Dr. Horrible and Other Horrible Stories by Zack Whedon. graphic novel, superheroes, film-to-book adaptations, humor 80 pages
Considering how tiny this book is, I'm not gonna church it up and continuously call it a graphic novel. Zack Whedon's "Dr. Horrible and Other Horrible Stories" is a comic book. While the book is short (even among comic book standards), this isn't what makes it suck. This book sucks because it fails to follow the hype of an entertaining potential franchise by boring the audience with lame back story. Those familiar with the internet sensation, Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, had a lot to look forward to with promises of sequels and/or prequels coming about every once in a while. What is delivered to readers is this pathetic attempt at satiation.
The story (if one can even call it that) is a series of 5-8 page minor arcs featuring every character from the popular web-movie. Readers will quickly be reminded of Dr. Horrible, Captain Hammer, Penny, and Moist, although each of their individual stories falls flat and fails to entertain. Anyone who's seen the movie recognizes that prequel stories about some of these characters would seem unnecessary considering their fates in the movie, but the fact that Whedon couldn't even come up with a somewhat entertaining plot for the MAIN CHARACTER is ridiculous.
I will concede that there were a few entertaining moments in the book, but they were definitely few and far between. The best parts came from the revelation of characters not seen in the movie, notably the barely-mentioned Johnny Snow and the members of the elite super villain collective known as the Evil League of Evil. All of these characters are present in only one story but this story manages to be the only entertaining one of the bunch. From what little mythology is provided from this book, readers learn that there are more superheroes and villains than just Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer, and we get to actually see the Evil League of Evil's members (in the movie, this view was limited to Bad Horse, the equine leader of the League). Some of the League's members are especially entertaining: Tie Die, an evil Hippie-Controlling flowerchild with a desire to destroy and Fake Thomas Jefferson, a Thomas Jefferson look-a-like whose powers are unknown but has somehow been granted membership to the League.
That being said, this book was, for the most part, as horrible as promised in the title. I expected a lot more out of an otherwise entertaining franchise, but I have been severely disappointed. Luckily, at 80 pages, if you waste your time with this, you won't be wasting MUCH time.
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