The Legion of Regrettable Super Villains by Jon Morris

It is a fact of life that every Superhero needs a Supervillain, or preferably a whole host of them, in order to keep them in the business of, well, being a Superhero. It is no good being a mild mannered reporter, reclusive millionaire etc by day and Guardian of Justice by night if you don't have a Machiavellian schemer to pit your wits against. Unfortunately, for every Joker, Lex Luthor, Magneto and Green Goblin in the history of Comic Books there is also the lesser known Supervillain, a Captain Black Bunny, a Doctor Cesspool...the list goes on.

These other, lesser known Supervillains may have gone forever unnoticed and forgotten if it weren't for Job Morris and the folks at Quirk. What they have produced here is a glorious tribute to the lesser known criminal geniuses and hero-botherers from 1938 to the modern era. The book is split into 3 sections, The Golden Age, The Silver Age and The Modern Age and each gives, on average 2 pages to each of the selected Supervillains, one page of text and one example of comic strip or a comic cover. You get a brief history of the character, where and when they appeared, who they were pitted against*.

It is easy to see why these failed to become household names as most are laughable, fairly incompetent or just plain rubbish but this book does them a service by celebrating their general rubbishness.

As always with Quirk this is a beautifully put together volume and something all fans of the genre should look at. It is more of a 'dipping into' book than a straight read but you may well find yourself reading just one more page as you lose yourself in the inept machinations of The League of Regrettable Supervillains.

Very entertaining reference book and well deserving of 5/5 stars.

*Such Superheroes as 'Power Nelson, The Future-Man', ' The Wizard and Roy the Super-Boy' and 'Granny Gumshoe' - I know, I've never heard of most of these either but I'm guessing they could be found in the companion volume to this, The League of Regrettable Superheroes (Quirk 2015, same author).