A fun reference book to dip into for a bizarre blast or two from the past. Attractively put together, and wittily written.

A gift from my niece this was cute. It originated as a series of blog posts and you can see that, but it’s heart is in the right place in terms of tone and mockery - acknowledging that any of these heroes could be great with the right creative team. Since some of them have become great (Squirrel Girl) since his writing, others (ROM) were great at the time and we regret losing access to them and the first in the book (711) has such a neat hook that I want to see more of him his introduction carries through the right tone.

I have a problem with applying the term "Regrettable" to all of the superheroes discussed in the book as there are some that I have read and liked and others that would be interesting to read, so there is almost no regret on my part. Some of the heroes mentioned even had long runs or recurring appearances showing up in current issues. But, there was one superhero based on a real life daredevil named The Human Fly whose comic run ended when the real daredevil was seriously injured jumping over busses with a rocket powered motorcycle, which I think is the only one that everyone can agree was a truly regrettable comic character (poor guy). This book a fun read, especially if you're a generic comic book fan, and I loved most of the well placed tongue-in-cheek commentary.

I am not much of a fan of superhero comics, but this book was pretty fascinating. My favorites were the Golden Age heroes. More specifically, my favorites were Fantomah and Stardust the Super-Wizard, both of whom were created by Fletcher Hanks. So I suppose I am a potential Fletcher Hanks fan, though of course I'd never heard of him before this! It's just, the art looks pretty cool and also the two heroes are sort of jerks? Or at least, pretty hardcore about punishing the bad guys. (They also both fly with their arms at their sides, which cracks me right up.)

I only wish there were even more excerpts from the actual comics, as I found them pretty fascinating. But I mean obviously that would make the book way too big.

The author writes the Gone and Forgotten blog, which is basically this sort of thing also -- old/dumb comics -- but the authorial voice in this book is a little different, I think. It took me a while to put my finger on it but I think it's the almost entire lack of "I" statements, and swearing. Which I guess is something you need to do to get an actual book published. It reads as a lot more . . . serious, I guess. Textbooky. But still funny! He gets his dry one-liners in, for sure.

Recommended to comic book fans of all levels of enthusiasm. I hope there's another one eventually.

Most of these guys won't be household names anytime soon, but it is fun to look back at the long and strange history that comics has and the many bizarre characters they have. worth looking at if you want an alternative history look at comics.

The League of Regrettable Superheroes is a fun little "coffee table" book written by Jon Morris (who unfortunately doesn't lend any of his cool cartoons to the volume, which is my only complaint - love your stuff, Jon!) compiling, in Golden, Silver and Modern sections, comicdom's strangest superheroes, those that were almost designed to fail. Okay, there are a couple of brighter lights like Doll Man and Rom Spaceknight (to which Jon is particularly gracious), but I'm pretty familiar with obscure superheroes and even *I* didn't recognize many of them. Each entry has at least a page of well-researched, humorous text, and at least a page of full color artwork from the original sources. Very entertaining even if you do know Fatman the Human Flying Saucer and Madam Fatal. Had a blast with it.

I found this book to be a very informative and humorous anthology of some of the strange comic book heroes from throughout the history of the medium. As Jon Morris states in the introduction to this book:

"We call these second-tier (or lower) superheroes "regrettable," but it's important to remember that none of these characters are inherently bad. Sometimes, the only factor that kept them from succeeding was bad timing, an unstable marketplace, or merely being lost in the crowd. There's not a single character in this book who doesn't have at least the potential to be great."

Well, maybe except for Captain Tootsie, the Captain Marvel-esque strongman powered by Tootsie Rolls.

I would have rated it 5 stars for the knowledge it provides (which is very enlightening), but their were so many grammatical errors that I can't bring myself to doing so

ever heard of Anonymous from #Zeroes? well, back in the 80s #MarvelComics had already created #ForgetMeNot
ya know about MarvelComics #Spiderman? well, back in the 40s there was a SpiederWoman, equipped with web shooters.

that's just 2 of the many superheroes (or superpowered characters) that we take for granted; someone had already created but got no love. It truly is a 5 star book based on trivia it contains