Writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Ramon Bachs present the second issue of the new ongoing Azrael series, as the White Ghost presents a trial to the new Azrael: save an Angel or condemn a Devil. While it may sound like a simple choice, Azrael has to decide if the perceived saint is a sinner or if the sinner is an innocent man. And what if the architect of the experiment, Ra’s al Ghul, is secretly testing all those involved to see who can best serve as his ultimate Dark Knight?

Well, a ton, dear Source reader. Too much to capably sum up in one blog post. It’s also way too early to give too much away. But, we can showcase some of the lovely artwork gracing the covers of the Bat-titles hitting in February, featuring the talents of Frank Quitely, Dustin Nguyen, Phil Noto and many more. So, take another bite of your lunch and look ‘em over.

In the spirit of my favorite time of the year…here are a few things that scare me.

THE FLAMINGO. This guy has death and danger written all over him. He rides a motorcycle and rips people’s faces off for fun. Oh yeah, and to top it all off, he’s dressed head-to-toe in pink. What’s not to be afraid of? If Batman & Robin thought they had their hands full with Red Hood & Scarlet, well, they haven’t seen anything yet. Check out the Flamingo in all of his pink and face-ripping glory in BATMAN & ROBIN #6.

TONY DANIEL. This guy scares me. True, he’s one of DC’s exclusive artists. He’s also one of my good friends. But he still scares me. Why? Because he’s a double-threat. Not only can he draw circles around anyone holding a pencil, but this guy can write, as well! In case you didn’t already know, Tony’s both writing and illustrating the current arc of BATMAN, which runs from #692-697. Will Tony reveal who’s under the Black Mask in this storyline? (Hint: I wouldn’t be teasing it, unless he was.)

BLACK MASK. His true identity scares me. Stay tuned.

WHITE GHOST. Sure, he has a name that sounds like a discounted Halloween costume, but this right-hand-man of Ra’s al Ghul is scary because he appears in not one, but two Batman titles this month–RED ROBIN #6 and AZRAEL #2

The PHILLIES don’t scare me.

MARCUS TO. Have you seen this guy’s art? Incredi–I mean, scary. Marcus debuts as RED ROBIN’s new regular artist this month, and I can’t tell you how excited we are about this. We’ve seen several complete issues of art from Marcus already, and each one gets better and better! Welcome aboard, Marcus!

Till next time, Stay Scary.

I’m sure many of you dedicated readers picked up on the most recent DC NATION column in the back of the books this week, where our very own Simona Martore gave the page some international flavor. And, because we’re completists here at The Source, we’ve got the translation of Simona’s original text, to help those who couldn’t translate it on their own. Take it away, Simona:

As it is my turn, honor and duty to deliver a memorable DC Nation, I would like to approach this task in a peculiar manner. As you all know, we have so many exciting projects to discuss that I don’t even know where to begin, and the fact is that I don’t want to reveal too much! That’s why I came up with another interesting path to follow that will make my words harder for you to understand. Yes! Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Thus, I will transform myself into the multilingual African Deity Orumnila for a couple of paragraphs, and will discuss some of these projects in other languages.

Ready?

Vous êtes prêt? Avez-vous un dictionnaire multilingue proche de vous? Très bien! Je commence par écrire en français, la langue la plus belle. Je voudrais vous parlez d’une nuit noire, la plus noire de toutes les nuits, quand des anneaux noirs provoque l’enfer dans l’univers des super-héros. Il y était une fois un super-héro, son nom : l’Homme des Etoiles. Apres la mort de Ted Knight, Starman s’est incarné plusieurs fois. Je suis donc heureuse d’annoncer que l’une de ces incarnations sera de retour dans l’univers de DC. Mais cette fois, il y aura quelque chose d’étrange et de terrifiant ! Notre ami se conduira d’une façon bizarre et aura un rendez-vous peu agréable avec une vieille amie irlandaise et avec un personnage obscur à la fois. Cette nouvelle histoire de Starman sera écrite par la main magique de James Robinson qui connait parfaitement l’univers de l’Homme des Etoiles.

