The Joker, Lex Luthor, Mystique – these brand-name supervillains are Yin to the Yang of Batman, Superman, and the X-Men. Supervillains are an important facet of popular storytelling. After all, without supervillain Norman Osborn, Spider-Man would be just another frustrated teenager with too much time on his hands.
In the follow-up to his masterfully executed first book, The League of Regrettable Superheroes: Half-Baked Heroes from Comic Book History, Jon Morris once again reminds us of the overlooked, underappreciated, and often misunderstood characters in bottom-of-the-barrel comics. Through The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History! Morris opens our minds to little-known worlds. Places where the likes of Bloor (director of Uranus) and Reefer King (arch-nemesis to Yankee Boy) conspire to cultivate fear, terror, and instability in the microcosms they inhabit.
The book takes a light-hearted look at the absurdity of a multitude of supervillains through the Golden, Silver, and Modern ages of comics. Readers are simultaneously entertained and informed by Morris’ analysis of each character and his role in the lives of his superhero counterparts. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments in the book and many of the plot lines will have readers pondering, “what were they thinking?!”
Not just anyone could write The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains. Jon is not only an expert in the field of comics, he’s also an illustrator and cartoonist. His understanding of comic-book storytelling helps guide readers through a labyrinth of twisted plotlines and even more twisted characters.
