Hey Brad and Garth!

Take notes:

NRAMA: The first arc - "The Next Age" - how many issues?

GJ: Four issues.

NRAMA: And the team is set by the end of the arc?

GJ: Oh, the team is set by the end of the first issue. We're not going to be screwing around.

Re: Boys #5

God dammit, Garth!

The first rule of burger joint is you DO NOT TALK ABOUT BURGER JOINT!

Why couldn't you have said Island Burger on 51st and 9th? Or, I don't know, Peter Lugar's or something. I mean, yeah, if you've set up in the Flatiron building, the Shake Shack really is at your feet, and that was a nice scene, but still... burger joint is crowded enough as it is without having every fanboy in Manhattan jamming the booths hoping to get a glimpse of you or Darick!

And while you're here, there's a few other things I'd like to tell you. First, pick up the GOD DAMNED PACE! I've paid good money for "my favorite heroes getting the crap kicked out of them" and we're only getting to that in issue 6? C'mon! That should have happened back in issue 4, or 3 even. By now the Seven should be already be moving against the Boys, or at least we should have been given a wider view of your world (how many super teams ARE there? and where are the super villains?)

And Lamplighter, your Green Lantern analogue that Homelander implicitly killed, is he really dead or merely crippled, so that he can join the Boys later when they bring down the Seven? And who was the guy A-Train replaced? Was he killed by the Homelander too?

That said, I am, in fact, enjoying the series, which drops just enough humanizing details in along with the obscene and ridiculous to keep me emotionally tethered even while pushing my envelope. But I may just switch to trades, which is, after all, how I read Preacher, so maybe that's what works best for you.

Thanks,

Steven

p.s. The Frenchman. That's Grant Morrison in a pair of goggles and a outrageous accent, isn't it?

Supervillain and Writers

On my other blog, I posted about how factions of the Republican Party match up pretty well with Superman villains.

But thinking about them, the villains, I though about how I would write them. And I realized that I would writer each in the style of a different writer.

For example, Lex Luthor, I would try to write him a Garth Ennis would write him. Ennis's villains are all over the map, Starr, the head of religious secret society, Ma Gnucci, the harridan head of a crime family, God, but they share certain characteristics. One, they weild an incredible amount of authority over other people. They are supremely arrogant. And though they profess to have only the highest ideals, in reality they are motivated by survival and satisfying their most basic desires. All of which fit Luthor to a T. But more than that, Ennis knows how to write a complete bastard that we really, really, want to punch in the face. If Superman isn't at least tempted to throw Luthor through a wall or two, then he's not Luthor.

Brainiac, the alien intelligence, I would try to write as Warren Ellis. Ellis writes bastards too, but his bastards tend to be the hero. Ellis's problem is that, though he pretends otherwise, he cares about people. His best villains, therefore, are monsterous intelligences, like the Four from Planetary, forget their own humanity and consider other human beings noticeable only as resources and playthings. Brainiac not only is an alien, but he moves away from his own biological original form, and away from anything Ellis or the reader could feel any sympathy for.

Mr. Mxyzptlk (which I spelled right on the first try... I am such a nerd)

Anyway, Mr. Myxzptlk is a fifth dimensional imp who not only can do anything he wants, he knows he's in a comic book and can bully and cajole the editor into shaping the story as he would like. That kind of fourth wall breaking meta-commentary is right up the alley of Grant Morrison.
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and as far as I know, none of these writers have not written these characters.

Are there any other characters that should be written by certain writers, but haven't been yet?