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.
– Image announced a line of crossover variant covers to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “The Walking Dead” series in October. Nine of the 35 planned covers were revealed, including five connecting variants by Stefano Simeone for the Massive-Verse issues “No/One” #7, “Radiant Black” #28 (covers C and D), “Rogue Sun” #17, and “The Dead Lucky” #10. For the full list of covers, and the other revealed artwork (namely “I Hate Fairyland” #10 by Skottie Young, “Time Before Time” #28 by Declan Shalvey, “Untold Tales of I Hate Fairyland” #4 by Dean Rankin, and “Tenement” #5 by Andrea Sorrentino), head to Image.com.
– Meanwhile, Skybound and Techland launched Dying Light 2: Stay Human’s “Walking Dead” event, which will run until Wednesday, August 2. The collaboration, also intended to mark the comic’s 20th anniversary, is largely cosmetic in nature, offering players items like Rick’s hat and Negan’s bat, as well as crossover “cover” artwork by artists Marek Oleksicki and Łukasz Owdziej, in exchange for completing gameplay challenges. You can watch the trailer here.
– In further game news, Skybound confirmed J.K. Simmons will reprise the role of Invincible‘s Omni-Man in Mortal Kombat 1’s Kombat Pack DLC; and Hulu and Fortnite have launched a Futurama collaboration to promote the show’s return. The latter adds Leela, Fry and Bender as playable characters, the Planet Express ship as a glider, and more.
– Paramount announced a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is in the works, as is Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a two-season Paramount+ show that will bridge the gap between the movies. Mutant Mayhem director Jeff Rowe will return to helm the sequel, while Chris Yost and Alan Wan (who are both veterans of the post-1980s Ninja Turtles cartoons) shall serve as showrunners on the series. The film’s lead voice cast, Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon, are expected to reprise their roles as the four turtles, while Lukas Williams will oversee both projects on behalf of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production company Point Grey. Mutant Mayhem kicks off the new continuity in theaters August 2.
– Long-running British children’s magazine “The Beano” marked its 85th anniversary (which falls on July 30) with yesterday’s issue #4196. The centerpiece was a story by cartoonist Nigel Parkinson, where various celebrities — including King Charles, Queen Camilla, and Tom Holland — team up with Beanotown’s kids to stop Mayor Brown from carving his face onto Mount Beano. Per the BBC, the guest stars were chosen from a survey of 3,000 children (aged seven to 14) asking which celebrities they would like to see appear.
Additionally, publisher DC Thomson revealed they’d be making the comic more inclusive, adding characters like Harsha, Mandi, Khadija, Mahira and Stevie Starr, while changing two kids’ outdated names, “Fatty” and “Spotty,” to Freddy and Scotty. Mike Stirling, Beano Studios’ creative director, commented he wasn’t afraid of being called “woke” over the changes, saying, “We have never seen that as a pejorative term. It’s awareness and being awake to things.”
– Neil Gaiman revealed in an interview that if Good Omens were to return for a third season, it would be based on a sequel he brainstormed with the novel’s late co-writer Terry Pratchett. “The hypothetical season three exists, there is a story that is there, [however] I didn’t feel that we could drive straight from season one into that,” he said. Good Omens season two, which has an original storyline, will be released on Prime Video tomorrow, July 28.
– Finally, Anime News Network shares Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso became a meme during last week’s Spanish general election. The line “Better a pig than a fascist” became a rallying cry against the far-right Vox party on social media, inspiring fan art of the title character reminding people to “vota.” The 1992 film, based on Miyazaki’s own manga “Hikōtei Jidai,” followed a cursed Italian fighter pilot battling his country’s fascists in 1929. At the time of writing, there is no clear majority from the election, with the conservative People’s Party winning 136 seats, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party winning 122, and Vox winning 33 – if PP and Vox were to form a coalition, it would mean the first far-right party in Spain’s government since the death of Franco in 1975.
