The Boys meets Assistant to the Villain in the electrifying, sharp, violent, and hilarious sequel to the highly acclaimed novel, Hench. Filled with a queer and neurodiverse cast, Villain asks the question: what happens when a diabolically brilliant henchperson looks back at their already storied career and thinks, I can be so much worse.
The hench once called Anna, now known to her colleagues and enemies as the Auditor, has carved out a wicked name for herself. Any superhero unlucky enough to cross her path knows her potential and powers. Surely, her recent success should taste sweet: she has an incredible job with lots of perks, her boss will literally annihilate anyone who crosses her, and her greatest enemy, the former hero Supercollider, has been utterly defeatedliterally ground to a still-living pulp.
But the Auditor still has her sights set on a greater work: destroying The Draft, the organization that makes, trains, and manages the worlds most powerful superheroes. These heroes have shown time and time again that they do more harm than good (she has the spreadsheets to prove it), and now is the time to stop the damage at its source.
Yet all is not well for the Auditor and her fellow evildoers. Her employer, Leviathanthe worlds most feared supervillainis not coping well with Supercolliders defeat at someone elses hands. As their relationship deepens, her work-life balance increasingly involves navigating the feelings of someone who doesnt believe they have any. Moreover, her unlikely ally and unexpected friend, Quantum Entanglement, has reappeared, forcing the Auditor to confront all the ways they deceived each other. Tension and uncertainty haunt the Auditor, and the fear that their triumph is about to crumble looms over all of them.
The Auditor soon finds herself facing down an opponent unlike any shes taken on beforenot another superhero, but someone like her, someone much more dangerous: The Drafts Chief Marketing Officer. Their conflict isnt a test of physical prowess, but ideas, and as their fight escalates, she'll need more than preternatural pattern recognition, data analysis, and a horrific imagination to meet this challenge. Its guerrilla ad warfare, and the Auditor might have finally met her match.
