Reviews of Hero.Com and Villain.Net

Andy Briggs Offers a Good and Bad Start to His New Book Series

Jun 24, 2009

Andy Briggs' pilot books provide both intriguing and disappointing beginnings to his companion book series, Hero.Com and Villain.Net

It’s a great concept: mysterious websites that let kids temporarily download superpowers for good – or evil – purposes. But as the pilot novels to Andy Briggs’ Hero.Com and its “anti-series” Villain.Net showcase, cool concepts are nothing without well-developed characters and strong plots to back them up.

Most superhero stories leave you admiring their heroes. Hero.Com: Rise of the Heroes makes you wonder if any of its characters deserve to be considered heroes.

The basic plot is simple – after stumbling onto the Hero.com website, Toby, Pete, Lorna, and Emily learn they can download powers like flight and invisibility in exchange for stopping villains from committing crimes. But when they fail to stop the evil Doc Tempest – who kidnaps Toby and Lorna’s mother – they must raise the money to buy more powers from Hero.com (which turns out to be a pay site) to save Mom and stop Doc Tempest from freezing the world.

Even though Briggs calls the kids “heroes,” they act more like adrenaline junkies who only occassionally bother to learn about the powers they downloaded before going into battle – a stupid decision that leads to one kid nearly killing a teammate with an untested power. In another scene, a kid puts off rescuing his mother (even though she may be dying of insulin shock) until he can create a superhero costume out of his old wetsuit and goggles.

Taken as a spoof of superhero stories, such scenes might be funny. Unfortunately, the book shifts in tone from serious to self-parody so often that it’s hard to decide how to read it. It doesn’t help that the villain is a cartoonishly inept bad guy (who still slaughters a hero in one scene) or that Hero.com comes with a disclaimer absolving it of all liability for loss of life or sanity (even though one of the heroes running it insists that being a hero is about doing the right thing). Despite a creative premise, the story itself falls flat.

After the disappointing Rise of the Heroes, one would expect the pilot book to its “anti-series” Villain.Net to also be a let-down. The surprise? Council of Evil is actually an enjoyable, fast-paced adventure about one boy’s corruption and addiction to power.

When school bully Jake Hunter is contacted by supervillain Basilisk, he’s intrigued by Basilisk’s offer to let Jake download powers from Villain.net in exchange for committing some crimes. But Basilisk sends Jake on increasingly dangerous missions, from kidnapping a millionaire to buying a nuclear bomb, Jake wonders if he’s really cut out to be a supervillain – and what his mysterious mentor is actually up to.

Unlike the kids in Rise of the Heroes (who come off as stereotypes of squabbling siblings and bullied nerds) Jake Hunter is a fully fleshed character who – while not exactly likeable – has enough of a conscience to question and regret some of his actions, keeping him from being a one-dimensional bad guy. Jake’s story also has plenty of intrigue,as he discovers Basilisk’s reasons for recruiting him and the secrets of his past.

As a companion book to Hero.Com, Council of Evil occasionally overlaps with Rise of the Heroes, allowing characters and events from one book to interact with and affect the characters and events of the other (even though the books have independent plots). However, Briggs adopts a consistently dark tone for Council of Evil – which is appropriate considering the story is essentially about a kid who becomes a terrorist.

Council of Evil isn’t without its share of plot holes – for one thing, while the story establishes that world governments have agents to police supervillains, readers must also accept that none of these agents can download superpowers (even though these same powers are easily accessed by twelve-year-olds with Internet connections).

Despite these flaws, the book is a vast improvement over Rise of the Heroes, and leaves readers interested in the next book in this “anti-series.”

Hero.Com/Villain.Net Animated Cartoon Series

According to Briggs’ website, Cartoon Network has expressed interest in his Hero.Com and Villain.Net books. Concept-wise, it’s easy to see how the books could make a great animated cartoon series – the idea of kids being able to download superpowers fits perfectly with superhero animated cartoons like Ben-10.

Even so, after reading the books, it’s clear that as great as Briggs’ premise is, it can’t support an entire series without good stories. And while Council of Evil proves Briggs can create a decent action story, the jury’s still out on whether he can sustain -- and improve -- this level of storytelling in his forthcoming series.

Briggs, Andy. Hero.Com: Rise of the Heroes. New York: Walker & Company. 2008. ISBN: 978-0-8027-9503-8

Briggs, Andy. Villain.Net: Council of Evil. New York: Walker & Company. 2008. ISBN: 978-0-8027-9517-5

The copyright of the article Reviews of Hero.Com and Villain.Net in Children’s Books is owned by Michael Jung. Permission to republish Reviews of Hero.Com and Villain.Net in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.