For those of you who read Detective Comics #854 a little while back, you’ll remember that in the Question second feature Renee Montoya finds some of her cases via a specialized e-mail address.

Guess what? It’s real.

Artist Cully Hamner has a link to ask-the-question.net, which allows readers to submit a question to the Faceless Avenger. What will the questions be used for? Not sure, but don’t think I haven’t asked!

UPDATE: 12:21am EST: The web site now says “under construction.” Is this simply a server error, or something else? Is this a case of too many questions, or are answers forthcoming?

If you ever have the pleasure of hanging out with me for more than about an hour at a time, chances are I’ll play you some of my favorite “nerdcore” rappers (though that may be a misnomer for some of them). I usually start off easy with MC Lars, a guy who skates between nerdcore, parody, and sometimes just plain old fun songs, whom I’m happy to call my friend. After that I might drop some of the original nerdcore rapper on you with some MC Frontalot, then try to branch you out a bit into other realms of underground hiphop (that sometimes happens to have nerdy lyrics) like Schaffer the Darklord, K. Flay, Optimus Rhyme, and many others.

The aforementioned MC Lars put up a blog post tonight saying nerdcore as it was originally conceived is dead or dying, and it’s up to new musicians (and those currently making songs out of life) to come up with the next big thing.

As with any genre, if you want to last, you have write songs that affect people in an emotional way and have an interesting live show and be very savvy with your business. What came up were hundreds of Myspace sites with kids rapping over Nintendo samples about Star Wars and how they couldn’t get laid. Nerdcore has been declining in popularity and notoriety because, to be quiet honest, its appeal as a genre outside of a select few people is ultimately finite. The Ramones and the Sex Pistols had an aesthetic that changed music forever, Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash perfected the art of the breakbeat and changed the party vibe by creating a context for funky beats to be played for hours with no gaps. It wasn’t until punk evolved into the post-punk of bands like Joy Division and Public Image Limited that it became interesting again and it wasn’t until the of the breakbeat and production were reinvented by guys like Dre that hip-hop began to evolve musically. Not to oversimplify things, but music evolves when people realize that it’s time for something new, and that time for nerdcore hip-hop is now.

It’s a really cool essay on music and musicians and a lot of what he says can be applied to the evolution of creative works in general. He also lets you know who else you should be listening to that’s pushing music forward right now, and who you should go to for a little hip-hop education.

Since initially being introduced to the genre and its close siblings wow, 5 or 6 years ago now, I’ve seen it change quite a bit. Lars isn’t wrong, there are a lot of pretenders and copiers, but there are also people taking the Do-It-Yourself ethics and nerdy storytelling that nerdcore was built on and doing it in fresh new ways; some are even taking it back outside the realm of hiphop, from Jonathan Coulton to Kirby Krackle, there are people out there putting out great, new music in great, new ways, that happens to appeal largely to us of the nerdy persuasion.

So go give MC Lars’ post a read, then give a listen to some of these guys, then if you’re so inclined, go out and make some tunes yourself (and feel free to post them here).

So I suppose, like all of you, I’ll be checking out this Wednesday Comics thing from DC to see what I think about it–as a comic, and as an idea for the medium. There is also No Hero, and The Unwritten, which is still fabulous. Also, Jeff Lemire’s original graphic novel The Nobody comes out this week, and though I shouldn’t spend that kind of cash, I really am tempted.

With all that goodness, I don’t know if there’s any more room in my increasingly tight budget for more comics, but, well, I always want more comics. So what else hits this week that looks good?

MTV’s Splash Page picked up on a bomb dropped during a recent Damon Lindelof Q&A. Brian K. Vaughan, comic book writer extraordinaire and the man responsible for much of the pop culture, comic, and light-hearted moments (one can assume anyhow) on the last 2.5 seasons of LOST, is leaving.

“Unfortunately he has left for greener pastures,” the series’ executive producer Damon Lindelof told fans during a Q&A Session at Curzon Cinema.

There hasn’t been any indication yet what those greener pastures might be, but to get Vaughan, who was a full producer last season as well as one of the writers, to leave a hit show in its final season, those pastures must be very green indeed.

Since the breakout hit of Y: The Last Man and his run on Runaways ended, Vaughan has been content to write WildStorm’s Ex Machina as his only current comic book. He’s had a near radio-silence since shutting down his own website, BKV.TV in February, 2008. In addition to comics and TV, the writer has penned drafts of movie scripts adapting his own comics. We’ll have more as soon as we hear it.

