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, we have exclusive previews of “Thunderbolts” #4 and “Miles Morales: Spider-Man” #18, both due out from Marvel next week.
– BOOM! Studios announced “Lawful,” an eight-part contemporary fantasy series by writer Greg Pak, artist Diego Galindo, colorist Irma Kniivila, and letterer Simon Bowland. Set in “a walled city with strangely familiar architecture,” the book follows two teens, Eris and Sung, in a world where sins and mistakes slowly but surely transform you into a monster. Sung is the son of the city’s chief enforcer, and a stickler for the rules, while Eris, his childhood friend, is a troublemaker who’s developed horns, a paw, and a tail as a result. It marks Pak and Galindo’s second project together after “Stranger Things: Tomb of Ybwen,” and the latest of several collaborations between the writer, Kniivila, and Bowland. Issue #1 will be released on June 12; you can read more about the series until then in an interview at Newsarama.
– Titan have acquired the rights to “Killtopia,” Dave Cook, Clark Bint and Craig Paton’s sci-fi action series, that was originally published by Scottish publisher BHP Comics until its shutdown last year. Launched in 2018, “Killtopia” revolves around a sector of Neo Tokyo overrun by killer mecha infected with a nanomachine virus, where hunters known as Wreckers are sent to destroy them in exchange for money and fame. All five volumes of the series will be reprinted in a single hardcover release, “Killtopia: The Complete Collection,” on September 24, 2024, which will retail at 288 pages for $29.99.
– Z2 Comics announced “No Remorse: The Illustrated True Stories of Lemmy Kilmister and Motorhead,” an anthology intended to mark the 50th anniversary of the rock band’s founding next year. The 176-page book will feature stories of the band and its late frontman Lemmy from 25 writers and 25 artists, including Michael Moorcock, Ozzy Osbourne, Chrissie Hynde, Neil Gaiman, Dee Snider, Slash, Dave Grohl, Triple H, Piotr Kowalski, Dave Chisholm, Felipe Sobreiro, Jim Mahfood, Ryan Dunlavey, Koren Shadmi, Tony Parker, and Tim Bradstreet. It is available to preorder now for a release sometime this summer.
– Claribel A. Ortega and Rose Bousamra, the creators of the award-winning children’s graphic novel “Frizzy,” are reteaming on “30 Ways to Kill Your Avatar,” a video game-themed fantasy OGN. The book follows Aury, a grieving teenager whose life “is turned upside down when she is literally sucked into her favorite life simulation video game; now she has to find a way out before her brother beats the game and finishes her off for good.” It will be released by Scholastic Graphix in 2028.
– Actor and novelist Luke Arnold (Black Sails) has penned his first graphic novel, “Essentials.” A philosophical, reality-hopping story written with children’s TV cartoon veteran Chris “Doc” Wyatt, the book revolves around disgraced mathematician Harris Pax, and Buttons, “an interdimensional being possessing his niece’s favorite toy,” as they set out to free humanity from the lie of subjective reality. It features art by DaNi, Glenn Fabry, Jason Howard, Vince Locke, Brendan McCarthy, Andrea Mutti, and M.K. Perker, and a cover by Bill Sienkiewicz. The book has found a home at The Lab Press, a new crowdfunding-based publisher founded by film producer Nicholas Kalikow, who will launch a Kickstarter for it this spring.
– Animated short film The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story will be released on Sony Pictures Animation’s YouTube channel at 9am ET on Wednesday, March 27. The short, which premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival last year, takes place in-between Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse, and follows Miles Morales as he experiences a panic attack. It will be released in partnership with the mental health awareness group Kevin Love Fund, who will incorporate it into a lesson plan, called The Hero Within. Incidentally, the film’s release comes two days before the originally planned date for Beyond the Spider-Verse, which is now expected to arrive when it’s ready.
Continued below– Doom Patrol season four will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, April 9, alongside the box set Doom Patrol: The Complete Series. The season four Blu-ray will cost $29, while the DVD will retail for $19.99, and The Complete Series will cost $84.99 on Blu-ray, and $59.99 on DVD. The acclaimed series launched on DC Universe in 2019 before moving to (HBO) Max after season two, and wrapped up after 46 episodes once the long-delayed second half of its final season was released late last year.
– Lucasfilm announced that in addition to the rerelease of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace on May 3, they will mark the film’s 25th anniversary with marathon screenings of all nine films in the Skywalker Saga on May 4 (Star Wars Day.) The films will be shown in chronological order, beginning with The Phantom Menace, and ending with The Rise of Skywalker. Furthermore, The Phantom Menace‘s screenings will be accompanied by an exclusive preview of its own prequel series, The Acolyte. Tickets for the rerelease of Episode I and the Skywalker Saga marathon go on sale today, while The Acolyte will premiere on June 4.
– The official “Dragon Ball” site announced a theme park will be built at Qiddiya, the tourism megaproject currently under construction in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It will feature seven different areas based on locations from the original series, five rides, and more. While some fans will rightfully balk at the idea, it is another testament to the global popularity of the late Akira Toriyama’s universe, and Japanese cartoons as a whole in the kingdom, where “manga” has become a common term in its fledgling entertainment industry, as well as the success of Saudi Arabia’s plays for soft power despite its appalling human rights record.
– Finally, a couple of notices from Hollywood: veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh (Blade Runner, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, and the 1990 Flash series) passed away from cardiac arrest on Tuesday, March 19, aged 88. He was survived by two nephews. Then, Dianne Crittenden, a casting director on the original Star Wars, and many more movies (including Howard the Duck and Spider-Man 2), died on Wednesday, March 20, following a battle with several cancers. She was 82. She was preceded in death by her husband, who passed away last year, and survived by her siblings, stepdaughter, and brother and sister in-law.
