Henchman: Ordering A Superweapon Online

I sneaked past Kellie’s desk while she was on the phone. Dr. Carbon’s door was open, so I stepped in. He was seated at his desk, and looked up when he heard (or sensed, I still wasn’t exactly sure what Dr. Carbon’s full capabilities were) me enter.

“Ah, Mike, thanks for coming so quickly,” he said.

I froze almost in mid-step. I’d interacted with Dr. Carbon quite often in my time with him, but I was sure I was just another faceless hireling to him, a name on a check or a jail roster whom the attorney had to bail out. If he knew my name, he probably had it in a file that he’d been reading just so he could address me properly before firing me. I had no idea what I’d done wrong, but to be called into a Vil’s office out of the blue… It wasn’t usually a pleasant experience from what I’d heard.

“Please, Mr. Williams, sit down,” Dr. Carbon said, pointing casually to one of the chairs in front of his desk.

I sat, wary of the chair being a trap, my mind visualizing webs or straps locking me in so he could tell me why he was about to toss me into a volcano. I have no idea why I was so paranoid, but the mind control incident had happened only a few days ago, and the Supes and Vils pretty much share the same information grapevine.

“Mike, the reason I know your name is because you’re a good worker.”

I froze again, this time in surprise that he might be able to read minds.

“The reason I’m an A-lister, Mike, is because I pay attention to details.”

I nodded, letting him know I respected him and enjoyed working for him because he paid attention to details enough to be an A-lister. At least I hoped that’s what my nod conveyed.

“A big part of the details,” he continued, “are the people working for me. I know most citizens and Supers only see you and your fellow associates as faceless goons, and too many of my own associates, the C-listers and below, make the same mistake. You’ve always done great work for me, and HR knows that any time your name comes up on the rotation, they are to do whatever it takes to get you back with us for another six months.

“And as an employee who is one of two on the HR list to get such special treatment, it means whenever I have a tough job, one that I dare not trust to anyone but someone I consider fully capable of successfully completing it, you and Washington are at the top of my list.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t too surprised to hear Washington’s name. The guy scared the hell out of me, scared the hell out of most people, including the Vils he worked for. I tried to imagine what kind of scheme Dr. Carbon had cooked up that he had to call me in and praise me.
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Smash and Grab and Loot and Steal #1

Well… I just wrote this about 30 minutes ago (I’ve spent the last 30 minutes trying to figure out why WordPress 4.0 no longer keeps proper formatting like paragraph indents and such). I don’t even know what the hell it is, so you probably should avoid reading it.

Smash and Grab and Loot and Steal #1

“May I help you?” the stuffy man at the counter asked the young woman standing across from him. The six pirates standing behind her all began to shout at once.

“Arrrr!”

“Keep yer eyes to yerself, matey!”

“Ye best be helpful, dog!”

A dirty hand loaded with shiny gold rings reached across the counter and tweaked the salesman’s name tag. “Don’t be thinkin’ we ain’t watching ya, Gary.”

The way the hand’s owner had said his name made Gary think of how someone might describe a pile of fecal matter. Another chorus of arrrr’s and grunts and snarls and other pirate-y noises followed the boisterous threats directed at the customer service rep. Carly held up her hand, and the store became quiet other than the rustling of sword scabbards and knife sheaths, the tinkling of jewelery, and the clink of coins within their purses.

“Don’t mind them,” the woman said to the man behind the counter. “They’re just…”

The man raised an eyebrow at her, waiting to hear what her answer could possibly be.

“They’re just a band of pirates my husband hired to follow me around to make sure no one gives me any trouble,” she said with a sigh, sounding as if she’d had to explain it for the hundredth time in the last ten minutes.

Gary gave a wary glance to the six pirates gathered around the woman. “I see,” he said. He looked back at the attractive woman standing before him. “How may I be of assistance?”

“Do you think you could fix this?” she asked, holding out her hand.

Gary leaned forward to get a look at the gold chain. He paused when he felt the tip of a sword under his chin. He glanced up to see a mouth full of shiny gold teeth greeting him.

“I see ya achin’ to get a look-see down M’lady’s shirt,” Captain Ironbeak growled, his voice dangerous and his breath only slightly less toxic than the atmosphere of Jupiter.

