#henchgirl

[fragmentaryremains]

Ooh, this is nice. This feels pretty complete in terms of Flavours—though that might be because I can't actually think of anything…

On the topic of archetypes though, I can of three additional ones to add to the list.

The Reluctant Villain: Maybe another villain has their significant other. Maybe they're in debt. Maybe they just had terrible luck. Regardless, this villain is defined just as much by their reluctance to do villainy as by their actual villainous actions. Depending on the work, they might be likely to find some measure of redemption and switch over to being a hero. Examples of this archetype could include characters like DC's Mr. Freeze, Marvel's Sandman and Henchgirl's Mary Posa.

The Accidental Villain: The product of some sort of lab accident or other catastrophe. Maybe they fell into a vat of chemicals, maybe it was a strange serum that made it into their blood, maybe they grabbed some sort of cursed object, or perhaps they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can overlap with other archetypes, such as the Reluctant Villain, Evil Genius, or any of the more monstrous archetypes like the Jekyll and Hyde. To me, what most defines this archetype is that the accident is both a constant presence and played for tragedy. Like, yeah Joker could qualify if his origin is presented as having fallen in a vat of chemicals. But it lacks both the constant reminder of the accident as well as the tragic elements, you know? Some notable examples of this archetype include DC's Mr. Freeze (again) as well as Marvel's Lizard. If we look beyond just comics, Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus would also be a good fit—especially with the added tragedy of his wife dying in the accident that would be his origin.

The Professional: Your standard killer for higher. They may or may not have some sort of professional code or carry themselves to a "higher standard" than your average supervillain. The most consistent piece of characterization is that they're hired to menace the hero by some outside party. This also means they can be defeated by means outside of just besting them in combat: just pay them even more to go do another job. They may even be hired by the hero to train/assist them depending on how (a)moral they are. Some notable examples include Marvel's Taskmaster and Bullseye as well as DC's Deathstroke.

An Incomplete List of Supervillain Archetypes

Ok, so my first attempt to brainstorm some supervillain prompts was derailed in a very perplexing way, but I am undeterred! Let's try this again in a way that's honestly a bit more fitting with my usual process - namely, by looking at the genre in question ans figuring out what archetypes are there, as well as what kind of... well, the words "theme" ad "motif" seemed to confuse people last time, so let's use the word "flavor" here for. So yes, a list of archetypes and flavors.

An incomplete list, as you no doubt noticed from the title here, because 1. while I've consumed a fair amount of superhero media, I'm by no means an expert and 2. I'm purposely leaving out archetypes and motifs that are dependent on a pre-established hero. That means no Mirror Universe counterparts, evil doppelgangers, guys with the same powers as the hero but they're evil, evil living versions of the hero's costume, etc. This is a list to make a rogue's gallery that isn't necessarily based around a particular hero - rogues for the sake of having rogues, rather than to further one good guy's narrative. We're not trying to make Morlun the interdimensional vampire who only eats Spider-Men here.

And since this is an incomplete list, I am officially inviting you, the person reading this, to point out anything big you think I missed! Just don't start listing college majors, ok? I already have another post about supervillain archetypes that's gathering a list of college majors. Inexplicably.

Supervillain Archetypes

Ok, we're gonna start with a list of, like, personality and story roles supervillains tend to come in. The Archetypes, if you will.

The Bank Robber with a Gimmick - the Silver Age classic. You rob banks and do other naughty but not-necessarily lethal crimes, but more than that, you do it with a gimmick, and goddamn are you devoted to committing to the bit. The bit is more important than the crimes - in fact, the crimes are really just a means to make everyone pay attention to your gimmick.

The Evil Genius - you are extremely book smart and are making it everyone's problem. Again, no need to suggest what degree the mad scientist has, I have a whole post where people are inexplicably doing that already!

The Big Monstrous Guy - you're a big guy with some sort of hideous deformity/mutation that makes you look like a monster. It may also make you act like a monster, although it's just as likely you only act that way because everyone treated you as a monster first. You are often reduced to being the dumb muscle in a given scene, but might get moments of pathos that show how hard it is to be a big monster guy.

The Wildcard - you're an agent of chaos who doesn't really have a plan/goal beyond making everything escalate as quickly as possible, and that's why we love you. In-universe, though, almost everybody thinks you're very annoying.

The Copycat - your villainy hinges on imitation. You are adept at stealing other people's identities, disguising yourself as someone else, and/or even taking the super powers of another person outright. Ultimately, the threat you pose isn't inherent to you - it's something your victims brought to the table.

A Normal Businessman - you view all people and things as nothing more than resources to exploit in your pursuit of wealth and power. Love for anyone but yourself is a weakness to be exploited, and all other living beings are only worth whatever labor you can extract from them as quickly and cruelly as possible, and should be discarded ruthlessly and without mercy when they no longer provide you that utility. In the real world you'd be treated like royalty, but since this is a fictional world, you actually face... resistance? Somehow? As if someone wants people like you to actually face consequences. How unnatural.

