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.
ICYMI, Mignolaversity had a look at January’s very brief number of releases.
– Image announced “W0rldtr33,” a new, ongoing horror series from writer James Tynion IV, artist Fernando Blanco, colorist Jordie Bellaire, and letterer Aditya Bidikar. The series follows five friends, who discovered what they dubbed the Undernet — “a secret architecture beneath the internet” — in 1999. “They charted their exploration of the Undernet on a private message board called W0rldtr33. Then they lost control. And unleashed unimaginable horrors.” The series begins in Spring 2023, but a preview will be featured in next month’s “Image!” #8, due out November 23.
– At this year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival, Posy Simmonds was awarded the 2022 Sergio Aragonés International Award for Excellence in Comic Art. Simmonds, 77, is best known as the creator of “Gemma Bovery,” “Tamara Drewe,” and “Cassandra Drake.” Previous winners of the award, which are decided by the American National Cartoonists Society as well as the UK-based festival, consist of Dave McKean (2017), Hunt Emerson (2018), Charlie Adlard (2019), and Boulet (2021).
– Via Popverse, Penguin’s Viking Press announced a graphic novelization of Maggie Stiefvater’s prose fantasy series The Raven Cycle. The adaptation will be penned by Stephanie Williams (“Nubia & the Amazons”) with art by Sas Milledge (“Mamo”), and the first instalment — based on The Raven Boys — will be released in Spring 2025. Stiefvater’s series, which consists of four books published from 2012 to 2016, tells the story of “four private school boys, a psychic’s daughter, and a Welsh legend sleeping under mountains in a sleepy Virginia town.”
– The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Harrison Ford will take over the role of Marvel’s Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross from the late William Hurt. Ford will begin playing the character in 2024’s Captain America: New World Order, and according to the trade paper, “would” return in the same summer’s Thunderbolts. Hurt played the role of the mustached general-turned-secretary of defense in five Marvel Cinematic Universe films from 2008 to 2021, before his death from prostate cancer earlier this year.
– The Reporter also ran a feature on the current state of DC Films to mark the release of Black Adam, and Walter Hamada’s departure from the studio this week. The piece reveals James Gunn is in talks to direct another DC movie; a new Henry Cavill solo Superman film is being prioritized alongside J.J. Abrams and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s project; The Batman director Matt Reeves has been developing spin-off movies for villains like the Scarecrow, Clayface and Professor Pyg; and a sequel to The Flash has already been scripted by Aquaman co-writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Head to the link for more, though please be aware the article goes into depth about a major Black Adam cameo you may not want spoiled.
– On Medium, Kamala Khan co-creator G. Willow Wilson shared a thoughtful blog post called Give Them Something They Can Carry, in which she answers the question, “How do you write stories for people outside your religion, while also remaining true to what you believe?” In it, the Muslim author compares a scene from “Ms. Marvel” and “Poison Ivy,” that she reveals are “essentially the same scene, twice,” as well as the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, which reflected their Christian beliefs in wildly different ways. You can also listen to an audio version at the link, which runs 6 mins.
– Finally, actor Jan Rabson passed away last week, aged 68. A member of Johnny Carson’s Mighty Carson Art Players, Rabson voiced Tetsuo in the original 1989 English dub of Akira. His other roles included voicing the title character in the Leisure Suit Larry games; minor roles in various Pixar projects; and guest appearances on various live-action and animated TV shows, including Kerma the alien turtle on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1991 to 1993. A cause of death was not given.
