Yup, I think you're right. Kinda sad, either way.

Yes! You'd think Cho would understand this, no? Or he does and he's being disingenuous to push his agenda.

Exactly. If Rucka asked for edits, that's not censoring Cho's work. If Cho chose not to make the edits, it's work for hire and his employer can decide against using it or crop it if they like. To me, Cho seems disingenuous about the whole thing. Like he was trying to foment some uprising against the big bad Rucka—and…

I'm with Rucka here too. Cho's diatribe was so, I don't know, childish? Every time that guy opens his mouth I lose a little more respect for him.

I'm very visual so when reading novels I tend to do the same thing as you. I conjure about mental images of the characters and the places they inhabit.

Same here. I love Marvel and its characters, but I'm not interested in most anything they're doing right now with their publishing line. No writers of major interest to me, and while there are some artists I'd love to follow on certain books, I can't justify paying what they're charging. Black Widow's my one monthly…

I might go that route too. I tried to get a review copy from the publisher (I write for a website now and then) but never got a reply.

Ah I really want to get the Big Book of Science Fiction. I'm afraid it might break my book shelves though.

I started the month reading A Hundred Thousand Worlds, Bob Proehl's debut novel. Just finished it yesterday and had that feeling you get as you finish a book that's really sucked you in: I didn't want it to end. Which is interesting because I enjoyed the book for the first half of it but wasn't expecting it to reach…

Back in the day that slang was dope!

Fair point. I think this group is fairly well behaved and genial, so I bet things will be just fine here.

I agree with all of that, but in this case I don't think it applies to these comments up above. Folks were just taking the piss out of FFBMB, that's all.

I know I couldn't resist it.

I thought maybe the artists would trade off arcs but it seems like that's not the case, as Schmidt's gone only two issues into the series proper. Glad to hear he's coming back in the fall though because I loved his work so far on this series. The previews here look great too, so no drop-off in talent.

What's up with the Mag Dogs references in the last issue? And IIRC they appear on the cover of the first issue too but I don't remember them cropping up in the story otherwise yet.

Um, so is Otto Schmidt off the series already?

As a kid it was cool seeing a comics shop on film, along with how into comics the main characters were. But otherwise…eh. It's one of those movies I'll watch for nostalgia but I was never particularly fond of it. Seeing it recently I actually said to my wife, WTF is wrong with Corey Haim? He's acting like he's playing…

So your Final Nights and Civil Wars are your basic quick fucks. Get in, get out, don't call you in the morning.

I think by the time these initial series reach their fourth or fifth issues, DC will have decided to either drop double shipping or double down on it for the rest of the year. Either way, it's just felt good recently to care about DC Comics again. To be excited by them, too.

That raises a cool topic for discussion here: what characters do we love more than some actual humans? My list of characters might be frighteningly large.