Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors #2 – Review

By: Mark Andrew Smith (writer), Armand Villavert (art), Carlos Carrasco & Andre Poulain (colors) & Thomas Mauer (letters)

The Story: Young super-villains continue their training, but the battle they are preparing for is not what it seems!

What’s Good: This comic is just all kinds of fresh.  Because of the art (both linework and colors), these 10-year-old super-villains don’t come off as brooding proto-monsters, but as rascally kids…and that makes all the difference in how this comic is perceived.  Even if they are kinda on the bad-guys side, they’re just so darn earnest and cute!  They attack their school lessons with gusto: taking down summoned sparring partners in the gym or mixing up monsters in a Hogwarts-style potions class.  And when they gather around the live TV coverage of a superhero vs. super villain battle, you’d think they were kids watching a WWE Pay Per View.

So much of this comic is just watching kids having fun and being larger than life.  Only the most black-hearted among us can fail to enjoy that!

What’s ironic about the enthusiasm for their studies that the young villains is that while the kids think they are being prepped to join the larger hero vs. villain battle… The events outside the school are not what they seem.  That will clearly be one of the central stories for the early parts of this series.

As mentioned above, the art really makes this comic.  Flat(ish) colors just kick all kinds of ass and it’s this type of coloring that makes this comic leap out at you from across the room.  And most of the colors are just bright and powerful reds, greens, yellows, etc.  Mix this together with very impish art and you’ve got a very fun book that is quite visually distinctive.

Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors #1 – Review

By: Mark A. Smith (writer), Armand Villavert (art), Carlos Carrasco (colors), Fonografiks (letters) & D.J. Kirkbridge (editor)

The Story: Imagine a Hogwarts-like school where the young super-villains of tomorrow can learn their craft…

What’s Good: This is a charming little comic where you really feel like you’re hanging out for the day at a middle school for baby villains.  If just feels authentic as in, “Yup, that’s probably how they’d act.”  Smith writes breezy dialog for these little monsters and shows them as they go through their days at school.  Even though the whole thing is quite tongue-in-cheek, it has lots of normal stuff you’d associate with a story about 12 year olds.  There are a few kids who are a little too self-important because they haven’t learned humility yet, girls who daydream about the cute boy in class and playground fisticuffs settled with junior-sized super-powers.  It is also a lot of fun seeing the vast assortment of kids in this class and wondering what their powers are.

There is also a lot of humor that starts on the first page where we see a listing of courses for the hellions.  Some are stuff you’d expect: Explosives 101, Subterranean Lairs and Intergalactic Conquests.  Some are kinda funny: Home Economics, Public Speaking and P.E. – Dodgeball.  Then the humor continues as we see how the school was started with the theft of THE world’s ubervillain’s “Playbook”.  This uber-villain is kinda an Iron-Man like character and when the theft goes down, he is trying to entertain guests by serving cranberry muffins and tea (on a silver platter) while wearing a pink, frilly apron.  The whole issue is kinda a knee slapper.