Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the previous day. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
– With people like Donald Trump running for office and other hopeful candidates saying consistently rude, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic things on a mass media public platform, Berkeley Breathed (which actually is his real name) is bringing back his comic strip, “Bloom County” after 25 years. The strip ran from 1980-1989 and satirized mid-Western American social and political life in the 80s. No stranger to controversy, Breathed had retired from political comic strips to focus on children’s books and film production art.
– Readers are striving for more diversity in the comics they’re reading, especially out of mainstream publishers. John Erik Christianson gives a report of queer representation so far this year over at Panels.net. DC is doing surprisingly better, Marvel has faltered, and Boom! Studios has made diverse characters in strong stories their M.O.
– Raina Telgemeier, whose work includes “Smile” and “Sisters” for Scholastic’s Graphix, announced via Twitter today her new graphic novel, “Ghosts.” It’s 240 pages and comes out fall 2016.
– Scott Snyder and Jock’s horror comic, “Wytches,” recently released its first trade. To help promote the book, Jock spoke with Robert Tutton at Paste Magazine about his thought- and creative process for working on the book. His thumbnails and preliminary sketches are pretty interesting.
– This last week, “Invader Zim” joined the ranks of properties who found a second life in comics. Jhonen Vasquez talks with the AV Club about the 13-year hiatus.
– Meredith Gran (“Marceline and the Scream Queens”) shares her bookshelf with Zainab Akhtar. I honestly love posts like these: they offer such interesting peeks into people’s tastes and influences and aesthetics and ambitions.
– Last Friday, we asked you which of the 12 new series Vertigo announced at San Diego Comic-Con you were most excited for, and 42% of you said “The Twilight Children” by Gilbert Hernandez and Darwyn Cooke. (What a team!) “Sheriff of Baghdad” from Tom King and Mitch Gerads received 14% of the vote, while 10% of readers were stoked for Gail Simone and Jon Davis-Hunt’s new book, “Clean Room” and “Red Thron” from David Baillie and Meghan Hetrick. Make sure to check back at Multiversity Comics for coverage on all these titles in the upcoming months. Also please feel free to vote in our next Readers’ Poll, this Friday!
– Finally, in Webcomics Worth Clicking: “Think of a City” is a massive collaborative project curated by Alison Sampson and Ian MacEwan featuring artists like J. H. Williams III, Ales Kot, Kate Brown, Leila del Duca, Christopher Sebela, Cameron Stewart, and Rebeckah Issacs, to name a few. It tells the story of one city, with each artist contributing an illustration, an architectural design, a sequential page, or anything they want to help fill in the avenues and alleyways of this city. It’s truly a sight to behold. Simpson also spoke with old Multiversity buddy, David Harper, about the project.
