How about Frank Herbert? He died before finishing his Dune storyline, but his son Brian found a plot outline for the final unwritten story and wrote a sequel so boring it needed two volumes to tell its tale.

I think Frank is a genius, but not only is Brian’s writing crap, Brian doesn’t try at all to write like his father. He’s trying to ‘speak with his own voice’. Oh! Why not let Douglas Coupland write the sequels? Because if you aren’t trying to write like Frank Herbert, does it matter who writes the stories?

Kinda destroys the rationale for Brian writing the 6 prequel novels before getting around to the 2 sequels. Sure, it’s good to get a feel for writing the Dune universe before tackling the sequel to the series of the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time. But, since his sequel was crap, the prequels instead come across as a pre-emptive cash-in.

Having finished those prequels and sequels, Brian is busy at work writing another 3 Dune prequels. The first of those three (Paul of Dune) actually isn’t bad. Huh.

The exact opposite is true for Christopher Tolkien. He published The Children of Hurin (a real novel at last!), based stringently on the assorted drafts that JRR Tolkien set forth, without any invention of Christoper’s own making, and that novel ROCKED! And while we might wish he would give permission for others to do the same, so that more novels could be constructed out of the conflicting versions of tales JRR left unfinished, Christopher will not allow it.

As for his own pre-emptive cash-in, you could say that the 12-book ‘History of Middle Earth’ he compiled qualified, though it was a good way of prepping for ‘Children of Hurin’. I sure hope he does more to make single, definitive works like ‘Children of Hurin’, instead of leaving us with concentrated boredom like ‘The Simarillion’ or the poetic but archaic ‘Book of Lost Tales’ 1 and 2. But it won’t be long before he’s dead, and if it wasn’t for the total surprise of ‘Children…’, I wouldn’t have expected any more writing on JRR’s legacy to surface.

Or is ‘Scott and Jean’ supposed to refer to dead characters who were supposed to stay dead?

In that case, more than any other character ever, I’d have to say Dark Phoenix. Was her original storyline even any good to begin with? And then blessed Chris Claremont, who can tickle the fancy from time to time, does what he does best, and pilfers from himself to bring Dark Phoenix back? Better not do it again for X-Men Forever, fool! (or whatever it’s called) Yeah, I know that every series he wrote since X-Men has the same dialogue, along with some ‘Wolverine’-type character in it. That’s the ‘Chris Claremont’-style!

Maybe I’m wrong, and superhero comics were that violent at times. I still think streams of gushing blood don’t belong anywhere in a Flash comic.

Bah, give me those beautiful Carmine Infantino Flash pages, with the gleaming Central City backgrounds, anyday.

Well, beyond the Spectre (who dispatched folks pretty gruesomely as far back as the ’40s), there were the following massively violent characters:

The Gay Guillotine (no snickering, it had a different meaning in the ’50s)

The Rack (whose original art pages are highly sought-after by “Good Girl” collectors)

and my favorite:

The Purple Hermit, who would mutilate bank robbers in ways that mirrored the “passion” of saints. He would shoot them with arrows or tie them to wheels, etc.

So, if anything, Flash: Rebirth is a tame homage to the gore of yesteryear. Ah, nostalgia.

Oh, really? Please point to a 1950s SUPERHERO comic that had the level of gore Flash: Rebirth had.

So, my new Scott and Jean is Scott and Jean-related (but not to poor Scott or poor Jean).