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, “Illegal,” written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Dorkin, and illustrated by Gionvanni Rigano, won the Judges’ Special Award at the Children’s Books Ireland Awards. We also have an interview with writers Chad Bowers (formerly of this site) and Chris Sims on “Infinity Countdown: Darkhawk,” and a preview of Johnny Ryan’s “Prison Pit: Book Six,” out next week.
![](http://www.multiversitycomics.com/wp-content/themes/mvc/images/timthumb.php?src=http://multiversitystatic.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2018/05/The-Hellblazer-24.jpg&q=95&w=196&zc=1&a=t)
– The current run of “The Hellblazer,” written by Tim Seeley and drawn by Davide Fabri, will end with issue #24 in July. Replying on Twitter to questions about the cancellation, Seeley wrote “Yeah, I was hired to bring it to an end,” and reminded fans that “there’s a Black Label book by Brian Azzarello [coming].” Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo will be joining forces for “Batman: Damned,” a graphic novel featuring a team up of Batman and John Constantine investigating the Joker’s death. Azzarello is no stranger to writing the British smoking occult detective, he wrote the original “Hellblazer” series for Vertigo in 2000. “Batman: Damned” will be released under the new DC Black Label, which starts this August.
– Image and Skybound Entertainment have announced that October 13th will be The Walking Dead Day. Image and Skybound revealed the first of many collectible The Walking Dead Day items, a “Walking Dead” 15th anniversary variant, drawn by co-creator Charlie Adlard, for the first time with colors by Dave Stewart. A selection of Walking Dead Day participating stores will have their own special edition covers too.
– HBO’s pilot of Watchmen has named some cast members: Regina King (The Leftovers), Don Johnson (Miami Vice), Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk), Louis Gossett Jr. (An Officer and a Gentleman), Adelaide Clemens (Rectify), and Andrew Howard (True Memoirs Of An International Assassin). Written by Damon Lindelof, based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s iconic limited comic series, the series won’t be a straight adaptation but its own entity. No specifics on whether any of the cast will be series regulars.
– Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver), Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex), and Sam Heughan (Outlander) have joined the cast of Bloodshot, the Valiant Comics movie starring Vin Diesel. The Sony Pictures film, which hasn’t got a release date yet, will be directed by Dave Wilson and written by Eric Heisserer (“Secret Weapons,” Arrival).
– Any Simpsons fans reading? Netflix have teased the first look of their new series Disenchantment, from Simpsons and Futurama creator Matt Groening. Disenchantment is a fantasy series starring Broad City‘s Abbi Jacobson as Princess Bean, Nat Faxon as Elfo the elf, and Eric Andre as Luci the demon. Half of the first season, which will consist of 10 episodes, will be released on August 17th.
– Dragon Ball Super has ended, but according to Anime Herald, a promotional poster in Japan revealed there’ll be a new anime, Dragon Ball Heroes. The show will be based on a trading arcade card game of the same name that launched in 2010, and which was turned back into a manga by Akira Toriyama’s successor Toyotarō.
– In more animated cartoon news, the Spider-Man animated series on Disney XD has got a season 2 start date: Monday June 18th, with a one-hour episode. The second season will feature new and old foes alike vying to take down Peter Parker.
– In world news, a recent ruling of the Madras High Court, in Tamil Nadu, India, has finished deliberations in regards to the case of Tamil cartoonist Karna, who was charged with criminal defamation for a cartoon of M. Karunanidhi, a former chief minister and leader of state political party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). In the ruling, the court have safeguarded satirists and caricaturists from being attacked on defamation charges. EP Unny, the cartoonist for leading English language daily, The Indian Express, thanked the high court for its “fine appreciation of an art practice that values and pushes the democratic debate.”
– The Acts & Civics Table (TACT) are going to collaborate with the Cartoonists Association of Nigeria (CARTAN) to campaign against killings and violence in the country. The campaign is tagged #DrawingBlood, it involves cartoonists and poems condemning the loss of lives in the nation. It will run for 6 months and will lead up to the Nigerian Satire Festival in November. It will have artists and cartoonists utilizing the color red, as their way of saying “We have had enough of bloodshed in Nigeria.”
– And finally, “Mech Cadet Yu” has received praise in an Inverse feature for turning Asian immigrant moms into comic book heroes. The all-age comic book from BOOM Studios, created by Greg Pak (“Incredible Hulk”) and illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa (“Ms. Marvel”), is about a young janitor who is chosen to join the Sky Corps Academy. Stanford Yu gets help from one person in particular, his overprotective mother, Dolly. Greg Pak told Inverse in an email, “I love writing Dolly so much, I’m interested in relationships I don’t see that often in genre fiction, and I can’t think of that many stories like this, that focus on a hero’s relationship with his mom.” Pak and Miyazawa recently announced that issue #12, out later this year, will be the last in the series.