Secrets of a D-List Supervillain

D-List Supervillain #2

by Jim Bernheimer

Cal Stringel may be dead to the world at large, but a select few know that he's still alive and in control of the most powerful suit of battle armor ever created. He's part of a rogue super team taking the world by storm and changing the dynamic for both heroes and villains alike. With change comes resistance and those holding control and power are not ready to just hand it over without a fight.

For the former D-List Supervillain, it’s time to break out the spare synthmuscle, charge the massive railgun pistol, and bring the pain. With his new team, he thinks he can take on the world, but is Cal biting off more than he can chew? He must deal with sanctioned hero teams and power mad bureaucrats on one side and the major supervillains of his world on the other.

As Cal and his allies ready themselves to face friend and foe, he will also have to deal with his relationship with Stacy Mitchell, also known as the Olympian, Aphrodite. Separated for over a year, they’ve only just reunited and are faced with the prospect of being on opposite sides of the coming conflict. Can they find enough common ground between the secrets and half-truths to sustain their fledgling relationship, or are they doomed like the last time to crash and burn?

Genres: Superheroes, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Humor, Science Fiction Fantasy

208 pages, ebook

First published December 25, 2014

About the author

Jim lives in Chesapeake, Virginia with his wife Kim, and daughters Laura and Marissa. By day, he works as a Systems Administrator on a government contract and runs his own side Information Technology consulting firm, EJB Networking, which can be found at www.ejbnetworking.com

Blessed (or cursed depending on your point of view) with an overactive imagination, Jim has long been a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Seeking to put that imagination to use, he has started to write his own orginal works in hopes of making his mark on the literary world.

Jim's literary influences include well known writers such as Robert Heinlein, Edgar Allen Poe, J.R.R Tolkien, and the not so well-known C.T. Westcott.

Reviews

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable sequel to Confessions of a D-List Supervillain but it never quite hit the heights of the first book in the series or the fantastic prequel book. It did provide the usual fun mix of humor, action, and gritty happenings that make this superhero series a fun read!

After faking his death reformed D-List supervillain Cal Stringel is now part of a rebel superhero team upsetting the apple cart in the superhero community as they refuse to tow the line and play nice with the others! Hiding his identity behind his latest armoured suit he sets about heroing in a new way.

The story was fun enough but suffered from being mostly flashbacks to stuff we learned at the end of the last book. It was good to get that stuff fleshed out a bit but I'd have preferred more fresh material in this instalment. The bits set in the present were mostly low key stuff. Though they did give us a good glimpse into Cal's relationship with his girlfriend and with his new team which was good.

If I had an issue, apart from the lack of exciting new material, it was the fact that in audio the jump from present time to flashbacks was not handled super smoothly so sometimes I was temporarily confused as to what was happening when.

This was still a fun read and the end happenings set up a potential fun showdown in the 4th instalment which I'll definitely be reading.

Rating: 3.5 stars.

Audio Note: Jeffrey Kafer did a good job with this one. He is perfect for a book that mixes humor and serious drama like this as he gets the tone of the story!

[✨Susan✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A kind of tounge in cheek, sarcastic crew of Super Hero's and Greek Gods are brought together secretly to save the world from a super villain. The main character is similar to iron man without the money. He is brilliant and has off color wit that kept the banter between his colleagues interesting. This is the second book in this series but the first book is recanted as he try's to tell his girl friend what really happened during their last assignment, and why he is not dead, as everyone thinks. When a new threat to the world arises, he and his trusted covert crew, must figure out how to participate without revealing his identity. I liked this book quite a bit more than I thought I would. The fun original characters and fast pace made for a good sci-fi listen. Jeffrey Kafer was the perfect voice for this flippant wise guy.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pulp novel-length comic book continuing the D-List Supervillian story.

My eBook was a brief 200-pages. It had a 2014 US copyright.

Jim Bernheimer is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He as more than ten (10) books published in several series. This is the third book in his D-List Supervilliain series. I've read the entire series.

Note: this book won't be understandable unless you've read the previous books in the series.

The books in this series are literary CHEETOS®. If you're a fan of superheroes, comic books, and Comic-Con you’ll like this book and its series. They heavily leverage and parody the Superhero trope.

