The Ultimate Super Villains

New Stories Featuring Marvel's Deadliest Villains

By: Stan Lee, Marvel

Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto

Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

This exciting new anthology has over a dozen original tales starring the vicious foes of Marvel's superheroes: Greg Cox's chronicle of the Super-Skrull's conflict with the Avengers, Michael Jan Friendman's story of evil Loki's latest attempt to snare his stepbrother Thor, Adam-Troy Castro's tale of a mutant who brings Magneto and X-Men's Professor X together in a unique manner, Glenn Greenberg's pairing of Venom and the Absorbing Man in an unlikely jailbreak.

Plus stories featuring Typhoid by Ann Nocenti, Carnage by Robert Sheckley, Kang the Conquerer by Richard Lee Byers, Mephisto by Robert L. Washington III, and many more villainous exploits!

©2020 Marvel (P)2020 Marvel

Probably my fav Marvel audiobook

Although Daredevil and Venom were pretty wicked. Writing is great. And the narrator is pretty great.

Such interesting stories by Marvel

Learned so much about different deadly villains great way to pass the time and understand marvel much more

again great book

again I hope you will love these story's as much as I did I though they all were good

a really good audio book

paints vikings in a new light and always you too see the other side of the mask

Supervillain story gold!

I like seeing the human side of the villains we love to hate! Everyone has s story out circumstance.

make mine marvel.

villains are complicated characters
this book will soften show you facets of them that make them more human than the heroes themselves

Wow

All I can say is WOW..I was not expecting this..( Spoiler alert 🚨)
Poor Fire Giant🔥🔥🔥…Loki needs some serious therapy.. Brotherly Love wins

Great Narrator!

Could be better, could be worse

Every anthology is a mixed bag. What I want from an anthology is more hits than misses. This one is about half and half. The hits are strong, very few really bad stories, several which are meh. Anthologies need more than 1 narrator. While this narrator was very good, it made the disconnected stories blur together.

* Kang the Conqueror: awful pacing. Characters kinda pop up and disappear at random. The core characters are used well though.
* Magneto: Perfect short story. New and familiar characters. Great character development. Thematic cohesion. Visual writing.
* Loki: Good short story. Embodied Loki's contempt and motivations. Embraced the Norse mythology.
* The Ringmaster: Impressive. Highly visual. Filled with history, legacy, origin story, mystery, villain's tragic descent, and something approaching but not quite achieving redemption
* Dr. Doom: Disposable. Maybe this would have worked better as a visual comic book
* Mephisto: Slow start but makes up for it with a satisfying story arc
* The painter of a thousand perils: Good quick story that cuts to the essence of the character
* The Super-Skrull: Fight/chase scene is too drawn out. Weird abrupt ending. Ridiculous pulpy goodness though
* Venom and The Absorbing Man: This vigilante version of Venom is hardly a super villain but it’s still a good story. Fast paced with a decent plot
* Ultron: Ok. Not bad but somehow just not that compelling
* Nightmare: I typically abhor dream sequences. They have no stakes and, like real dreams, are only interesting to the teller. This one was kinda interesting since there did appear to be stakes. Still, the over the top surrealist how-random-can-I-be schtick got old fast
* D'Spayer: How can something this short be so rambling and meandering. I could hardly focus. The namesake of the story doesn't arrive until 3/4 into the story. My comment above (in Nightmare's story) about dream sequences being pointless definitely applies here. I still have no idea the point of this story.
* Carnage: a carnage story where scientific hubris thinks they can cure him of his homicidal sadism and a bunch of serial killers are set to be assembled ... what could go wrong? On one hand they squandered this premise. It should have been a fight scene worthy of an Arkham breakout. On the other hand, what they did proceed with was fascinating and unexpected.
* The Wizard and The Sandman: another not-a-super-villain story. Still this one was quick, fun, and to the point. Kinetic and at times creative
* Typhoid: waxes and wanes. The disorienting shifts are annoying but they make sense in context of this character. The story gets pretty good by the end
* The Trapster: How man of these are going to be ex-villains? Good 'trying to go straight' story. Still, I'd like to hear some real villain stories. The callback to a previous story in this anthology was a fun treat. One of the more engaging stories of the series and one of the only ones with actual pathos
* One of the road: intentionally mysterious so I'll not spoil it. It's a good 'sympathy for the devil' bit and is the perfect ending piece. Very well done

Some great, some good, some ehhh.

There is some good to great storytelling here. I will recommend it to anyone who is a marvel/superhero fan, with a few caveats. Stories: several of the stories are really good, the type of character development that you would expect in a novel or a good script. Some of them however are not great. Two or three stories just end, they don’t really have an ending, there’s no arc. The first couple stories are very good. Last few are also strong. It’s the middle. It’s like, Im getting paid and we need to fill space, this is good enough. Narration: Again generally strong. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the narration but more of a quality of the production. Especially early on, it’s like they made last-minute changes to the script, changes that really didn’t matter at all, but the P stands very abrupt words or sentences that we’re just jarring. It’s like, this is good enough for these people. Honestly I relisten to a couple of them, and they would’ve been so much better off just not including those lines. But again, it was probably some author who insisted on it or something equally ridiculous. Hurt quality of the production.

I would recommend this for the nuggets of gold and because it’s a long enough listen to keep you entertained. I just wish that there were more of the good ones. Honestly, superhero novelizations are suspect at best. So this is better than a lot of stuff you see available.

One more thing, there is very little superhero stuff here. If you’re hoping to listen in on your favorite superhero fighting is arch enemy, this isn’t that story. All stories are from the perspective of the super villain.

I did enjoy, just didn’t love it.

Mediocre Stories, Poor Audio

The stories would be more for young people, if some of the plots, dialogue, and situations weren't pushing adult levels

The recording was harsh with "S" being extreme. You had to decide between turning up the volume to hear and having your ear blasted with hard consonants. Invest in a windscreen for your mic next time.