Villainology: Fabulous Lives of the Big, the Bad, and the Wicked

This book and its companion volume Monsterology: Fabulous Lives of the Creepy, the Revolting, and the Undead go side by side like a two pieces of toast. They are wonderful to read. After reading them through the first time, I pick them up and randomly flip through and read different profiles. Wonderfully illustrated with portraits of each villain and small embellishments through the book by Derek Mah, this book is fun and frivolous and just plain fantastic. In this volume there are profiles of 15 villains are: The Wicked Witch of The West Atilla the Hun The Wolf Billy the Kid The Headless Horseman Morhan le Fay Qin Hui Shakespearian Cillians The Invisible Monster Emperor Nero The Queen (from Little Snow White) Scarface Capone Scrooge The Phantom of the Opera (Not the Webbrowser.) Mephistopheles Arthur Slade, in a very cheeky fashion, presents a short biography of each of these characters. He tells their story with a mix of the story they come from - myth, legends, and his own twisted take on their life and times. Each profile is an attempt to elicit a response and will probably cause many young readers to pursue some of the classics that they are drawn from. This book is very well done and was a great pleasure to read, and I am sure I will reread it again and again. Bravo.