This book is a continuation of the: pulp, novel-length, comic book-like, series grounded in the Marvel/DC universes trope(s) of superhero teams: Avengers, Justice League, etc.. It points out how dysfunctional superheroes and teams of super heroes ought to be considering the egos and superior abilities (powers) involved compared to 'normal' folks.

The author kindly summarizes the plot of this book in the narrative: "It’s a superhero meets super girl during Apocalypse, super boy loses super girl, super boy gets super girl back type story." At this point, the superhero and super girl are back together. They're now preparing for a climactic battle with their long-term foe. The writing was workmanlike. There was no improvement over the previous book. Plotting was a little choppy, but was well within its several tropes-in-flight. The author adopts an pseudo-epistolary format with this book. This was new. Previous books were straight-up "first person". The narrative in this book cuts back and forth between the protagonist's "Tell All" biography and the present. The biography is a superhero exposé of their darkest secrets. This technique just didn't work for me. Frankly, not a lot happened in this book. Its a 'bridge' book within the series. Thankfully, it was very short.

This series is about as deep as a carpark puddle, but its a parody of a trope. How deep can it be? It was a quick, fun, almost mindless read. I chuckled a few times reading it. However, it could only be appreciated by a superhero comic book nerd.

I already have the next book in the series ( Rise of a D-List Supervillain ) on the TBR pile back at my secret, orbital, lair from which I'll plan world domination once out of lock down.

If you're a fan of this low-form of superhero lit, you may also be interested in Ex-Heroes (Ex-Heroes, #1) (my review).

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice superhero storyline. funny and well written. good Action throughout. Recommended

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of the D-List Supervillain series. It's one of my top three Capepunk series along with Wearing the Cape and Ex-Heroes. The premise, for those unfamiliar with the books, are the (mis)adventures of Cal Stringel a.k.a Mechani-Cal. Cal is an armored supervillain, loosely based on longtime Spiderman foe and sometimes-hero, the Beetle.

In the previous two volumes, we watched (in anachronistic order), Cal go from being a petty criminal with some high-tech weaponry to a man who saves the world. Unfortunately, Cal doesn't have the moral fortitude to be a superhero so he fakes his death and goes back to working on his technology. There's an entire year missing from this timeline, surrounding Cal's death and return, which this book chooses to cover. The book also contains a number of "present" scenes, which give us a sense of what he's doing in the lead-up for Book 4# in the series.

So what is Cal up to?

Mostly, it's Cal sorting through his problems.

Cal Stringer has gone through quite the character arc in the past two books and he needs to solve the question which dogged the Incredible Hulk during his early years: Is he hero? Villain? Or both? In the end, Cal is too selfish to be a hero but not evil enough to be a villain. This book is about him figuring out what sort of happy medium he can achieve within those confines.

Secrets of a D-List Supervillain borrows from Marvel's Civil War event as a backdrop with the government choosing to crack down hard on superheroes in the wake of the Earth's near-destruction during Confessions. The heroes of this world aren't all a bunch of true-blue boyscouts so plenty are onboard with the government's oppression as long as it continues them drawing a paycheck. Unlike Marvel's Civil War, this is more of a hassle rather than an epic fight between heroes. It's also more of a backdrop to Mechani-Cal's journey of self-discovery than a real plotline.

The Confessions series is always at its best when it's attempting to deal with the absurdities of a superhero world in a semi-realistic manner. Cal finds the majority of superheroes to be irritations and he's not about to give up his criminal associations, so he ends up being something of an outside observer on both sides. Some truly ridiculous situations result where neither side really knows whether he's on their side of not.

Cal could answer that.

He's on his side.

Several relationships established in previous books get developed better in Secrets. This includes an expanded focus on the Aphrodite/Mechani-Cal relationship, a in-depth look at ingenue superheroine Whirl-Wendy, and his ex-supervillain cronies. Quite a few of the latter would be willing to come over to the other side, simply because being good can pay better if you know the right people. Watching Cal slowly develop a family out of these oddballs is the best part of the book and well worth the price of admission.

