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.
– Jared Leto’s Joker tattoos got you down? Bummed you’re not going to get to see the Joker you love in three dimensions? Well, turn that frown upside-down, because makeup Capital-A Artist Rick Baker posted renderings of how he’d approach bringing Capullo’s ‘Death of the Family’ Joker design to life. And because you don’t get 7 Oscars to your name by sucking at your job, Baker’s version is amazing. Too amazing for mainstream movie-going audiences, IMO, which is why we’re stuck with the grill-&-tats version. But you, kind readers, are a heartier breed by far, so feel free to take a look at something REALLY creepy! And if they ever want to do an adaptation of the Synder/Capullo Bat-run, Baker just saved everyone a whole lot of work!
– Like fellow Portland-based comic writer Brian Michael Bendis before him, writer Matt Fraction made an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. And not just as someone hanging out backstage in the green room or something, but as, as he put it in his latest newsletter, “like, a guest-guest.” Which I’m assuming is like one step above double-secret probation or some other cool designation. As of this Rundown being put together, I have not seen his appearance yet, but I’m sure it’s funny.
– Another year, another Image Expo! Or rather…another six months, another Image Expo! It seems like the publisher has settled into a twice-a-year groove with this event; one in January and another in July. This year’s summer Expo will be on July 2 and held in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. This is still right before SDCC, but about a week earlier and 500 miles north. Guests already announced include Robert Kirkman, Tula Lotay, Greg Rucka, Brian K. Vaughan, and Steve Skroce.
– The 2015 Glyph Awards, recognizing “the best in Black Comics”, were given out at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention last week. Congratulations to all the award winners! (You can hear our talk at last year’s SPX with winner Joel Christian Gill about the book that would later win him that award here.)
– According to Bleeding Cool, there is a possibility of DC Comics running half-page ads on story pages in their print comics. Running ads on the bottom half of the page was an industry practice at both mainstream publishers back in the 1970’s, and even in DC Comics up until the late 1990’s (although those tended to be house ads for other DC titles). Neither these ads nor the page real estate cleared for them are thought to transfer over to the digital or collected versions of these stories. But at least the increased ad revenue will help bring the cost of comics down, right? Right?
