Of Spoilers & Setups

Ed Brubaker (gentleman on the left in the picture to the right) put forth a Twitter tirade about his Fear Itself 7.1 story getting spoiled on comic book news websites (mostly directed at BleedingCool.com, I believe).

But he misdirects his anger...and I think even he might admit by now that he overreacted a bit.

No way to discuss this without acknowledging the spoiler, so, out of respect for his frustration, I'm putting the rest of the talk on a click-through after showing a few of Brubaker's initial tweets on this subject:

More...

Dismantling The Hype Machine

During times of war, I stick to the roads less traveled.

Who's That Girl?

Her "Secret" is as guarded as can be.

(do I have to spell it out more directly than that?)

Mr. Anonymous, Is That You?

So I see an old friend pop on AIM and I decide to say hi. Last time he had juicy spoilers for me, I held back on coming right out with the info and made it into a guessing game. Since, I've kinda lost the hunger for getting spoilers. All of this is to say: I really was just saying hello.

But he had an update for me. Secret Avengers lineup.

Hmmm. Eclectic damn thing. We both agree that, if anyone can pull it off, Bru is the man. We disagree on whether it is a definite that Bru and Deodato can make it sell well, in addition to being a quality product. Then again, I guess cast didn't significantly hurt Avengers: The Initiative or the later issues of Mighty Avengers.

I'll say popular opinion on the first teasers is correct. I'll be picking up the first few issues just to see how they make this thing work.

George Bush: How'd He Do?

Via Ed Brubaker on Twitter (and that tenuous link to comic books is enough for me to put it up here)

Random Comic Book Thoughts

• Daniel Patrick Cassidy better be in the process of being returned to his stuck-in-a-suit, weirdness magnet beginnings. Otherwise, a comic book crime has been committed in Shadowpact. I had my own idea of how to accomplish this back in the day, over on the Newsarama boards.
  
• In discussing with some friends what villains we think could support their own series (ala Doom 2099 or Empire), we all seemed to agree that Black Adam could sustain a series (based on that wonderful mini). The dream writer team (as dual writers seems to be all the rage), would be Tomasi and Fraction. But the surprise concept brought up was Red Skull. At first, it was thought he couldn't pull off a series. I countered that, if there ever was a time, it was now. Someone challenged that he'd need a foil, to which I answered that you'd simply have to go with someone trying to bring his organization down from within, possibly taking on a legacy name. Keep Bru on to write his diabolical Skull, bring on Fraction to bring some of his Casanova craziness to the foil. I'd really love to see Marvel try something like that.
  
• Mike Choi (who was swell enough to stop by and comment on a blog I did about one of his blogs) posted an amazing...wait for it...blog about the David Mack situation. Or is it about the Mack situation? You decide. But I think he put a huge chunk of himself into that whole discussion. It's always amazing to me when comic book professionals put themselves out there like that, showing their emotional vulnerability in such a quiet and humanizing way. It's part of why the Word Balloon Bendis tapes softened me a lot on Marvel.
  
• I really wonder how many of the readers who are here for spoilers will stick around when the well runs dry? It's not keeping me up at night, but I'd be lying if I said curiosity wasn't getting the better of me.
  
• I'm glad that I've been able to run a few other people in the WGBGB feature, though I admit Mike's inclusion was a stretch. I knew there'd be a reasonable explanation or clarification, but I thought it'd make for good conversation, nonetheless.