There is a crack in everything
To quote Leonard Cohen: ‘’There is a crack in everything.’’ To quote Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV: ’I must break you.’
Natalie Zina Walschots’ 2020 novel Hench was a 2021 “Canada Reads” nominee. It opens on main character Anna Tromedlov’s contact with the Temp Agency, which finds work from tech aides to hired muscle, in the world of super villains. That’s right – Anna and friends are regulars within the world of basic support of ‘the bad guys.’ If there is anything that Hench does, it is transport us – but instead of going somewhere we expected to go, this is more like a kidnapping.
Anna has a knack for numbers – calculations. DATA. She is scouted out by villain Electric Eel, and it turns out that her ability with crunching numbers and producing data comes in handy for determining outcomes of hero activity. Being able to predict what a hero is going to do next is the ultimate tool for a villain. When Anna is caught in the crossfire during a public event while working for the Electric Eel, she feels the actual impact of being in superhero Supercollider’s path, leaving her with a shattered femur, and a shattered career. In Supercollider’s world, Anna is dismissed as collateral damage. Stuck on the couch due to her injuries, Anna begins running numbers. How many life years did Supercollider and his cronies cost the people injured and killed on the day of Anna’s injury? The figures take us where the world has been tilting towards in recent history – the dismantling of heroes. Anna bores into the so-called good, the so-called bad, and all of the ugly truth of what happens when one becomes too comfortable in power. This isn’t cancel culture – this is the pedestal police. Hench evens things out.
After a long stretch on the couch, with her crunched bones, crunching numbers Anna is scouted out by Supercollider’s arch nemesis, Leviathan. Given a pad within Leviathan’s compound; Anna benefits from proper medical care and rest. Anna slowly wins over a team within Leviathan’s entourage and employees. Virtually all of Leviathan’s crew have had a great fall. They have experienced ‘the worst thing’ happening, and cobbling their lives back together has both the damage and beauty of repaired things. Anna and the team set about crafting the dismantling of the superhero world, all with the goal of ultimately taking down Supercollider.
Hench sheds light on what truly is for ‘our own good’ – recalling other wellbeloved characters – such as the redhaired orphan without a home, the metal man without a heart, a beast, a villain in a long black and green robe with flying minions – I’m talking about Stan Lee’s retelling of the Wizard of Oz, known as The Avengers, possibly the most destructive superhero franchise to date, virtually razing Manhattan just to sort out Thor’s brother.
Hench isn’t the first super tale to explore the ruins remaining following a superhero intervention. Disney’s The Incredibles also ventured into the perspective of the expense of heroic damage. Through Hench we are reminded that we all have our superpowers and our downfalls. Hench further frees us from the mirage of good and bad, evens the playing field, sifting, sorting and piling hero and villain archaeology, reaching the bedrock of what being accountable for our actions really means – taking responsibility for the bad fall-out of socalled good intentions.
As Newton’s third law states, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – meaning that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. Forces always come in pairs – equal and opposite action-reaction force pairs. Regarding Hench, this sums up the rivalry between Supercollider and Leviathan – and although the hero world claims to be steering itself towards a more peaceful existence, it’s really all show. As Anna develops her own persona, related to being the diva of data, we learn that some super personas are a birthright, and others grow slowly, over time – the nature vs. nurture of power development. Natalie Zina Walschots dishes out the messiness of friendship, and the importance of a great team, many of whom worked for the hero side in the past, disillusioned by nepotism, cruelty disguised as nobility, ultimately giving up on holding out for a hero, and tiring of the world’s investment in maintaining heroes.
Hench’s readers may be reminded of the Crimefighters of Alan Moore’s comic series Watchmen, of the lonely business of delving for the truth, and the weight what happens once it is unearthed; of Azirephale and Crowley, the angel and demon characters in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s collaboration Good Omens, as balance is contemplated. As Anna Tromedlov begins her craft by calculating life years lost in superheroes collateral damage, she is aware of her own accountability, carrying the weight of havoc, and the pressure of becoming a skilled navigator, necessary to The Boss’s plans.
Hench transports us – traveling at the speed of lifeyears, at a time when we could be no more certain about a lifeyear’s value. At the root of it all, transported in whatever fashion we wish, it’s at the speed of life all we all truly go. Our pedestals have the power to become Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator or the Tower of Terror – and we are complicit in the rise and the plummet. At a time in the world when data dictates a tremendous amount of everything we are exposed to, the fallibility of algorithms is to be remembered, and their potency will only really last so long, reveal so much. Life isn’t a brand. If DNA can change over our lifetime, why can’t our strengths, abilities, and even….powers? What side will you choose? Are you sure what side it is?
Natalie Zina Walschots deserves praise for an inclusive cast, incorporating gender fluidity, androids, flexible pronouns, the LGBTQQ2IAA+ community, and senior characters, with hints at a culturally and racially diverse lot.