Ron Charles vs. the Robots: Heading up WaPo Book World today is Ron Charles' disappointed review of Robopocalpyse, the second novel by Daniel H. Wilson, a scientific satirist who actually holds a Ph.D. in advanced robotics. Wilson's literary corpus, however, suggests he is putting that knowledge to work by aiming to do for robots what Max Brooks did for zombies—his first book was 2005's non-fiction How to Survive a Robot Uprising. But Robopocalypse, Charles writes, "sounds like a jalopy clanked together from spare parts of The Terminator, Logan’s Run, Westworld, Maximum Overdrive and Independence Day." And the Village People save the world. Sounds bad. The Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation is due out in 2013.

It's Not the Department of Justice. It's HBO: Attorney General Eric Holder spent yesterday afternoon at a seminar on preventing child exploitation, with celebrity cred from Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn, and Jim True-Frost—I mean Bunk, Kima, and Prez. At the end of his serious remarks on the topic at hand, Holder used his guests' presence to implore David Simon and Ed Burns to get their heads out of the Bayou and give us more Baltimore stories. "Do another season of The Wire," Reuters reported Holder saying. "If you don’t do a season, do a movie. We’ve done HBO movies, this is a series that deserves a movie. I want another season or I want a movie. I have a lot of power Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon.”

Coming Up on Arts Desk: Grousing ahead of the Kennedy Center-Washington National Opera merger; the Hill Country Barbecue Concert Series; a thorough guide to every cover The Dismemberment Plan dropped into "OK Joke's Over" during the reunion tour.

Jason's Werewolves of Montpellier (Fantagraphics, $12.99) is an odd little book. The Norwegian cartoonist specializes in anthropomorphic characters who act human, just like the Disney Ducks did in their best comics. Sven, an unemployed artist and cat burglar, breaks into apartments at night while wearing a werewolf mask. His life becomes more complicated when he falls in love with his lesbian neighbor while real werewolves start pursuing him over the rooftops. Jason's art is always simple and elegant, his stories are cool and laid back, and this is a fun anti-horror novel.

Girl Genius 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm by Phil and Kaja Foglio (Airship Entertainment, $22.99) is the latest collection of the Hugo-award winning Web comic. This steam-punk story follows Agatha, heir to her parents' mad-scientist abilities,  as she tries to repair their damaged sentient castle. At the same time, she's in love with Europe's dictator's son, and ill with Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation, and under attack by a false heir... the Foglio's have their tongues firmly in cheeks, but the story is goofy and a lot of fun. I've been following this since the beginning, which was half  a decade ago and am still enjoying it immensely.

Ed Briant was signing his novel Choppy Socky Blues (Flux Books, $9.95) at the American Library Association's convention recently and I struck up a conversation. I was thrilled to discover he's the cartoonist behind the Web comic Tales from the Slush Pile, a strip about the trials of children's book illustrators. British-born Briant's also one of those, as well as a teacher at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Briant says his story of Jason Smallfield, a young English boy who's still struggling with his parent's divorce, was originally meant to be a graphic novel. The story's aimed at young adults, and deals with Jason resuming his karate practice with his estranged stuntman father so he can impress  a girl. I was on a weekend reading roll, and enjoyed this book, too, although it's probably more for children.

Karl Kesel's Captain America: The 1940's Newspaper Strip No. 1 (Marvel, $3.99) may confuse some longtime comic strip readers because Captain America didn't have a newspaper strip. This is actually a collection of a Web comic that was recently running as part of their fee-charging digital download site. Kesel does a good job mimicking a 1940s adventure strip, including using larger "Sunday" pages to move the story along. The story itself is about an American think-tank laboratory attempting to recreate the experiment that produced Cap, while suffering under apparent Nazi sabotage and its own goofy inventors. The three-issue miniseries is worth picking up, although it will probably be collected as a trade paperback for those who prefer a meatier story.

A regular roundup of international comic-book collections.

Years ago Elvis Costello asked: “What’s so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?” It's not hard to imagine cartoonist Dik Browne pondering that question, coming up with "nothing," and creating the fun-loving Viking pillager Hagar the Horrible. “[Hagar] is a Viking and God knows he is a barbarian, but he is also a family man, a loving husband, and a devoted father,” writes Browne in his introduction to The Epic Chronicles of Hagar the Horrible: The Dailies 1973-1974 (Titan, $19.95). The gag strip is essentially a domestic middle-American surburban family set in the Dark Ages. After a massively successful launch in America, for some reason, it became stunningly popular in Scandinavia, and Browne was a regular guest at conventions there. The new volume shows us the first two years of the strip, with Hagar taking out the garbage by catapulting it at his enemies, getting a shopping list from his wife before invading Europe, and being snubbed by English castle owners. While I’m in favor of preserving comic strips in formats that libraries will buy, I’m not sure Hagar needed the hardcover treatment, as the gags are pretty lightweight. The strip may have been radical when it launched, and the 200 papers the introduction claims for its early-'70s launch would be a major success today, but I think Hagar will appeal most to preteens now.

