War of the Independents

CBR is reporting on a new series featuring independently owned creations – from Savage Dragon to Shi to Madman to Cerebus – called “War of the Independents.” A cursory glance at the accompanying image tells me … well, it tells me there’s going to be dozens of characters I don’t recognize. Is that Captain Canuck in there?

The inspiration comes from artist Dave Ryan, who explains that having just survived Infinite Crisis and Civil War, he figured he’d never seen a similar sort of story featuring independent characters. The story he has planned is going to focus on “the villains Kain and Orcus trying to create a reverse tower of Babel to open the gates of Hell and destroy the Earth.” Not a terribly well-thought out plan, if you ask me – where will they live then? The moon?

As for when we can expect to see this, according the article, these villains are going to be introduced in Ryan’s Penance book in March 2008. So we may not be seeing this for a while, unless that ’08 was a typo for ’07. In the meantime, I’ll just oscillate between being worried and excited about seeing another potential train-wreck of a crossover.