Morris breaks his chosen heroes out alphabetically by era for ease for reference. The early Golden Age years had gangsters and Nazis to battle, the fifties and early sixties had rogue atomic power and the Cold War, and the seventies, eighties and nineties had, well, other stuff-more Russians, and some angst. All of them arise to face the main threats of their particular days. Heroes may be more than merely men, but they don’t exist in a cultural vacuum, after all. He provides us with a concise and witty history of the evolution of superheroes in the comics, and the various cultural fashion trends that they followed on the way to their flame-outs. Morris, who also runs the comic blog Gone and Forgotten, shows us how all these heroes fit into the grand scheme of things.

For example, there is one benighted creature called Brother Power the Geek, a hybrid hippy/Pinnochio who straggled through two issues before being put out of his misery by the publisher. Some of these characters are so ungainly the only other option for them is tragedy. The whole thing is an extremely amusing snark-fest, but it has to be. Many of them seem to be full-out messing with us (Mother Hubbard? Really?). It’s hard not to feel some affection for these guys once we get to know them.Īnd we do get to know them, through all the profiles of poorly-conceived and coolly-received superheroes stretching from the thirties into the nineties. There is a great spirit of throw-them-at-the-wall-and-see-who-sticks to many of these comics, and a cheerful disregard for logic and continuity. This labor of love appears just in time for Antman to hit theaters, and reminds us that there were plenty of other righteous crusaders out there who were even more awkwardly conceived of than he. We won’t be talking about them, though…”- Jon Morris, The League of Regrettable Superheroes “More sophisticated storytelling, including such high-profile critical successes as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, encouraged a new generation of innovative writers and artists to invent some of the most fascinating, thoughtful, well-crafted superhero tales ever produced. Guess which ones show up in Jon Morris’s The League of Regrettable Superheroes? Some comic book superheroes make you think, and some make you wonder.

The league of regrettable superheroes