The woman cleared her throat, and the sword disappeared. The pirate’s snarl morphed into a smile that promised a walk off the plank at the point of a scimitar. Gary blinked a few times, then turned his attention back to the gold chain. He studied it for a few moments before raising his head, making sure to focus on the woman’s eyes.

“May I?” he asked, holding out his hand, which caused a number of swords and knives to rattle in their scabbards and sheaths.

“Certainly,” she said, handing the chain to the salesman.

Gary gave another wary look around, the six pirates all staring daggers at him, before he focused on the ugly knot in the woman’s chain. Within seconds, he saw the problem, and visualized how Frank, the master jeweler, would repair it. He’d just opened his mouth to give the customer a quote when a resounding crash erupted behind her, followed by much cursing, yelling, and gnashing of teeth.

“Get yer sticky hands away from here, pup!” Pirate Rustblade snarled, waving a saber at a small child who was sprawled on the floor of the jewelery store’s wide entrance.

Three other pirates were brandishing their weapons at the child’s parents, while a fourth gave a challenging stare to the mall cop who had finally left the Food Court to make his rounds.

“Uh,” Gary said in a voice loud enough to get everyone’s attention. A little too loud, he thought when six angry pirate faces swiveled back to wish evil things on him. “Please don’t get blood on the carpet.”

Gary was sure that he’d formed some other thought to vocalize, but his brain and mouth were on vacation at the moment. The only thing his mind had been able to focus after the pirates had turned their attention to him again was how Mr. Douglas would erupt into a fit of rage at having to replace a section of blood-stained carpet. Gary thought Mr. Douglas was a pretty decent guy, other than the constant complaining about how much everything cost, how much money he was losing, how the government was out to get his every last dime, and how his employees were getting a free ride since jewelery practically sold itself to anyone who could afford it.

The woman snapped her fingers and the pirates immediately formed up into a small mob behind her. She gave Gary a sheepish grin, one that said he was lucky all they’d done was accost a small child holding a cookie.

“Frank will be able to take care of this for you,” Gary said, once again making sure to keep his eyes locked on the woman’s face. “It will take him maybe three or four days, as he’s kind of busy this week, but it shouldn’t run anymore than twenty-five dollars, depending on how intricate the work is.”

An explosion of roars and threats and blustery howls met his ears, along with three sword blades that met his neck.

“Let me have ‘is head, M’lady?” Pirate Bloodeye asked.

“I say we tenderize ‘im a bit,” Pirate Fangtooth rumbled, giving the fancy salesman a triple poke with the tip of his cutlass.

“Walk the plank!” Pirate Hookfist shouted.

The band of pirates exploded in cheers and shouts and calls and barks and demands that the criminal behind the glass counter be forced down the plank with a sword at his spine. Gary thought about asking the pirates where they’d parked their ship, since Idaho was a landlocked state, and Boise was too far upriver for a galleon, or a caravel, or a brigantine, or whatever type of ship a pirate crew would sail, to navigate safely. The three pirate blades waving near his neck and eyes made him decide to keep his question to himself.

“Twenty-five dollars is fine,” the customer said.

The threats and howls and grunts behind her turned into low grumbles of agreement, along with a single dissenting belch that sounded like a broken foghorn.

“Please fill out the top section of this,” Gary said, careful to reach slowly for a repair ticket.

He looked at the pirate that he thought might be the leader, though to his eyes, all six of the men seemed to be dressed the same in a mash-up of tattered, torn cotton, and fine vivid silks, with hair that ranged from long and greasy to longer and greasier. Captain Ironbeak nodded, the pirate’s massive, calloused nose hypnotizing Gary for a moment as he watched it bob up and down.

“Thank you so much,” said the woman, Carly, according to the repair ticket, after handing it back to Gary. “Next Monday, maybe?”

“Frank will call you and let you know, but it shouldn’t be any problem to get it done by then.”

“Ye best warn yer ol’ pal Frank to get right on it,” Pirate Devildog threatened.

“Don’t make us angry!” Pirate Rustblade yelled, receiving a number of hoots and shouted agreements.

“You’ll walk the plank!” Pirate Hookfist cried out.

“Walk the plank!” came the chorus of whoops, cheers, and shrieks, punctuated by the harmony of rattling swords, jangling jewelery, and plinking coins.

