Jon Morris Releases ‘Villains Of Steel’ Portfolio As A Pay What You Want Download

The first thing you need to know about Jon Morris is that he really, really loves Superman. Actually, no, that's not right --- the first thing that you should probably know is that he's a cartoonist of no small talent who loves delving into the more obscure bits of comic book history, and who recently wrote an entire book on the strange and obscure superheroes that have fallen by the wayside over the years. But second? Yeah, second is probably gonna be that Superman thing.

Put those two facts together, and you've got the motivation behind Villains of Steel, an art project where Morris drew 75 of Superman's foes to celebrate the hero's 75th birthday last year. Now, the whole thing has been collected as a pay-what-you-want download, and it's pretty amazing.

The great thing about Villains of Steel, aside from being able to get high-res versions of Morris's art for whatever you'd like to pay, is that it draws on the entirety of Superman's 75-year history. There are villains in there from the big-screen movies, the Fleischer animated shorts from the '40s, Superman: The Animated Series, every era of the comics and even, in my personal favorite entry, an anti-smoking PSA from 1980 in which Superman battled the habit-forming hate of Nick O'Teen:

There's even one in there from the Broadway Musical, and as someone who has actually talked to Morris on multiple occasions, I can only imagine how painful it was for him to actually acknowledge that that project existed.

The suggested price on the Villains of Steel portfolio is $3, and it's definitely worth checking out. Preview a few more pieces below: