Summary

Summary

Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?
As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off.
With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks.
Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance.
It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world.
A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

Quick Comments

This is the shit I want. This is contemporary, realistic superheroes and just how fucked up it is for them to operate in a real life setting. There's gore and torture and superheroes behaving like real life cops, acting with government funding and absolute freedom to maintain the status quo. It's brutal. Read the content warnings. But at the same time I hope this doesn't discourage curious readers. The romance is odd and awkward, and while I didn't care for it, I did genuinely empathize with all the not-so-villanous underdogs. They're ordinary people, like you! Just like the superhero genre wants to make you feel, like you could be an extraordinary person! Just like the superhero genre wants you to forget that evil criminal is robbing a bank because they don't have rent money, that the evil hench man can't find decent work because he's a felon and the prison industrial complex devours whole lives like we're nothing. Just like that.
I do have complaints. The author is white. Not a problem but I feel like characters of color could have been utilized a lot better. It feels like they're being used in a vaguely performative 'hey here's a not white character!' before going through a racially stereotypical arc and being discarded thereafter.

Summary

Gifted with metahuman powers in a world full of capes and villains, Tori Rivas kept away from the limelight, preferring to work as a thief in the shadows. But when she's captured trying to rob a vault that belongs to a secret guild of villains, she's offered a hard choice: prove she has what it takes to join them or be eliminated.
Apprenticed to one of the world's most powerful (and supposedly dead) villains, she is thrust into a strange world where the lines that divide superheroes and criminals are more complex than they seem. The education of a villain is not an easy one, and Tori will have to learn quickly if she wants to survive. On top of the peril she faces from her own teacher, there are also the capes and fellow apprentices to worry about, to say nothing of having to keep up a civilian cover.
Most dangerous of all, though, are those who loathe the guild's very existence. Old grudges mean some are willing to go to any length to see the guild turned to ash, along with each one of its members. Even the lowly apprentices.

Quick Comments

I like tori rivas. Shes my token not quite character of color. See below for that. Tori is an underdog, a fancy bitch, an ordinary person who's entertainingly clever and fun to watch stumble through life into something amazing. I love the sole villainous point of view of the plot, though it does feature a few POVs that aren't villains. The characters feel like real people who talk like normal humans beings and not terrible MCU witty comebacks and such. Ok sure there are some cheesy villain lines, but it's a superhero genre. Of course there are.
I also adored the teacher student friendship. Absolutely zero romance and even the book comments 'oh yeah, there's absolutely nothing happening here'. I do feel like due to the large cast, some characters are flat or feel like props for other characters. Morgana, and Stasis to some extent. Not such a bad thing, understandably this is Tori's story.
The bad of it.
Oh Jesus Fuck.
For some fucking reason the author included a superhero thats a literal kkk clan member. As in their superhero outfit is kkk themed and they pass out white supremicist pamphlets at scenes of tragedies they show up to 'help' at. Yes they're mentioned at least twice and are featured in one scene. No they're not portrayed as a good guy, and i suppose they're emblematic about hash tag free speech white liberal type attempts at commentary on race in society. I don't ever want to hear a white man talk about this shit and I think the book does not need this.
Theres also a scene in the book that explains why a character of color joined the villain side if only to have a safe place to learn their powers and not be literally drafted into a superhero defense squad a la the vietnam draft. [yes this is a thing in canon] The reason being the good guys back in the legal segregation era of usamerican history had a segregated unit for Black superheros and Superheos of Color. Again its not portrayed as a good thing. The attempts at these topics are topical and bland and not often brought up again. I can appreciate the attempt to pay attention to such things. But as the author is white, is a very limited portrayal and feels more like mouth service than anything impacting the story.
Tori is a poc? Specifically woc. I hadn't realized. Again the author is white and like all whites they fall into the same ignorant cookie cutter of making a character a poc but not following through beyond the standard markers of curly hair and tan skin. Rivas's parents are dead and thats all we hear of them. Are they hispanic? Did they not have an extended family? Did no one from their assumably catholic church not attempt to care for the newly orphaned Tori? I won't say she's a mary sue or self insert, but as far as ethnicity goes you could state she's white and have a hard time canonically disproving that.

Summary

After her apprenticeship was done and a place in the guild of villains secured, Tori's life was supposed to get simpler. Unfortunately, a poorly timed errand sees Tori caught in the debut of a new team of capes, one wearing an all-too-familiar name.
Thrust into the spotlight, Tori will have to navigate her unwanted fame as well as the suspiciously superheroic new neighbors down the hall, all while keeping up with her own villainous enterprises. With the guild no longer a secret, Hephaestus needs to grow as strong as possible to face her mounting threats.
Ambitious gangs, battling against mechanized traps, and brawling with capes are only the beginning. Behind the scenes, a hidden enemy works to settle an old score, one that has burned for decades. This secret scheme will not only endanger Tori, her friends, and the guild, but the very world itself.

