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.
– Nintendo’s addictive aquatic third-person shooter game, Splatoon, is being released in manga format in the US on December 12. The manga has been published in Japan in Corocoro Magazine since 2015, but is finally coming stateside after being picked up by Viz Media . The comic is written and drawn by Sankichi Hinodeya and focuses on a ragtag team of inklings who use inventive strategies to succeed as they participate in the Turf War.
– No Christmastime in the UK is complete without watching the new John Lewis Christmas advert, but one political cartoonist claims that the company plagiarized his work. Chris Riddell tweeted the company ‘helped themselves’ to his 1988 children’s book, Mr. Underbed, and that the monster’s looks and the overall storyline were similar. John Lewis released a statement that the ‘main thrust’ of their advert was ‘utterly different’ from Riddell’s.
– In television news, actress Skyler Samuels has signed on to play a ‘key recurring role’ in Fox’s new Marvel drama series, The Gifted. Known for her role in Scream Queens, Samuels will be playing “a refugee mutant with telepathic abilities and a mysterious past” according to Deadline.The series, written by Matt Nix, is about parents played by Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker who go on the run after discovering that their children have mutant abilities.
– In an interview with IGN France, director Rian Johnson confirmed Star Wars: The Last Jedi has a runtime of two hours and thirty minutes. That time includes the ending credits, and makes The Last Jedi the longest Star Wars film in the franchise’s history. Johnson also said that actor Mark Hamill offered ideas for the script of the film there would be ’moving’ tributes to actress Carrie Fischer too.
– The worldwide hit manga, Naruto, will be transformed into a kabuki play to premiere in Japan in August 2018. It will feature Minosuke Bandō as the eponymous ninja Naruto and Hayato Nakamura playing Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto’s close friend and rival. The play will be performed at the Shinbashi Enbujō Theater in Tokyo.
– Comichaus has announced that they will be releasing a beta version of their own digital comics subscription app which they’ve called ‘the Netflix of indie comics.’ For three pounds a month, the Comichaus app will have new releases, the ability to save comics for offline reading, and a user comic book rating system. Fifty per cent of advert and subscription revenue received from the service will also be split with creators based on their total comic views.
– Marvel Comics released a teaser image for an upcoming, epic “Infinity” saga set for a February release date. Revving up the excitement for Avengers: Infinity War, the image showed Wolverine, Star-Lord, and Captain Marvel each holding a different infinity stone. The teaser identifies them as the Power, Space and Reality stones and said: “who will hold Infinity? The countdown begins this February!”
