The Science of Supervillains [Hardcover]

Reviewer: Brian Wilkinson, for ComiX-Fan.com
Overall Rating: Great!

In a book that bills itself as the Science of the Supervillains readers have to feel right from the first page that this is an all-or-nothing kind of book. Thankfully writers Robert Weinberg and Lois H. Gresh have stepped up to the plate to deliver a funny and insightful look into the mind and heart(less?) of some of the greatest villains that have graced the pages of our beloved funny book medium for more than 70 years.

This is a project that could have easily gone astray or been caught up in the many nuances of cunning and deceit that the countless villains have put our heroes through. Instead they take the cream of the crop, including baddies like Magneto, Lex Luthor, Doc Octopus and several others to show some of the more interesting attempts they've made to make the world a worse place to live.

The Luthor chapter starts the book off with a decent look at the man who would become Superman's main villain. That's really saying a lot if you think about it considering how powerful and unstoppable the Man of Steel really is. Yet everything Luthor has tried has failed. Instead of really getting into why Luthor sucks or how Superman may have just gotten lucky, Gresh and Weinberg dissect the science the villains used in the books.

Intentionally or not, this may be a bit of a nod in the direction of the writers and editors behind the book. Back in the day, the two major companies, Marvel and DC, both had their own approaches to how science was used in the comics. Julius Schwartz over at DC maintained that the science had to be believable no matter what. It didn't necessarily have to exist, but so long as an attempt was made to reveal how things were being done, that seemed enough.

Enter Luthor's weather machine. Apparently Lex thought he'd be able to manipulate the weather over Smallville and sent the little town into a deep freeze. Rather than take the typical comic fan stance of disbelief, Gresh and Weinberg actually talk to top scientists and do the research behind whether or not such a contraption is possible. Not surprisingly, they find out it isn't something that Lex could have done in real life, but rather than take the typical fan standpoint of "look how smart I am because I know it can't be done" they take the extra step towards proving it.

The diabolical nature of this book isn't so much in the characters that it discusses as it is in the clever methods the authors use to trick their audiences into reading a science textbook. It doesn't matter that subjects like magnetism, nuclear science and more are covered in very specific and scientific terms as the humour and subject matter work so brilliantly to disguise it. This is the kind of book kids across North America are liable to pick up in their local library for the fun colors and then shock their parents at the dinner table with a basic knowledge of nuclear fission. Heck, if I was a kid I'd read it just to look smart.

Beyond the unbelievable and the humour, this is an overall package that serves to delight and entertain without getting bogged down in minute details. Like the first volume, The Science of Super Heroes, this book delves into the mysteries of comic book lore without taking away the fun and excitement that it's meant to generate in the first place. Think of this book as the perfect companion piece to kids just getting into comics, or for older readers who think they know it all.

The book isn't without a few cursory flaws, however. The narrative device used by the pair have them stating things like "We don't think this is possible" or "We have a theory." While it's generally acknowledged that there are two voices here it begins to feel a little like the royal `we' and becomes distracting from the information it's trying to convey.

Fans may also raise an eyebrow or two at the inclusion of Silver Surfer, the current hero and one-time herald of the planet-eater, Galactus. It's the latter rather than the former that our intrepid authors are focusing on but it raises an interesting question in terms of modern-day heroes that often blur the line between who is a hero and who is a villain. This is more of a philosophical question and would take the book off course, so it isn't dealt with in the book. It's more food for thought, really.

The book features an introduction by legendary comic book writer Chris Claremont (Uncanny X-Men) who gives a little of the back history about what it means to be a writer and to tackle the great villains of comic books. It's a nice addition and can only serve to add up the appeal to casual readers interested in some hard core comic science.

At its heart, The Science of Supervillains is a book full of winks and nods. But much like the popular novel at the moment, The Da Vinci Code it seems like the characters or stories are just loose wrapping around incredibly interesting research. I devoured Dan Brown's novel because of his interesting facts and finds, much like Weinberg and Gresh have provided a feast of comic book goodies for readers of all ages.

It's not your typical book, but it's not to be ignored either. Pick both this volume and its sequel up as soon as you can. You won't be disappointed, and if you are, there's enough information in here for you to begin plotting some diabolical deed of your own. (Don't actually do this, it's generally not a good idea.)

(...)

If you ever wondered if superheroes and supervillains can exist and have superpowers, then this is the book for you. Highly entertaining, well written and informative. I highly recommend it.

In theory, The Science of Supervillains, the sequel to Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg's 2002 The Science of Superheroes, is the perfect formula: Nefarious comic book baddies explicated by real-world physical laws - Mad scientists with real science. In theory, on paper, it's a lock. Of course, in theory, on paper (chapter one, to be exact), time travel is also entirely possible; it is just a matter of actually creating something that can do the job. That's where things get tricky, both for time travel and The Science of Supervillians: creating a concrete object to live up to the theory.

To be fair, fans of Superheroes will not be disappointed by Supervillains. A number of notable, nasty nemeses are named and needled, from Magneto to Lex Luthor to the Anti-Monitor to Dr. Doom (whom they have the bad habit of continually calling "Dr. von Doom," as if he will insist they stand on ceremony). But, those readers who require more of the books they read - those for whom the style of thing such as, say, alliteration is empty without substance to back it - will find the book a little erratic. At one moment, it treats the characters and the pseudo-science behind them quite carefully and insightfully; at another moment, though, the writers will brush off compelling aspects of a given villain and simply go for what in baseball is called "the easy out." It is as if, in the case of something like their fourth chapter, the collaborators said to each other, "Let's do a bit on aerodynamics and flight. Is there an easy villain we can use as a segue?" And so, the Vulture gets his own chapter.

