The Beginning of the End.
The Fall Of Supervillainy is the ninth book in The Supervillainy Saga by C.T. Phipps. The series is published by Crossroad Press.
Gary Karkofsky is enjoying the results of his rebooting the world in The Horror Of Supervillainy. Ultragod is now President of the United States, most supervillains are either locked up or on work release, and everything seems to be coming up Merciless. However, a heart attack followed by an encounter with horrifying monsters informs our antihero that the walls of reality are breaking down.
It gets even worse when Ultragod informs Gary that a devastating plague is sweeping through the superhuman population of the Earth. Teaming up with fellow anarchist, The Trench Coat Magician, the two have to keep from each other's throats long enough to see if they can recover the Crown of the Gods.
Fantasy worlds, alien despots, and a coup attempt are just some of the things that Gary will face as the Age of Superheroes comes to an end.
The book was released on August 20th, 2023.
- A God Am I: Gary embraces his divine status with Jacob's encouragement, at least enough that he's the god of kobolds. Also sex, gaming, and rock and roll.
- Artifact of Doom: The Crown of the Gods was made by Earth's pantheons during WW2 to fight the Great Beasts but ended up in the hands of the Nazis. It was destroyed but still serves as a powerful magical enhancer. Gary, accidentally, repairs it.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Cockatrice is an enormous rooster with Eye Beams that turn you into stone.
- Bait-and-Switch Garry offers to adopt Larry, Mandy's illegitimate son.... as his archenemies.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Nanoplague and coup against the US government are thwarted but Ultragod is killed in the process. Most of his reforms are also undone in the wake of renewed fears of Superhumans. Most of the people that Gary brought back from the dead are also killed. However, President Omega is finally killed, a new generation of heroes is there to pick up the fight, and Gary and Mandy are finally reconciled for good.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: The Trenchcoat Magician was kidnapped and surgically brainwashed by PHANTOM. This is why he keeps trying to kill Gary rather than his stated reasons of trying to save the world.
- The Bus Came Back:
- President Omega returns for the first time since The Science of Supervillainy, being the architect behind the PHANTOM coup.
- Psychoslinger, who hasn't been seen since The Rules of Supervillainy is one of the foes Gary faces during the coup.
- Concepts Are Cheap: Discussed between Gary Karkofsky AKA Merciless The Supervillain without MercyTM and Jack Hellraiser AKA the Trench Coat Magician. They are both anarchists but neither of them agree upon what that means. Gary doesn't mind being a Bourgeois Bohemian as long as he fights against the system while Jack thinks that you should live the punk life. They both also agree to work for the President of the United States because he's their friend, Ultragod.
- Crisis Crossover: Gary ends up in Fantasy WorldTM, which is actually the world from Wraith Knight. There he meets Jacob Riverson AKA The Wraith Knight and Ketra, his dragon sidekick.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: President Omega is powerful enough fight Ultragod. He is not powerful enough to fight Ultragod, Ultragoddess, Gary, and Ms. Terri.
- Developing Doomed Characters: Gary and Ketra team up with a group of fantasy adventurers that Ketra warns Gary not to get too attached to. True enough, they're gradually picked off by the traps and monsters in Everfrost.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: A huge attack on Washington DC by PHANTOM and their allied supervillain groups is designed to destroy the democratic process. Downplayed as it involves lots of superpowers.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Parodied. Gary has his own cryptocurrency called the Merciless Coin but refuses to sell NFTs.
- Expy: The White Witch Queen actually the White LICH Queen is one for Dungeon and Dragons's Vlaakith the Githyanki Queen.
- She also seems to have a fair bit of Veranke the Skrull empress in her, given that she's impersonated Splotch-Woman as part of a scheme to conquer Earth.
- Amanda Douglas meanwhile undergoes an entire Scarlet Witch style breakdown while Gary is off training.
- Fate Worse than Death: President Omega suffered one of these when he was sent back 65 million years into the past and forced to live for the majority of that time without any form of human contact. It's left him little more than a Brain in a Jar.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: The superheroes are completely overwhelmed at Soldiers Memorial Park and not even Ultragod can stop them so Gary uses his social media presence to contact every single person that he's done a favor for over the past nine books and they arrive as The Cavalry.
- Interspecies Relationship: Gary has a short lived affair with Ketra, who is a Blue Dragon. Given the latter can shapeshift, it's not a particularly big deal but leads to several questions about how they breed.
- Killed Off for Real:
- The entirety of Gary's adventuring party are killed off during their dungeon crawl.
- Ultragod is killed for a second and more permanent time, taking down Armageddon AKA President Omega in the process. It's also revealed that Ultragod never came back but was merely a projection of Gary's desire to have him returned.
- Armageddon AKA President Omega finally gets his well deserved Karma Houdini Warranty revoked.
