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.
– The Renae de Liz/Ray Dillon saga continues. Last week, DC announced they were cancelling the second part of “The Legend of Wonder Woman.” (A book which made our 2016 Best Digital First/Web Comics list.) De Liz turned to social media, starting a GoFundMe page; the donations have been generous. However, in light of this, it’s come to the surface that De Liz and Dillon are notorious for taking commissions and never delivering on a project. In fact, several of their Kickstarter campaigns (including “Womanthology” and “Peter Pan”) never delivered product to their customers. It also came out that DC 86ed the book in no small part due to a “‘challenging relationship’ with the husband and wife team behind the scenes” and series of unprofessional comments Dillon made on Twitter about other Wonder Woman creative teams. Dillon, especially, has been playing cleanup since this story surfaced, and according to Bleeding Cool, is down to 11 unfulfilled commissions between himself and De Liz. “We are not bad people,” De Liz said in a Facebook post: “We just missed information somewhere which led us to choosing honesty instead of the expected compliance.”
(Editorial: while this might have been a series of miscommunications between DC and the De Liz group, not honoring commissions, commitments, and pledges you made years ago is unforgivable. And this isn’t something that’s suddenly happening to them, because it appears claims against the team have been going back since the mid-2000s. It takes a lot for me to side with the big corporation on something, but saying things like “we chose honesty instead of compliance” ring as nasty and unprofessional to me. De Liz’s work is no less fantastic for this, but it’s clear they need to reevaluate their business procedures.)
– Star Wars Rebels announced last week that Saw Gerrera would appear on the mid-season premiere of the series. Gerrera was created for The Clone Wars, but has gained significant attention thanks to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. More than that, LucasFilm has confirmed Forest Whitaker will be voicing the role. Gerrera was originally voiced by Andrew Kishino. Star Wars Rebels returns January 7. 2017.
– Entertainment Weekly has a new photo from the upcoming Justice League movie. The project is being directed by Zach Snyder and drops into theaters November 2017.
– Marvel has announced a new “Spider-Man” comic from Peter David and Mark Bagley. The book is untitled, but promises to “reveal the final fate for Ben Reilly.”
– Dark Horse will be publishing an Art of Splatoon book this June.
– Check out these excerpts from the upcoming We Told You So: Comics as Art by Tom Spurgeon and Michael Dean. The book is an oral history of Fantagraphics (one of our 2016 Best Publishers). Disclaimer: the excerpts are hosted on The Comics Journal website, which is owned by Fantagraphics Publishers.
