Heroic Henchmen

You're not asking anything, you already know the fucking answer. Stop being an obtuse faggot and accept it.

I am literally asking why heroes don't have their own henchmen.

Burbank covers communications between the agents
Moe Shrevnitz/Shrevvy provides ground transportation via taxi (usually for the agents, sometimes for The Shadow) and keeps an eye out for anything going on in the city
Cliff Marsland and Hawkeye infiltrate the criminal underworld and provide any info to The Shadow
Clyde Burke is a reporter who can do investigations and is friends with the police inspector

There's lots.

angelfire.com/comics/thejonasdrop/Shadowagents.html

But you know why you braying fucking ass, you're just feigning ignorance.
Are you just bored or do you really not want to accept such an obvious and simple answer.

The obvious answers to the question are really fucking stupid though. Lazy artists and cultural obsession with the romanticized idea of the lone hero are not exactly compelling. Just kind of dumb and obnoxious, really.

Well too fucking bad, you're just gonna have to deal with the fact it's one of the most popular and appealing cliches in all human history and henchmen are an inherently unheroic concept.
Fag.

Hero worship is cancer for human culture, everyone perceive themselves the hero of their story, real life is not a narrative and there are no hero’s, just those who win and impose their narrative on the world

Hence its appeal. People want and want to be heroes. Henchmen are just lame.

> henchmen are an inherently unheroic concept
Bullshit. Heroes are often attributed leadership qualities, but it typically only comes into play in the final battle war scenes. The only heroes who get to display consistent leadership throughout their stories are those like Commander Shepard, wherein they lead a cadre of special snowflakes.

And unless you're Samus Aran, there's nothing heroic about going into every mission alone and without back up like a damn fool. And even Samus has her psychic ghost bird people leaving items everywhere for her to collect.

Edginess aside, this. Hero worship is part of the reason supporting casts are dying, especially in capeshit. Nobody ever gives any live to logistics people, even though it is quite literally impossible to get anything done without someone making sure everything is running as it should.

Most heroes have never had henchmen yet still managed to have a supporting cast.
Henchmens whole purpose is to be faceless and expendable. A hero using them just turns them into heartless douchebags using people for their crusades. An actual team of individuals allows them to be "leaders" without being cold fuckers.

I'd say it's the opposite, the logistic side is more focused on than ever. The real issue is that writers aren't really willing to invest in the hero's downtime or find a way to mesh their civilian lives effectively with their heroic life. This is compounded by some heroes simply not having civilian lives that work well with their heroics, which means a valid issue for some characters gets generalized. Writers also tend to make all the supporting cast be aware or a part of the heroic life, and drop ones that aren't or cannot be, to make it easier to work them into plots.

1. It's easier to write a compelling story with a single protagonist.
2. Americans admire individuality over group efforts.
3. The Conservation of Ninjutsu

You are now realising that sidekicks are just henchmen with better PR

>Most heroes have never had henchmen yet still managed to have a supporting casts.
And again, said supporting casts are being phased out. The main point of a supporting cast is to have someone around who is able to fill a role the protagonist can't. The tech expert being the most basic bitch incarnation of this.

In modern cape fiction, stories have boiled down to all fight scenes all the time, or the hero can just know and do everything with no justification. It's fucking ludicrous.

>Henchmens whole purpose is to be faceless and expendable
Star Trek has brainwashed you into thinking red shirts only exist to die. Again, this comes down to writers and artists being lazy fucks. I ain't asking that every individual goon get their own in depth character arc, just that they actually contribute to the story in a meaningful way. Like the Shadow's agents, for example.

Shit, much I hate Bat-god knowing everything, I'd totally buy him knowing everything if he was shown to have spies all over the city instead of being everywhere at once.

Hellboy and BRPD

Star Trek has a surprising amount of recurring background and minor characters.

Came into this thread to post that. You have your main field agents the comic follows, but reading Hell on Earth, there are tons of great single issues fleshing out goons that really makes everything feel authentic.

Actually wasn't thinking of Star Trek at all, but Henchmen's whole point is to lack an identity and do grunt work and be expendable. Best case, it's just something they could use an actual supporting character with an actual identity to do and worst it makes the hero look like a prick who uses people.
They're not really useful on a protagonists end, atleast from a story telling perspective.
Actual Teammates and partners do a better job.

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What about america Chavez' backups? Theyre even themed.

Superman has his robot army. Batman has his Batboys if Miller has any say, plus the Robins are sort of mooks. I wouldn't exactly place the Amazons as Wondy mooks, since they actually raised and trained her. Of course, no superhero has more mooks than Aquaman.

Well villains love henchmen because they're cannon fodder and disposable. Not really something you want associated with a hero

Guardian and the Newsboys?

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>I wouldn't exactly place the Amazons as Wondy mooks, since they actually raised and trained her.
In all honesty, they should be. The Amazons were created to bring peace and love to the world, so it would be nice if editorial actually let them, y'know, do stuff.

Well obviously, you just have the hero be nice to them and remember their names and give them birthday presents and all that goody two shoes crap.

The way you deal with that is to have the mooks be recurring extras with unique designs, similar to that one show about horses we're not allowed to talk about.

Never?