Quick Comments

Ah the sequel. Despite being similarly long, it didn't feel like a rehash or meandering attempt at cash in. It feels like a real nice update and drop in just a little while after the first book. There's a fresh new plot and we see Tori adjust to being a real villain and a ordinary civilian.
Also for those worried about romance. There's still nothing in this book, thankfully. Sorry for those looking for a villain to fall in love with a hero or vice versa. This ain't it for you.
I think my complaints about the first book still remain with this one. And it's even worse in this as we get a shitty white liberal plot twist that I think is dumb as hell, and something only white people who have never experienced colonization would come up with.

Summary

With her new product line launched and an updated version of her suit to test, Tori Rivas is ready to focus on her work for a while. But when an eruption of power elsewhere in the multiverse sends monsters bursting into her world, the young villain will find herself in the crosshairs of an unexpected invader.

As if being pursued by an unknown entity from outside her own reality wasn’t enough to handle, there’s also developing her product line, exploring her suit’s new capabilities, and maybe even making some extra money on the side. Add in extradimensional monsters popping in without warning, and Ridge City is even more chaotic than usual.

Yet more danger lurks unseen, as the Rookstone escapees have begun to hatch their own schemes. One of which is a primal force whose goal cannot be denied. No matter what, or who, stands in his way.

Summary

No one cares that you cured cancer if you also cloned a horde of dinosaurs and let them rampage down the street.

Supergenius and quasi-villain Rex normally can’t go a week without accidentally endangering Decimen City with her science shenanigans. It’s been two weeks since her genetically engineered dinosaurs rampaged through town—a good streak for her—but the peace is broken when actual villain Last Dance sets his sights on Decimen. And he wants Rex’s help. Before Rex can say “I didn’t do it,” superheroes who’ve dragged her to jail on her worst days are crowding her lab to conscript her into quasi-herodom.

Rex would rather stay out of it and deal with the dinosaurs that keep calling her Mom, but she can’t ignore that she was somewhat responsible for Last Dance’s villainy. She’d kept a very disorganized lab. And he was such a nosy brother. She failed to help him back then, but maybe if she stops him now—and keeps the heroes fooled—she can finally set things right.

Quick Comments

Uhh the aphobia thing was hugely cringe and hamfisted. Also entire book extremely white. Like idc if the author implies CoC there's not a speck of Culture here. [or Black characters tbh lets be honest] Shoulda just focused on the tragic trauma imo. Kinda forgettable. The casual antisemitism sucks, however blink and miss that it is. This gets ranked here if only the rest of the subgenre is saturated with fantasy cops/copaganda and it's tedious to sift through the trash.

TIER RANKING best to worst

• villains code series
• hench
• this book
• everything else

Summary

Doctor Impossible—evil genius, would-be world conqueror—languishes in prison. Shuffling through the cafeteria line with ordinary criminals, he wonders if the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life. After all, he's lost every battle he's ever fought. But this prison won't hold him forever. Fatale—half woman, half high-tech warrior—used to be an unemployed cyborg. Now, she's a rookie member of the world's most famous super-team, the Champions. But being a superhero is not all flying cars and planets in peril—she learns that in the locker rooms and dive bars of superherodom, the men and women (even mutants) behind the masks are as human as anyone. Soon I Will Be Invincible is a wildly entertaining first novel, brimming with attitude and humor—an emotionally resonant look at good and evil, love and loss, power and glory.

Summary

Summary

The second anthology from the authors of the Pen & Cape Society contains eleven all-new tales from the wrong side of the law. The proceeds of this collection will benefit long-time comic book author James Hudnall, who has fallen upon hard times, losing a foot to diabetes and becoming homeless. Bad things can happen to anyone, and the Pen & Cape Society will help where it can. They may write about villains, but they're a pretty heroic bunch.

TOC

• Back In Business A Tale of the Second Life of D.B. Cooper by Nicholas Ahlhelm
• Afterword DB Cooper and the Quadrant Universe
• Frankie By Scott Bachmann
• Stripped Down Blues By Mike Baron
• Goon #3 By Drew Hayes
• Components A Just Cause Universe Tale By Ian Thomas Healy
• Lemonade By Hydrargentium
• Here Comes the Pain By T. Mike McCurley
• Who Deserves to Die? / Politics as Usual By Landon Porter
• I Am SKYSTEP By R.J. Ross
• The Revenge by Cheyanne Young
• Too Close by Jim Zoetewey

Summary

Volume I:

A town of magic and danger, where what one dons becomes who they are.
A desperate priestess in another world calling for a champion, only to receive an unstoppable monster.
A night of joy and giving, of grudges and combat, all as the winter snow falls.
Between grand adventures, what mishaps may occur in the world of the Villains’ Code? These are the smaller selections, short sagas within the greater story.
These are the Villains’ Vignettes.

Volume II:

A former superhero, cast down from glory, finds himself stuck in a town whose gaze remains fixed toward the past.

A priestess in another realm journeys onward, uncovering troubling secrets about both her world and her summoned champion.

A camp for newly turned meta-humans must cope with a siege from a nigh-endless army of unusual creatures, as a handful of campers battle their way toward the source of the danger.

Between grand adventures, what mishaps may occur in the world of the Villains’ Code? These are the smaller selections, short sagas within the greater story.

These are the Villains’ Vignettes.

Summary

Summary