Astounding Villain House Review: More Hits Than Misses

Comic book super-villains come in many varieties. Shannon Wheeler’s “Astounding Villain House” takes a look at the super-villains’ everyday life with four stories that range in quality.

The first story, “The Squid and Pachyderm,” is about two villains, The Squid and The Pachyderm, who are thrown in jail again. The Squid has a plan to break out but The Pachyderm wants nothing of it. Then The Pachyderm’s mom gets sick and he wants to see her. After the warden says no he decides to go The Squid’s plan.

It’s a decent story about criminals planning an escape and one being reluctant to do so. The ending will make the reader fell sorry for The Pachyderm

The next story, “Satan’s Son,” is about a date between two people who spend the entire comic talking about their exes. The girl has dated a whole bunch of super-villains and tells why she hated all of them.

This is the second weakest of the four stories. It’s like listening in on a date’s conversation and just as interesting. Only read if you are a gossip.

“House Arrest” has super-villain The Buzzard get three other baddies Fat Joe, Demonoid and Rapunzel to do a crime for him seeing as how he’s under house arrest.

This is the best of the four stories. This brings a brilliant scenario: How would a super-villain do a crime if he is under house arrest? The ending will leave anyone in stitches.

Finally there’s “Blind Mole-Rat King.” Here a group of heroes attack the Mole-Rat King because they feel he’s evil and a communist. In fact, the king is just trying to make the mole people’s lives better.

This is the worst of the three. This is obviously a jab at America and how it goes about attacking other nations, taking their “evil” leaders out of power and bringing democracy to these nations. It’s a poor satire that’s way too obvious and not at all funny.

The art looks like your typical newspaper cartoon. That’s because Wheeler makes a living as a cartoonist whose work appeared in the New Yorker. This style fits into the stories in that they seem like stories that may appear in newspapers.

“Astounding Villain House” has a few misses, but the hits do manage to keep the reader interested. There should be more of these types of comics because they do shed a different light on the whole super-villain genre that’s pure comedy.