These Books Among Us

Everyone knows we are supposed to hate the villains in the story. They are the bad guys, the ones who are throwing a wrench into the safety the hero so desperately wants to hold onto. But for some reason, the villain is often times the audience’s favorite character, even more so than the hero. I want to try to take a peek into why that is in this post today. First off, lets define a villain. Dictionary.com says: a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel. And: a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot. They are criminals, lawbreakers, offenders, felons, convicts, malefactors, and wrongdoers. Villains are not anti-heroes. That is a fully different category and I would just like to make that distinction. Okay then, let’s start off with some examples, now, shall we? First off is going to be a lot of people’s favorite villain: Loki from the Thor and Avengers films. L...

Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (216 pages) My Rating: 4.5 Stars Date Read: 5 January 2017 Synopsis: In this groundbreaking, painted graphic novel, the inmates of Arkham Asylum have taken over Gotham's detention center for the criminally insane on April Fools Day, demanding Batman in exchange for their hostages. Accepting their demented challenge, Batman is forced to live and endure the personal hells of the Joker, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Two-Face and many other sworn enemies in order to save the innocents and retake the prison. During his run through this absurd gauntlet, the Dark Knight's own sanity is placed in jeopardy. This special anniversary edition trade paperback also reproduces the original script with annotations by Morrison and editor Karen Berger. My Review: I have not read too many of the DC Comics, but this one was really good. Batman is one of the few DC heroes that I like, so it was cool to see this side of him through the J...