The main site and Blog@ will both be taking some time in the next few days to once again examine event pricing. Troy Brownfield and Lucas Siegel will be talking about Blackset Night and War of Kings. To kick things off over here, I’m going to talk about the BIGGEST event in terms of sheer size, Dark Reign.

Remember: These examinations imply no editorial judgment; they are merely a look at the totals as a service to the readership. And, of course, whether you buy all of the tie-ins is up to you and your individual proclivities, and as always, comes with the message from the publisher that you don’t need all the tie-in issues to enjoy the story, though individual readers’ mileage on that statement may vary, of course.

With that said — better bring your umbrella, because there’s a lot of Reign on the horizon!

Marvel’s current megaevent, Dark Reign, is a growing storm around the Marvel Universe, with nearly double the number of issues of its predecessor, Secret Invasion. But then again, this event has been in play since December 2008, and will be running along through at least October of 2009.

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File this under “things that make you go… oy.”

Contact Music is reporting that Hayden Panettiere, or Claire from Heroes, is “preparing for girl-on-girl love scenes in the next series of HEROES.” According to them, she will be sharing a kiss with her college roommate.

But wait — we’re not at the “oy” yet. Here’s where it gets exploitative and just plain weird:

A source tells British newspaper the Daily Star, “It’s just girlie fun at first. But it might progress into something more serious. It depends on how viewers respond.”

Um. Urm… are they suggesting a call-in poll? Because we all know how well that worked out for Jason Todd. All in all, this feels less benign and more exploitative, less of an appeal to the LGBT community and more of the cheerleader fantasy crowd. Valerie D’Orazio, who I picked this link up from, has a nice takedown of the whole process. All I can say is: if this is true, who thought this was a good idea?

Well, maybe that’s not completely accurate — but thankfully, there are no radioactive isotopes involved.

RichardDawkins.net has reported that Spanish scientists from the University of Alcalá de Henares (UAH) have determined that human beings can develop echolocation by producing particular kinds of tongue clicks.

Lead author Juan Antonio Martínez said that “in certain circumstances, we humans could rival bats in our echolocation or biosonar capacity.” This had previously been noted as a rare phenomenon, such as blind guide for the blind Daniel Kish and Ben Underwood, known by some as the world’s best “echolocator.”

Yet don’t start busting out your billy clubs just yet:

In order to learn how to emit, receive and interpret sounds, the scientists are developing a method that uses a series of protocols. This first step is for the individual to know how to make and identify his or her own sounds (they are different for each person), and later to know how to use them to distinguish between objects according to their geometrical properties “as is done by ships’ sonar”.

Now all we need to do is teach these guys echolocation, and we’ve got ourselves a superhero!

[Tip of the hat to Lee Garbett for the link]

Cartoonist Carly Monardo has taken it upon herself a challenge: take the characters from one story and redesign them to fit another story or artist’s style.  Dubbed the “Whirring Blender Design Challenge” (and posted on a blog of the same title), she’s done this on several occasions… but this recent one seems like the most off-the-wall and just-plain-awesome yet.

Final Fantasy VII meets European cartoonist Gipi.

She’s done four examples, with the latest being the best yet: Barrett.

Check it out and cheer her on!

B:DC June Challenge RESULTS!

It’s the moment we’ve all been anticipating for this whole armpit-hot month of June, the B:DC Challenge entries! But wait, before you get to excited, I have some bad news: I was the only person in the universe who participated in this month’s challenge. Yeah. Just me. It’s cool though, I still gave it my all. Click on the thumbies bellow and let me know what you think!

Okay, I must admit, I did source heavily from Alex Ross’s panels in KINGDOM COME and SUPERMAN: PEACE ON EARTH. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to go shoot my own reference photos. But nobody else had time enough to even do one, so I don’t feel too bad.

The characters are all public domain from Lev Gleson Co.’s run of CAPTAIN BATTLE. It was interesting to me that Captain Battle had a kid sidekick, Nathan, that wasn’t his son, whom later shows up for a spinoff series in his own title, CAPTAIN BATTLE JR. Cap was sporting the eye patch before Nick Fury really made it cool. That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll have a new challenge!

Agree, disagree? Questions, comments? Love poems, hate lymerics? Want to congratulate me on a sweet new logo? Email: latino.kyle (at) gmail (dot) com.

