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@multiversity.com.
In case you missed it, Marvel artist Stuart Immonen has apparently retired, and we spoke to Ivan Reis and Joe Prado about “The Man of Steel” #1.
– Video game players will have the opportunity to play as their favorite DC villains in Lego DC Super-Villains. In the game, the Justice League has disappeared, leaving Earth to be protected by heroes from a parallel universe known as the Justice Syndicate. Classic DC super-villains in the Legion of Doom realize the heroes from the Justice Syndicate are not who they claim to be. Gamers will have the option of creating a new DC super-villain to team up with the other classic characters.
“LEGO DC Super-Villains gives players a new way to play with their favorite DC characters with a splash of light-hearted, villainous antics. Players will enjoy exploring the expansive DC universe in the way only a LEGO game can deliver,” said Sean McEvoy, VP Digital Games at The LEGO Group. Lego DC Super-Villains will be available on October 16 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One X, Nintendo Switch and PC. For more on the game, including DLC and an exclusive Lex Luthor Superman minifigure, read the press release.
– Diamond President and CEO Stephen A. Geppi is closing Baltimore’s Geppi Museum, and donating more than 3,000 items to the Library of Congress. The items include comic books and pop-culture memorabilia that date back to the start of American newspaper comics. “The magnitude of this gift is overwhelming, We as an institution, intend to honor it by making the collection as accessible as possible to Americans [and] the world while still preserving it for future generations,” said Sarah Duke, curator at the library’s prints and photographs division.
– Chuck Palahniuk posted that he was among many victims of embezzlement by his agent’s accountant, Darin Webb. Webb currently faces fraud charges over $3.4 million dollars being stolen from his literary agency, which led to Palahniuk not receiving income from titles such as Dark Horse Comics’s “Fight Club 2,” leaving him baffled as to what happened. Palahniuk writes, “On the plus side, I’m incredibly rich. Rich beyond my ever imagining, with friends and readers who’ve rushed to my rescue.”
– Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi is co-starring in a series of illustrated books with comic strip character Chacha Choudhary. The announcement has been met with a fair share of anger toward the BJP government in Maharashtra, with the National Herald calling it “shocking that the cash-strapped Fadnavis government has spent lakhs of rupees just to project the image of a controversial Prime Minister; and that, too, on the pretext of providing education reading material to primary school students.”
– The Nerdist’s Amy Ratcliffe will write a new Star Wars book, Star Wars: Women of the Galaxy. The title will feature characters such as Leia Organa, Rey, Ahsoka Tano, Jyn Erso, Rose Tico, Maz Kanata and others, illustrated by comic book artists like Elsa Charretier and Jen Bartel. With this book, Ratcliffe intends to “celebrate female characters across the galaxy – from the ones fans know incredibly well, like Leia and Padme, to lesser known women like Vi Moradi or Aurra Sing.” One character Ratcliffe was excited to include is Kyrsta Agate. Star Wars: Women of the Galaxy will arrive in hardcover in October 2018.
– “Be Everything at Once: Tales of a Cartoonist Lady Person” by Dami Lee will be released in August by Chronicle Books. The book, which includes selections from her webcomic “As Per Usual,” as well as many other new comics, is about Lee’s experiences growing up as a immigrant child in Texas, navigating the highways of cyberspace to become a professional cartoonist.
– Lion Forge unveiled plans for a new middle grade imprint called Caracal. “The market for middle-grade comics has really exploded over the past few years and is showing every sign of continuing that phenomenal growth,” says Andrea Colvin, the editor in chief of Lion Forge. Caracal joins the early readers imprint CubHouse and the young adult imprint Roar.
– Masato Hira will launch a manga adaptation of the anime film Batman Ninja, which will debut in “Monthly Hero” magazine tomorrow. The film depicted a time displacement machine created by Gorilla Grodd transporting Batman, some of his allies and worst enemies to feudal Japan. The film will be released in Japan on June 15, and is currently available here on Blu-ray, DVD and digitally right now.
– Dave Bautista will be featured in Dogtown, a film based on the comic book series “Body Bags” by Jason Pearson. Bautista has been cast as Mack Delgado, a bounty hunter whose teenage daughter he does not know he had arrives with the desire to reconnect with her father. Production is aimed to start this fall. The film will be written by John Wick 2‘s Kyle Ward, and produced by Bold Films (Drive, Whiplash).