TRANSLATION: Do you have a multilingual dictionary with you? Very good! Let’s begin, then. I will start writing in French, which is the most beautiful language in the world. What I’d like to do is to tell you something about a night, the darkest of them all, when some black rings caused hell in the heroes’ world. Once upon a time, there was a superhero named Starman. After his death, he came back several times under different names. I am very happy to announce that one of his incarnations is coming back, but this time, he will do something strange and terrifying! Our superhero will behave in a peculiar manner and will have an interesting encounter with an old, Irish friend and another character who’s very dark in his own way. This new Starman episode will be written by the magic hand of James Robinson.

E con l’italiano, come va la cavate? Meglio di me? Puo’ darsi; tuttavia, essendo la mia lingua madre, mi sento in dovere di onorare la patria degli spaghetti e degli imperatori romani e di annoiarvi ulteriormente imprimendo qualche pensiero su carta in quello che alla maggior parte di voi potrebbe sembrare Latin gibberish.

A proposito di “Notti piu’ oscure”… Sono sempre entusiasta all’idea di leggere una storia dall’intreccio solido e originale e penso proprio che questo sia uno di quei fortunati esempi. Si da’ il caso, infatti, che una nuova avventura avente come protagonista Catwoman e in qualche modo associata ad una “notte buia”, sia in procinto di essere immortalata su carta da Fabian Nicieza. Questa volta la nostra felina preferita si trovera’ alle prese con un vecchio nemico che ostenta da sempre una passione poco ortodossa per artefatti generalmente usati a scopo protettivo od ornamentale.

TRANSLATION: And what about Italian? Do you speak it better than I do? Perhaps. However, as it’s my mother tongue, I feel obliged to honor the country of spaghetti and Roman emperors and to annoy you even further by writing something in a language that probably sounds like Latin gibberish to many you. Let’s start then. Speaking of blackest nights again…I am always very excited at the idea of reading a story that has a solid and original plot, and I think that this time I am dealing with something like that. In fact, a new adventure featuring Catwoman, associated somehow to a “dark night” and written by Fabian Nicieza, is going to be presented to you very soon. This time, our favorite feline will have to face an old enemy who is known for his passion for artifacts generally used ornamentally.

How do you like them apples? Shouldn’t we play U.N. more often? It’s fun! Thank you for your patience! Zai jian!

Writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Ramon Bachs kick off a new era for Azrael, Death’s Dark Knight — starting here. Michael Lane is a man in search of redemption, but doe serving the Order of Purity as God’s Angel of Justice bring him closer to his goal, or send him further down a road paved with good intentions? When a hired killer comes to Gotham City seeking revenge for crimes committed decades ago, Azrael faces an impossible conflict: What if God’s justice forces the hero to claim one of his servants? Need more? Check out a few pages from the first issue below.

AZRAEL #1 hits 10/21.

As some of you know, the Baltimore Retailer Summit is in full swing. We’ve got some news breaking during our presentation, so what better place to unveil it than here, on The Source?

Glad you agree. Our very own Dan DiDio has the info, so we live the rest of this blog entry in his more-than-capable hands. Take it away, Dan:

How big is Blackest Night?

So big that its power to make the dead rise has now moved from expired characters to old, canceled series.

That’s right, this January, the BLACKEST NIGHT mini series skips a month to make room for a very special Blackest night event. Eight classic titles from DC’s past will return from the dead for one month only to celebrate this mega-crossover throughout the DC Universe. Each series will pick up on its original numbering and feature characters from their original runs as they deal with the events currently unfolding in the DC Universe. And I have to say, this has been one of the more fun projects we’ve put together.

We scoured the list of series from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today to find the right titles to bring back from the dead. They are, in no particular order, as follows;

- POWER OF SHAZAM #48 Eric Wallace tells the tale in which Osiris returns from the dead to “chew the fat” with a very powerless Billy and Mary Batson.
- CATWOMAN #83 Fabian Nicieza has the original Black mask explaining to Selina why shooting him in the head was a bad idea.
- SUICIDE SQUAD #67 Gail Simone and John Ostrander are ringside for the epic fight between a very dead Suicide Squad and a possibly soon-to-be dead Secret Six.
- QUESTION #37 Greg Rucka has the one answer for when two Questions meet.
- PHANTOM STRANGER #42 Pete Tomasi reveals what Blackest Night means to the Phantom Stranger.
- WEIRD WESTERN TALES #71 Dan DiDio (weirdly talking about myself in the third person) lets you know what all the dead old west characters are doing in the new west today.
- ATOM AND HAWKMAN #46 Geoff brings you the double date from Hell, The Black Lantern Hawks work to reunite Atom with his long dead love, Jean Loring.
- STARMAN #81 James Robinson returns to the book he made great and visits some old haunts.