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I think the issue with the Amazons is that if you have a bunch of them directly interacting with the world it not only changes the format of stories revolving around Diana, it also starts muscling in on other superheroes. If you've got a couple thousand immortal, highly trained, Amazons running around in magical armor and weapons why the fuck is anyone operating under that powerlevel still around?

Because that would be more efficient. Most heroes don't care about efficiency, they just want to brawl with the villain, lock them up, they get out, rinse and repeat. That's why I love Superior Spiderman, he's so efficient when the plot isn't written specifically to fuck him over. Why go on patrol when you can have spybots all over the city? Each of them scanning crimes and contacting the proper authorities if SpOck is unable to intervene. Killing repeat offenders to keep the public safe and save the tax payers money since that's one less criminal for prisons to house. In pic related, SpOck and his Spiderlings raid The Hand and Kingpin on their home turf, allowing thousands of nearby residents to be free of those criminal elements. When written well, Heroic Henchmen can be a great tool against crime.

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Why waste the time and not just make them fuller characters than simple Henchmen?
They can't be everywhere doing everything.

>Why go on patrol when you can have spybots all over the city?
That's supervillain behavior worthy of Batman.

hero's have no funds and have to keep a secret identity

Reminder to all a simple telepathic read would have dismantled the whole story of Spock within seconds.

Superior Spider-Man functions on retard logic. By attempting to bypass genre conventions you start bringing up thorny questions, like why is the US government allowing a vigilante to install spy cameras over NYC so he might more effectively commit vigilantism, freely commit homicide against criminals, and engage in open firefights involving armies of private soldiers backed by armored units and heavy artillery? Fuck, how was Spock able to keep the homeless, junkies, souvenir hunters, other criminals both regular and super, tech companies, or legitimate law enforcement from stealing, destroying, or exploiting his spybots until the final act?

They don't have to be, but by sheer volume, abilities, and skill sets they'd logically render a huge swath of heroes redundant.

>narrative revolving around Diana
Diana is the champion, the face of the band, if you will. She'll still be running around doing important stuff.

>power levels
I picture it as them more dealing with larger scale stuff, such as liberating nations run by supervillains, and acting as mediators in peace agreements and whatnot. Sure, there'd be some mundane crime patrol, but like everyone else in a shared universe, they'd mostly stay in their lane.

Or, you could have that be the whole point. Them sticking their noses everywhere, presumably unauthorized, would make everyone a tad uneasy. I mean, they are imposing their power all over the place while spewing their weird foreign values about how you should submit to their love.

There already are plenty of Amazon characters that could be used. Io, Menalippe, Philippus, Artemis, Epione, Hippolyta herself...

>How come heroes never have mooks?
youtube.com/watch?v=h2_Kbz90maE

>they'd mostly stay in their lane.
You just said their lane is pretty much every role played by other heroes and superteams. Plus maybe people don't want to read about the geopolitical ramifications and ethical considerations of a foreign nation deploying soldiers as vigilantes while attempting to culture jam, as would be an inescapable presence in every story.

>I mean, they are imposing their power all over the place while spewing their weird foreign values about how you should submit to their love.
That's unbelievably hot.

>Plus maybe people don't want to read about the geopolitical ramifications and ethical considerations of a foreign nation deploying soldiers as vigilantes while attempting to culture jam,
Then maybe they shouldn't be indulging in fiction that is primarily about vigilantes imposing their personal brands of justice upon the world. Superheroes are inherently political, and trying to avoid the political ramifications of them is intellectual cowardice.

And yes, I sort of contradicted the lanes thing. The most likely scenario is that the Amazons--at Diana's insistence no doubt--would try to work with other heroes to avoid undue conflict with them.

You're not wrong, but Loving Submission is really just a fancy way of saying "Trust me, and I will take care of you.". It's not necessarily a sexual thing.

Genre conventions exist for a reason. Your premise avoids the logical political ramification of the Amazons attempting to do such a thing, they'd be kicked out. Hell, superheroes and villains existing at all is an avoidance of the logical political ramifications, as they'd simply be arrested.

>they'd be kicked out
Yes, they probably would be, and there'd be all manner of drama concerning where and when they are able to operate without causing a colossal shitstorm. In the DCU, superheroes are mostly allowed to just do their thing, but the Amazons would be a completely different story as operatives of a foreign nation that actively and explicitly seeks to change the world. And directly addressing these facts is what would make it an interesting story.

It's already really fucking questionable that Aquaman is able to operate anywhere but Atlantis, and frankly, I'd like to see these obvious questions about the extreme gray area that capes exist in addressed rather than yet another faux-epic punch up against whatever giant cosmic person editorial came up with this week.

Aquaman is a native US citizen. The problem is that directly addressing those facts without glossing over them is a completely different genre; it's political drama, not superheroics. You wouldn't even need any actual superheroics to occur to tell the story.

>The problem is that directly addressing those facts without glossing over them is a completely different genre; it's political drama
Yeah, that's the point. A superhero political drama has the potential to be a lot of fun.

Also, the absolute clusterfuck of a monarch having foreign citizenship. Yikes. I don't even care if that happens all the time in real life, it's still really fucking weird.

Every single conflict over borders, from stealing resources to straight up invasion, right down to petty differences over race, culture and language barriers, are a consequence of ancient humans trying to conspire against God and getting BTFO eternally for it. It'd be cool if capebooks ever tackled something like that. Blending politics with cosmic forces and ancient lore.