Supreme Villainy

In this tongue-in-cheek faux memoir, legendary supervillain King Oblivion, Ph.D., recounts his century-long life of evil and mayhem from his not-so-humble birth through his fifth (and most recent) death, growing from orphaned pawn to educated menace to towering figure in the supervillain profession. Comedy writer and authorial self-insert Wilson (The Supervillain Handbook) pieces together the contradictions, lies, and self-aggrandizing braggadocio to paint a picture of a villain who never fails except on purpose, and whose setbacks are all according to plan. However, the sly humor sometimes works against itself: ghostwritten chapters told in different styles by kidnapped writers include numerous edits in the margins by Oblivion himself, which verge on the distracting, and it’s often tempting to skim through the vocational quizzes and essays. Wilson’s irreverent take on comic book tropes is caught between parody and satire—side characters include Mr. Wonderful and the Bioluminescent Brawler—and a little too self-aware for its own good, resulting in a clever story with oft forced humor about an unreliable, unsympathetic narrator who will undoubtedly incinerate this reviewer in due time. (June)