- Long-Lost Relative: Mandy's illegitimate child from the time she was a teenage girl returns as an adult trans man paladin. Interestingly, Gary is the one who greets him and immediately accepts him into the family.
- Love Epiphany: Gary finally realizes he loves Mandy as a vampire and that he wants to be with her most of all.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Averted for Psychoslinger real name Ted Bundy. He claims that his parents were big fans of Married... with Children which suggests they might have given their son a last name from the show rather than a first.... Even Merciless thinks it makes no sense.
- No True Scotsman: The Trench Coat Magician accuses Gary of this. Apparently, he thinks that a rich supporter of the US President can't be an anarchist. This is part of his brainwashing by PHANTOM, though.
- Oblivious to His Own Description: Psychoslinger insists that Ultra God and his followers are "the real Nazis." He says this while helping support PHANTOM, who given that they're being lead by President Omega who was one of four villains who took over Nazi Germany after Hitler was arrested by Ultra God don't even qualify as "Neo-Nazis.", they're just Nazi Nazis.
- Only Sane Man: Larry joins the ranks of these as he takes most of Gary's insanity in stride but seems devoted to being the best hero he can be.
- The Paladin: Larry Karkofsky is known as Ultra-Paladin and is a knight themed hero with healing powers as well as The Paragon.
- Physical God: Gary is proclaimed to be this and Jacob also qualifies, being the God of Evil on his homeworld from Wraith Knight.
- The Plague: The Nanoplague is an artificial disease created by President Omega, designed to kill all of Earth's Supers.
- Secret Test of Character: Jacob gives Gary one of these and he fails it miserably. It's implied this was always the plan, however, and that Gary did learn something from it.
- Series Continuity Error: Diabloman at one point busts Gary's chops for helping Tom Terror break out of a prison on the moon Gary defends himself by claiming that he though it was only Tom Terror the third the grandson of the original Tom Terror, and not a guy who helped make superweapons for the Nazis. Except in the book where those events took place Gary comments on how he has to give kudos to someone who fought Ultra God with no powers for 80 years. Though it could also possibly be history having been rewritten at play or Gary trying to paint a more flattering version his past. Could also be a Rule of Funny Take That! at Nineties Superman
Dork Age where Lex Luthor pretended to be his own son. - Shout-Out:
- Gary asks to be executed by Snu-Snu.
- One of the monsters that Gary faces in the dungeon of Everfrost is Sinistar. He even recites his iconic lines.
- Tomb of Horrors is referenced as what Jacob might have based some of the traps on, especially the Sphere of Annihilation door.
- Gary apparently uses Narnia, excuse me, Farnia to do his financial crimes. Ultragod points out the CS Lewis estate wants their wardrobe back.
- The Soulless: Ultragod and a handful of other people resurrected by Gary are this as their spirits chose not to be returned to life.
- Take That!: Since his last appearance Psychoslinger has become a big fan of "R" a self proclaimed anonymous government agent who posts the secrets of the Illuminati. The comparison to QAnon is hardly subtle, nor are the implications.
- Temporary Love Interest: Ketra and Gary have a romance because they're in an isolated location for months. Neither seems to like each other that much but are sexually active enough to take comfort in each other's arms. That and Gary always wanted to bork a dragon.
- Too Dumb to Live: The adventurers who join Gary and Ketra's quest to go dungeon crawling in the Tower of Everfrost.
- Took a Level in Badass: President Omega as Armageddon is depicted as repeatedly taking on entire teams of superehroes at once. Rather tellingly the story treats him more seriously than ever before, as he's shed all of his prior Trumplica character traits, and the only humor he brings to the story comes from him playing straight man to Gary intentionally winding him up.
- Tyke Bomb: Leia becomes a financial one as the fifteen year old apparently crashes the economy of Londonium by doing illegal day trading on her cellphone.
- Twilight of the Supers: A Downplayed Trope example as the Twilight of the Old West is referenced directly. Ultragod is dead and most of the older generation of superheroes are retired. The Battle of Soldiers Park also leaves many other heroes dead. However, a new generation of heroes has taken their place and while superheroes may be far weaker now, they won't be going away any time soon.
- Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Noticeably averted by Psychoslinger who despite having first faced Gary when he was just starting out as a Merciless has since then taken the time to learn Gary's dungeon magic system, and proceeds to hold his own against Gary during the climatic fight.
- White-Collar Crime: Leia takes after her parents by becoming a precocious supervillain but manages to damage to the world economy, buy Omega Corp, a city called Raven's Roost, and the state of New Jersey just using her cellphone.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Gary insist that that people who have been turned to stone are just as dead as people who have been burnt to ashes and so there's never much point to turning them back to flesh. Ketra promptly explains that in this case the magic involved was especially designed to keep the people transformed alive.