There is an inconsistent love for the comic book medium and superhero/villain genre fueling this enterprise. Mild disdain for the medium - its silliness, its presumably juvenile nature, its utter impracticality - surfaces from time to time, only to be compellingly overturned by meticulous, heartfelt discourses on such things as the origin of Cable and Apocalypse.

Supervillains spends three pages weaving through the ins-and-outs of the arch-nemeses' convoluted, time-hopping history - thanks in no small part to the writer of their Foreword, Mr. Chris Claremont - which is almost half of the entire chapter on the science of Dr. Doom. One suspects that there might be an X-fan at the helm of this ship, instead of an objective, unbiased scientist - the sort which they admonish the supposedly selfish Dr. Curt Connors of being in his misadventures of becoming the Lizard.

Overall, though, the trope of using supervillains to explore scientific notions feels artificial; they read as more of a vehicle by which to get the book on bookshelves in the hands of a wider audience than as a genuine attempt to analyze the superhero universe. (It should be noted that Science of Superheroes had a similar overtone to it.) Admittedly, that expectation may be too high; Gresh and Weinberg do a better job wrestling with their source material than, say, The Zen of Beverly Hills 90210, The Ethics of James Bond, or The Faith of Rambo. (Those books, incidentally, do not actually exist. But The Science of Star Trek does, written slightly more lovingly by Gresh & Weinberg, as well.)

What leaves the reader with the impression that supervillains (and, in the previous volume, superheroes) are nothing more than a vehicle? First, there is the relative sloppiness of summarizing their featured characters. Saying that Dr. Doom was attempting to reach his mother in the afterlife "for reasons never stated" impacts the devout Fantastic Four reader as something of a gross error. Likewise, noting that Braniac attempted to convert Metropolis into a massive computer only in the Xbox Superman: Man of Steel video game overlooks a whole body of individual comics. And even just observing that Dr. Connors "can still talk fine" as the Lizard sounds like a comment coming from one who never read a Spider-Man comic book, where the reptile lisps his way from panel-to-panel. Of course, these are likely only the sort of gaffs that a superhero comic enthusiast might find problematic - but, at the same time, given the intense magnifying glass under which they're holding these characters for their scientific believability, one would think a similar standard of precision should be maintained for the character histories (and motivations and articulation) they study.

In addition, there is the minutiae which Gresh and Weinberg choose to highlight that is off-putting. That is, they do an excellent job of discussing various theories of time travel, but not for such chronal villains as Kang, Parralax, or even Dr. Doom and his time platform; instead, they elect to focus on that non-seminal event of Luthor going back in time to try and kill President Lincoln in Superboy #85. Likewise, instead of a dialogue about cosmic power sources, vacuum-tight encasing, or planetary subsistence, they focus much of their Galactus chapter on a six-page recount of the Silver Surfer's history, then three pages discussing solar breezes. No time is given to Luthor's replacement body as "Luthor Jr." in the early1990s, Braniac is given a surface treatment instead of a more straightforward robot intelligence like Ultron from The Avengers, and what could have been fascinating studies of Venom's weakness to sonics or Apocalypse's shapechanging abilities are absent. "Nuff said," indeed.

To their credit, though, Gresh and Weinberg do have electric moments, no pun intended. In addition to their look at time travel, the chapter dedicated to Sinestro, the Green Lantern foe empowered by an antimatter universe's yellow ring, breaks down quantum physics in a remarkably readable matter. From cataloguing subatomic particles, the elements of antimatter, and the possibility of both "dark matter" and "shadow particles," to alternate explanations on the events following just moments after the Big Bang, this chapter is every science fiction reader's dream and is the exemplar for the entire book. Further, they perform an encore by addressing a true genre milestone, DC Comics' 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths maxi-series, in terms of what wiping out an infinite number of alternative universes would truly mean and the near-infinite unlikelihood of it. This time, though, it does not seems as though they are out to burst anyone's bubble (or universe); rather, the narration takes on a tone of wanting the continuity-impacting series to ring true, even if scientifically it cannot. That sentiment is also apparent in the final chapter dealing with the other-dimensional imps Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite - which they are willing to admit could exist, given what little humans know about higher dimensions. (After all, they note, supersymmetry and string theory, the hot topics of the quantum physics community, posit a total of ten dimensions. So who are they to say beings from a fifth dimension are impossible?)

In short, The Science of Supervillains is flawed but worthwhile. The opening Foreword by Chris Claremont alone, where he admits to a science error early in his scriptwriting career that drew the wrath of detail-minded fans, serves as an excellent cautionary tale. Further, the bibliography and closing interview with comic book professionals (including The PULSE's own Jen Contino) on their perception of science in superhero stories are likewise enlightening. The wealth of resources available and the easy admittance by writers that science can be skimped on in their tales is proof enough that books like The Science of Supervillains is needed.

Now, if only it read more like a dastardly master-plan rather than a two-bit scheme ...