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.
– Today marks the first day of the Baltimore Comicon, which will host the Harvey Awards tomorrow night. It also means that yesterday was the Diamond Retailer Summit, where comic companies paraded a lot of upcoming goodies and whatnot to an assemblage of, well, retailers. You can find out more about the summit in general here, but out of yesterday’s meeting came these announcements among many others: Marvel will be collecting “Master of Kung Fu” in oversized omnibus format starting next summer. Let me say that again: MARVEL WILL BE COLLECTING “MASTER OF KUNG FU”! Why is that such a big deal? Because “MoKF” has been one of those never-to-be-reprinted series like “ROM”, “Micronauts”, and “2001: A Space Odyssey” because while Marvel owns the rights to series protagonist Shang-Chi (the said martial arts master) they do not own the rights to his crimelord father (and series antagonist) Fu Manchu. Marvel licensed those rights from the Sax Rohmer estate back during the title’s initial run but failed to renew once the series was cancelled. My guess is that the Shang-Chi mini from “Secret Wars” got enough buzz that they see the Fu Manchu license fees as no longer an insurmountable obstacle. Wow.
– Josh Fialkov made a series of tweets last week about his experiences working at DC during the 2011 “New 52” relaunch. Long story short: it was a horribly stressful and physically taxing experience trying to keep up with the publisher’s ever-changing and increasingly contradictory demands. Yesterday, former Kirby inker Greg Theakston decided to make his opinion known about those experiences, despite not having been personally involved in them at the time, nor willing to actually read the account in full before commenting. Long story short: he called Fialkov a “whiney little bitch”. And it is in the spirit that Theakston made this comment that I offer him this rebuttal: It must be great to have so much wisdom about an industry you haven’t actively worked in for almost 30 years. Why don’t you try getting back in and seeing how things actually work for Big Two professionals in this century before you go off on an unsubstantiated, unprofessional, and error-filled Facebook rant that makes you the ‘whiney little bitch’ you accuse Fialkov of being?
– There is still some life in “Afterlife with Archie”, as Archie confirmed the script for issue #9 had been turned in by writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.
– Charlie may not surf, but it looks like Dan Slott & Mike Allred will continue to, as their “Silver Surfer” series will keep catching space waves during the “All-New, All-Different Marvel” period post-“Secret Wars”. No relaunch is announced, but this team’s continuing with the character has been made official.
– Greg Smallwood will continue on “Moon Knight”, with Jeff Lemire replacing Brian Wood while Norrin Radd hangs ten.
– Dark Horse will be running a 30th anniversary variant cover program similar to their 25th anniversary program four years ago. (The 30th anniversary is next year, not this year, just in case it looks like I can’t do the maths).
– Not to be outdone, DC showed off a Dave Gibbons variant cover for “DKIII”, riffing on the famous Batman/Robin tandem-jump splash page. They also showed a mock-up of the slipcase you’ll be using to collect all of those “DKIII” hardcover issues the publisher is putting out. I’m not quite sure I get how this is going to actually work, but I hope the final design is something close to what we see here, as this case has a B&W wraparound image that has black silhouettes of Batman/Robin/Superman taken from “DKI” artwork with spot color on the emblems for pop. Maybe they’ll have Andy Kubert whip up a “DKIII” equivalent.
