The 52 villains presented in the Villainomicon provide ICONS GMs with a steady stream of antagonists for the players’ heroes. Each villain’s writeup includes full game stats, of course, plus origin story and a few (usually three) plot ideas. The story ideas offer many interesting possibilities for super-villain team-ups or three-way fights: villain vs. villain vs. hero. A few of the villains (including the Killer Gamemaster and Skeletron) appear in published ICONS adventures as well, so the additional caper ideas in the Villainomicon can help GMs plot sequels or prequels for those adventures.

Better even than the villains, in my mind, is the short section of new rules, detailing new specialties, new powers, simple frameworks for catastrophes and disasters, and a few rules variants. The success pyramid has already proven to be a popular and successful addition to the core rules.

Sadly, that infamous and stealthy imp, the Grammar Gremlin, seems to have infested the Villainomicon. Little things like misplaced or missing punctuation marks, double dashes used (inconsistently) instead of hyphens, inconsistent capitalization, extra space between sentences, misspellings (“miniturization,” “firey,” “polinated”), “then” used where “than” is needed, and so on add up. It’s also a bit disconcerting when the text descriptions and pictures don’t match, as when the text describes Earworm as “black and gray” but the picture depicts it as green and purple. Also, the cover shown in the product description (as of June 2012, long after publication) isn’t the actual cover; an update to the promotional imagery wouldn’t hurt.