There's a bunch of super-hero comics that have rung the dinner bell on their creative teams, and you're probably wondering, "Hey. I don't know whether I should buy this, and I always disagree with everything that Tucker Stone guy says. I wonder if he could provide me with a breakdown of what I should spend whatever change I have from my economic stimulus plan, now that I've collected enough baubles and colored rocks to finish my life-size model of the Infinity Gauntlet."

Oh yes, my tender friend, I can. Let's dance on the precipice of the light fantastic, comic book creative team style:

Who's Out?
John Cassaday and Joss Whedon

Yeah, so? There aren't many comics creators who would make a seamless fit into what Cassaday & Whedon were doing, so trying to find the Coldplay to their Radiohead is a smart move on Marvel's part—and considering how bad the critical worm ended up turning on Whedon's scripts in the last year, it's probably not a bad idea to go with a fan-approved guy like Warren Ellis. If Whedon had left the comic earlier, back when everybody was in love with his Buffy-ish dialog and the excitement among X-fans for the return of Colossus, that might've been a different story. Of course, the flipside of Ellis-fandom is that his super-hero comics aren't always top of the pile sellers—like him or not, Nextwave apparently couldn't meet the cost of paying Stuart Immonen, and Thunderbolts is too intermittent a publication to merit much acclaim. It also doesn't help that X-fans are a notoriously sensitive bunch and Ellis is just as notorious with his criticisms of work-for-hire spandex titles. However, this has the potential to be the sort of careering move that Ellis really needs: a successful run on a huge Marvel title that could stand beside Transmetropolitan as an example of his vaunted talent. On the negative side, Simone Bianchi has yet to prove that he's got the kind of sales draw a guy like John Cassaday has, meaning "will people buy this just to see what he draws, regardless of story?" For my money, that's a resounding no, not yet.

Verdict? Mixed: Good call on the writer—bad on the artist.

Who's Out?
Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker & David Aja

And? It's easy to assume this is going to be the most immediate failure of Marvel's creative changes—easy because it was hard to imagine that anyone was going to find success with an Iron Fist title in the first place, and now that Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction have shown it to be possible, it's harder still to believe that lightning can be caught again, in the same bottle, by a writer with as little experience in the comics field as Swierczynski has. More and more, Matt Fraction, who was also a relative newbie to the field when Iron Fist first dropped, seems to be a prodigious talent in the field of giving comics fans exactly what they want to pay for—and most of the time, that happens to coincide with what they want to read as well. Writers like that, who are both versed in getting the job done and in getting it to appeal to the limited fan interest in new ongoing super-hero titles, aren't that common. What is pretty common is a comic company assuming that they can keep throwing jobs to new writers until the new writers buckle under the workload. On the art side, David Aja will certainly be missed. But if Travel Foreman plans to keep drawing Iron Fist like this, that pain might not be that bad. That's the kind of weird that might make for an easy transition.

Verdict? Well, if it doesn't work out, it isn't like you have to give back your trades of the previous run.

Who's Out?
Greg Rucka & Eric Trautmann

So what? On the art tip, it's a bit of an upside: while Checkmate has never had straight up bad art, it also hasn't had consistent art of any kind. Sometimes it's Jesus Saiz, sometimes it was Joe Bennet, etc. If Manuel Garcia, who is booked for at least the first five after the creative change, stays with the book and catches on, then maybe Checkmate can lock in a penciler who will give it some kind of regular tone. The writing thing—well, that's more of a difficult thing to deal with. It's obvious that comics would love to clone somebody like Greg Rucka—his espionage title Queen & Country is one of those rare books that most people seem only to dislike if they haven't read it, and he was able to tell "mature" stories with his run on Checkmate without resorting to hardcore sex and violence—which is pretty much the poor man's definition of "mature" in most super-hero titles. Bruce Jones doesn't arrive on the book with a whole lot of goodwill—his run on Nightwing after the big One Year Later idea is now universally acknowledged as a really terrible idea that produced really terrible comics, and he followed that up with two DC mini-series that no one read about the Vigilante and the OMAC project—so far, his rose hasn't bloomed. On top of that, his longest run in the mainstream so far was on the Incredible Hulk—while sales went up, and the first year of that run was pretty well received, fans seemed to tire of his gritty take on the character, often complaining that there was too little Hulk in a Hulk comic. After he left the title, the comic reverted back to form and helped to usher in Marvel's successful World War Hulk event. Now it's up to him to carve a mark into a book that has suffered dwindling sales since its inception while proving he's got what it takes to follow Greg Rucka, who seemed to many to be the only reason Checkmate was being published at all.

His solution so far seems to be that he'll tell a bad Frankenstein story. Go figure.

Verdict? Honestly, if Bruce Jones can pull off making Checkmate successful, I'll eat my hat. I have already picked out the hat.