French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim keeps a daily journal on the Web and collects the resulting strips in books. His latest collection, Little Nothings 3: Uneasy Happiness (NBM, $14.95), is the best so far. Trondheim draws himself and everyone else as animals, but the effect is more amusing and less distancing than, say, Maus. Much of the book is taken up by his travels—to Italy, Angouleme for France’s comic fest, Portugal, Reunion Island, Fiji…so it's clear the life of a French cartoonist ain't so bad. Beside his travels, Trondheim draws his daily travails, such as his cat bringing a mouse into the house, or how his children became better at skiing than him in just a few days. The book ends with Trondheim and his wife driving home from vacation in Spain. They pass a woman sitting in a lawnchair on the side of the road, and Trondheim says, “Oh? A whore,” to which his wife replies with a smug look, “That’s several of them I’ve seen with their chairs. Thanks for bringing us this way.” Things really are better abroad.

Nemi, by Lise Myhre of Norway, is a popular alternative strip in the free Metro papers, especially in England. Nemi III (Titan, $14.95) is a large selection of the strip that focuses on a 20-something, unemployed, hard-drinking, chain-smoking goth woman—so, clearly, it's aimed at the demographic of the Washington City Paper’s readership. If you don't even need the visual of two young women dress-shopping to grin at lines like “Wow! That one says ‘I can’t breathe because my dress is too tight. Get it off and take me hard against the Fridge!',” you should try out this collection. I’m twice as old its characters, but I still enjoyed it.

Roman Dirge’s Lenore: Noogies (Titan, $17.95) didn’t quite appeal to me, probably because Dirge is only from Los Angeles. Lenore, named for the Poe poem, follows a young dead girl (technically a zombie, I suppose). Dirge began the comic in the 1990s during the second black-and-white minicomic boom. This volume reprints the first four comic books, digitally reworked and colored due to lost originals. Reading it, one can tell Dirge is still feeling his way into doing a regular comic book. Lenore eventually became extremely popular, and fans of Tim Burton or Edward Gorey may want to try it out.

Nordic Jazz Fest, hosted annually by the embassies of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark, has become Nordic Jazz Week for 2009, featuring an opening performance at the Embassy of Finland on Sunday, June 14, and then two nights of performances at the House of Sweden on June 16-17.

Of note in the lineup are Norwegians Nils Petter Molvær & Arve Henriksen, who are pioneers in the peculiar kind of jazz/electronic/ambient music crossover that labels like Rune Grammofon (to which Henriksen is signed) are currently exploring. These two play as a duo on June 17, probably my most highly anticipated set of the festival. A close second is the Søren Kjærgaard Trio on June 16; Kjærgaard is a Danish pianist whose tuneful, energetic style has made him an interesting collaborator with such avant-jazz luminaries as Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Tim Berne, Herb Robertson, and more.

Full lineup, location and ticket details after the jump.

Photo of Nils Petter Molvær above courtesy his Myspace page.

Sunday, June 14 at 6 pm
Concert at the Embassy of Finland
Karikko (Finland)
Bjørn Solli Quartet (Norway)

Tuesday, June 16 at 6.30 pm
Concert on House of Sweden rooftop
Jonas Kullhammar Quartet (Sweden)
Karikko (Finland)
Søren Kjærgaard Trio (Denmark)

Wednesday, June 17 at 6.30 pm
Concert on House of Sweden Rooftop
The Sunna Gunnlaugs Quartet (Iceland)
Nils Petter Molvær & Arve Henriksen (Norway)
Jonas Kullhammar Quartet (Sweden)

Where: Embassy of Finland, 3301 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20008 (June 14) and Embassy of Sweden, House of Sweden, 2900 K Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20007 (June 16 and 17)
When: June 14 at 6 pm, June 16 at 6.30 pm and June 17 at 6.30 pm
Tickets: Presale tickets only from ticketweb or 866 666 8932.
$25 per night; $50 for all three nights. (No ticket sales at the door.)