So there you have it! Eight great issues to show the amazing reach of this amazing story. And in case you are wondering why we skipped a month BLACKEST NIGHT, well, that’s just to give the immensely talented, and immensely overworked Ivan Reis a chance to prepare the over-sized final issue of this series out this March.

How’s that for fun?

To be continued…

DD

Writer Fabian Nicieza and artist J. Calafiore present a tale of a murdered priest. A desecrated grave marker. A kidnapped child. A secret key. A mystery whose solution could upset the world order. For Batman and Robin to stop the rampage of a zealot named Amon, the Sixth Sinner, they first have to halt a deadlier foe intent on making sure Amon succeeds. To end the killer’s mad scheme, Batman faces Azrael, Death’s Dark Knight. “The Eighth Deadly Sin” continues in DETECTIVE COMICS ANNUAL #11 and sets the stage for this month’s premiere issue of the AZRAEL ongoing series. Check out the first four pages below.

BATMAN ANNUAL #27 hits 10/7.

The cover to December’s AZRAEL #3, by Jock.

Since the DC offices — and, in turn, The Source — will be closed tomorrow celebrating the Fourth, we thought it’d be nice to end the week with a bit of cool news.

Well, here it is: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the heroes of the Justice League will join forces with Teshkeel Comics’ THE 99, the award-winning original superhero group based on Islamic culture and history.

THE 99 team, which debuted in June 2006, was recently identified by Forbes Magazine as one of the “Top 20 Trends Sweeping the Globe.” Not too shabby, huh? In THE 99 — created by Naif Al-Mutawa — are a team of superheroes, including Jabbar the Powerful and Noora the Light who must collect 99 gems encrypted with the wisdom and power of the ancient Dar Al-Hikma library of Baghdad, which are spread across the globe.

The mini-series will be penned by incoming AZRAEL scribe Fabian Nicieza, who’s no stranger to THE 99, having written the series previously. We’re saving the artistic announcement and official release date for another day, once we’re ready to show off some of the art. But can you blame us for spilling the news? We didn’t think so.

Want to learn more about The 99? Well, you’re in luck. THE 99 has a handy website with all the answers for any questions you might have.

Stay tuned to The Source for more information on the upcoming crossover.

This past Wednesday saw the publication of TRINITY #45… and as of today all the plots are written… the co-features are drawn and inked through issue 51… And Mark Bagley and Art Thibert are well into the art for issue #50.

So that’s seven more issues for you… and one and a half for us!

Without patting ourselves on the back here for doing what we set out to do (we SHOULD always do that)… I WOULD like to pat the guys who’ve done the Herculean part of the assignment for the last year! Weekly comics are hard… but we’ve done a few of them lately… and I was personally involved in the SUPERMAN titles when they were virtually weekly back in the day. But weekly comics are HARDER when you have a bunch of people represented on virtually half of the pages of every single issue for that year!

No one writer or artist did that on SUPERMAN… JG Jones DID do every single cover on 52—and that was amazing. The writing team of Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid and Geoff Johns did a quarter of each issue for a year. And only Paul Dini was in on the whole of COUNTDOWN… supervising another team of writers.

But Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, Fabian Nicieza and Art Thibert have touched the equivalent of about half an issue every single week for the last year! This is a simply phenomenal achievement!

For the artists this is a commitment of over 600 pages in one year and Kurt’s had his hand in every single page that’s 1160 pages in one year, sports fans!

Sure we’ve had help from co-featured players like Scott McDaniel, Tom Derenick and Mike Norton with Andy Owens and Wayne Faucher, too… and most of them had other gigs producing comics on time for DC this year!

(And you won’t catch leaving out recognizing the weekly work of colorists Pete Pantazis on the Bagley-Thibert section and Allen Passalaqua on the co-features—they haven’t missed an issue either. And while letterer Pat Brosseau HAS missed about 30 or 40 pages… it wasn’t his fault, AND that’s still 1100 pages on this one series!)

In an age where everyone can debate the ultimate merits of any single comic series (or novel, or movie, or TV show), nobody can argue with a great work ethic… I would like to offer a round of applause to the TRINITY team!