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.
– Marvel Comics announced “Dark Web: Ms. Marvel,” a two-part miniseries from Sabir Pirzada (one of the Ms. Marvel TV series writers), and artist Francesco Mortarino (“Power Rangers”). The tie-in to the upcoming X-Men/Spider-Man crossover will see Kamala Khan — who recently became an intern at Oscorp in the pages of “Amazing Spider-Man” — find herself trapped in Limbo after several “deadly and dangerous experiments” go wrong. The first issue will be released in December.
– Marvel also announced the Stormbreakers’ Class of 2023, celebrating their best up-and-coming artists. This year’s class consists of Elena Casagrande (“Black Widow”), Nic Klein (“Thor”), Jan Bazaldúa (“Legion of X”), Chris Allen (“Miles Morales: Spider-Man”), Martin Coccolo (“Deadpool”), Lucas Werneck (“Immortal X-Men”), C.F. Villa (“X-Men”), and Federico Vicentini (“X Deaths of Wolverine”). You can learn more, and check out the exclusive artwork commissioned from the artists to mark the occasion, here.
– DC Comics announced plans for this year’s Batman Day (held Saturday, September 17), including two free comics titles: “Batman: Hush #1 Batman Day Special,” a reprint of the first chapter of Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb’s seminal story, and “Batman’s Mystery Casebook Batman Day Special Edition,” containing an excerpt of the upcoming middle-grade graphic novel by Sholly Fisch and Christopher Uminga.
HBO Max also marked the occasion by announcing the forthcoming animated film Batman Azteca: Choque De Imperios (Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires) will star the voices of Horacio García Rojas (Diablero) as Yohualli (Batman), Omar Chaparro (No Manches Frida) as Yoka (Joker), and Álvaro Morte as Hernán Cortés (Two-Face). Furthermore, the day will see the premiere of the preschool cartoon Batwheels, and the release of the previously exclusive Batman: The Audio Adventures on all podcast platforms. For more details, head to DC.com.
– In further DC news, Variety reports film producer Dan Lin is no longer in the running to take over as head of Warner Bros. Discovery’s DC film and TV adaptations. The trade paper states Lin was enthusiastic about the idea, but Discovery balked at his desire for the conglomerate to acquire a stake in his production company Rideback. WBD CEO David Zaslav has been reportedly looking for a Kevin Feige-like figure to succeed DC Films president Walter Hamada, and turn DC’s disparate film and TV series into a single universe akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
– Longtime Simpsons writer and producer Tim Long will serve as co-showrunner on the planned animated series Bloom County, alongside the original comic strip’s creator, Berkeley Breathed. According to Fox, which will air the show, Bloom County follows “a collapsed lawyer, a lobotomized cat and an overly-carbonated penguin immigrant living in the world’s last boarding house in the world’s most forgotten place deep in the dandelion wilds of FlyWayThe@%!#OVER country. To wit, today’s America at a glance.”
– Actress Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim, Anne Boleyn) is in talks to join the upcoming Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte. No details were given about her character, but the show, which is being overseen by Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland, will explore the dark side of the Force during the final years of the High Republic era, roughly 100 years before A New Hope. Assuming the deal goes forward, Turner-Smith will co-star alongside series lead Amandla Stenberg, and begin filming the show later this year.
– Finally, in an unexpected bit of crossover news, “The Umbrella Academy’s” Hazel and Cha-Cha have become playable characters in behemoth multiplayer games Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard. You can check out the virtual renditions of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s time-traveling assassins in action separately here and here. Hazel and Cha-Cha were portrayed by Cameron Britton and Mary J. Blige in the first two seasons of Netflix’s Umbrella Academy, way back in 2020 and 2019 respectively.
