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abigail369's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.75
This book is a companion to the book The Science of Superheroes. I did not enjoy this book nearly as much as its predecessor. While Superheroes focused on grounding heroes into our own world and explaining ways to make their powers more plausible without breaking any natural laws, this book takes a more abstract approach. It does not always focus on villains and their origins, but often discusses how the larger DC and Marvel universes unwittingly write themselves into paradoxical situations that break the laws of relativity. This might have been interesting if the authors were able to explain these concepts in an approachable manner, but the analogies they used were often convoluted and confusing. Additionally, this book included more visual aids than its predecessor did, but these visuals seemed poorly constructed and distracting and didn't help to explain the concepts being discussed. This cannot be attributed to the difficulty of the material covered in the book, since physicist Kip Thorne proved in The Science of Interstellar that it is possible to give simple, approachable explanations to even the most complex natural phenomena. I was hoping that I would like this book better since supervillains tend to have cooler origins and gadgets than their good-guy counterparts. But ultimately, this book failed to impress me.
kataboy's review against another edition
2.0
Kinda dissapointing. This books comes after I read James Kakalios' Science of Supoer Heroes and it does not come close to that book in quality for me...
corvus_corone's review against another edition
3.0
The Science of Supervillains takes a look at a few of the villains from the golden and silver ages of comics and looks at the science involved with them. Its a fun and informative read and I enjoyed the suggested reading list in the back should you want more information on any one topic.
What drove me nuts was the constant jumping from topic to topic without finishing the last topic. Its not a length where it could go into depth about any one subject but I felt it could have been much better organized.
What drove me nuts was the constant jumping from topic to topic without finishing the last topic. Its not a length where it could go into depth about any one subject but I felt it could have been much better organized.
alicea's review
5.0
The Science of Supervillains by Lois H. Gresh & Robert Weinberg was just as much fun as The Science of Superheroes which I read earlier this year. This volume discusses the possibility (or impossibility) of the various powers and abilities that supervillains from comic lore possess. They cover such classic villains as Poison Ivy, Lex Luthor, Doc Ock, and Magneto to name just a few. One of the more fascinating sections examined a comic titled "Crisis on Infinite Earths" where infinite realities, galaxies, and universes were destroyed. Gresh determined that within these infinite galaxies and universes would be still more infinite galaxies which would take infinite power and infinite time to destroy...which is impossible. (If you're a huge science nerd then this is the kind of stuff that makes your brain hum with happiness.) Included at the back of the book was an excellent notes section as well as a Q&A with various comic writers and reviewers. The only con I could see was that it was quite a bit shorter than its predecessor which bummed me out as I enjoyed it so much. (In fact, I'm ordering another book by Gresh about the computers of Star Trek which I'm super pumped to read.) Well researched, well written, and well executed...can't ask for more than that! 10/10
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