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PREVIEW: Hate You Forever: How To Channel Your Rage Into Effective Supervillainy by M.D. Wilson

Published Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:29:57 -0600

M.D. Wilson has written a number of most informative articles about Bleeding Cool on the website International Society of Supervillains. It's only fair that we return the favour for his new spinoff book, Hate You Forever: How to Channel Your Rage into Effective Supervillainy.

So yes, in common with a number of books such as The Zombie Survival Guide and How To Date A Vampire, this is one of those fantasy-novels-masquerading-as-a-how-to-guide, with a side salad of self-help books to boot. This time concentrating on the process, both physical and mental, of becoming a comic book-style villain. And what's really interesting is the narrative tangents the book appears to go off on, along its route.

There will be comparisons with Dr Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog straight off the bat which are a little unfair, as this project probably began well before Joss and Zack Whedon picked up their sheet music paper, and indeed there are a lot of references in common – right from the beginning there's talk of poisoning the city water supply. So it appears the book might not be covering exactly virgin-fresh territory here.

But from the preview above, it seems a rather entertaining, if well-trod journey. But' its the diversions from the journey that make this book special. That first paragraph of the fourth chapter, is fractal in the way it represents the rest of the chapter, going in one direction, telling us about the then zig-zagging into side gags, and side gags to those side gags. It leads with the what purports to be a description of a hall of villains, takes a tangent over various politics within the group, before going with a left-feld testicle gag. Just as the chapter takes you through all sorts of choices you'll have to make as a super villain while revealing all manner of examples of supervillainy colour, sidebars, illustrations and tables, before taking the superb jump to look at how corporations manage their own villain for inspiration. Because not only does this appear to be a rather funny book, in the Douglas Adams vein, but it's a funny book with decent, clever and rewarding structure. Length, often the doom for bloggers-turned-book writers, is M.D. Wilson's friend.

So yes, on the basis of this preview, I'll be picking this up. It's available through Lulu right now but I think I'll wait a couple of weeks till it's on Amazon. Well, I've got a $25 credit to spend, haven't I? And I'll get Associate kickback too…

Okay, I haven't exactly ripped M.D. Wilson a new one here. Why should I, this appears to be a rather entertaining book, just the kind of thing that Bleeding Cool readers would enjoy.

No, the only revenge I can possibly take, is hope that this Bleeding Cool article becomes a prominent result on Google for the book. And possibly for M.D. Wilson himself. Oh look, his name's in the URL. That should help.

Mwah hah hah hah.

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