The book is flawed, however, by the fact Jim Bernheimer doesn't take a time to catch new readers up with who is who and how they relate to Cal. It's been a couple of years since I read Confessions of a D-List Supervillain so some of the intricacies were lost on me. Taking the time to throw in a paragraph for each of the characters to bring everyone up to speed would have been nice. Also, and this is just a personal preference, the book loses points for the fact it focuses so much on the Aphrodite/Mechani-Cal relationship.

While I don't hate Aphrodite, her relationship with Cal, is about as enjoyable as watching paint dry. They have a lot of sex and both fight supervillains but I'm not sure what else the two have in common. Do they have any shared interests? What do they talk about aside from work? They seem to be in love just because they're in love. The most honest moments are when Aphrodite talks about how Cal pushes her to be someone different and her unease about the fact everyone thinks she's a moron but him. I'd prefer WhirlWendy and Cal to give it another go but the author actually makes fun of fans who support this ship (in a gentle way) so I think that's not happening.

In conclusion, this is a great but flawed book. It took awhile for me to get back into the swing of things but I came to enjoy it quite a bit. The use of continuity and past characters is well-handled and I've started to develop "favorites" amongst the cast. I'm torn between an 8.5 and a 9 but the book rebounded from a somewhat confusing start and landed on an interesting note.

9/10

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sequel to Confessions of a D-List Supervillain features Cal Stringel again as the reformed supervillain once known as "Mechani-Cal." Now that the world has been saved and Cal is supposed to be part of a superhero team, he finds finds himself facing rivalries with other superhero teams, especially his old nemesis Ultraweapon (who's still sore that Cal stole his girlfriend Aphrodite). None of the other heroes trust the ex-villain, and Cal doesn't really care since he doesn't think of himself as particularly bad, and is unabashed about being selfish and self-centered. Nonetheless, he has a soft spot for his girlfriend, his daughter, and his baby-momma.

This book was fun, like its predecessor, but the shine of the premise (a former D-lister who levels up and becomes a reluctant hero) has worn off, and much of this book felt like either superhero relationship soap opera or just setup for the big battle in the next book. There was a string of encounters with various heroes and villains, clever uses of powers, and Cal is continuing to level up by adding new talents, such as magic, to his character sheet. But I wasn't at any point excited by what was going on, and this book felt very much like a lukewarm middle volume in a series.

[Cloak88 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, but more backstory than plot.

As you've read in Confessions, it turned out Cal survived and faked his own death, created a super suite and got his vengeance. Now you learn how. Why he did it and what his future plans are.

As said before the book is a bit short on plot. Not all that much happens, but what does happens is cool and the backstory itself is interesting and fills a few gapes left in the previous novels.

[Deanna Stanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short on plot - mostly filling in gaps in the prior book.

[Koffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another meh author has serious issues can't believe an adult wrote this.

[Nick Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very, very good.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not expecting to be impressed by the sequel to Confessions of a D-List Supervillian and I can say that I felt that this one was merely OK. I believe the author is self-published, but if not I think would benefit from additional proof-reading or an/another editor. I found the non-linearity of the book to be too confusing, and though I have a soft spot for Cal Stringel there was way-too much Tucker Max-like dialog. That said, I still still like the premise and, to be fair, Jim Bernheimer includes some surprising elements to his take on superheroes. Cal is certainly unique. For that reason, I'm considering reading the prequel and the follow-up book, but if this is an endless series of sequels that's probably all the more that I'll commit to.

A warning to anyone who follows my reviews: if you have any triggers with I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell or similar, you will not like these books.

[Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literally 90% filler

This is the one you can skip. Cal is literally informing you about the time skip in confessions, and how he's doing what he's doing. It's all redundant because he already did this, for the most part, at the end of confessions. It's a more detailed, but ultimately unnecessary follow up. Just go straight to rise of a d list supervillain, won't be missing much. Kinda miffed at this blatant cash grab. I understand to not cook the golden goose laying those precious eggs, but this series was never really meant to go past a trilogy. Cal, based on his character, is unable to really grow, so we get a lot of the same as a result. The series could benefit from a POV from Wendy and Larry. They both seem much more interesting and have better backstory and trauma that makes a redemption story work.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can be skipped

If you read book two you can skip this one and jump into book 4.

