The Astonishing Antagonists: The Super Villain Squad You’ve Been Waiting For

In absent moments, most of us comics readers have asked ourselves what would happen if the story was told from the villain’s perspective. What does the antagonist of the story think they’re accomplishing? Why? Rafael Chandler has gone the next step and written the book that comes from that question. The Astonishing Antagonists is a great, if occasionally lumpy, read that will leave you unable to read comics the same way again. Here’s your opening line: “Motley wanted to break his bones like laws. She guzzled bitter coffee and daydreamed about violence.” GawdDamn, I’m in. “Break his bones like laws” — that’s a metaphor for the ages. In the now-familiar, each-character-gets-their-own-POV-chapter format, Chandler builds up a team of supervillains that call themselves The Antagonists. They know the history of what they do will always belong to the Protagonist superheroes, but they are not going down easy. There’s Motley, the Latina cat burglar who keeps a strong wall around her heart. Dr. Agon (yes, they all have supervillain cover names) is the Black evil genius who never finished high school but masterminds complicated plans and counterplans in his sleep. Dr. Agon brings with him Coltan, an Asian American recent college graduate/current intern at a tech company, who touches the wrong thing and is gifted with the ability to control metal. Oh. Yeah. The heavy hitter is Baelphegor, a white man who’s made a deal with the devil for all the right reasons and is now a Satan worshipi…