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, Four new artists have been added to the previously announced “Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey” from Matthew Rosenberg and Lenil Yu: Carlos Pacheco, Joe Bennett, Ramon Rosanas, and Khoi Pham. It was also announced “Jean Grey” #11 from Dennis Hopeless and Victor Ibanez will finish out the series, being the conclusion to the arc ‘Psych War.’ The first issue of “Phoenix Resurrection” hits stores December 27th.
– Mark Ruffalo revealed that although the MCU can’t make standalone Hulk movies due to contractual issues still tied up at Universal, his Hulk character will have a special story arc split over the next three big Marvel Studios movies. Hulk is appearing next in Thor: Ragnarok soon which will loosely adapt parts of the “Planet Hulk” storyline and be part one of the arc before Avengers 3 and 4 complete the trilogy. Ruffalo talked about it in terms of Banner and Hulk finally become two distinct identities as Hulk learns to talk and matures. Ragnarok hits theaters November 2.
– Taika Waititi, director of Thor: Ragnarok, is on press tour right now. He is also currently in the running to direct an adaptation of the classic manga “Akira” for Warner Bros., and has assured fans that if he gets the gig he will not whitewash the characters from the manga. Hollywood has been criticized historically for whitewashing roles, but has done so very blatantly with Asian characters recently in movies like Ghost in the Shell and the new Hellboy reboot. No release date or casting choices for Akira have yet been announced.
– The Flash returned to television last night for season four, and showrunner Todd Helbing recently revealed another villain soon to make Central City their home, Kilg%re. Kilg%re is a sentient computer virus who devoured his previous planet due to the insatiable hunger for electricity. Kilg%re also recently appeared in Rebirth in “Cyborg” as more of a massive robot type character. Look for the techno-villain, along with the Thinker the big bad for the season, as season 4 heats up.
– back in August Netflix acquired Mark Millar’s Millarworld with the intention of turning many of Millar’s creator-owned series into television properties and movies. Millar tweeted out today that the first series of this collaboration was completely finished and details would be announced by the end of this month. We have no idea what series the two companies have cooked up first, but apparently it’s coming soon to a computer screen near you.
– Hulu’s adaptation of “Runaways” is tweaking one aspect of Nico Minoru in what its deemed a responsible direction, namely the idea that she has to cut herself to retrieve a magical staff from her chest. Nico actress Lyrica Okano stated at NYCC, “There’s going to be a lot of young teenagers who are going to be watching the show and we don’t want to promote anything like self-harming because that’s very serious.” Runaways drops November 21 on Hulu.
– Writer Jim Zub has created an article tracking the sales of his Image title “Wayward” he thinks might be indicative to the future of the comic book medium as a whole. The data for his series points to a continued move towards trade paperbacks, and the decline of profitability of single issues. The piece points toward a more hopeful vision of the future of the medium, albeit yet one that needs to engage in some deep reflection. You can read his full piece here and see if you agree.
– A man was arrested after attempting to steal a single comic from one of Midtown Comics’s locations in New York and jumping from a second story window. The man was taken to the hospital and treated for minor injuries and is in custody. The store is fully open and operation. You can find local news coverage of the event here.
– Finally, Newsarama has created a post celebrating internet superfans Aaron Reynolds, R. Sikoryak, and Christian Dumais. Reynolds is the operator of the Twitter account @BatLabels, Sikoryak created “The Unquotable Trump” which is a collection of classic comic covers parodied with Trump quotes, and Dumais operates the @DRUNKHULK Twitter. All three are fun celebrations of this thing we love called comics, and we at Multiversity where “We love comics” appreciate all you fans.
