Henchmen

By Stephen B. Bagley

Do you ever wonder where the villains in those James Bond films get all those henchmen? The henchmen drop like flies as they defend their Great Leader, but apparently there is an inexhaustible supply of underlings. They’re more plentiful than the mixed-up nuts at a political convention.

Let's imagine that job description: Wanted: Henchmen. Good salary, but no benefits because the hero will shoot, knife, karate-chop, laser, or drown you long before you reach retirement age. You also might be executed for irritating Our Great Leader or used as a test subject for a deadly nerve toxin or on a whim. No phone calls. Apply in person. Bring machine gun.

You can understand why the henchmen at the beginning of the adventure don’t quit — after all, they haven’t seen Bond mow down dozens of their co-henchmen — but those guys who stick it out to the end are simply asking for a messy death. They’re the lemmings of the villain world. No one will sell them life insurance. They should all wear red shirts. (In the original Star Trek series, crewmen who wore red shirts rarely survived beyond the first commercial break. I hate having to explain jokes. Please brush up on your pop culture trivia. Thanks so much.)

Part of the high attrition rate isn’t their fault, of course. Their boss can never just shoot Bond. No, their super genius boss has to arrange an elaborate death for Bond for no good reason, and then go off and leave Bond completely unattended so that the super spy can escape and foil the master plan. It’s like the boss is a Democrat or some other creature that self-destructs.

When I was younger, I used to root for Bond — and I still do — but I have a lot of respect for some of those villains. For instance, in Moonraker, evil genius Hugo Drax has built a huge space station that even has artificial gravity. It’s years ahead of what we can do. And in The Spy Who Loved Me, another evil genius, Karl Stromberg, has built an entire city underwater, once again something we can’t do. Admittedly both of them are crazier than a North Korean president, but you’ve got to admire their superior engineering skills.

And they’re surely providing jobs. Drax alone employed hundreds. If he really existed, he would be running for President for the Republican Party based on his corporate experience. He might even win.

But Bond doesn’t do that. He builds nothing. All he does is blow things up. Space station, underwater city, stealth ship, Starbucks, etc. There’s never a hint that maybe we should use the technology for the greater good. And the only jobs he provides is for a few techs in Q Division and a couple of explosives factories.

Whenever Bond shows up, there’s rubble and smoke everywhere with a body count higher than in Halo. Then, after a smug quip or two, Bond is off to a beach sipping a nasty vodka martini with the latest Bond tart clinging to his arm. For a super villain, that’s got to be really discouraging.

You can tell the villains are dispirited. In the last couple of Bond films, the villains are simply after money. No grand plans of world conquest. Not that you can blame them. Conquering the world implies you have to rule it, and that’s no fun at all. Just having to deal with the cast of Jersey Shore is a headache no one wants. (Naturally the cast would be killed, but the debate of how to torture them before their deaths would take up days.)

Still, I miss the days when they dreamed big. When they would get excited about the idea of orbital missile platforms or a hidden base built of ice in the Antarctica from which to launch nuclear-armed submarines. Those were the days of the great villains, but I fear they have gone away forever like the dodo, passenger pigeon, and honest Congressmen.

At least henchmen aren’t endangered. You can find thousands of them working for various political campaigns, hoping their man will one day peal forth truly mad laughter and order the robot flying monkeys to attack.

Copyright 2011 by Stephen B. Bagley. Excepted from Return of the Floozy. All rights reserved. No copying without express prior written permission from the publisher and author.

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