Gary could only stare when the customer gave him one last smile, as if she still had three hours of shopping to do while lugging around six small, cranky toddlers, then turned around and walked to the door. The pirates parted, then closed ranks behind her, each of them shooting a final hateful glare at the landlubber behind the counter. The sounds of a jaunty pirate tune soon rolled back through the store’s opening, the occasional blustery shouting of the song’s chorus and the rattling of sabers and cutlasses and rapiers and spadroons slowly fading as the strange group made its way to the JC Penny anchoring the mall’s eastern end.

Le $.99 / Free Sale (this weekend)

This weekend, I’m offering all of my books at either $.99 or Free @ Amazon!

Angry Sale

Including my latest release “Diabolus”

The Big Bhang #4: Make Joints, Not War

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak
The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine
The Big Bhang #3: The Lill & The Backstory of the Backstory

             4. Make Joints, Not War

Forjay sat in the lobby of the GlrgHlkd Hotel and Convention Center on Rialta-9, spreading his attention between watching the numerous strange aliens wander past him, and watching GANJA on his wrist comm. Galactic Al-Jazeera News and Journalism Association anchor Zarg Graxon, a Ji, which is a race of lizard-like bipeds, vaguely humanoid, except for the upper classes, who all have a third eye on a stalk protruding from the top of their heads, was relaying the latest galactic day’s news. The top story, for the four hundredth day in a row, was about how little time the upstart humans had left before being ground into raw elements by the combined might of the Galactic Union.

Humans, other than Forjay, of course, raged at their holo sets and flat screens and wrist comms at the news, with a number of them using the Federation internet to lodge complaints detailing how GANJA was nothing but an alien tool to spout propaganda to the masses about how awful humans were, and how they should be exterminated. Of course, like most humans, the majority of them refused to pay for premium cable or satellite, and watched the clips on the net. The clips, when not pure propaganda from xenophobic types that lived in trailer parks and on bubbles attached to asteroids, were generally badly subtitled from half-assed translations.

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The Big Bhang #3: The Lill & The Backstory of the Backstory

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak
The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine

3. The Lill and the Backstory of the Backstory

Within two hours of the Hipronians coming across humans wandering about within the Hipronian Outer Colonies, the Galactic Union had been informed that the one hundred and eighty-eighth race of star-faring aliens had been encountered. Within forty-eight hours after humanity’s first contact with an alien race, a massive GU warship entered Earth’s orbit and demanded a meeting with the leaders of the FAP.

Even then, some of the FAP generals wanted to lob a few nuclear warheads at the GU ship, just to see if they had shields, and to see if they were tough. Luckily for humans, the generals weren’t able to actually make military decisions on their own. Once holovid footage of the warship in orbit reached the government, everyone visibly trembled. Some even fainted. According to the satellite laser scans, most of the gun barrels on the alien ship were large enough to fire shells the same size as the rockets humans were using to put those satellites into space with.

The humans agreed, and the GU warship sent down a dropship. Humans across the entire Federation held their breaths as the landing gear settled on the ground outside of the U.N. building in New York City. They were hoping that these aliens were cute and fuzzy like the Hipronians. When a frightening monster with four arms and what seemed like hundreds of claws, fangs, and gun barrels stepped from the dropship, panic riots broke out all over the Federation.

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The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak

             2. Global Legalization and the Human War Machine

Planet Earth barely survived the 21st century. By 2020, there were forty-three major wars going on across the world. By 2045, water was becoming something worth threatening nuclear war over, oil was more expensive than diamonds, and the feeling on the majority of human minds was that there might only be five more years left before everything went up like a powder keg and madmen made good on their threats of annihilation.

In a last, desperate attempt to keep the clock from counting down the final two minutes to midnight, the world’s leaders sent their best diplomats and statesmen to Geneva and tried to figure out how to turn things around. One brash, young diplomat from Australia showed up with a half-kilo of a strain of marijuana called “Fuck You.” He spent the night before the first day’s meetings rolling over two hundred joints. Not the giant bombers that he regularly enjoyed, but not little pinners either that were mostly paper and might have a quarter of a microgram of actual weed in them. He calculated that most of the other diplomats were noobs, or at least nowhere near as experienced as he was, and rolled the doobies just large enough to blow their minds, but not make them run screaming from the meeting as if they’d been doused in kerosene and set on fire.