-Kyle Latino

The holiday weekend has resulted in some super slim pickings for links. Here are the few I found…

“Each of the 50 stars on the costume of this freedom-loving champion represents a different state—and a different superpower related to that state!”: Captain America could have stayed dead indefinitely, and America would have been well covered in the patriotic superhero department, thanks to the Chris Duffy’s The July Fourth Project. It’s a collection of  YOUR democracy-loving, 5th column bashing champions of justice. created and submitted by cartoonists of all (stars and) stripes. You owe it to yourself—and your country!—to check out the results.

“Serena Williams Wants to Play Movie Superhero”: Provided she’s not talking a brand-new film superhero, but would be looking for a readymade, who have we got for her? Misty Knight in a Heroes For Hire movie maybe? Monica Rambeau in a Next Wave: Agents of H.A.T.E. movie? (Like there would ever actually be one of those).

Here’s one more thing I wish they had when I was a kid: Washington paper The Bellingham Herald has a little feature story on a local YMCA’s “Superhero Training” summer camp for kids. Children between the ages of three and six picked out a superhero identity like misspelled  Spiderman or Mopsy The Supercat and then learned wall-climbing, tumbling, swimming and suchlike.

“Carol Tyler is one of the best cartoonists currently working. She has been for years”: Tom Spurgeon’s Sunday interview is with C. Tyler, the creator behind the excellent You’ll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man.

From DC Comics

Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti

Art by Cristiano Cucina

Jonah Hex #45, Part Two of Six of “The Six Gun War” is an impressive page-turner and easily a great place to jump in. This series has gone through a number of artists since its relaunch with the shift in styles from one story to the next sometimes jarring. But the current story arc is looking quite good with the robust style of Cristiano Cucina. A dramatic page from the previous issue, a depiction of gunmen and horses swirling in a tornado, opens this multi-layered tale with a promising flair that delivers throughout.

Like any good Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, the beauty of the plot lies in its utter simplicity. Johah Hex has been wronged and he is out for revenge. And, like most Eastwood films, we are initially pushed away from an unlikable character while being pulled in as we become curious about what’s going on inside. Hex certainly has that push/pull dynamic. Half his face is hideously deformed from some past misadventure for one thing. He’s also a fairly ruthless bounty hunter.  And yet he does have a sense of justice, however rough it might be. And he may even have a heart.

In “Six Gun War,” it looks like we’ll get to explore a bit more of what makes Hex tick. The writing team of Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have done a great job of capturing the feel of the old existential spaghetti westerns that you can just about here an Ennio Morricone soundtrack in the background. The series has gone from one adventure to the next. A lot of fools have attempted to kill Hex and he ends up killing them in the end. This time out, Hex has the help of a supernatural entity, El Diablo,who prods Hex to explain himself. But what really spices things up is the inclusion of Tallulah Black, a female desperado whose face and outlook on life is as twisted as that of Hex and she seems to be a little sweet on him, even though she adamantly denies it.

I have to admit that I never really gave Johan Hex much thought until Megan Fox but now I’m glad I’ve gotten to know the guy even though he’s a mighty hard fella to understand. If you get a copy of the first collected trade, Face Full of Violence, of the new Hex under the capable hands of Gray and Palmiotti, I’m sure you’ll find yourself reading the book in one sitting. The character, as odd as he is, grows on you.

I understand that the term “graphic novel” has some difficulties, particularly in the second half. After all, the term is used to refer to pretty much anything that is comics and has a spine, whether they’re actually the comics-equivalent of nonfiction or short stories.

To call a bound anthology of short, nonfiction comics a “graphic novel” might not be technically correct, so I can understand why someone might not want to use it.

I don’t understand what’s so wrong about the word “comics” though, or why anyone might think the word “picto-essays” is somehow preferable, as Brendan Burford apparently does, as he’s titled his extremely strong collection of comics Syncopated: An Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays (Villard).

What does the term “picto-essays” really accomplish that that “comics” couldn’t have? Well, it makes the book seem incredibly pretentious, and the editor and/or publishers seem somewhat unfamiliar with and ashamed of the medium.

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What better way to tell the story of a politician as overwrought as Michele Bachmann than as a comic book? After all, if a comic book writer had created Bachmann, she’d be hard to believe. Just a couple of months after Barack Obama’s inauguration (and his swath of guest appearances in comics), Bachmann declared that it was time for the people of the US to have an “orderly revolution” to throw Obama out of office.

