Book review 500 Comic Book Villains by Mike Conroy

500 Comic Book Villains by Mike Conroy qualifies as neither a good coffee table book or as a hard cover version of your trading cards.

Time and again, Solomon Grundy is but one example, a villian from decades ago is illustrated with a drawing from more recent times. So don't expect vintage comic art. Don't really expect comic art either because the drawings too often resemble year book photos (_ "posed" for this is at least one caption).

We didn't like the book. We disputed many factoids. We're aware that like a soap opera, the facts always change in the comic book world. So we didn't dispute those details as much as we disputed some obviously neglected points. (D.C.'s World Finest is a comic that the author should have studied closely for some of his entries, specifically the late seventies through the mid-eighties.)

If you appeared in a movie, congrats Vils!, you're in the book. If you didn't? Maybe you made the cut, maybe you didn't. Going with the obvious may help sell books but it doesn't provide the overview that "500 Villians" promises.

We also dispute the "findings" in the one bit of real writing in the book. We don't think "silly" (superpets") leads to camp (Batman -- the live action TV series) and we can't imagine anyone who made that evalution with a knowledge of either. Maybe in the he-man wonders of Conroy's mind, the comparison is apt?

It also allows interesting conclusions. Take this one:

Often accused of being a racial stereotype, the Dragon Lady is the epitome of a mythic female legend: the seductive, "exotic," yet deadly Asian black widow.

We find that "evaluation" both racially stereotypical and sexually.

Conroy doesn't. Eveything's great. Everything's the best (except for the super pets), everything is just wonderful. It's as though the book's written by a cheerleader for Bob Jones University.

There's nothing wrong with being a fan but it's the sort of thing that destroys the majority of Bruce Springsteen books. Each page brings another statement of "and then the Boss topped himself again!" Those books are exhausting to read, they must be exhausting to write.

This book is ideal for comic book fans with a knowledge base. They can pick it apart and point to the errors. For anyone else, 500 Books doesn't cut it even as a coffee table book.