A small look at just how weird comic history has been (and still can be)…

The League of Regrettable Superheroes: Half-Baked Heroes from Comic Book History by Jon Morris is a misfit of a book that features superheroes most of you have never heard of…

While this book would probably only appeal to comic fans, it’s also an invaluable sample of pop culture trends at the time (and how some of them influenced comics at the time often through failed experiments).

I wanna say that some of the characters are “products of the time”, but many of these characters would have even been trash back them…and a handful are FAR more recent than you may realize.

It also should be noted that these range from characters published by long defunct publishers to those published (and some still owned by) predecessors of the “big two” Marvel and DC. Some were even done by big name comic creators who would like disown them if prompted…

You may even be surprised that a handful of these characters have even seen a partial redemption in the last decade…with a few returning in one form or another.

From a comic historian Point of view, the writer does a wonderful job charting the history of each character…including their place in the comic world at the time. The writer is often freaking the character only appeared in a handful of stories throughout their existence (a drop in a bucket compared to more comic catalogs), and some that might have overstayed their welcome longer than they should.