Imagine that some of the great writers of the past were alive today and wanted to work in the comic-book industry. Which work-for-hire mainstream titles would you put them on? (And no, you can’t put Robert E. Howard on Conan, for example, cool as that would be; it has to be something they’ve not done before)

Here’s the talent pool to deploy. Say where you’d place them and what their first story arc might be:

Dashiel Hammett (Sam Spade etc)

Howard Phillip Lovecraft (Call of Cthulhhu et al)

Edgar Allen Poe (Murders in the Rue Morgue et al)

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter etc)

Frank Herbert (Dune etc)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World etc)

Sheridan Le Fanu (Carmilla (the vampire) and lots of other ghost stories)

Robert E. Howard (Conan, Solomon Kane etc.)

Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist et al)

J.R.R. Tolkein (The Lord of the Rings etc)

William Shakespeare (Macbeth, Hamlet etc)

And just to make it interesting, what other writer who was born before 1920 would you pick to write:

New Avengers

Captain America

Superman

Astro City

Star Wars

Buffy

Pet Avengers