“I absolutely loved the first half. The book answers the question, “Why would anyone be a henchman for these crazy-ass villains?”
Which is a valid question.
I’ll always remember the henchman from the first Batman movie. Bob. They made Bob stand out a little in the movie. Bob wore the Joker henching uniform, which was a purple windbreaker with a picture of the Joker on it. Why a custom clothing place would ever agree to make these is beyond me.
Bob had a few little scenes in the movie. When the bad guys were messing up all the art in the museum, Bob is about to slash a painting when the Joker stops him and tells him to go ahead and leave THAT one alone. The painting is Bacon’s “Figure With Meat”, which seems like a painting the Joker might dig.
Most memorably, near the end of the movie Joker gets frustrated, asks Bob for his gun, and then uses said gun to shoot Bob. It’s fast. It’s not drawn-out. He gets the gun, and he blows Bob away.
Such a terrible end. I mean, Jesus, the guy has an action figure!
It makes total sense that the Joker would shoot the guy, but how the hell does a Joker keep getting henchmen? When Mr. Freeze blasts a henchman who was just being helpful and handing him a newspaper, don’t the other guys see that and think, “Screw this. I’m outta here.”?
This book answers that question. And it does so in a way that doesn’t make fun of comics while still recognizing the inherent silliness of henchmen, as a concept.
The second half is a little weaker in that regard.
The pitting of regular people and superpowered people works in the book, but when the main character makes attempts at gaining his own superpowers, things get a little flat. It’s kind of played for comedy, kind of serious, and overall doesn’t do it for me. It also kind of pumps out that old idea of “The heroes are just as crazy as the villains. Maybe, -gasp- even crazier!”
There’s something worth exploring there, for sure. But now that the gritty 90’s are over, you’re going to have a tough time convincing me that Batman is, perhaps, crazier than the Joker. Or, you’re going to have trouble convincing me that’s a good story.
Here’s the thing. We all love to wonder what would happen if Batman snapped. If he went crazy and fought against the people he normally fought alongside. But, we’ve told that story, and now that we’ve come out the other side, I think that what makes Batman into Batman is that he doesn’t. He COULD do a lot of stuff, but he doesn’t. What makes Batman interesting to me, in 2015, is his willpower. He could definitely kill the Joker, and he doesn’t. I’m ready to admit that this, in itself, is a form of crazy. But it’s a very different form of crazy than shooting poor ol’ Bob. It’s manipulative, and it’s grandiose in thinking you can orchestrate everything, that you can go so far as to SAVE the Joker, essentially deciding when he lives and dies. But when a book, a book like Hench, reduces that character to being crazy in the “I’ll kill you!” way, I think it misses the mark. Or, at the very least, tells a story that doesn’t need to be told again and again.”