Film threat: Am I the only one who loathes the "design" of The Pulse's main page? I realize it probably makes things easy on their end, but I constantly miss updates to their irregular columns like "The Beat." Everything gets lost in the clutter.

When I wasn't looking, Jai Nitz posted another installment of his occasionally entertaining "The Hustler." This time around, he offers some fairly interesting concepts for Marvel movie spinoff books, including Nick Fury and SHIELD (written as a Clancy-inspired spy thriller) and Iron Man (A Christmas Carol meets Three Kings?).

Although I like the dryadic (is that a word?) Man-Thing sketch by Josh Searcy, Nitz's spin on the premise is a little weak, and would turn the book into a Smallville-esque threat-of-the-week series as a new villain pops through the Nexus of Realities each issue.

Nitz refers to Man-Thing as a "blatant Swamp Thing knock-off." If you'll allow me a moment of geekishness, I'd like to point out that he's wrong in that assertion; the two characters' debuts were far too close together for one to be a knock-off of the other (besides, Man-Thing actually appeared first). End geekishness. Sort of.

I actually like Nitz's idea for Namor, particularly in the wake of the Tsunami title of the same name. His concept isn't groundbreaking, but reduces the character to his basic elements -- torn between two worlds, militant thinking, etc. -- and builds him back up from there.