The Foreign Tyrant - you rule some made-up country, planet, or plane of existence that doesn't exist in the real world and thus can be as comically awful and dystopian as the writer desires. Everything that's wrong with your foreign home is more or less your fault, because you rule it with an iron fist. You tend to be pretty theatrical about it, too.

The Mind Taker - you're a villain whose main scheme involves some form of mind control, brainwashing, or other methods of forcibly recruiting innocent people into serving you. You're often a seductive figure, and always a manipulative one.

The Mind Fucker - you screw with people's perception of reality in order to enact your schemes. Maybe you send their feelings into overdrive, maybe you dazzle their senses with magnificent illusions, but ultimately you make it that anyone who wants to oppose you has to fight their own mind in the process.

The Jekyll and Hyde - you're not a bad guy, really! But, well... sometimes a part of you takes over, something you bury deep inside, something you really want to keep caged inside you. And when that "other guy" comes out, well... they're pretty bad, actually.

The Anything But Retail - you approach super-villainy the way you would any other job. You're not here for the love of the game or because you're theatrical - this is just the only thing that pays the bills that you can see yourself doing.

The All-Time Hater - you are, quite literally, a hateful person, and by gum you are going to make everyone know it! None of your schemes serve any goal except making people you hate suffer - your only ambition is to make life worse for others.

The Super Mafia - you walked straight out of a gangster movie and into a Saturday morning cartoon, and somehow that transition wasn't nearly as difficult as it should have been. Time to make these costumed fucks sleep with the fishes, even if all your goons now carry harmless laser guns instead of actual pistols.

The Planet Eater - you are a villain whose threat is so great that you threaten the very narrative itself with destruction by way of raising the stakes so high that nothing will ever have any meaning ever again. If the writers aren't up to snuff, you will make everything that occurs after you feel like either an anticlimax, or a pathetic attempt to raise the stakes to an even more inconceivably high level. If you threaten to kill the planet, the next bad guy will threaten the universe. If you threaten the universe, then they'll threaten the multiverse. If you threaten that, then by god, I don't know how we'll raise the stakes from there, but a hack writer will definitely try. A good writer can avoid that terrible fate, but unfortunately you're far more popular with bad writers than good ones.

Supervillain Flavors

These are more surface-level ways to categorize supervillains, mostly concerned with, like, their aesthetic - i.e. the theme of their costume, weapons, lair, etc.

Clown (note to self: don't even try it. You'll never escape Harley Quinn's shadow. It's a fool's errand.)

Reptile

Spider

Insect

Shark

Other "scary" animals

Obscure Animal the writer got obsessed with and decided to theme a bad guy around

Cat-themed Cat Burglar (note to self: don't do this one either. We already have a good one with Catwoman and then also a less good one with Black Cat, who's just Catwoman but at Marvel. There

Space alien

Robot

Cyborg

Mutant (radioactive)

Mutant (toxic waste/pollution)

Mutant (genetically engineered)

Mutant (setting specific source of mutation)

A classic Gothic Horror monster but now they wear superhero tights. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts, etc.

Literally Satan

Satan but we're too cowardly to fully embrace that he's Satan so we're gonna, like, try to have plausible deniability and claim our Satan isn't literally Satan (but he's more or less Satan)

Wizard (fake)

Wizard (real)

Knight

Witch

Fantastical Monster (dragon, gorgon, etc.)

Adapted from/inspired by real world mythology

A god in an old world mythology sort of way

A god but in a cool 60's cosmic way

Anthropomorphic Personification of Abstract Concept

A normal businessman

Elemental Powers (Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Ice, Lightning, etc.)

Shapeshifter

Power Stealer

90's Extreme Radical Wanton Gun Violence

90's Extreme Radical Body Horror

Ninja

Caricature of Obnoxious Media Trend (shock jocks, reality TV, celebrity culture, etc.)

Alright, that's what I've got off the top of my head. What'd I miss?

[cinnamon-does-wacky-shit]

henchgirl outfit for a thing I’m writing

[about-faces]

Me: “I’m writing a fic where Gilda can’t get art commissions due to Harvey’s notoriety, so she has to work retail.”

Henchgirl: “LEAVE THAT POOR WOMAN ALONE HASN’T SHE SUFFERED ENOUGH?!?!”

[scarecrowdrugs]

So I'm using Sugar and Spice from Batman Forever as Two-Face's designated henchgirls in Shiversverse, except with Drag Queen Sugar and Spice being heavily based on Rhea Ripley/Chyna. My Harvey absolutely had an awakening like this when he hired Sugar; Two-Face's existential gender/sexuality crisis hit him like a truck.

