Big Hero Six #1

In the history of the world, only one nation has ever suffered a direct nuclear attack — the island monarchy of Japan.  The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War 2 inflicted scars on the national memory that last to this day.  Like any nation, Japan needs to defend itself, but unlike the other great powers, it has forsworn the use of nuclear weapons.  They’ve found another way.

Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #3

Some gender politics:

Leave my fiancee alone.  Do you hear me?!  And I am not a tramp you chauvinistic $*@!!

And, is this an Obama reference?

To not believe in you, the savior, the uniter… is to not believe in hope.  I choose to believe in hope.

Ex-Machina #38

The Great Machine – Effective immediately, I am retiring from volunteer community crimefighting.  And running as your independent candidate for Mayor of the great city of New York.  I’m hoping to be part of a truly grassroots campaign, one that will finally utilize the internet’s true potential to reach all voters.  Starting today, contributions as small as one dollar can be made directly to my new website at http://www.hundred4mayor.net.  That’s the word hundred and the number four, so please don’t–

And on speaking to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City:

Deputy Mayor – You’ve officially lost your mind.  You’re really going to deliver a speech from the same stage where the worst President in my lifetime is about to ask this country to give him another shot?

Mayor Hundred – I’m just being a good host, Dave.  Now which one of my stupid old “trophies” do you think I should present to the Vice President tomorrow?

Deputy Mayor – You’re letting Cheney inside Gracie Mansion?

Mayor Hundred – Believe it or not, New York doesn’t belong to the Democrats.

Deputy Mayor – And 9/11 doesn’t belong to the Republicans, no matter what the out-of-towners they’re busing into Madison Square Garden think.  Are you at least going to tell these people to start allocating more antiterrorism funds to the cities that actually need it?

And on Mayor Hundred running for Governor:

Deputy Mayor – You mean… you’re thinking about running for Governor?  Because, no offense, once that seat opens, everyone knows it’s going to Spitzer, unless somebody catches Mr. Clean in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

X-Men: Magneto Testament #1

From the writer Greg Pak

In the three years editor Warren Simons and I have been developing “Magneto: Testament,” we’ve struggled with the complicated, rich, and contradictory information the comics give us about Magneto’s life during the Nazi rise to power and World War II.  Different comics give different accounts of Magneto’s name, his age, his ethnicity and religion, his hair color, and even his Auschwitz tattoo number.  But as dedicated Magneto fans have documented, the most compelling and essential material indicates that Magneto was a Jewish boy in Europe during the Nazi ascendancy and provides several key details about the fate of his family and his experiences in Auschwitz.

We’ve done our best to remain true to these elements while fleshing out the rest of our hero’s experiences based on research into the actual historical record.  Longtime readers will notice a wealth of surprising new details — for example, for the firs time, we’re revealing Magneto’s birth name.  And sometimes, because the comics record is contradictory or conflicts with historical fact, we’ve had to choose one detail over another.  But at every step, we’ve done our best to remain true to the key moments that have contributed so much towards making Magneto the deeply compelling character we know today.

But most importantly, in an age in which Holocaust deniers still spread their lies, we’ve done our best to ensure that the real-world history we explore in the series is entirely accurate and that we deal with this unfathomably harrowing material in a way that’s honest, unflinching, human, and humane.  In later issues, we’ll provide citations and suggestions for future reading.  For now, we offer a thousand thanks to Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his expert advice and historical fact-checking.