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 have previews of tomorrow’s “Shazam” #8 and next month’s “Firefly” #12. We also have interviews with Dirk Manning and Milton Lawson on “Orson Welles: Warrior of the Worlds.”
– Image Comics’ “Crowded” is going from single issues to an OGN format in 2020. Artist/co-creator Ted Brandt said, “It’s not necessarily what we’d have liked, but the economics of single issues are what they are. Unless you sell over a certain threshold it actually costs you money to do, so for us right now it’s better to go straight to trade and get no money from floppies than risk losing money on them.” January 22’s “Crowded” #11 will be the penultimate issue of the series’ single-issue run (issue #12 has not been solicited yet). “Crowded” Vol. 3 – which will include what would’ve been the next six issues – will conclude the series.
– DC Comics has released a listing for a Young Readers title dubbed “Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge.” Created by Grace Ellis and Brittney L. Williams, the comic is a story about a 13-year old Lois Lane and her navigating the confusing world of social media and friendships. It is scheduled for release July 21st, 2020.
– Meanwhile, writer Jennifer Muro and Thomas Krajewski have teamed up with artist Gretel Lusky to create a brand new DC superhero. She’s called Ashley Rayburn, and her Young Adult graphic novel “Primer” will be published by DC Comics June 23rd, 2020.
– The director for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, J.J. Abrams revealed the runtime of the movie is about 2 hours and 21 minutes. This makes it the second longest running Star Wars movie behind The Last Jedi.
– DreamWorks and NBCUniversal International Networks announced the new animated series Cleopatra in Space, which premiered yesterday in Asia. Based on the award-winning graphic novels by Mike Maihack, Cleopatra in Space is a comedic adventure focusing on the untold story of Cleopatra’s teenage years, when Cleo is transported 30,000 years into the future, where she is the prophesied savior of the world and must attend an elite academy that will help train her for this mission. The series is currently available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.
– Liana Finck, a New Yorker cartoonist, has helped create a new app called Animate Objects. It is an augmented-reality app that lets you discover the secret thoughts of everyday items from the handwritten interface to the imagined personalities of the objects around you. Download the latest version of the The New Yorker Today app to access the feature now.
– Bleeding Cool has noted that a series of emails sent out by Diamond Comic Distributor representatives, containing sensitive commercial data, including the address of every live Diamond account, and their average and monthly and yearly order amounts of what is presumed to be their Marvel Comics orders, was accidentally leaked to about 200 stores. Diamond has apologised for the leak and says it will implement additional security to make sure such leaks don’t happen again.