The first day’s meetings ran almost fourteen hours over what they’d been scheduled for, and the diplomats had ordered so much pizza that a portable Pizza Heaven restaurant had to be flown in from an American air base in Germany just to meet demand. The owners of the local shops publicly grumbled, but privately laughed and rubbed their mistresses’ legs as they drove their brand new Mercedes down the Eurobahn at more than two hundred kilometers per hour or more.

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The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak

The Big Bhang #1: The Master & The Streak
The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine
The Big Bhang #3: The Lill & The Backstory of the Backstory
The Big Bhang #4: Make Joints, Not War

 

             1. The Master and The Streak

Jeremy Jefferson Jacobs Jackson, Forjay to everyone but his mother, grew the most potent marijuana on planet Earth. Plenty of partakers would spark up a bowl or eat a plate of brownies and speculate that he grew the best weed in the entire universe. In 2093, when Forjay was only twenty years old, he took the world by storm, winning the 43rd Annual Chronic Cup with a strain of sativa that he called “Phased Reality.”

The judges, no strangers to the power of some pretty scary breeds over their careers, had been so high that Security found them playing jacks in a closet on the 39th floor of the Seattle Towers Hotel. Journalists from all over the world that had been covering the event had to dedicate an entire online column, complete with pictures and video links, to explain what the hell jacks was. When the public found out that it wasn’t gambling, but a child’s game with a ball and some weird looking pieces of metal, they all agreed that the weed Forjay had entered into the competition was truly deserving of the win.

Forjay’s win swept him up into the tornado of fame, and soon he was being asked for interviews, autographs, and of course, growing tips from fans all across the globe. He was the youngest person to ever win the Chronic Cup, and you can imagine that it stuck in the craw of the older hippies who’d been perfecting their grass for almost half a century since it had become legal everywhere on Earth in 2050.

Forjay was above all of the jealousy, for all he cared about was the weed. His goal had always been the next great high, one spacier, more relaxing, more imaginative than the last. This also made the older hippie growers upset, as they felt he was a bit of a snob. What drove the other contestants the most crazy was that he truly enjoyed the competition. He didn’t care about the prizes, the fame, the glory, not even the brand new 2093 Cadillac Neutron EUV with real fake-leather seats and a ninety-eight speaker stereo entertainment system.

Forjay was no stranger to competition. He’d engaged in it with his father, Jonathon James Jared Jackson, a lifelong marijuana breeder and grower, on their modest pot farm just outside of Tillamook, Oregon, for the first twenty years of his life. The senior Jackson educated his son on every aspect of Cannabis Sativa, instilling young Forjay with love for the magical plant, all while pushing him to push the already straining boundaries with newer and more potent strains.

When Forjay was ten, his father held an impromptu Chronic Cup and invited ten other local growers to participate. Jonathon Jackson had never been more proud in his life than when all of the growers judged Forjay’s marijuana to be superior to anything they’d entered. He was even more proud that Seth Lincoln, a long-time friend and fellow grower, got so stoned from Forjay’s entry that he never stepped foot off his property ever again.

Forjay knew from that moment, holding his homemade cardboard Chronic Cup, a smile beaming so bright that it could be seen from outer space, that he’d found his calling in life. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t even be able to sample his magnificent breeds for another six years, a rule his father had strictly enforced, and Forjay gladly obeyed. Forjay’s sense of smell, and his knowledge when it came to breeding and growing, was more than enough to help him continually surpass his previous attempts without fail. Plus, it was a huge help having his father and his Uncle Jim around to cheer him on as they crawled around on the floor, fried out of their minds after testing each new variety he’d bred.

*

By Forjay’s fifth win in a row in 2098, he was a superstar, his name on every news reporter’s lips. No one had ever won the Chronic Cup five years in a row. Karen Li, a middle-aged housewife from Kansas City, Missouri, had won it four years in a row back in the 2060’s, but back then it was a lot easier to repeat as a champion. The pool of entries was much smaller, and the world’s growers were still new, still finding their legs.

Ms. Li had lucked out, according to some, when one of her prized Uzi-12 female clones had somehow been pollinated with a light dusting of some unknown strain that had blown in on the wind. But by 2070, repeat champions were rare. Between 2072 to 2093, there had been only a single back-to-back winner. Forjay’s winning streak was quickly becoming the stuff of legends as the attendees who were able to sample the winning strains told tales that simply couldn’t be true. Most weren’t, and a lot of the tales and stories the lucky partakers told made absolutely zero sense at all. Some sounded like little more than babbling in strange, fake languages.

