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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.

Why Not Justice League?

By Megan McArdle
Mar 31 2008, 12:17 PM ET Comment

[Peter Suderman]

Jeffrey Overstreet and Peter Chattaway are both dismayed by the rumor that Hayden Christensen, otherwise known as Stephen Glass, might play Superman in George Miller's upcoming Justice League film. In fact, they're more than dismayed. Chattaway wants the project to just go away entirely.

I'm not sure the casting Christensen, if confirmed, would be particularly good news, but I don't see why this project ought to be sunk. Yes, it's low on star power, but the first X-Men film showed you could make a fine superhero picture without any A-list performers. (Hugh Jackman, an unknown at the time, was catapulted to his current status by that film's success.) And I'd rather see something made rather than nothing at all. More than that, I'm just curious what would happen if you gave the director of Mad Max and The Road Warrior $100 million and said "Go make a superhero movie!" Sure, it might be terrible; but it might not be either -- directors who start doing gonzo, low-budget genre films have a history of coming through on big-budget projects. Just look what happened when the guy behind Army of Darkness was put in charge of Spider-Man. Miller's got a great eye for action and archetypal characters (Max was essentially a comic book anti-hero). I see no reason not to give him the chance on this one.

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