Hench

"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, as she goes from being a Hench to being a trusted lieutenant... and then goes farther.


 * 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, kidnap somebody who had offered to make peace, or throw each other under a bus at the slightest hint of bad publicity. On the other side ... are the villains.
 * Create Your Own Villain: Supercollider's lack of willingness to accept responsibility for his collateral damage is what causes Anna to go from being hired help to become a full-blown villain.
 * 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.
 * Hero Insurance: Exists in-universe, but it's Anna's claim being denied that sets her on the road to full-blown villainy.
 * Lower Deck Episode: The entire novel is this to the Superhero Literature genre.
 * Painting the Medium: Text chats are presented in Speech Bubbles, as if the reader was looking at the protagonist's smartphone.
 * Propaganda Piece: Anna manipulates a journalist into writing one... which, despite being completely fact-checked, almost doesn't get published because it doesn't match the paper's Confirmation Bias.
 * Sdrawkcab Name: "Tromedlov" → "voldemorT"
 * 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 the only footnote in the novel.
 * String Theory: The electronic version - a graphical presentation of relationships between various people and groups - is what gives Anna the final clue as to how to actually go up against Supercollider without risking her own death.
 * Sued for Superheroics: Tromedlov isn't able to take Supercollider to court for crippling her, so she pleads her case online, in the court of public opinion. This brings the matter to the public's attention - and paints a target on her back, forcing her into the role of supervillain.
 * Transgender: It's mentioned as a very minor data point that one of a pair of twin sibling heroes who appear only once has transitioned - possibly to highlight the other twin's casual sexism.
 * Unusual Euphemism: "Meat", for mooks who are expected to do fieldwork and get into combat. This is a broad job description, ranging from Dumb Muscle to Cannon Fodder to every sort of Meat Shield... to highly trained elite forces (who call themselves "sirloin").
 * Villain Protagonist: Not to begin with, but after she's recruited, Anna happily takes on this role.
 * Wham! Line: