Maddie Blaustein, known to a generation as the voice of Pokémon’s nemesis Meowth, passed away at age 48.  Aaron McQuade said she died in her sleep after a brief, undisclosed illness.

Born Adam Blaustein, she broke into the comics field as Jim Owsley’s editorial assistant at Marvel Comics in the 1980s before leaving to go freelance. Blaustein went on to write several issues of Milestone’s Static before joining DC Comics as a production artist/photographer.

Blaustein, a transgender individual, evolved into Madeleine while building up an impressive voice over resume for English-language anime adaptations including Solomon Moto on Yu-Gi-Oh, commercials and radio. She was also a very active participant at Second Life.

After leaving DC Comics in 2006, Blaustein joined Weekly World News as its visual artist, creating the elaborate photos to accompany its stories.  We worked alongside one another at the company and she loved the challenge the stories posed her.  After the paper folded in August 2007, Blaustein freelanced until her death.

Aaron McQuade, who profiled Maddie for The Advocate, wrote on his blog, “Maddie once told me the story of how she was inspired to fully transition from male to female (and to come out to her co-workers as transgender) by an episode of Pokémon. In the episode ‘Go West, Young Meowth’ her character travels to Hollywood to make it big. There, Meowth falls in love with another Meowth, who spurns his advances. He decides to learn how to speak and to stand upright in order to impress her – but she rejects him for being a “freak.” Meowth was a human trapped in a Pokémon’s body.”

Top Cow Productions, Inc. announced Wednesday that fans who have been clamoring for the return of the Hunter-Killer series and anticipating more Cyberforce will finally get their wish when the publisher launches Cyberforce/Hunter-Killer, a monster crossover limited series set to debut in July.

Eisner-nominated writer Mark Waid (Amazing Spider-Man, Kingdom Come), who co-created Hunter-Killer with Top Cow founder and CEO Marc Silvestri in 2005, will pen the story. Providing art will be rising superstar Kenneth Rocafort (Madame Mirage, Astonishing Tales), who drew the final four issues of Season 1 of Hunter-Killer.

“I can’t wait to work with Kenneth again,” raved Waid. “He blew my mind when I first saw his Hunter-Killer pages during the first run. To be brutally honest, it’s rare that I see a new artist whose work doesn’t feel redundant or a clone of something else already out there. Kenneth’s energy knocks me out.”

“This is a dream come true to draw one of my favorite teams of all time, Cyberforce,” said Rocafort, who was a fan of Top Cow books well before he started drawing for them. “And to combine that with the characters of Hunter-Killer, which I love to draw, and working with Mark again, this is an exciting project for me.”

Cyberforce is a team of unique individuals granted with superhuman abilities via cybernetic implants created to be the pawns of a corrupt and evil corporation. Having defeated their creators, they united to fight the battles no one else could. Hunter-Killers are a group of Ultra Sapiens—a genetic super race living in secret because they are walking weapons of mass destruction—who monitor and police their own to ensure the safety of planet Earth. Details of the crossover storyline are being kept under wraps for now.

“The past two summers, we’ve focused on the more supernatural aspects of our universe with First Born and Broken Trinity,” said Rob Levin, VP Editorial for Top Cow. “Next summer, we’re going to shine a light on our tech-based heroes. Mark Waid is one of my favorite writers out there. And Kenneth…that guy is unstoppable. The work he’s doing is going to melt eyeballs, and dare I say it, crack the Internet in quarters. Quarters!”

DC has long been the home of a certain kind of story – at least moderately hip, and equally popular, usually with some elements derived from the superhero mainstream but with its own high-concept premise ripped from the Zeitgeist. First there was [[[Sandman]]], then [[[Preacher]]] and [[[Transmetropolitan]]] and so on – but, these days, since [[[Y: The Last Man]]] ended, the two thoroughbreds left in that particular stable are [[[Fables]]] and [[[Ex Machina]]]. As it happens, both of those series had new collections this fall…

Ex Machina, Vol. 7: Ex Cathedra
By Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris & Jim Clark
DC Comics/Wildstorm, October 2008, $12.99

[[[Ex Machina]]] has been piling up the cheap trade paperbacks, keeping its storylines to four or five issues and pumping out the reprints as quickly as possible. And so this seventh volume collects issues #30-34, the last of which hit stores as a floppy only in February. (I reviewed the sixth volume back in April, for those who want some background.)

Ex Machina, as you might know by now, is a science-fiction story about Mitchell Hundred, the Mayor of New York City, in a slightly alternate world. Hundred has some kind of alien (or other-dimensional) gizmo embedded in his face, which allows him to understand and command machines – since this is a comic book, he used that at first to dress up in a funny costume (as “The Great Machine”) and fight crime. Since this is a smart comic book, he then ran for mayor, and won after he stopped the second 9/11 plane from hitting the World Trade Center.

[[[Ex Cathedra]]] is a four-part story set in December of 2003; it’s still not quite the midpoint of Hundred’s first term. The series has bounced back and forth in time between Hundred’s mayoral and superhero days; in these issues we do get a few scenes in 2000-2001 for spice, but it’s mostly about a visit to the Vatican.

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