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.
– The producers of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus will debut a new live show called Marvel Universe Live! Age of Heroes. The show will feature characters from The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Spider-Man. Audiences can expect acrobatics, video effects, motorcycle stunts, and lots of explosions as part of the performance. The premiere is set for July 7 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, with a soft launch on June 23-25 in New Orleans. A tour in the U.S. and Canada is scheduled to run through 2019, with an international tour to follow.
– The winners of the 2017 Doug Wright Awards, which recognizes the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics, were announced this past weekend. “Bird in a Cage” by Rebecca Roher won Best Book, Steve Wolfhard won the Spotlight Award (Canadian cartoonist deserving of wider recognition) for “Cat Rackham,” and “The Palace of Champions” by Henriette Valium won the Pigskin Peters Award (best experimental, unconventional or avant-garde comic). Katherine Collins, formerly known as Arn Saba before transitioning in 1993, was inducted into the Giants of the North Canadian cartoonist hall of fame.
– Justice League Dark director Doug Liman seems to have forgotten that he’s making a fantasy film, steeped in magic, while describing the “amazing” approach that he’s going to take, “Jason Bourne is a superhero, of sorts. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena, in The Wall, are superheroes. They’re very grounded, but the amount of training and stuff that soldiers bring to the field, they’re like Iron Man.” He continued, “So, I’m really excited… to actually look at what it’s like, if I actually tackle a real superhero, but it’s not gonna look that different from my other superheroes.” The film had already lost fan-favorite director Guillermo del Toro, and this is not making me more optimistic.
– Devin Grayson’s “USER,” a “reality-twisting tale of online identity and worlds colliding” with art by Sean Phillips and John Bolton, will be reprinted as a collection by Image Comics. The series was originally released by Vertigo as three prestige-format issues in 2001 and had never been reprinted or collected until now. The content will be mostly the same, aside from a few fixed typos, but will feature a new cover by Phillips, and some extra backmatter.
– Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will not return with the rest of the Fall scheduling this year. Instead, it will be banished to Friday nights as a mid-season replacement for the eight-episode run of Inhumans. Friday nights are typically a death sentence for shows, but ABC is hoping to pair the time slot with Once Upon A Time to create a “destination for fantasy and sci-fi fans.”
– For those participating in a launch party for June’s “Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man” #1, you may be able to snag a selfie-inspired Spider-Man mask. If history is any indication, I’m sure writer Chip Zdarsky will model the merchandise at some point.
– Marvel will be celebrating Mary Jane Watson with June’s themed variant covers and a good sampling of them can be seen over at CBR. I think my favorite is the “Black Bolt” one by Ryan Stegman.
