Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown of 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, Dynamite Entertainment is celebrating “Vampirella”‘s 50th anniversary with a new ongoing from Christopher Priest and Ergün Gündüz, and Marvel unveiled a couple new series alongside additional details on Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men series.
– Al Jazeera’s graphic novel-style news story, “Lost Childhoods: Nigeria’s fear of ‘witchcraft’ ruins young lives,” received an Amnesty UK award in innovation last week. The story was constructed by working with Nigerian artists to blend a mix of comic style-panels, real photos, and video into a narrative about the witch-hunts currently taking place in Nigeria. To learn more about the process of creating the story, click over to Journalism.co.uk.
– The Hollywood Reporter has details on the return of one of Stan Lee’s final projects. “Backchannel” is a 26-part serial that will re-commence its weekly run on LINE Webtoon, after a hiatus in the wake of Lee’s passing. The series features “an unconventional father-and-son story,” with its first new episode debuting today.
– It’s official: Shazam! is getting a sequel. The Hollywood Reporter says that screenwriter Henry Gayden is locked in to return for Shazam! 2, while director David F. Sandberg and producer Peter Safran are expected to also reprise their roles for the follow-up. Shazam! grossed $159.1 million worldwide during its opening weekend.
– The much-praised graphic novel “Sabrina” may become a feature film. Deadline reports that The Martian and Bad Times at the El Royale screenwriter Drew Goddard will be adapting Nick Drnaso’s story, and possibly even directing the movie.
– Video game developer Atomic Wolf announced a “playable tech-noir graphic novel” entitled Liberated, which will debut later this year. According to the synopsis at Gamespew, Liberated allows players to “jump right into the frame of a graphic novel, where classic motion comic storytelling transitions into fully playable action section.” You can check out the trailer by clicking the link above.
– Not content with just two television series, AMC plans to launch a second The Walking Dead spinoff (and third series overall) by 2020. Newsarama reports that this new series will be an “original drama” co-created by Scott M. Gimple and Matt Negrete, both of whom have many previous The Walking Dead credentials. The as-yet-untitled spinoff will star “two young female protagonists” and focus on the first children to have come of age during the apocalypse.
– Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has plans for Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he doesn’t want to tell you about them. So says io9, which reports that Feige has the next five years of the MCU mapped out, and that those plans likely don’t include the X-Men.
– Netflix’s upcoming Jupiter’s Legacy series has cast Tenika Davis (Incorporated) in a key recurring role. Deadline reports that Davis will play Petra Small (aka The Flare), a hero who takes up her father’s mantle after he’s critically injured. Jupiter’s Legacy will, of course, be based on the comic series of the same name by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely.
– And finally, the next season of AMC’s Preacher will be its last. Newsarama says that the show’s fourth and now-confirmed-as-final season will premiere August 4.
