How to Be a Supervillain Books in Order

The How to Be a Supervillain books follow Victor Spoil, the son of legendary supervillains who has one big problem: he is almost absurdly nice. He likes order, rules, and doing the right thing, which is not exactly the family brand when your parents expect you to grow up menacing cities and ruining heroes' afternoons.

Being bad is homework in Victor's world.

That setup gives the series its main joke, but it also gives it real momentum. Victor is pushed into villain training, first through his apprenticeship with the washed-up Smear and later through life at the Junior Super Academy. Around him is a whole comic-book society of heroes, villains, rival teams, secret schemes, and powers that are often as ridiculous as they are useful.

Fry has fun with superhero logic from every angle. In these books, battles can feel half like epic showdowns and half like a very strange public performance, and Victor is the kid who keeps noticing how weird all of it is. He is usually the most sensible person in the room, which is not the safest position to hold when everyone else is wearing capes and making terrible decisions.

Victor's relationships do a lot of the work. His parents are disappointed but still very much in the picture, The Smear turns into more than a joke mentor, and Victor's classmates shift from rivals to uneasy allies depending on the crisis. The books understand that school politics and world-saving are not so different once you are twelve.

Across How to Be a Supervillain, Born to Be Good, and Bad Guys Finish First, the stakes get bigger, but the heart of the series stays the same. Victor wants the freedom to decide who he is. Sometimes that means saving people he is supposedly meant to defeat. Sometimes it means working with other misfit supers. Sometimes it means discovering that even librarians have their own secret agendas.

Quiet kids will probably recognize Victor before anyone else does.

The tone is fast, goofy, and packed with cartoon energy, with illustrations that keep the jokes moving. But beneath the action, these books are about identity, family pressure, and the awkward feeling of disappointing people just by being yourself. If you like superhero stories that poke fun at the genre without losing affection for it, this series is a very good fit.