YMMV / The Reckoners Trilogy

• Alternate Character Interpretation: In-Universe, it's wondered if only evil people gain powers, or if the powers make you evil. As shown in The Reveal in Steelheart (and explained in more detail throughout the series) the latter is the case, and Epics who avoid their powers are able to avoid turning evil.
• Magnificent Bastard: Jonathan "Prof" Phaedrus is the founder and leader of the Reckoners, secretly an High Epic himself. Having been forced to kill his former Super Team when they fell to The Corruption, Prof had the Reckoners take out multiple epics, while hiding his true nature from his subordinates and keeping his sanity by sharing his powers via gadgets. When David offers a opportunity to defeat Steelheart, Jon leads the team on a sabotage campaing against Steelheart's regime, sucessfully luring the tyrant to a duel by posing as a fake rival epic, even using his powers to fight Steelheart and his army. Later sacrificing his sanity to save the people of Babilar/Manhattan from Regalia and Obliteration's machinations, Prof reinvents himself as the supervillain Limelight. Retaining his strategic skill, Limelight effortlessly wipes out most of the reckoner cells and conquers the city of Ildithia, seeking to use its former ruler Larcener to drain Calamity and become the master Epic. Discovering that the surviving reckoners are sheltering Larcener, Prof deceives them with a fake deadline before launching an assault with both other epics and human foot soldiers, only being defeated because David managed to figure out his weakness.