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.
and Brett Breeding
– DC Comics announced “The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special,” an 80-page comic that will (as its name suggests) mark 30 years since ‘The Death of Superman,’ with four new stories from the creative team revisiting the event, as well as Jon Kent’s take on it. The stories will be respectively created by Dan Jurgens, Brett Breeding, Brad Anderson, and John Workman; Roger Stern, Butch Guice, Glenn Whitmore, and Rob Leigh; Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove, Glenn Whitmore, and Rob Leigh; and Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett, Doug Hazlewood, Glenn Whitmore, with Rob Leigh.
The comic goes on sale November 8, for $10.99. It will also include nine pin-ups from artists like Jamal Campbell, Lee Weeks, Clay Mann, Fabio Moon, Walt Simonson, and Bill Sienkiewicz, while the various covers available will include a polybag variant, containing a black armband with ‘The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary’ logo, and the main cover by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding. Additionally, a special edition reprint of 1992’s “Superman” #75 — the issue of the crossover where Superman and Doomsday actually fought to the death — containing interviews with the original creative team will be released beforehand on November 1, 2022.
– A play about Batman co-creator Bill Finger, titled Bill Finger: Rise of the Bat, is set to be performed in Rhode Island on Batman Day (September 17). Written by Lenny Schwartz, with assistance from Finger’s granddaughters Athena Finger and Alethia Bess Mariotta, the play chronicles Finger’s reunion with co-creator Bob Kane as adults (after attending high school together), to being denied credit for the Dark Knight’s creation, and his eventual posthumous recognition. The play will also be performed in New York City from October 3-5; for more on the play, head to Popverse.
– Via Twitter, the state-owned company Telefilm Canada announced funding for several movie projects, including Paying for It, a romantic comedy based on Chester Brown’s graphic novel of the same name, directed by his former partner Sook-Yin Lee. Published in 2011, “Paying for It” chronicles how Brown chose to seek solace with prostitutes after breaking up with Lee in 1999, and ultimately decided he preferred their services to the “possessive monogamy” of traditional relationships. Brown and Lee remain friends, and a film portrayal of his life with her at the helm was previously mooted in 2012. It is unknown when the film will be released.
– In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed the upcoming Fantastic Four movie will not be another origin story, stating “A lot of people know this origin story. A lot of people know the basics. How do we take that and bring something that they’ve never seen before? We’ve set a very high bar for ourselves with bringing that to the screen.” The new Fantastic Four movie, which does not currently have a director after Marvel’s Spider-Man trilogy helmer Jon Watts departed the project in April, is set for release in theaters on November 8, 2024. It is unclear at this time if John Krasinski, who played a variant of Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, will reprise the role or not.
– Per The Hollywood Reporter, Stan Lee’s estate have settled a lawsuit against Lee’s former business manager, Jerardo “Jerry” Olivarez. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lee, who died in 2018, sued Olivarez earlier that year, accusing him of trying to exploit him after the death of his wife, Joan. Olivarez’s attorney Donald Randolph declared in a statement, “Jerry Olivarez and JC Lee, Stan and Joan Lee’s only daughter and Trustee of the Lee Family Trust, are happy to announce the resolution of their Court dispute. The genesis of this dispute was the unfortunate manipulation of Stan Lee and his family undertaken by certain individuals — not named in the lawsuit — which was intended to unfairly malign Jerry Olivarez. These individuals exerted undue influence on the Lee family to accuse Jerry Olivarez of harmful acts which he did not do.” The case against Lee’s former business manager, Keya Morgan, who was arrested on an elder abuse in 2019, remains ongoing.
– Finally, veteran British actor Bernard Cribbins has passed away, aged 93. Cribbins’s roles included The Railway Children, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, and narrating The Wombles, but he was probably best known to American audiences for playing Donna Noble’s grandfather, Wilfred Mott, on Doctor Who. Doctor Who writer/executive producer Russell T Davies, who oversaw Cribbins’s time on the series from 2007 to 2010, stated, “I’m so lucky to have known him. Thanks for everything, my old soldier. A legend has left the world.” Shortly before his death, Cribbins reprised the role of Wilfred for the show’s 60th anniversary special, which will air next year. He joins his wife Gillian McBarnet, whom he was married to from 1955 until her death in 2021; the couple had no children.
