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.
In case you missed it, Dark Horse is starting a line of “Minecraft” graphic novels, and BOOM! is releasing a new graphic novel based on The Magicians.
– Mike Mignola will be providing an exclusive variant cover for Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s “The Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion” #1. The cover will first be featured at NYCC, and then future conventions afterwards. For those not attending any conventions, it will also be included with pre-orders of the Dark Horse Direct Spaceboy Maquette.
– The cover for Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s new graphic novel from First Second, “Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me,” has been revealed. “It’s a story about what can happen after you fall in love, after you get the girl. It’s messy and complicated and strange and there’s various painful bits and happy bits,” Tamaki said of the book. It releases on May 7, 2019.
– There is a little hope for The Walking Dead: The Final Season after Telltale Games announced that it was effectively shutting down. The game studio said in a statement, “Multiple potential partners have stepped forward to express interest in helping to see The Final Season through to completion.” Episode two releases today as planned, but three and four were in doubt after the company laid off most of its staff.
– The Denver Comic Con will rebrand itself as the Denver Pop Culture Con starting in 2019. The move comes amid legal battles resulting from San Diego’s Comic-Con International’s trademarking of the “comic con” name. Denver’s Pop Culture Classroom, the producers of the convention, said that the name-change was already in the works.
– An executive editor and cartoonist at The Indianapolis Star have apologized in a column after publishing a cartoon framing requests by Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as ridiculous demands. The apologies came after public outcry on social media.
– Deadline is reporting that the Margot Robbie-fronted Birds of Prey film will open on February 7, 2020. The film, directed by Cathy Yan, is also set to feature Huntress, Rene Montoya and Black Canary.
– Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back producer Gary Kurtz has passed away at the age of 78 after battling cancer for the past year. In addition to the Star Wars franchise, Kurtz was also a producer on films like American Graffiti, The Dark Crystal, and Return to Oz.
– Film director Roger Mainwood died at the age of 65. He directed the film adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s graphic novel, “Ethel & Ernest,” and was also an animator on other projects based on Briggs books like The Snowman, When The Wind Blows and Father Christmas.
– And lastly, the trailer for Bumblebee, the first Michael Bay-free Transformers film, has premiered, featuring Marvel Comics-inspired takes on Shockwave, Soundwave, Ravage and more characters cameoing in the film. The movie comes out December 21.
