Perhaps the biggest comics news story to come out of the turn of ‘08/’09 is the return of Wildstorm — not the Wildstorm of badass 90210-style superhero franchises; that Wildstorm’s been managed pretty consistently — but the eclectic, unpredictable Wildstorm of creator-driven oddities and off-genre fiction.

The long-overdue finale of The Winter Men, Brett Lewis & John Paul Leon’s brooding, sardonic epic of the Russian Mob and the botched superbeing underworld at its margins, was a Watchmen-level event, with all the literary layers and moody museum-quality art this one-of-a-kind (yet state-of-the-art) strip should be better known for. It’s geopolitical gangster fiction with a sidebar of superheroes who don’t matter or make it worse, and a subtext of stubborn persistence through sh*tty reality that informs both the current-events and cartoon worlds well.

Wildstorm was roundly pilloried (here and elsewhere) for not renewing Marc Bernardin & Adam Freeman’s smart sci-fi spy thriller The Highwaymen, but luckily the criticism didn’t affect either the writing team’s attitude of Jim Lee’s judgment, since the boys are back for the smart sci-fi prequel comic to February’s film Push. Nobody in current comics is better at combining the wit and ensemble dynamics of heist films with the scary intensity of geopolitical conspiracy pulp than Bernardin & Freeman, and theirs is the *other* comeback of the year.

Writer Jeff Parker reinvents the magician comic by tracing branches of its ancestry that even the most classic comics didn’t, basing the distracted, imperious and just possibly godlike title character of Mysterius the Unfathomable on Carter Beats the Devil-era stage conjurers and matching him with modern-day bohemians and other desperate characters. Employing cutting-edge theoretical physics he usually can’t quite remember, Mysterius represents both the roots and horizons of magic and science as we understand them, while Tom Fowler’s post-Will Elder art creates dense habitats and deep comedy. This book is heading for worlds we’ve never seen but will feel right at home in.

I found the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial (televised by HBO even for those of us who aren’t HBO subscribers) entertaining, and even deep at times, but I wasn’t truly moved until it was just about over. That’s when Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger (along with Pete’s grandson Tao) took the stage to lead the crowd in “This Land is Your Land.” Undoubtedly the significance of Pete’s presence was lost on most of the 750,000 concert attendees, but for me his appearance provided the gravity for what was otherwise largely light and entertaining fare. Pete, now in his 90s, has been my personal hero for as long as I can remember (which is getting to be pretty long now, as it happens), and I’ve had the pleasure to see him in concert a few times. At the height of his prowess he was a powerful performer, a Pied Piper who alone with his instrument was able to lead crowds of thousands in songs they might not otherwise sing. The songs were simple but the ideas were enormous: let’s have peace without war; let’s not judge based on skin color or belief. But more often then not, the songs were filled with biting commentary as much as hopeful wishes. My brother and I used to play (and still do, sometimes) a Leadbelly song we learned from one of Pete’s songbooks. The song was called “Bourgeois Blues” and the opening verse sings, “White folk in Washington / They know how / to throw a colored man a nickel / just to see him bow / I got the bourgeois blues.” Wow.

What does it say when the consummate protest singer is a featured voice at a demonstration so clearly Establishment? I can’t decide if we’ve come full circle or if it’s the passing of an age. Pete has been the Greek chorus to the United States’ social and societal dramas of the last 50 years, and his presence on stage was as much a symbol of having surmounted a major obstacle as were the tears streaming down Jesse Jackson’s face on the night Mr. Obama won the presidency.

There are clearly still songs to sing about wrongs that need righting, but Pete has done a more than admirable job making the statement written on his banjo ring true. On the drum of Pete’s banjo a decades-old phrase might still be readable around the drum’s circumference: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”