Parts 1–3: I can’t really remember what happened because they came out so freaking long ago (although I remember part 3 being something like “Let’s fit as many weird sex jokes about Beast and Agent Brand as possible into one issue”)! And they had that overpriced “Ghost Boxes” miniseries between them and part 4. But I remember not being impressed.

Part 4 (a.k.a. “Horrible Foreshadowing”): Let’s mention Forge as many times as possible in unrelated circumstances . . . and then find out on the last page that (you guessed it!) the X-Men need to go find Forge!

Part 5: Let’s talk about how crazy Forge was! Maybe if we say it enough times, people’ll think he actually WAS and we’re not just making this up to fit our story idea! (Oh, and let’s kill a bunch of the weird, artificially mutated “new mutants” Forge has created—because we’re the X-Men, and we kill people. Even the one that Storm intentionally didn’t kill—we just won’t tell her! Oh, and why are we keeping X-Force a secret again?)

Part 6: Let’s kill even more artificial mutants, plus psycho Forge, in a big explosion! And even thought he was an X-Man for a while, none of us’ll really care about it . . .

Ugh.

Beau Smith has no problem with B’wana Beasts name!

That Buffy cover reminds me of a question I’ve always had about comics licensed from TV shows: given that the characters tend to be drawn to resemble the actors who played them, has anyone from such a show ever complained about seeing “themselves” depicted in a tasteless or questionable fashion? (The usual transfer of likeness rights in actors’ contracts would presumably take real legal action off the table, but public complaints could still produce controversy.)

I don’t know that any actor has complained about how a character was written in a comic, but James Marsters was none too happy with how Ryan Sook depicted Spike in a one-shot Marsters co-wrote.

Jay: I’ll still have to mull it over. That’s a neat link, though.

Trust me, you WILL want Jim Rugg’s “Afrodisiac” collection. Here’s why: http://worldofhurtonline.com/tag/jim-rugg/

I normally don’t chime in with rants like this since I’m obviously biased but this book has gotten nothing but praise from people who have seen it so far. If you go to http://www.myspace.com/radicalpublishing, you can read the first 15 pages and make your own opinion.

Issue 5 has been held up at Image for the last four weeks due to a production bottleneck, which is frustrating. We still have hopes of actually getting all 3 out, and then going straight into the trade on the stated pre-Christmas deadline*. Yes, that does mean more than one a month. But it’s going to be a bit more of a crush than we hoped, if we pull it off.

KG

*Considering there’s so much extra content in the comics to the zines, we don’t feel the small distance is a problem.

Interestingly, Ennis’s last arc on the Punisher MAX title turned this around and made his version of Castle a commentary on the war.

Fast forward 30′s years to the late 60′s and his pacifist son gets caught up in the pressures of being the son of Doc Savage, including getting constantly berated by Doc;’s group of hangers-on about how pathetic he is in comparison to his father. Doc Jr. dies, but not before his lover announces she’s pregnant.

Fast forward yet again to “modern day” (the late 80′s) and we get Doc’s grandson, Chip. He is, physically, much like his grandfather and begins adventuring with Doc’s now-well-over-the-hill gang of followers, who never disbanded in the 50 years since his disappearance. However, Chip also hates killing and weapons and abhorrs many of his grandfather’s adventures and techniques for fighting crime. I guess he’s supposed to imbody the “sensitive 80′s man” or something…

To make long story short, the original Doc does come back and he and his grandson have to thwart a villain together, arguing the whole way. I liked elements of O’Neil’s story, but his inclusion of Chip and his attempts at “updating” the concept to the 80′s don’t work quite as well. The regular series that followed the mini-series suffered a bit from the same problem until issue #7 when Mike Barr took over writing and his first accomplishment was writing Chip out of the series and going back to focus on the original Man Of Bronze.

Oh, and the early artwork from the Kubert brothers is aces too. I don’t know why DC didn’t do more to keep them around as exclusives…

X-Men: Noir sounds more like generic pulp, with a twist of Howard, than noir.

He has done it, twice, and excellently, during Preacher. John Custer’s experiences in Vietnam show that he’s done more war stories than just the Deuce ( even if that’s his preferred territory ).

He also did it again and much more dark in The Punisher: Born.

Both Preacher and Punisher were great, but I’d love a straight up Nam series by him, without it tying into anything else – because in Preacher it was about his dad, not the war, and in Punisher it was about Castle and how he was destined to be The Punisher well before his family were killed.

That said, WW2 sure does have a lot different angles you take with it.

He has done it, twice, and excellently, during Preacher. John Custer’s experiences in Vietnam show that he’s done more war stories than just the Deuce ( even if that’s his preferred territory ).

You will not like the O’Neil/Kubert(s) “Doc Savage” mini. Unless you like stuff that’s dull and uninspired and sucks the life out of the mythology.

(No Moon Knight gag needed.)

FGJ: I was thinking of his Spanish Civil War story in “War Stories,” which was very good. I wouldn’t mind if Ennis wrote a ‘Nam story, but I also wouldn’t mind him writing a story about, I don’t know, the British Afghan campaigns!

A more contemporary one could be interesting as well.

Let’s face it, the guy could do nothing but write War Stories all day – as many a month as he wanted – and I’d be totally happy buying them all.
I love The Boys, but I’d say goodbye to it if it got us another war series from him!