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, it was the final day of Star Wars Celebration Europe, and there were several final big reveals from Lucasfilm, Disney and Marvel. We also spoke to Jeremy Holt and Axel Alonso about their upcoming “Gatsby” reimagining.
– Oni Press have announced “Malcolm Kid and the Perfect Song,” a YA graphic novel by poet and writer Austin Paramore (in his comics debut), and artist Sarah Bollinger (“Girls Have a Blog”). Releasing August 2, the book follows Malcolm, an average student who discovers a keyboard containing the soul of an old jazz musician. To free him, Malcolm must perform the perfect song, and embarks on a musical journey of self-discovery across the city of New Bronzeville to find it.
– Anime News Network shares that “Spy x Family” won the grand prize in the Comics Division at this year’s Japan Cartoonists Association Awards. It caps off a great month for Tatsuya Endo’s manga, which began in 2019 and became an anime last year, after it became the bestselling book in America overall. Head to the link to check out this year’s other winners.
– DC revealed next month’s landmark “Batman” #135/900 will have a variant cover by Neal Adams, featuring one of the last pieces he did of the Caped Crusader before his death last year. The 56-page issue, featuring a main cover and interior art by Jorge Jiménez, plus variants and other pages by many more, releases May 2.
– Disney announced Rogers: The Musical — the dramatization of Steve/Captain America’s life from Disney+’s Hawkeye — will be performed at Disney California Adventure Park beginning June 30. The expanded version, which runs 30 mins, will include five new songs written by Disney Live Entertainment, plus Hawkeye music team Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman’s “Save the City,” and Alan Menken & David Zippel’s Captain America: The First Avenger song “Star Spangled Man.” It will be performed at the Hyperion Theater every Tuesday through Saturday most weeks for a limited time.
– Stranger Things continues to expand with Netflix’s announcement of an animated series, developed by Glitch Techs co-creator Eric Robles at Australia’s Flying Bark Productions (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.) The Duffer Bros., who will co-executive produce the show, said “We’ve always dreamed of an animated Stranger Things in the vein of the Saturday morning cartoons that we grew up loving, and to see this dream realized has been absolutely thrilling.” No further details were announced, although the press release implies the show has entered pre-production.
– Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery has joined the cast of Here, Robert Zemeckis’s upcoming film adaptation of the graphic novel by Richard McGuire. The film, also starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Paul Bettany, will be released in the U.S. by Sony at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, Carmen Ejogo (Selma), François Chau (Ghost of Tsushima), and David H. Holmes (High Fidelity) have been cast in recurring roles in The Penguin. The Batman spin-off, starring Colin Farrell, will premiere on HBO Max sometime next year.
– In more casting news, Rob Corddry (The Daily Show) and Glynn Turman (The Wire) have joined the pilot for CBS’s JumpStart, the sitcom based on Robb Armstrong’s comic strip of the same name. Corddry will play Crunchy, the best friend and police partner of Terry Crews’s protagonist Joseph L. Cobb, while Turman is playing Joe’s “Pop,” the retired cop Frank. Crunchy is described as a regular character, who’s considered an uncle by Cobb’s kids, while Pop is intended as a guest part. JumpStart, also starring Ryan Michelle Bathé as Joseph’s wife Marcy, is set to roll cameras soon.
– Finally, The LEGO Batman Movie director Chris McKay shed light on what the sequel would’ve been like if it had been produced, stating Dan Harmon and Michael Waldron wrote a Godfather Part II-inspired script where Batman and the Justice League battle Lex Luthor and OMAC, while flashbacks reveal why Batman and Superman fell out. Plus, “there was going to be a crossover with a major franchise that can only happen in a LEGO movie.” The movie won’t happen since LEGO sold the rights to Universal after Warner Bros.’s last two LEGO movies underperformed, although McKay expressed hope at still directing Nightwing (another project he was attached to) for DC Studios, admitting the character inspired a scene in his new film, Renfield (out in theaters this Friday.)
