Wanted

This book is stupid. Now let me validate that with a plot summary. This book is about a wimpy guy living a crap life who suddenly finds out that ... (show more)

This book is stupid. Now let me validate that with a plot summary. This book is about a wimpy guy living a crap life who suddenly finds out that his dad was a supervillain and he'll inherit the fortune should he take up his father's mantel. There to train him are the super villains who have ruled the world since 1986 when they killed all the superheroes and erased the memories of everyone on earth to forget they ever existed (interestingly enough, '86 was the year Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and Moore's "Watchmen" came out, saving the superhero genre from cancellation). I will admit, at this point, I was pretty intrigued. Published by a third-party (i.e. neither DC or Marvel), the writers couldn't go and use actual superheroes and supervillains to tell their story so they somewhat cleverly use make shift ones who look like the originals (such as Superman and Batman of course, but also Catwoman, Toy Man, the Joker, Bizarro, Parasite, etc.). Up to this point, this book had serious potential; they even throw a dash of self-doubt into our hero's head (or rather anti-hero) to make us think, "Hey, maybe he'll realize he's a dick and take on all the supervillains for being even bigger ones!" And granted, he does sort of do that but not for nearly such interesting reasons. He basically becomes the guy Eminem portrays himself to be in his early rap (killing, raping, and generally being a jerk to perfectly innocent people, and even looking just like Marshall Mathers) all the while protected by the supervillains secretly ruling the world. What's interesting about this? Nothing. There's no character development, the dialogue is like someone doing an impersonation of the aforementioned rapper but taking it over the top to just sounding dumb. And none of the other characters are interesting because it's assumed that since you know who they're supposed to be, you don't need to read anything new about them. Which means that while the writers pretend to do something new with the superhero satire genre, they don't actually do anything new with it.
BUT If you're looking for a story about people who do truly evil things for no other reason than that they can, and you just can't go out and by GTA4 and scratch that itch in a video game, this is just the kind of meaningless story for you. I will admit that in high school, I probably would have loved this graphic novel (and the fact that I was being rebellious and reading stuff my parents wouldn't have approved of) and tried to convince all my friends to read it too.
PS The upcoming movie will probably have nothing to do with the book, but that may work to the film's advantage. (show less)