Thursday's Most Exciting Announcement...

...is Fred Van Lente's upcoming Power Man and Iron Fist mini-series, spinning out of the Shadowland: Powerman mini that begins next month.

Van Lente is a hell of a comics writer, and he's among the few people I trust to bring a modicum of the glory that was The Immortal Iron Fist back to the character. It's no secret that I hold the sixteen issues of that series that were written by Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker and drawn mostly by David Aja in high esteem, so FVL is going to have some high standards to live up to... but I think he'll probably be up to it, provided that he doesn't go too far down the buddy comedy route. In his interview with CBR about the project he sells it as sort of a fun street book and he talks about the way Fraction thinks of the character, which are both good signs.

It helps too that Van Lente's done some of the best comics work out there in recent years, from The Incredible Hercules to Comic Book Comics- Marvel is handing the reigns of one of my favorite characters to an excellent writer and, while I do hope that Fraction and Brubaker return to Danny Rand some day, I have high hopes for what FVL can do.

The runner-up announcement is pretty cool too. While Jon and I had mixed feelings about the first Strange Tales anthology, the list of talent (which includes Kate Beaton, Rafael Grampa, Jeff Lemire, Jhonen Vazquez and the late, great, Harvey Pekar) is mind-boggling, as are the possibilities.