Hero Hourly works from the premise someone developed a serum that gives you super-powers for a limited time. But as the main character, Saul Smirkanski puts it, rather than decide 'great power comes with great responsibility, he patented it and got a business loan.' Now there's a company whose employees clock in, put on their uniforms, and go fight crime (for paying clients) until their shift is over.
I'm assuming the James Patrick who wrote this is the same one who wrote Kaiju Score. It has that same feel of examining how the everyday world would adapt or assimilate weird superhero stuff. Kaiju Score had the parts that there were established warnings and evacuation procedures, as well as there being plenty of research about where and why a kaiju would make landfall.
Hero Hourly has a handbook with guidelines on what pose you're supposed to strike when you fly or perch dramatically on a rooftop. The experienced workers, naturally, have thrown the handbook in the trash and just do what works. There's budget concerns, which lead to the serum and its effects being watered down later on. Liability waivers to sign during fights with super-intelligent apes, guys taking their breaks at inconvenient moments. Saul accidentally grabs a woman's breast when he's trying to stop her from falling to her death and has to attend sensitivity training about where you can touch someone when trying to save their life.
Carlos Trigo (artist) and Alex Sollazzo (color artist) both help make the fantastic become mundane. The heroes all have the same uniform, which is a generic yellow-and-blue number with a big "H" on the chest. It does not flatter anyone. Saul doesn't put it on and suddenly look totally ripped. If anything, it emphasizes that he's an unremarkable looking fellow more than his looser, civilian clothing does. Everybody looks tired, bags under the eyes, deeply lined faces. Most of the (human) villains look equally cheap. Captain Commander's cape looks like it was once a particularly hideous set of drapes. Your Daddy (that's his name, "Your Daddy") escaped from a Smashmouth music video. The Foreclosure, the one recurring villain, is, I don't know how to describe it.
The story is narrated by Saul, and his tone is similar to Marco's in Kaiju Score. They're both characters who think they had it all figured out, and it's just been bad luck that brought them to their current places in life. Saul's more bitter than Marco, but there's still that constant sarcasm and absolute confidence that things are gonna work out for them.
The story is largely about making the best of the opportunities you have. Saul graduated college and expected everything to just fall right for him. When it didn't, he ended up in jobs he thought were beneath him and just temporary. He seems to settle into a state of acceptance of where he's at in the middle, and in that section, I'm not sure how we're meant to read it. Does Patrick think Saul is just lying to himself, that he's given up, or is it good Saul's found things that make him happy? I'm inclined to think the former, because Saul's always reminding himself of some questionable advice he received from an authority figure. There's also a two-panel joke in there about Saul's college professor making him perform oral sex on him that seemed unneeded.
It's like Saul's trying to convince himself this life is fine. But then there's Gabe, who took the job seriously and seemed to derive satisfaction from it, but was cast aside by the company once he cost too much. The climax is Saul realizes if he's ever going to make the life he dreamed of, he has to make it happen. He can't just sit around and wait for it to come to him.
(Another thing this has in common with Kaiju Score, because even though Marco's failed again and again, he was still dreaming big and taking the risks to make it happen.)
This is contrasted with Carl, who lost his home after getting a mortgage he couldn't afford. So he becomes The Foreclosure and starts a vague campaign of. . .something. Revenge? Wealth acquisition? Patrick makes it explicit at the end that unlike Saul, Carl is still blaming his circumstances on other people and expecting that one magical thing that is going to make everything better. This dismisses the actual responsibility of the financial sector for handing out mortgages precisely because they knew people couldn't pay and would have to default. It's not like Carl's the only person to get screwed that way.
But a) Saul wants to work in the financial sector in an executive position, so of course he would see their bullshit as OK, and b) it's not like Carl is trying to address that problem in any way. He's mad and just wants to lash out. He could be attacking company execs, but instead he fixated on Saul and Gabe, who were just low-level wage drones.
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