History of Supervillain University

The 1870s were a dark place in America and abroad. War, strife, famine and a lack of two-ply bathroom tissue were just a few of the ills facing the world and it seemed that no one was willing to take up the mantle of the disenfranchised. No one, that is, except for Sven and Erik, two brothers of Norwegian descent who had seen first-hand how the evils of the world could have tragic effects on the innocent. After a tour of darkest Australia, Sven and Erik knew that their lives would be spent righting the wrongs they had seen.

In a moment of insight, the elder brother, Erik, announced that he had discovered a truth, that children are our future. Suddenly their path was clear and they knew that they must create a school. But not just any school. No, this institution would warn its students of the ills of giving in to one’s base desires for pleasures of the flesh, put them on the right track to truth, justice and the Norwegian way.

Shortly afterward, our founders met up with this pair of pansies, staked them out over an anthill in the desert, absconded with the deed to the school and made two-ply toilet paper out of their Norwegian songbooks.

Drawn together by their mutual admiration of the works of Hieronymous Bosch, our school’s founders entered the first of what would be many unholy pacts several years earlier when they rolled the profits from betting on the winning side of Sherman’s March to the Sea and traveled the world over seeking their fortune.

After spending several months drinking their bankroll away in such lovely vacation spots as northeastern Siberia and the Belgian Congo, twins Dermott and Diggory Smythe were moved by evidence of the kind of petty evil infesting the world they inhabited. So moved, in fact, that Diggory (the smart one) declared that they needed to teach these evil-doers a lesson – A lesson in how to be more evil.

“I mean, if you’re going to do a job,” remarked Diggory in a drunken stupor, “you might as well do it right.”

From their humble beginnings opening a one-room Center for the Education of Wayward Boys and Girls, the Smythe twins quickly gathered a following of miscreants and practitioners of wickedness. Over time, the Center became a large enough success that the founders were able to join forces with other similarly-minded schools by the simple expedient of leading armed assaults against their administration and incorporating the ruins into the Center’s ever-growing empire. After assimilating General Bob’s Evildoers in Training Barracks, the Upper Valley Community College of The Wrong and the Massachusetts Bay Area College of Compleat Villainy (the oldest and surely most infamous training ground for evildoers in America), the Smythes elected to consolidate their holdings. Several years of construction, manipulation of the space-time continuum and bribes to tax officials ensued, after which the Center was reopened in 1934 as Supervillain University.