After Forjay’s tenth win in a row, more of the world began to take notice of him. Not everyone on Earth was a pothead, but at least half of the planet’s population were no strangers to the plant’s more psychotropic properties. After worldwide legalization in 2050, it became even more common than beer. The brewing companies were pissed until some of their employees, major stoners to be sure, piped up and told executives over company picnic lunches and Christmas party drunken speeches that with the distribution networks in place for alcohol, they’d make a killing if they got into the business of commercial weed.

When Forjay won his twentieth Chronic Cup in a row in 2113, more than half of the annual contestants dropped out permanently. Some were pissed off that they could never do better than second place, but most conceded that the “kid,” now a forty year old man in the prime of his life, was simply unbeatable. Quite a few of them sold their operations to 4J Enterprises, Forjay’s global empire of all things green.

Forjay was sad that the competition seemed to be crumbling, and whenever his company swallowed up one of his former opponent’s operations, Forjay himself would be present for the contract signing. Almost every deal ended with Forjay taking his former rivals out for a lavish dinner, and then slipping them a personal check that was sometimes more generous than the amount the company had paid.

By this time, the “kid” was one of the richest humans on the planet. Not everyone loved him, or even thought highly of him (no pun intended), but those that didn’t usually got a punch to the stomach and then their pants pulled down around their ankles in public. Since stoners weren’t really belligerent and violent like drunks, the punch was usually kind of lazy, but hard enough to make the victim pee himself (sometimes a herself as well, girls can be just as cruel) a little. The aggressors usually fell down laughing while trying to run away after de-pantsing the hater as well.

Forjay had earned the highest respect from his former competitors for his kindness, his compassion, and his willingness to spend any amount of money necessary (and sometimes unnecessary) to right a wrong or to help someone or some cause in need that was important to him. He earned the respect of the world when he began to spend large chunks of his fortune to make his home planet, the cradle of humanity, a better place.

*

By his thirtieth Cup win in a row in 2123, Jeremy Jefferson Jacobs Jackson had become quite jaded. He’d burned up more than half of his nearly trillion dollar fortune trying to help humanity, but he’d begun to realize that it was a lost cause. On the day he won his thirty-first Chronic Cup in a row, he cried in front of the cameras. He’d never been more sad in his life than when he looked at the entry sign-up sheets at the Cup judging and saw only two other names.

In 2125, on the day he received his thirty-second Chronic Cup title in a row, a graying but still dashing Forjay told the cameras and his sole competitor that he was officially dropping out of the Chronic Cup. While the entire world mourned Forjay’s exit from the Cup, most took his morose words to heart. Forjay had practically begged the world to get excited and begin working on their Chronic Cup entries for 2126, since he’d no longer be there to oppose them.

Less than a month later, those words were lost when the Federal Network went haywire with news that the Galactic Union had deemed humanity unfit to exist, and had begun planning to exterminate every single human being in the Milky Way.

The Big Bhang #2: Global Legalization & The Human War Machine

(nonsense explanation of this story… for more of the story, click the link above)

I’ve decided to try something different. I typically work on 3-5 stories at once, rarely writing a story from beginning to end without working on anything else in between. With what is going on in Colorado and Washington, and with the sudden push from what seems to be just over half of Americans, I started to wonder if there was such a thing as a “Stoner Fiction” genre. I know there’s the “stoner movies” like the many Cheech & Chong movies, and “Half Baked” and “Pineapple Express” and such, plenty of “stoner music” and even “stoner comics,” but what about books?

Turns out, there’s not really such a thing in written fiction. Sure, there’s the classics like “The Forver War” by Joe Haldeman, where marijuana is an integrated part of the story, but the story isn’t about marijuana at all. There’s a lot of Philip K. Dick stories to choose from, but most of those tend to revolve around hallucinogenic drugs, or some sort of other drug that isn’t marijuana. Heck, even Stephen King writes pot into his stories often enough, but like all other fiction (I’m sure there’s a ‘weed story’ out there that I simply haven’t come across yet), it’s not really about weed.

After talking to a couple of buddies who live and work in Colorado and Washington, and some of the medical marijuana crowd in Oregon and Washington, I decided… what the hell. If I can write about organized crime, alien invasions, axe-murdering Santa Clauses, and time travel, I can damn well write about ganja. But I wanted this story to center around it.

