Mr Bones looks a lot like artist Todd McFarlane's later creation, Spawn.

The Headless Horseman resembles Ghost Rider, also created by writer Gary Friedrich (and sometimes drawn by artist George Tuska).

With Jim Lee it's more of a general style (he does like those ponytails and straps blowing in the wind), but I will say his Deathblow looks like a cross between Lady Deathstrike and Bonebreaker on that X-Men cover.

I thought the mystery character was the Green Goblin until clue #4 (And only in comics could someone be described as "currently deceased" .

It's interesting to look at Punisher MAX as a companion piece to Hitman, especially aided by the appearance of O'Brien/MacAllister and members of the Mitchell family in both series, looking at the differences in their protagonists. Tommy and Frank both face this horrific legacy of violence from childhood onwards (from his very birth, in Tommy's case), but it is Tommy who clings to his compassion and dies, and Frank who constantly endeavors to bury everything human about him and survives.

To me, Preacher still ranks as having probably the greatest ending ever to an overall series, but none of the individual arcs ever reached the sheer power of the endings to The Slavers, Widowmaker and The Long Cold Dark.

It's so hard for me to make this call without feeling like I'm diminishing one series or the other in some way, but I think I have to come down on the side of Punisher as well. It may lack the redemption that came at the end of Preacher, but overall it feels like the work of a much more experienced and mature creator, and ultimately it's probably the better series despite being less broadly accessible.

(I'm actually planning on doing a pretty long piece breaking down the entire Punisher MAX series and spinoffs, including Fury, at some point in time once the series proper finishes, so compiling my thoughts on it into a brief comment is a lot more time-consuming for me than it should be.)

Will

Sadly I haven't been able to find any non-Cap covers beyond the ones already linked to.

It was lagging somewhat up until the end of Long Cold Dark, which was one of those rare issues which made me stop and think yes, that's exactly how it has to be.

That said, Jesse Custer is a more interesting character than Frank Castle.

(If you've got a lot of two-cent bits, I'll happily tell you my theory that yes, there are good characters and bad characters, as well as good writers and bad writers, and Ennis's run on Punisher Max is a perfect example of exactly what a good writer can do with a bad character)

And John'd smoke Kyle. It'd be close, but I think John's marine training (which I'm glad was carried over to the comics since it's one of the more interesting aspects of the animated version) gives him an edge.

Have a good day.
John Cage

Preacher #1-66 was 100% Dillon. McCrea might have done a spin-off, I can't recall.

http://www.comicbookdb.com/graphics/comic_graphics/1/56/33758_20060324014403_large.jpg

Like you said, the writing in Preacher is SO sloppy SO much of the time. If Ennis and Dillon had cut, say, forty issues out of Preacher and focussed completely on the central character arc, I'd vote for it.

I guess I like craft more than heart.

Actually, IIRC some of the regular Preacher series issues were drawn by Mccrea.

But the Dillon art really does bring it together. Dillon art makes any comic far better than it would have been otherwise (take for example the Nighthawk spinoff of Supreme Power).

The second cover has the Horseman menacing a guy named Bones Bullinger.