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.
– Kicking off, Marvel has revealed the contents of their other CLASSIFIED solicit from their December solicits, after announcing “Avengers: No Surrender,” in “Guardians of the Galaxy” #150. This will see the return of beloved character Adam Warlock. The cosmic character will return in a storyline aptly titled ‘The Return of Adam Warlock’ for unknown reasons, with the announcement asking, “Is he here for the Infinity Stones? Has he come to take them back for himself?” More information set to be revealed today at “Marvel Legacy: Next Big Thing” panel. “Guardians of the Galaxy” is written by Gerry Duggan with art from Marcus To and Aaron Kuder and covers by Alex Ross. You can find all of our coverage of NYCC17 here.
– America is currently grieving the loss of life from Sunday October 1 with the death of 59 people and injury of over 500 others after the largest mass shooting in the country’s history took place in Las Vegas. With NYCC this weekend, Marvel and Netflix have seen it prudent to pull their panel for their MCU Netflix show The Punisher which was set for Saturday. Both companies, in a joint-statement, it wouldn’t be appropriate for the gun toting vigilante to participate in NYCC and that “Our thoughts continue to be with the victims and those affected by this tragedy.”
– Lion Forge Comics has added four new editorial positions ahead of NYCC, where the growing publisher will announce a number of new titles. Desiree Rodriguez, Erika Kuster, Hazel Newlevant, and Jasmine Amiri were all added to the editorial team at Lion Forge, coming from a variety of backgrounds including comics journalism, editing and publishing. You can check out more about each of these four’s various experience here. Congratulations to all these hires!
– Oni Press has entered into a brand new sales and distribution deal with publishing company Simon & Schuster, moving all of the distribution of their comics and graphical novels from Diamond to Simon & Schuster. The agreement, which begins March 1, 2018, will bring all of Oni Press’s various titles to a larger group of “new readers, retailers, and libraries,” moving beyond the direct market.
– Dynamite Entertainment has revealed more comics ahead of the beginning of New York Comic-Con today, the first of which is a new “James Bond” limited series from writer Ales Kot. The new six-issue miniseries is called “James Bond: The Body” and will debut its first issue in January 2018, with each issue featuring a tale of a different injury Bond has as he’s relaying these stories to his medical examiner after his latest mission. No artist has been announced yet for the series.
– Dynamite’s second series of the day came in the form of the four-issue series, “Robots vs. Princesses” from Todd Matthy and Nicolas Chapuis. The all-ages story follows Princess Zara on a quest to find a dragon as she stumbles upon a robot she befriends named Wheeler as they team to stop an impending robot invasion. The fantasy series drops its first issue in April 2018.
– The last of Dynamite’s series announcements came in the form of a new “Xena” comic from writer Meredith Finch. Xena: Warrior Princess first premiered back in 1995 and spanned six seasons, and spun off into comic form in 1997 and has been housed at Topps Comics, Dark Horse, and Dynamite. The newest relaunch features a cover from David Finch and also has no artist as of this time. “Xena” #1 will hit stores in February 2018.
– “Goosebumps” is returning to IDW for a new comic from writer Jen Vaughn and artist Michelle Wong. The new three-issue series is called “Goosebumps: Download and Die!” and is a spiritual successor to 1992 Say Cheese and Die! where a camera took photos that predicted certain doom for those in the picture. The new story is updated a little and concerns a “smartphone app that snaps filtered pictures which depict nightmarish outcomes.” The new series arrives in stores in February 2018.
Continued below– Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Image Comic “Velvet” is being adapted to the small screen for Paramount Television, the newest rebranding of current cable network Spike TV. Kyle Killen (Awake, Lone Star) is writing the pilot and executive producing along with Keith Redmon and Steve Golin of Anonymous Content, Scott Pennington, and Brubaker, with Epting serving as producer. “Velvet” debuted and ran fifteen issues from 2013-2016 following the story of Velvet Templeton a female spy during the Cold War.
– Ahead of the premiere for the next trailer this Sunday October 8th, Justice League premiered five new posters with the tagline “All In.” The posters depict Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman, and the Flash with Superman seemingly absent from the promotion. You can check out the posters here, and follow the site this weekend for anymore DCEU-related news coming from NYCC. Justice League premieres in theaters November 17th.
– In more movie news, Sony’s Spider-Verse (minus having Spider-Man) film Venom has a new writer for the script originally drafted by Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner. Kelly Marcel, best known for her work on Fifty Shades of Grey and Saving Mr. banks has come on board to write a new draft of the script. The Tom Hardy-starring film is still set to hit theaters a year from now literally on October 5th, so there’s time to add some fun BDSM elements to the Spidey-film. Those webs really are good for something.
– DC is reverting to some legacy numbering of their own in the coming weeks and acknowledging some milestones for some of their biggest titles. Tony Daniel is providing variant covers for “Superman” #34 and “Batman” #35 in honor of their 800th issues, as well as, “Wonder Woman” #34 and “The Flash” #39, in honor of those series 700th. You can check out the Superman cover, the first that has been released, here.
– DC is also having some shake-ups on some upcoming issues the first of which being the previously solicited “Batman & The Signal” miniseries being pushed back two months to January. Sean Gordon Murphy’s “Batman: White Knight,” which debuted its first issue today, is adding an eighth issue to the miniseries. A few DC issues have been delayed a week including the first issue of “The Demon: Hell Is Earth” from November 15 to 22 as well as “Hawkman: Found” from December 20 to 27 following “Metal” #4 being delayed a week to the 20th. Finally, as previously revealed since Bryan Hitch is leaving “Justice League” both Joshua Williamson and Robert Venditti will co-write the two “Metal” tie-ins for the series.
– Finally, Injustice 2 is adding another downloadable character in The Atom, but not The CW Atom, the Ryan Choi version of the character created in 2006. Choi’s character description sees him harnessing the power of “quantum shrinking technology” in order to find his missing mentor Ray Palmer, very similar to the current Rebirth plotline. You can find the trailer for the character debut here.
