Van Lente Gets New Task(Master)

Our legacy of semi-hilarious blog titles continues. Fred Van Lente, a man who has never heard of the phrase "rest and relaxation", has been announced as the writer in charge of Marvel's latest miniseries. Recently Marvel seem to have been very happy to announce lots and lots of miniseries instead of ongoing series, but in this case perhaps their caution is warranted. Van Lente will be writing a four-issue miniseries about none other than Taskmaster, the skeleton-faced crony who was recently turned into a fully-formed character by lovely Christos Gage in his lovely 'Avengers: The Initiative' series. You might think that Taskmaster is a bit of a strange character to use as a protagonist - he's a villain, after all - and you'd be absolutely right.

But this seems less like a Taskmaster story and more like a chance for Van Lente to play around in some of his favourite villainous sandboxes. AIM, Hydra, MODOK - it looks like he'll be throwing as many radioactive people as possible at the bony one in succession, as the characters all attempt to collect a bounty placed on his head. Wait, that was bad use of pronoun. The characters will be trying to collect a bounty placed on Taskmaster's head, not Van Lente's head. Although who knows? Perhaps Fred occasionally works as a jewel thief. It wouldn't surprise us. Not one bit.

Out in September, the artwork for the series will come from former Dr Voodoo artist Jefte Paolo.