he could actually use his skills). One of the supervillain's calls has Greg ask whether he's tried turning the device off and back on again.
• Lower Deck Episode: The entire novel is this to the Superhero Literature genre.
• Shown Their Work: When comparing the damage cause by the hero Supercollider to the damage caused by an earthquake, the author cites the relevant Real Life website in a footnote.
• Wham! Line: "Not only were heroes responsible for all of the damage and injury they caused, they were even responsible for creating the villains they fought."