Comic book publishers would be pretty bummed to see their cash cow thrown out, so it’s probably a good thing for the industry that Bachmann’s revolution seems to be on the back burner for the moment. But for those of you who want to be prepared in case she manages to pull it off, you could do worse than checking out False Witness! The Michele Bachmann story.

For those of you outside of Minnesota who don’t spend your evenings with Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann, Bachmann is the representative from Minnesota’s 6th congressional district. Her latest claim to fame is a rather public refusal to fill out the 2010 census forms for nebulous reasons connected to “personal” information. Rather like Sarah Palin, Bachmann is a pretty, populist Christian conservative with a reputation for saying outlandish things and a spectacular ability to mobilize the “base.”

Issue number one of False Witness! is less the narrative of Michele Bachmann and more a story of the religious right’s rise, tied together with the rise of Bachmann. As such, it’s rather text-heavy, and contains contributions by several different artists. The art doesn’t so much tell the story as add to it, turning all the characters to outsize caricatures while telling stories drawn straight from the news (with a “citations” page in the back just in case you doubt). The creators are certainly aware of this–even throwing in a two-page spread in which the comic critiques itself so that you don’t have to–and notes that it is an “important political story.”

The book is worth the $4 cover price just for the page in which Bachmann chants “You Will Pay!” at a fellow Republican who doubted her, in panels growing ever closer to eyes glowing with lunacy and a forehead beaded with sweat (evoking Nixon’s famous debate sweats, perhaps?). Yet like many satires, it is aimed mainly at the converted, and probably won’t be picked up by anyone but those who already know who Bachmann is and find her frightening–or amusing. Though the creators do a good job of illustrating the schisms and splits in the Republican party, when it comes to specific claims of demagoguery or extremism, the book is at its most effective when it lets Bachmann’s own, documented words speak for themselves. Readers who don’t already agree that Bachmann is a fundamentalist extremist will probably never get anywhere near the comic, so I doubt it will have much effect on Bachmann’s popularity at home.

We are promised more issues after this first one, so I’m hopeful that we’ll get more narrative when the creators don’t need to cram years of history of the Republican party into their comic. Perhaps we’ll get some Michele Bachmann origin stories, some more tales of her time in the state senate, or, since unlike Palin she shows no signs of going away, more stories of her newest headline-grabbing antics. Or perhaps Bachmann will prove me wrong and turn out to be the biggest boon to comic retailers since Spider-Man met Obama.

Stranger things have happened.

Apologies to any of you who check Blog@Newsarama every Saturday morning just to read my linkblogging. I usually try to have this up first thing in the morning (my version of first thing in the morning, anyway), but I stayed up to the wee hours of the night finishing the second season of Primeval on DVD last night and thus sleeping in obscenely late on this Fourth of July holiday. Wait a minute, Primeval‘s a British series! Aaaa! I’ve betrayed my country!

Anyway, here are some links to things dealing with comics that I took note of since Wednesday morning…

“Luke did an amazing job of making the Mouse Guard RPG more than jut a typical RPG where you happen to be mice, but where being mice is the RPG”: That’s Mouse Guard creator David Petersen talking about Luke Crane and his work on the Mouse Guard role-playing game, which recently won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game of 2008.

“As far as I can tell, gods and other deities don’t have trademarks that are jealously guarded by lawyers for entertainment corporations”: Paul Constant reviews Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow and Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader for The Stranger, focusing on the superheroes-as-modern myth theme in a lot of comics criticism and commentary. The results are pretty entertaining.

This is at least part of the reason I can’t read X-Men comics: Wired’s Geek Dad columnist recently re-experienced the confusing world of the X-Men via the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon, and in a column on the subject he linked to this completely insane relationship chart at io9. Did you know that Wolverine slept with every single member of every X-Men team ever? It’s true! (It’s not). That’s why he’s on so many teams, has so many books and is the most popular X-person. Dude totally slept his way to the top.

“Although sometimes inaccurately called a graphic novelist, Sacco is a journalist who draws”: The Toronto Star includes Joe Sacco’s upcoming work of comics fiction, Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel, in a round-up of book releases to watch for this fall.

