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.
– Vault Comics announced that they will continue to celebrate Pride every single month with the launch of their new ongoing Proud Comics initiative. The initative will see different Vault titles being highlighted each month, and 50% of that title’s digital sales being donated to the Trevor Project, a charity which provides vital support to LGBTQ individuals under the age of 25. Vault also unveiled a new Pride Vault logo by Tim Daniel as part of the new initiative. The full list of titles currently highlighted and set to be involved in the coming months are available here.
– CBR reported that “Calvin and Hobbes” has become a part of the continuity of “Bloom County,” with Hobbes joining the strip last month after being revealed as the identity of an individual wearing a medical mask and suit. The creators of “Calvin and Hobbes” and “Bloom County,” Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed respectively, are longtime friends, and Breathed has frequently crossed “Calvin and Hobbes” characters into his work, usually annually since April Fool’s Day in 2016, when Breathed jokingly claimed to have bought the rights to Watterson’s series. This year a crossover strip didn’t occur, with Breathed instead waiting until now to include Hobbes as part of a full story instead. “Bloom County” can be read on Berkeley Breathed’s Facebook page.
– Artist Jim Lee revealed his subscriber’s exclusive cover for the upcoming The Suicide Squad issue of Empire magazine. The cover showcases the members of the team with film director James Gunn at the center. It is inspired by Howard Chaykin’s cover for “Suicide Squad” #1, the launch of the first series to focus on the team, which was released in May 1987. A version of the artwork colored by Alex Sinclair will be included inside the issue. For non-subscribers, there will be five interconnecting covers to collect. The The Suicide Squad-focused issue of Empire is scheduled for release on July 8 ahead of the film’s UK release on July 30, with the film debuting in the US on August 6. You can see Jim Lee’s finished cover, colored version, and pencils, here, and the interconnecting covers here.
– This blurb contains details about Spider-Man: No Way Home some readers may wish to avoid: Marvel shared a host of merchandise for the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home, which confirmed the appearance of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange. The reveal included the film’s licensed products by Funko, Hasbro, Lego, and Nerf, with Funko’s Pop! line including a selection of different Spider-Man figures showcasing new suits from the film, as well as MJ, Ned, and Doctor Strange out of his usual costume and in very casual attire. The products are due out this summer, with the film set for release on December 17. You can see the image gallery for the products here.
– Netflix announced that they have bought the rights to exclusively stream an anime adaptation of the manga that wins Shonen Jump+‘s Million Tag competition series. The competition will see six teams of creators undertaking four challenges to win 5 million yen (which converts to just over $45,000), the chance to have the manga published in Shonen Jump+, and then have the manga collected in volume form afterwards. With Netflix’s announcement, it is clear that the winner is now likely to have the manga adapted in addition to the other prizes, but details as to who will develop the series are not yet known. The competition started on July 2, with the first of eight episodes in the series currently available on the Weekly Shonen Jump YouTube channel. The series will continue weekly on Fridays.
– Meanwhile, animator Ippei Ichii (Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!) criticized Netflix for their “low rates” of pay for an anime produced by MAPPA, detailing that “a producer working on a Netflix anime made at MAPPA suggested to pay 3,800 yen (US$34) per cut. The budget for TV series is between 3,800 to 7,000 yen, so if you accept that offer, the unit price for animators would go down.” He continued, citing that his issue is with Netflix, not MAPPA, stating “for all the exorbitant amount of capital [Netflix has], it’s a problem that they’ve started to place orders with such low rates.” Netflix formalized their partnership with MAPPA last October.
Continued below– Lucasfilm pulled back the curtain on their upcoming anime anthology series Star Wars: Visions. During their panel at AX (Anime Expo) Lite, Lucasfilm detailed nine of the ten anime shorts will be produced by seven different animation studios, including Science SARU, Trigger, and Kamikaze Douga. The revealed shorts have all been titled and had their directors named too. In a short clip, featuring a swathe of development artwork, Lucasfilm Executive Producer James Waugh described the anthology episodes as their creators’ “visions, through the lens of Star Wars.” The series will cover a breadth of genres, with Taku Kimura, the director of the short called “Tatooine Rhapsody,” describing it as “a rock opera style film,” while Abel Gongora’s “T0-B1” will have a “retro, vintage feeling” influenced by “Astro Boy.” Star Wars: Visions will debut on Disney+ on September 22, and the full ‘Special Look’ can be viewed here.
– A full trailer for Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation Part 1 was released. The trailer showcases Eternia without its magic, with the fate of the universe left in the balance as Eternia will collapse should magic not be returned. The trailer also reveals that the Sword of Power was not destroyed but divided into two, and ends with Prince Adam wielding one of the Swords of Power and transforming into He-Man. Netflix also revealed three new cast members alongside the trailer: Dennis Haysbert is set to voice King Grayskull; Adam Gifford will be Vikor; and Wundar will be voiced by Jay Tavare. They join the already star-studded cast of Mark Hamill, Lena Headey, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and more. The five episodes that make up Part 1 of the series will premiere on July 23.
– Finally, Philece Sampler, the voice actor best known for voicing Mimi Tachikawa across the Digimon franchise, died at the age of 67 following a heart attack. Sampler started her acting career as Renee DuMonde in Days of Our Lives in the early 1980s, and started her voice acting career in 1996 with her portrayal of Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk. Three years later her involvement with the Digimon franchise began, taking on the role of Mimi for the English dub of Digimon Adventure, before going on to voice multiple characters across different series under the Digimon umbrella. Her last involvement with Digimon came in 2018 as Mimi for Digimon Adventures tri..Sampler is also known for her role as the older Toph in The Legend of Korra. Sampler is survived by her husband, Larry Dean.
