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.
– IDW Publishing will release “Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp,” a children’s graphic novel by writer Rosie Knight and artist Oliver Ono (“Godzilla Rivals: Vs. Battra”). The book follows Zelda, an artistic youngster who finds herself feeling like an outcast at a sports summer camp, until she discovers a portal to Monster Island.
There, she will befriend Minilla, the infant son of the King of the Monsters (who first appeared in 1967’s Son of Godzilla), and help him protect his home from an evil stirring on the island. The 128-page book will retail for $12.99, and arrive in bookstores and comic book shops on August 12, 2024 (during the 70th anniversary of the original Godzilla film.)
– Writer Joe Illidge and artist ChrisCross are teaming up on the historical graphic novel “The Winterfields,” which will be published by FairSquare Comics’ Noir Is the New Black imprint. Set in 1920s Harlem, the book follows Cain Winterfield, a bodyguard, and his young son Carver. When one of Cain’s clients disappears on his watch, her violent husband comes after them, furious with what has happened. A prelude will appear in the Expanded Edition of the “Noir Is the New Black” anthology, due out in February, and the full graphic novel will be released in 2025.
– Amazon are developing The Boys: Mexico, a Spanish-language spin-off set in Mexico City. Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal are attached as executive producers, and are considering taking on minor acting parts, while Blue Beetle‘s Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer is set to write the project. It will mark the third Boys spin-off, after Gen V, and the animated The Boys Presents: Diabolical.
– The launch trailer for the Nintendo Switch version of the Batman: Arkham Trilogy has confirmed Robert Pattinson’s suit from The Batman will be added to Arkham Knight. It will be a free, limited time exclusive for Switch players when the trilogy arrives on the console on December 1. The skin’s existence was revealed when it was mistakenly released on the Epic Games store last month, allowing several players to take it out for a test run.
– Max have revealed a recording of Spirited Away: Live on Stage will be added to the streamer on December 24. The production, based on Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning film of the same name, was directed by Tony Award-winner John Caird, and scored by Joe Hisaishi, the composer of the original film. It was staged at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo in 2022. The show is also available to buy digitally and on Blu-ray courtesy of GKIDS, and is set to premiere in Europe at the London Coliseum in April 2024.
– Writer Pat Mills, who penned the comic the Doctor Who special “The Star Beast” was based on, has launched a new self-published book about writing comics, titled Pageturners – How to Write Iconic Stories. Additionally, he has used his newfound attention to draw awareness to the ways UK publishers are failing creators, stating the BBC and Bad Wolf Productions paid him and Dave Gibbons “generously” for creating the story, but that he has never received any royalties from Doctor Who Magazine owner Panini. You can read a compilation of his tweets on the subject at Bleeding Cool.
Ironically, Mills’s praise for the BBC comes amid reports they have changed their royalty scheme for Doctor Who writers, because of the deal with Disney+ to carry the show outside the UK and Ireland. Deadline claims the producers have ditched giving writers residuals in favor of paying a larger upfront fee. The BBC responded, “Doctor Who deals are individually negotiated and commercially confidential. However, all deals take into account both the rights needed by the programme funders and the fees and residuals payable to talent.” Ellie Peers, General Secretary of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, called the alleged deal “a serious retrograde step,” and urged writers “who have these contracts to come forward and contact us in confidence, so we can look at them properly and move forward from there.”