[k17y]

ㅤㅤㅤI   NEED   Y’ALL   TO   IMAGINE   KITY   PROVIDING   BACKUP   VOCALS   ( ACAPELLA   STYLE   OR   OTHERWISE )   TO   ANY   OR   ALL   OF   VAL / THE   VEES’   SONGS.   THANK   YOU !   <3

[rubyceazaart]

And now let me also share this piece- (almost) every new oc I made in 2023. Also a few ocs who have existed for years and finally got their designs this year. Which amounts to 28 characters here. (29 if you count the living sword)

[queryxecho]

Precision

Word Game // Still Accepting @sionisassistant

"Li." No hesitation. "Sionis better know how lucky he is." There wasn't anything that woman missed- and not just with her shots. To keeping shit organized and off GCPD radar to running deals, to managing thugs twice her size like children. Gotham was lucky she didn't have an interest in just taking over herself.

"Why do you think we try so hard to get her into the bedroom?"

[smallsubpoena]

The Beulah saga! From Batman: The Silver Age Newspaper Comics Volume 1 (1966-1967). Maybe sometime I'll get better scans of these, but for now, I just want them on this blog.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

#read hench by natalie zina walschots#the protagonist goes from jobbing temp henchperson to full blown supervillain#it's great

Hench is a very fun book and I liked it a lot but it's not quite what I'm talking about here

I hope all the girl henchmen who have to wear little sparkly girly versions of the henchmen uniform and flirt with their bosses are unionized. I hope they're getting good benefits and a stipend for hair and makeup.

[explosiongifd-old]

Quick henchgirl

[about-faces]

Selina’s new costume for 2024, from cover art for Catwoman #69 by Noobovich, Sebastian Fiumara, and Homare

[flowery-laser-blasts]

Evil Kim (That's it. That's the post).

Sitch in Time but Drakgo takes Kim from her family and raises her as their own evil-doer teen henchgirl... Up to Ron to fix the timeline and safe Kim from helping Drakken and Shego take over the world.

This makes me want to redesign Athena as well...

[fragmentaryremains]

Ooh. Is this for any upcoming creative project? Wouldn't mind seeing what your take on the genre could result in.

There's definitely a whole bunch of archetypes and themes that might be fun to see more of. But the first thing that popped into my head is having more supervillains that do it as their job. That is to say, they aren't billionaire CEOs or mad scientists or unrepentant murders or people who kick puppies and blow up orphanages for fun. They're just people doing what they do best. Maybe that involves hurting or killing people, and maybe they aren't the nicest person. But at the end of the day, they continue being a supervillain because that's what they've been doing for as long as they can remember. Maybe they started for the thrills or the glamour, but at this point they're too committed to the lifestyle to turn around.

There's a whole bunch of ways to play this archetype, but the main stories I was thinking of here are Nick Spencer's Superior Foes of Spider-Man and Kristen Gudsnuk's Henchgirl. The Superior Foes of Spider-Man is great fun if you like B and C-list villains. It's main cast are for one reason or another committed to the life of villainy. Whether that be to get rich, get respect, clear their debts, to try and establish their name so they can turn to the heroic side, or simply because that's what they've been doing since forever. There's no epic battles between good and evil here. Just some jerks that are either forced to work together to make it big, or backstabbing each other while taking the big score for themselves. These aren't the guys who will be ruling the world or even the city—they're the underlings of said rulers. In short, they're the Wile E. Coyote of supervillains. Lot's of ambition and plans, but never able to claim the prize.

In contrast, Henchgirl's protagonist would very much like to get out of the business. She got sucked into the world of supervillains through a combination of poor choices and poor circumstances. Instead of pursuing big scores or climbing the ladder of supervillainy she'd just like to stay afloat, make rent every month, and get through this with her morals intact. But that last bit can be rather hard when your "workplace" involves robbery, extortion and beating people up. Not to mention the issue of coworkers, who can range from "doesn't really want to be involved in this mess" to "really likes their job and would happily take candy from a baby." Still, no matter how bleak and hopeless things get they continue to get back up. Because sometimes, that's all that you can do.

So yeah. This isn't necessarily a new or even underdone concept. I'm sure there's other stories out there which have a similar vision of villainy being more of a career than a conscious decision to be evil. But it's a fun archetype when done well!

Reply to or reblog this post with a supervillain theme you'd like to see more of - whether it's underutilized, could be executed better than it has been, or just hasn't been used at all to your knowledge.

[ritzy-biscuit]

Arleen Sorkin

An actress who dressed up like a jester on “Days of Our Lives” and whose mannerisms and personality inspired Harley Quinn. The character who was just supposed to be a one off henchgirl was breathed into life by Arleen becoming one the most beloved characters of our lifetime.

Some of us watched Harley Quinn debut on our clunky CRT tvs and it was so fun to watch her develop and grow bigger and bigger over these past 30 years.

And yet no matter how many characterizations Harley Quinn has, I’m sure for most of us we always think back to the one and only Arleen Sorkin.

R.I.P Arleen.

Give a hug to Kevin Conroy for us.

Thank you for everything ❤️🖤❤️🖤

[kaixiscake]

spreading the henchgirl tohru agenda