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[What is Cast of Shadows? Click here for the introduction to this series]

In honor of the first mention of CoS in the MSM, I will now announce the winners of contests #3 and #4. Trust me, you'll want to see the winning anagram, after the jump.

But first, here's Mike Martone's winning entry for contest #3: Who would you clone?

I am concerned that your Cast of Shadows contest #3 trivializes the eugenic consequences of germline mutation. Human cloning should be used for one purpose and one purpose only: to recreate the original September 1963 lineup of the X-Men. Here's who I would clone:

* BEAST: The Myostatin Musclebaby. Or, if he is too young to give medical consent, Oliver the Humanzee.

* MARVEL GIRL: Natasha Demkina.

* CYCLOPS: Kimberly Goodman.

* ICEMAN: Erika Nordby. Or, if she is too young to give medical consent, Ted Williams.

* ANGEL: Oh, what the hell. A 20-year-old Angel Sparks.

OK, there are a few flaws to this entry. One is that you wouldn't really need to clone these people to form the original X-Men, just get them together (at, say, a school for the gifted). Another is that Marvel Girl didn't have x-ray vision, fer crissake. You want me to revoke your license to geek, Martone? Finally, for Angel, I woulda gone with Kanye West. Still, considering that the next best submission was "Brian Doyle-Murray" (with no further explantion), Martone walks away with a copy of Kevin's novel.

Now to contest, #4, in which you were asked to anagram CAST OF SHADOWS, KEVIN GUILFOILE, or KEVIN GUILFOILE CAST OF SHADOWS.

There were several good entries. Eric Berlin submitted AS I LOVE, I ASK: "WHO DIGS CLONE STUFF?" (by adding an 's to Guilfoile), and prefaced it by saying, "I'm not letting Francis take this without a little competition."

Despite that, professional anagrammer Francis Heaney did indeed take it with an anagram of KEVIN GUILFOILE CAST OF SHADOWS that pretty much sums up the book perfectly: FOLKS SAID, "WHO CLONES A FUGITIVE?"

Congratulations, guys.

Posted by Daniel Radosh

4:47 PM