I also wanted to make sure it is a “real” story, with characters, a plot, interesting elements and dialog, etc. I did NOT want it to read like two stoners sat around writing gibberish with crayons after bombing out on twenty or so bong hits.

I guess the irony of such a thing is that while I’m an advocate of legalizing marijuana and putting a stop to potheads or pot growers being arrested and sent to prison (instead of, you know, murderers, cocaine/heroin/meth dealers, rapists, those types), wasting valuable law enforcement resources instead of putting them to use fighting or deterring real crime, I live in a state that is still pretty rigid in its marijuana laws. Which means I’m unable to participate in any illegal or even medical partaking, as I’d rather not deal with the fallout of drug dogs biting me in the crotch when they don’t find any weed that I am too scared to buy.

However, I spent a good deal of my 20’s doing enough partaking for any five hundred of you (unless you came back from Vietnam jaded and angry and decided to start an illegal grow operation in the back country of California’s northern mountain ranges. Or you’re a total burnout who started smoking grass at ten years old and now you’re sixty-three and can’t remember where you put your glasses even though they’re on your face right now).

So, while this story is amusing to me, keep in mind, I’m having to live a sober, pot-free life until enough of you buy my books that I can move to Colorado or Washington. Hopefully it’s even more humorous to those of you who are legally allowed to partake of the magical hemp plant.

(PS, last thing before the story… if anyone reading this is an illustrative artist, and wants to go 50-50 on a graphic novel / comic of this story, leave me a comment)

“Henchman” – Randy the Tech #1A

Right. This is part one of a two part chapter about Randy the Tech. This is still a bit rough, but hopefully not too rough. Don’t worry, all of these stories go through an editor before being published. I just like to give away pretty much every chapter for free now before actually publishing.

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Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

Randy the Tech Tests Out A Mind Control Unit

 “Hey, dude,” Washington said to me from his side of the doorway.

I looked over at my co-worker, a huge, scary, pipe-hittin’ brother who towered over me by a good six inches, and could snap me in half as if I were dry spaghetti. He looked distressed, yet his voice was casual, calm. Maybe he looked distressed. When he gets all crazy, his eyes get real big, and it makes me begin to shake inside because I start getting little movies playing in my head that feature Washington on a rampage, picking me up, and literally pile-driving me through the concrete floor like we were in a cartoon. But he didn’t look like enraged Washington. He looked like he might have had an accident in his fatigues.

The fact that he sounded casual and called me “dude” made me possibly more frightened of him. Washington didn’t talk much, but when he did, it always seemed like he was a drill instructor and you were some lowly piece of shit new recruit that just caused the entire platoon to lose out on a three day weekend where they’d all planned to hit Tijuana for some female company. I’d never heard him say a single casual thing to anyone but the Vils, and that was maybe three times in the eight years I’d known him. All three times, he looked like he was strategizing just how quickly he could kill everyone in the room and escape.

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“Henchman” – a new series of stories

Right. So. Carly and I talked about this idea, and I sort of just went with it. We hear all about the superheroes and supervillains, but we never really hear from the henchmen, the guys who make all of the magic happen (well, for anyone who doesn’t have a superpower).

Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

Henchmanby Mike Williams
Author’s Note & Introduction

I bet you’re wondering why anyone would write a book about henchmen. Actually, I bet you’re looking at the cover of this book again and asking yourself “who the hell is ‘Mike Williams?’. There’s all kinds of books and TV shows and movies and comics and novels and action figures and pop culture when it comes to superheroes and supervillains. But let’s be honest and admit that you know nothing about how this semi-hidden culture actually operates.

For instance, did you know that superheroes have almost no henchmen? And yes, I’m counting the fact that the good guys (I call bullshit on this, by the way, but that’s for later) don’t call their helpers “henchmen.” So let’s say that Jake Donovan, the famous superhero detective, has his bombshell secretary Lila Donovan, and his two junior detective sniffers, Kyle & Donna. To you, they’re sidekicks, but to everyone in the business, they’re henchmen. Just because they work for superheros instead of supervillains doesn’t change the fact that they’re lackeys, grunts, handlers, and any number of things that all of the henchmen that work for supervillains are.

Anyway, superheroes rarely rely on henchmen to do their jobs, yet supervillains employ armies of men and women like me. Literally, in some cases, armies. Why? See? You’re already partially hooked.

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