What is Villains’ Vignettes II?
A former superhero, cast down from glory, finds himself stuck in a town whose gaze remains fixed toward the past.
A priestess in another realm journeys onward, uncovering troubling secrets about both her world and her summoned champion.
A camp for newly turned meta-humans must cope with a siege from a nigh-endless army of unusual creatures, as a handful of campers battle their way toward the source of the danger.
Between grand adventures, what mishaps may occur in the world of the Villains’ Code? These are the smaller selections, short sagas within the greater story.
These are the Villains’ Vignettes.
Review
Drew Hayes is one of my all-time favorite superhero authors. Ironic given my love of dark fantasy, I prefer superheroes that are goofy with jet packs and gorillas rather than serious grimdark Injustice-style stuff. The author of the SUPER POWERED and VILLAINS CODE series consistently produces a cozy sort of cape world that the bad guys are not that bad while the heroes are very-very good. Indeed, the only truly irredeemable villains are rarely the villains but the heroes who pretend to be good while being evil at heart. Hypocrisy is the truest sign of a monster and that is also a message that resonates with me these days.
One problem that many superhero authors run into, though, is that their universes frequently get so large that you have many amazing characters that don’t get enough attention. Some authors make use of anthologies to be able to give these attention, though. The original VILLAINS VIGNETTES was a collection of three novellas that detailed a spooktacular Halloween adventure, a fantasy world alongside the superhero one, and a Christmas adventure. All the sorts of things that you wouldn’t necessarily see in the main series.
This installment follows three stories that I found very interesting. The first follows the character of Apollo, who is the disgraced ex-hero from the first novel that was meant to spend the rest of his life behind bars. However, the system is reluctant to punish still-popular heroes when they can make political bank by releasing him back to house arrest in his hometown. The thing is that Apollo doesn’t want to be freed, let alone treated as a local hero by his hometown that doesn’t care people got killed by his attempt to end the treaty with the supervillain guild.
This is probably my favorite story in the bunch because I love the idea of a disgraced hero coming back to a dying rural community and dealing with the complications of his legacy. He gets to meet a local unappreciated hero and we also get the usual, “One man’s hero is another man’s villain.” It’s definitely a very strong start to the collection.
The second story is a continuation of Ivan Gerhardt AKA Fornax wandering around a fantasy world that is overwhelmed by demons. Fornax is less than interested in liberating the world and becomes less so when he discovers the demons may have a reason for their hatred of mankind (reminds me a bit of Ultima VI). As usual, Fornax is an unstoppable killing machine that just needs to get revved up to lay down his horrifying doom powers. This is probably my least favorite plot because I’m not really feeling the mix of superpowers with Medieval Fantasy. I’d much rather get some more modern day Earth action.
The third story is about Ivan’s son who received a massive set of changes in CHILLING REFLECTIONS (the third Villains Code book) and is left dealing with the aftermath. Specifically, he’s been sent to a superpowered summer camp halfway between Camp Half-Blood and the X-men. There’s a lot of new and interesting characters here that could sustain their own series. I was a bit disappointed we didn’t see people confront his “true” face but, otherwise, I felt it was a solid and entertaining story.
In conclusion, I thought this was an enjoyable collection of stories and certainly something that fans of the main series should check out. The absence of Tori and company from the book was a disappointment but I absolutely loved the story about Apollo’s quasi-redemption. I hope Drew Hayes continues to make stories like this.
