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, we ran previews of Archie’s “Happy Horrodays” and Marvel’s “All-Out Avengers” #3, and interviewed Cullen Bunn and Sally Cantirino about their new book “Door to Door, Night by Night.”
– The full list of 2023’s Free Comic Book Day titles were revealed, including Titan Comics and game developer Jagex’s first “RuneScape” comic. Ryan O’Sullivan will write the book, which will lead into a four-issue series, “RuneScape: Untold Tales of the God Wars.” Titan promotes the comic a “the perfect jumping-on point for fans of the game and newcomers alike.” Originally released in 2001, RuneScape hosts over three hundred million accounts across PC, iOS, and Steam platforms. The full list of FCBD titles, releasing May 6, 2023, can be found here.
– Tony Fleecs and Tim Seeley are teaming up for a series that’s one part hardboiled noir, one part Xtreme ’90s superhero tribute. “Local Man” from Image Comics follows former superhero Jack “Crossjack” Xaver, who, after moving back to his hometown, finds himself investigating a series of murders. Issues will be presented in a classic Image “flipbook” format: the front half will be the main story drawn by Fleecs, while an old school Image-inspired flashback will be on the reverse side. Issue #1 will be available February 22, 2023.
– A summer camp slasher survivor will infiltrate a gated community of mindless, unkillable monsters in the four-part miniseries “Where Monsters Lie.” Written by Kyle Starks (“I Hate This Place,” “Assassin Nation”) with art from Piotr Kowalski (“Stephen King’s Dark Tower,” “The Witcher Volume 3: Curse of Crows”), the meta-horror tribute will be available from Dark Horse beginning February 1, 2023.
– AHOY Comics announced a new series described as a a dark, hyper-violent superhero/pro-wrestling comedy. “The Gimmick” follows superpowered pro-wrestler Shane Bryant, who has been forced to flee to Tijuana after brutally murdering an opponent in the ring. Joanne Starer (“Sirens of the City”) writes while Elena Gogou (“Quests Aside”) provides art, with Andy Troy and Rob Steen providing colors and letters respectively. Starer credits her “incredible, and sometimes terrible experiences” in the pro-wrestling industry as the inspiration for the series, stating “I’ve seen it from many angles: as an in-ring performer, a promoter, and a wrestler’s girlfriend. I’ve got stories, y’all.” You can pick up “The Gimmick” #1 on March 8, 2023.
– Ignatz Award nominee Jed McGowan (“Gonzalo,” “Uninhabitable”) will make his graphic novel debut with “My Life Among Humans.” The OGN follows a nameless alien who accidentally reveals himself to one of the humans he’s been sent to study, putting their mission in jeopardy. “It’s a bit of a sympathetic monster story, a kind of story I love. I wanted to show why the alien does what it does,” McGowan says of the project. “That’s one of my favorite things about comics and stories — they help you understand others by putting you in their heads, showing you things from new perspectives.” It’s due out on February 7, 2023.
– Archie Horror announced “Chilling Adventures Presents… Betty: The Final Girl,” a one-shot inspired by slasher movies like Scream and When a Stranger Calls, which sees Betty Cooper spending the weekend seemingly alone in Veronica’s remote mountain chalet, after Archie whisks Veronica away on a romantic adventure. The comic was written by Micol Ostow, Casey Gilly, and Sam Maggs, and features art by Laura Braga, Natalie Nardozza, and Carola Borelli. It will be released on February 15, 2023, with a cover by Laura Braga, and a variant by Megan Hutchison.
– Mashed tweeted a preview of their Harry Absalom short, which you can watch on their YouTube channel. Absalom: Fight Night! features the iconic police inspector from 2000 AD breaking up an underground fighting ring, and battling a couple demonic entities in the process. Mashed also provides a link to “Absalom: Ghosts or London” for fans who want to learn “what happens next.”
– Warner Bros. announced that the upcoming animated Legion of Super-Heroes film, which sees Supergirl travel to the 31st century to attend the Legion Academy, will be released on on February 7, 2023. The film will be available on a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray combo pack, Blu-ray + Digital, Blu-ray (Canada only), and Digital with multiple behind-the-scenes featurettes. American Housewife‘s Meg Donnelly stars as Supergirl, with Crazy Rich Asians‘s Harry Shum Jr. as Brainiac 5. You can watch the trailer here.
– Finally, Silk: Spider Society will be the first in Sony Pictures’s suite of live-action Marvel television series. The series, created by Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang, will focus on Korean American hero Cindy Moon, and be developed alongside Into the Spider-Verse producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Sony’s planned new series will feature many of the 900 characters the studio currently holds the rights to. Each series will air on MGM+ (the upcoming rebrand of Epix), and stream outside the States on Amazon Prime Video.
