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.
– “Stray Dogs” co-writer Tony Fleecs and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” artist Dave Wachter are teaming up at BOOM! Studios on “Uncanny Valley,” a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-esque adventure starting April 10, 2024. The comic follows Oliver, a 12-year old boy with surreal, cartoonish superpowers, and “a mysterious family history that seems to start and end with his mother.” Followed by a murder of similarly animated crows, Oliver will begin “to pull the thread on the secrets his family has kept from him for so long,” and find himself bridging the gap between two very different worlds.
– Dark Horse revealed “The Witcher: Corvo Bianco,” a new, five-part series written by Bartosz Sztybor with art by Corrado Mastantuono (a veteran Italian artist, whose credits include “Disney Italia,” in his US debut.) Picking up from the third video game’s final DLC, Blood and Wine, the comic sees Geralt of Rivia, now living in retirement on the titular vineyard, take up his sword(s) again to deal with a new threat. Also starring Yennefer, and featuring coloring and lettering by Matteo Vattani and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, “The Witcher: Corvo Bianco” #1 will be released on May 8, 2024.
– Oni Press announced “RoboForce,” the first series in the NacelleVerse comics line — based on properties owned by the Nacelle Company — will begin on April 17. A three-issue prequel to the upcoming animated series of the same name, written by Melissa Flores with art by Diogenes Neves, the comic is set in 2091, and follows ex-RoboForce member Maxx 89 as he recovers a piece of tech stolen from his creator. Oni also revealed the “Biker Mice from Mars” comic will begin in July. The NacelleVerse will kick off beforehand with an eponymous issue #0, also by Flores and Neves, on March 20.
– Netflix’s Fate: The Winx Saga is returning as a graphic novel series from Mad Cave’s YA imprint Maverick. The first installment, “Dark Destiny,” will be penned by Olivia Cuartero-Briggs with art by Christianne Godreau, and continue the story of Aisha, Kat, and Terra, the students at the fairy school of Alfea, as they face a mysterious new enemy. It will be released in July. Fate: The Winx Saga, a live-action reimagining of the Italian magical girls’ cartoon Winx Club, ran for two seasons from 2021 to 2022. Mad Cave owns the license for the overall franchise, and the news comes in the wake of the release of their first “Winx Club” graphic novel last week.
– Mad Cave also announced “Love Me: A Romance Story,” a sci-fi action series by writer Francesca Perillo, artist Stefano Cardoselli (“Don’t Spit in the Wind”), colorist Lorenzo Scaramella, and letterer Buddy Beaudoin. Starting April 17, the comic follows JoJo, a robot taxi driver in a far future New York, who falls in love with the human woman Gilda. “But the course of true love is a bumpy one, and JoJo is going to find that out firsthand when he discovers that Gilda is entangled with the mafia that runs his beloved city, and they’re very much against this potential union.”
– Drawn & Quarterly will release a third volume of Chris Ware’s “Acme Novelty Datebook,” the cartoonist’s autobiographical series of sketchbooks, “spanning over 37 years of bus rides, airport delays and telephone hold music.” It will retail for $49.95 on October 29. The first two installments were published respectively in 2007 and 2013, and will be rereleased in a slipcase edition of all three books, also releasing on October 29.
– The 96th Academy Award nominations were announced, with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Boy and the Heron, Nimona, and Robot Dreams among those nominated for Best Animated Feature Film. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 also picked up a nod for Best Visual Effects, while John Williams earned a Best Original Score nomination for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Hit the link for the full list of nominees, which were dominated by Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and Killers of the Flower Moon. The winners will be announced Sunday night, March 10.
Continued below– Penguin Random House have formed a global distribution deal with Wattpad Webtoon Book Group. The deal, which includes print releases of Webtoon’s digital comics, adds another feather in Penguin’s cap (no pun intended), as the publishing giant also distributes titles from Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, IDW, and more, in both the bookstore and single-issue comics markets. The announcement also builds on the pop-up imprint Random House announced last year, Inklore, whose titles will include webcomics, and which Tappytoon, another South Korean webcomics platform, had agreed to partner with on last fall.
– The Bookseller reports Scholastic will publish a graphic novelization of Holocaust survivor Peter Lantos’s memoir, The Boy Who Didn’t Want To Die. The prose version, released in 2023, told the story of how Lantos survived the war as a five-year old boy in 1944. A Hungarian born, British Jewish neuroscientist, Lantos had previously told his story in other memoirs, but this was his first aimed at children. Victoria Stebleva will illustrate the adaptation, which will arrive in January 2025, and you can check out her work-in-progress here.
– Finally, a round-up of TV news: Netflix released a second trailer for the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, debuting February 22, plus cast and crew breakdowns; Disney+ announced Iwájú, the animated series made in collaboration with pan-African publisher Kugali, will be released on February 28; and Wilson Bethel is reportedly reprising the role of Bullseye in Daredevil: Born Again. Assuming it’s true, it will mark Bullseye’s second only appearance in the MCU, following his debut on season three of the Netflix series in 2018, and his first under his more familiar codename, after spending the third season masquerading as Daredevil.
