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.
– Marvel Comics announced that their Silver tier Free Comic Book Day comic will be “Spider-Man / Venom” #1. In the Spider-Man story, writers Tom Taylor and Saladin Ahmed and artist Cory Smith will take Miles Morales in a “shocking new direction” and lay the foundations for a storyline later this year. Writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman will bring a Venom story that “that’s been brewing since classic Spider-Man tales like ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #252, ‘The Spectacular Spider-Man’ #90, ‘Marvel Team-Up’ #141.” The final cover has not yet been released but the teaser promises that the final cover will “terrify you.” Free Comic Book Day will take place on May 4.
– Marvel Comics have debuted a new page in all of their titles today featuring a reprint of Stan’s Soapbox editorial. Following Stan Lee’s death on November 12 last year, all of Marvel Comics’ titles have featured a cover banner and black inside pages as a memorial, but this has now come to an end and has seemingly been replaced with a reprinting of a selected Stan Soapbox editorial marked “Stan Lee Forever.” This month’s chosen Soapbox is from July 1967. The duration for which the Soapbox reprinting will continue is not yet known.
– Image Comics have revealed a line of variant covers for the new story arc of “Rumble” in time for Black History Month. The variant covers will feature artwork Keith Pollard (“The Amazing Spider-Man”), Arvell Jones (“All-Star Squadron”), Ron Wilson (“The Thing”), Chris Brunner (“Loose Ends”), and Sanford Greene (“Bitter Root”). “Rumble” series writer John Arcudi came up with the idea for the series of variant covers to pay tribute to the “rich history of African Americans working in comics.” The variant covers will be featured on “Rumble” issues #11-15. “Rumble” #11 is due for release on April 17. You can check out all of the covers here.
– Coinciding with the release of the new anime film version, Japan’s health ministry launched a new vaccine campaign using characters from the manga “City Hunter.” Tsukasa Hojo, writer and artist of “City Hunter,” joined the campaign and designed a poster which features Ryo Saeba and Kaori Makimura, which reads, “We need you to take action to eradicate rubella.” The campaign aims to get men aged 39 to 56 to get vaccinated against rubella after Japan recorded the second highest number of reported rubella cases in 2018 since they implemented their current survey method in 2008. The ministry hopes that many members of the age group will be encouraged to get checked and vaccinated because they grew up reading “City Hunter.” The series was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1985 to 1991, and the new anime film, City Hunter The Movie: Shinjuku Private Eyes, is out in Japan on Friday. The vaccination service will be available until March 2022.
– Researchers at the University of Chichester and the University of Leuven have discovered that in 1965, the National Cartoonist Society commissioned work from pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Historically, the relationship between the pop artist and comic book creators has been plagued with accusations of idea-theft but this new article in Art History, by Professor Hugo Frey (Chichester) and Professor Jan Baetens (Leuven), along with the Roy Lichtenstein Archive, explains that the connection between cartoonists and the pop artist was not as negative as previously thought. Following on from the aforementioned commission work, Lichtenstein engaged with the Parisian comic world and had an interview with the fanzine, Giff-Wiff in 1966. The researchers also discovered that Lichtenstein had a “blow-up” of Burma from Milton Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates” on the wall of his fraternity house while at university. From these discoveries, they concluded that rather that rather imitating comic book strips, “all parties were in fact collaborating for greater creativity in both disciplines.” The full article is available here.
– Nickelodeon and Netflix have agreed a deal for two, original animated feature films to be produced by Nickelodeon Studios: The Loud House and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The films will be based on Nickelodeon’s properties, but will not be connected to the TV series. This is not the first time Nickelodeon and Netflix have formed a partnership, with the Pinky Malinky series debuting on the streaming platform last year, as well as a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender set to enter production this year. Schedules for the two animated feature films have not yet been released.
Continued below– The lawsuit from The Walking Dead co-creator Frank Darabont against AMC Studios will go to trial in May 2020. Darabont began suing AMC over unpaid profits (estimated at roughly $300 million) from the show in 2014. And in further Walking Dead news, Lauren Cohan told The Hollywood Reporter that “there may have been some conversations” about a spin-off starring her character, Maggie Rhee, but noted that “everything is so early days ambiguous.”
– Marvel announced that the second season of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger will premiere on Freeform on Thursday, April 4 with a 2-hour premiere event. In addition to the air date confirmation, they released a new poster, which promises “Mayhem is coming.” Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger tells the story of Tandy Bowen and Tyrone Johnson who wake up to find themselves with newly-acquired superpowers that are mysteriously connected to one another. You can read our coverage of the first season premiere here.
– In an interview with Lorraine Cink at the Marvel LA studio, Clark Gregg, who has previously played Phil Coulson in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., teased his role in the upcoming sixth season as being “very mysterious,” and that the reason for his new character’s identical appearance to Coulson will be “groundbreaking” and “wild.” This comes after the teaser for the new series featured a reminder that “Agent Coulson is Dead.” Season 6 of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is set to air this summer.
– Finally, ABC have chosen not to give a pilot order to its Marvel drama by Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman). While specific details about the project were never released, it was meant to be focused on lesser-known female characters with superpowers. Heinberg was also executive producer for the series alongside Jeph Loeb.
