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.
In case you missed it, Oni Press announced the spiritual “One Soul” sequel “One Line.”
– Via The Hollywood Reporter, Magnetic Press is publishing the Chinese graphic novel “Hard Melody” by Lu Ming in the US. The story follows three thirty-something friends who reunite the band they played in during their 20s, and become involved in an uprising against the authorities attempting to evict an entire neighborhood. Magnetic Press publisher Mike Kennedy told The Hollywood Reporter that he was drawn to Lu Ming’s work due to the book’s striking, photorealistic art style, and engrossing themes. “Hard Melody” hits shelves in April.
– Disney has signed a five-year overall exclusive television deal with Black Panther writer/director Ryan Coogler and his production company Proximity Media. Via Deadline, Coogler will develop new TV series for Disney as part of the deal, the first of which will be a drama based in the kingdom of Wakanda for the streamer Disney+. The deal also paves the way for Proximity to develop series for other areas of the company. Proximity Media is run by Coogler alongside his wife Zinzi Coogler, Sev Ohanian, Archie Davis, Peter Nicks, and composer Ludwig Göransson.
– Marvel has unveiled a set of connecting covers by Leinil Francis Yu for the upcoming revisit of “Heroes Reborn” from Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness. They also revealed the first four issues will contain back-up stories, drawn respectively by Patrick Gleason, Dale Keown, Federico Vicentini, and James Stokoe. “Heroes Reborn” debuts in May.
– Webcomic creator Adam Ellis posted a thread on Twitter accusing a short film of plagiarizing his work. The post features images from the short film Keratin posted alongside Ellis’s comic, highlighting the similarities between the short and his work. The thread was prompted in part by an interview given by directors Andrew Butler and James Wilson to the film website Directors Notes, in which they acknowledged Ellis’s work but did not identify him by name, instead stating, “The original concept was inspired by a short online cartoon we saw which we developed further.” Ellis also provided a screenshot of an email sent to him in October by a representative for the film, asking him to help promote the film after it had already been screened at festivals. Directors Notes has since posted a statement affirming that they take plagiarism seriously and that they have removed the interview in response to the accusations.
– The upcoming The Suicide Squad HBO Max spinoff Peacemaker from creator James Gunn is continuing to build out its cast. Via Deadline, Elizabeth Faith Ludlow (The Walking Dead) and Rizwan Manji (The Magicians, Mr. Robot) have boarded the project to play recurring characters Keeya and Jamil, respectively. Their character descriptions are being kept under wraps. The newcomers join John Cena in the lead role, as well as Steve Agee, Danielle Brooks, Robert Patrick, Jennifer Holland, Chris Conrad, and Chukwudi Iwuji. The series is set to debut in mid-2021, and The Suicide Squad will premiere in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6.
– The American Library Association hosted their Midwinter conference virtually this year, including the unveiling of the winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards. Via The Beat, the graphic novel “When Stars Are Scattered” from Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson picked up two top awards: the Schneider Family Book Award, as well as the Odyssey Award for its audiobook adaptation. “When Stars Are Scattered” tells the true story of Mohamed, who lived as a young boy in a refugee camp in Kenya with his nonverbal younger brother Hassan. The Beat also ran down the other comics honorees from the ceremony, including “Displacement” by Kiku Hughes, “Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio” by Derf Backderf, “Solutions and Other Problems” by Allie Brosh, and Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien’s “Dragon Hoops.”
– The Fauve Awards, given out at the annual French comics festival Angoulême, were announced last week, with top prizes distributed to comics from around the world. Via The Beat, the festival’s top prize went to “The Hunting Accident” by Landis Blair and David L. Carlson, first published in the English language in 2017. Other winners that were originally published in English include Special Jury Prize winner “Dragman” by Steven Appleby and the first volume of Skottie Young and Jorge Corona’s “Middlewest,” which won the Youth Prize – 12-16 Years. You can find a full rundown of the winners over at The Beat.
Continued below– A new bursary for Black and Indigenous comics creators has been won by artist Talysha Bujold-Abu. Via CBC News, publisher Conundrum Press will award Bujold-Abu with $1000 to support the development of a mini-comic. Bujold-Abu told CBC Radio her comic will explore the politics of Black hair, and “instances of hair politics within the everyday.” A trained fine artist, Bujold-Abu said she pursued the scholarship because she wants to see people like herself represented in the medium. This is the first year for the bursary from Conundrum Press, which was established last year in solidarity with protestors fighting systemic racism.
– HBO Max is creating a Batman podcast that will feature Jeffrey Wright donning the aural cowl. Via The Hollywood Reporter, Batman: The Audio Adventures will be a comedic take on the Batman mythos, written by longtime Saturday Night Live writer Dennis McNicholas. McNicholas is bringing over several recognizable names from that program as well, as the long cast list includes SNL veterans Chris Parnell, Melissa Villaseñor, Seth Meyers, Bobby Moynihan, Kenan Thompson, Jason Sudeikis, Heidi Gardner, Tim Meadows, Fred Armisen, Katie Rich, Pete Schultz and Paula Pell. Filling out the cast (if those names weren’t enough for you) are Rosario Dawson, John Leguizamo, Ike Barinholtz, Alan Tudyk, Brooke Shields, Paul Scheer, Ray Wise, Ben Rodgers, and Toby Huss. Coincidentally, Jeffrey Wright is set to appear in the next big screen entry in the Batman franchise, portraying Commissioner Gordon in Matt Reeves’s upcoming The Batman. In the meantime, Batman: The Audio Adventures will pop up on HBO Max sometime in 2021.
– Hasidic rabbi Abraham Twerski has died from COVID-19 at the age of 90. A well-regarded psychiatrist and author who was known for championing treatment for substance abuse, Twerski authored books on covering a wide range of subjects, including a series of self-help books co-authored with legendary “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz and featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy. His work in his field “broke down barriers and taboos about psychiatry and abuse within the Orthodox Jewish world,” according to the Associated Press. “I didn’t see my life as a performer of rituals, and I felt that if what psychiatry is doing is what my father used to be doing, well, then that’s where I’ll go,” Twerski told the National Council of Jewish Women in a 1988 interview. “So I went to medical school to become a psychiatrist to do what I wanted to do as a rabbi.” He is survived by two brothers, Michel and Aaron, his wife Dr. Gail Bessler-Twerski, four children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. His first wife, Golda, passed away in 1995.