I can’t stand flashback books, this book although well done is one big flashback. While it fills the reader up on how we arrived at the ending of book 2 I feel like too much information damages the mystery of what was a great ending.

For continuities sake and for the bits that actually moves the story forward you could read book 3 but you wouldn’t be missing much if you didn’t.

Favorite Line: I’m that rare kind of lazy that will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid doing something I don’t want to.

[Ed Nemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this series. Writing a good Supervillain/Superhero book that is not a part of the Marvel or DC Universe is amazing. Writing a great series of books is absolutely astounding.

This book explains the motivations of the new super-team and how it was formed since Cal was "killed". I love the characters and the more realistic way they act and deal with problems in the superhuman community. This has joined the ranks of my Must Follow series along with Dresden Files and the Iron Druid. I am greatly looking forward to the next installment.

[Jamie Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon the first book in this series and was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it. The second book for me was just as good if not better then the first. I love the idea of the story and the villain aspect as it continues into the second book and how things can change. The humor, wit, and sarcasm between and amongst the villains and super heroes is well done. I'm looking forward to starting the third installment of this series and have recommended it to friends looking for something new to read.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good continuation of Confessions of a D-List Supervillain. This book hops back and forth between the ending of the Confessions of a D-List Supervillain and events that occurred during Confessions of a D-List Supervillain that were not included in the original story. The book is very good and explains areas that were very glossed over in the original book. If you like comedy and superhero stories I highly recommend this book/series.

[Chip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skipped so much of this. You'd think that the explanation for what went on 'off-screen' in book 1 would take 5 or 10 minutes as most of it was covered in the last book's epilogue, however, almost this entire book is just flashbacks to book 1 and a tiny flimsy story strung in between like a clip show on tv.

The overall story is pretty dull but the narration is really good.

I did like the Bungle in the Jungle reference though.

[Douglas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just don't wast your time. The author tells an incomplete story in a short a book with no apparent intention of ever wrapping up a single story line. If you want a good "supers" book I recommend 'SuperGuy' by Kurt Clopton, the Super Powereds series by Drew Hayes or 'So Not a Hero' by S.J. Delos (that last is definitely for adult readers despite its lighthearted title).

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I forgot how seriously hilarious this author is! I laughed out loud through the whole book. Only gave 4 stars because there isn’t much of a plot. It’s not too different from the last two books (prequel and book #1) But it is thoroughly entertaining for very little plot. I thought the first two in the series had a better outlines story.

[charlie graphman]

Cal is the MAN!!

I have been hooked on this series since the beginning. It just seems to get better with every book. With the making of "The Boys" and other movies that go "behind the scenes" for hero and villain alike, maybe it is time for Cal Stringel's story to be told in the big screen. I would definitely tune in for something like this in any screen.

[Joseph Santiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another excellent book for this series. I'm happy to find there is another book but I don't have it yet. The character development and cheesy twists and turns make this story wonderful. Kal is a great character and this story has left me wanting the next book. This is good read.

Mr. Joe

[Karlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed Cal from his first story. This addition did not disappoint. I love his inner turmoil to be both who he is and try to be a good guy too. He is an applicable anti hero. The story is lined with wisdom and wit. I recommend it.

[Rich6849 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great follow on to the previous book

The last book. Left off with an epilogue set one year in to the future. This book tells the story between the last book’s epilogue and where Confessions of a D-list Villain it brings together the stories of the characters very well

[Ruby Ridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still a good read although not up to the standard of the first,
Will persevere with the series in the hope it picks up steam again

[Pandanator · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a fun romp of a book, nicely paced and just enjoyable to read. It's basically a comic book without pictures.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

These books are quick and entertaining. They put a lot of the 800 plus pages books to shame.
So much less filler and unneeded chaff.

3/5 Stars

[Al Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book in this series. On to the next one.

[Dan Ritchey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

[James Ingraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the first two

Like the headline says, the first two books were better. Still, if you liked the others this is worth a read.

[Rhett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed Secrets of a D-List Supervillain and would recommend it to fans of superhero fiction, comedy, and redemption stories. I would give it an 8/10