I’m honestly not sure if having every character in a JLA comic shout “Justice!” at the end of their scene is awesome or stupid: James Robinson and Mauro Cascioli’s Justice League: Cry For Justice must be a really special comic book. Retailer Brian Hibbs’ daring highly trained special mission force of critics has been taking it kind of slow on Savagecritic.com this summer, but a half dirty-dozen of ‘em showed up to review JL:CFJ, on the week of the Fourth of July holiday. The comic doesn’t fare too well, but it was honestly pretty fascinating to see the various strategies employed to criticize it. Douglas Wolk was first out the gate with an elegant single doctored-image allusion review (sinle allusion reviews really aren’t something you see every day), Graeme McMillan noticed some Jeph Loebishness and some Brian Michael Bendisocity in the script, Hibbs himself questions the font of the subtitle and the use of the word “Justice,” Tucker Stone calls it “hardcore pornography for train-wreck enthusiasts” while determining that it is “excellent crap” and David Uzumeri offers a pretty straightforward dismantling of the issue while holding out the not-unreasonable hope that it might get better. I’m crossing my fingers that Abhay Khosla will show up before the end of the weekend to deliver a 5,000 word essay full of sex jokes about it.

Speaking of that Justice League comic…: Many of the negative reviews I’ve read of it so far have focused on Robinson’s script while generally praising Cascioli’s art. Let me help balance that out a bit. Yeah, Cascioli’s panels all generally look like nice images in isolation. His figure work is just fine, and he adds some appropriate melodrama here and there. But on a purely technical, below-the-paints-and-pencil level? It’s pretty weak work that fails at some of the most basic stuff. I’m not talking about the fact that 22 entire pages of nothing but talking occurs and yet no one except Congorilla ever actually opens their mouth—although “draw the character talking with their mouth open” is Comics Art 101, isn’t it—but the staging.

What is up with that first six pages or so, where Hal Jordan gets all teenager-y with the rest of the Justice League? The whole scene looks like a dream, with characters appearing and disappearing at random and dramatically shifting positions between panels.

This is my favorite page, as it makes it look like the table dramatically shrinks between panels, or that Wonder Woman and Roy Harper ran all the way around the table super-fast and knocked some chairs out of the way just to get all up in Hal’s face, while he tosses his head dramatically back and forth, so that different people are to the left of him:

Okay, well that’s probably enough complaining about sub-par super-comics for me today. I’m going to kick off my celebration of the Fourth of July in the traditional way, by watching the symbol of our nation punch a filthy communist across the room:

Before I go off to find fireworks and some sort of food on a stick (which I maintain is truly American) I’m going to give a quick shout to my favorite patriotic comic book.

It’s not Captain America. It’s certainly not any of the opportunistic Barack Obama comics to hit in the last few months.

It’s Transmetropolitan.

Yes, it’s filthy-mouthed sci-fi written by the British master of filthy-mouthed sci-fi, Warren Ellis. Even so, Transmet is indisputably American the same way Watchmen is. It’s a rough-and-tumble take on American politics, through the lens of a loathsome yet idealistic journalist and his slightly less loathsome Filthy Assistants.

And it’s the only comic I can think of that actually embodies some of the good things about America (and our politics).

Sure, Spider Jerusalem’s real loyalty is to the Truth, rendered in caps to make sure you understand that there is a truth and Spider’s telling it, but he also believes in democracy, free speech, and several other things that certainly aren’t uniquely American values. So why set the comic in the USA instead of in England?

The villains, if anything, seem more American–vile presidential candidates who want to slash at the Constitution or shit on poor people. And what could be more American than taking them on headlong with little backup and nothing more than a hunch that they’re the bad guy–and ultimately succeeding? That’s really the American dream, right?

Maybe it’s just me, but I see dissent as a value to be upheld. We were founded on it, weren’t we? And so for the Fourth of July, I’ll celebrate the right of journalists everywhere to make public officials lives’ hell for fun and righteousness.

And I swear I’m not going to inject heroin into my eyeballs.

Well, it seems this review is pretty timely. I was starting to wonder if Barack the Barbarian really had legs and then we get some legs.

Playing off Pres. Obama’s mention that he collected Conan the Barbarian comics as a kid, this comic, published by Devil’s Due and written by Larry Hama and drawn by Christopher Schons, is set in a time of swords and sorcery. A gathering of children listen as a shaman retells the legend of Barack the Barbarian. Riding in on a donkey, Barack the Barbarian is determined to set things right in the city of Warshingstun, “where every word uttered was lie, and every soul was for sale. A place where men traded dark secrets and openly peddled a powerful drug named Influence.” After fending off some ogres, Barack meets Manny the Fixer who will set him on the path to greatness. But first, they will feast and Barack will partake of a multicultural meal with a dash of Dijon mustard.

Considering that the flap over Dijon mustard is pretty recent, it looks like the creation of the rest of this four part comic is very much in play. So, it would only make sense to go for the gold and follow closely what Sarah Palin does next now that she’s abandoned her post as governor. It’s when Red Sarah, the fighting Queen of the North, makes her entrance that this first issue kicks into gear and it may very well be that the Wonder from Wasilla will bestow some of her mavericky magic onto the rest of this comic.

So far, the best of the Obama comic books is IDW‘s comic book documenting the Obama campaign. It’s a serious approach and it’s spot on. And the best satire is MAD Magazine‘s “Obama, The First 100 Minutes.” Of course, MAD is the gold standard. Barack the Barbarian is funny and seems aimed at all ages despite all the babes in bikinis. So, maybe for older kids. Overall, it’s poking fun at a time in history and isn’t really taking sides. I would only hope that the jokes get sharper.

The humor should be at least as funny as what The White House can create for a political roast. And delivered with as much style as the real Obama like in this perfect dig at the House Minority Leader, a true Republican partisan with a perpetual tan, John Boehner, told at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, May 9, 2009: “In the next one hundred days, our bipartisan outreach will be so successful than even John Boehner will consider becoming a Democrat. Afterall, we have a lot in common. He is a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world.” That joke had the Commander in Chief cracking up. And it still cracks me up.

The $3.99, 22-page comic book—threat or menace? Please write your answer down on a scrap of paper before reading the next paragraph for the correct answer.

Did you write “threat” down? Well then, you’re wrong. Did you write “menace” instead? Well, you’re still wrong. Ha ha! It was a trick question! As the $3.99, 22-page comic book is both a threat and a menace, as well as many other negative things, including “extremely annoying,”  “a poor investment” and “to the direct market as a giant asteroid was to the dinosaurs.”

Does that last one seem melodramatic? Maybe. So let me be more specific. I don’t think the introduction of $3.99, 22-page comics are exactly analogous to an asteroid slamming into prehistoric earth; it’s more like a new star appearing in the prehistoric sky, and getting bigger and bigger each month. It’s an indicator of an extinction level event, not the event itself. Or perhaps it’s just the start of the event, but not the really destructive part.

See, it’s as clear as a demonstration and a declaration as we’re going to get that the direct market’s leaders—the so-called Big Two—are fully committed to a strategy of selling as many comics as possible to the people who already buy their comics to make as much money as possible, instead of actively trying to increase the existing market (that is, the number of people who buy their comics in the direct market). And, once those readers are stretched as thing as possible, buying all of the books they’re going to buy (Marvel currently things there’s an audience for two Deadpool books, but there aren’t any fans who will buy a third Deadpool ongoing series, are there?), then if you want to keep making more money, you have to raise the price.

A lot.

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When you get down to it, the political comic is starting to go beyond Political Power, Female Force, and the Bo Obama bio comic Puppy Power.

Reuters is reporting that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will also be getting her own comic book called “Miss Tschormanie,” written by journalist Miriam Hollstein and drawn by political cartoonist Heiko Sakurai. The book chronicles Merkel’s rise to power, all the way through the open election in September.

The 64-page comic seems to be less serious fare, based on lines such as “You boys only belong to the past, I, however, have gone down in HISTORY!” Still, if you’re obsessive about your political comics, this might be something to look out for.

Party on, Garth.

DC editor Brian Cunningham, via their blog the Source, has announced that the one-time Aqualad will be returning to the DCU in Blackest Night #1. Meanwhile, in Titans #15, writer JT Krul will be taking a look at where Tempest has been the last year or so, dealing with the fallout of the destruction of Atlantis.

The above image is from their preview for Titans #15. In some ways, I’ve found Tempest — with his water-controlling powers as well as his support structure within the Titans as well as his unease within Atlantean society — to make him even more viable a character than his orange-shirted mentor. What do you think?

Blair Butler announced yesterday on Attack of the Show that Top Cow would be revisiting their Pilot Season Competition, where fans will vote on five comics to determine which two will become a miniseries.

But instead of rookies and indie talent, this competition will be different: all five series have been developed by Image partners Robert Kirkman and Marc Silvestri.

I gotta say, with the success of Kirkman properties such as Invincible and the Walking Dead (and Astonishing Wolf-Man isn’t bad, either), I’m pretty excited. There’s no word on interior artists (as Silvestri is only doing the covers), but we’ll report more as we hear about it.