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.
– Looks like the squeaky wheel does get the grease every once in a while. Gerry Conway posted on his Tumblr that DC powers-that-be DiDio, Lee, and Johns have reached out to him about his concerns over creator royalty payment confusion/obstruction/obfuscation. He also made comments on a podcast linked there that he might be included on plotting the new direction of Firestorm, one of his singular creations. While DC is saddled with royalty payment structures defined by WB & Hollywood accounting as ways to give out the absolute least amount of money in the unlikely event you can’t just dismiss it completely beforehand, it is nice to see some human involvement on the part of the DC brass and maybe, just maybe, a little streamlining of the process moving forward.
– The CW has greenlit The Flash/Arrow spinoff series DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. The show will skip the pilot stage and go straight to series, possibly as a midseason replacement, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I’m way behind on Flash episodes, but DC on TV has so far been everything that DC on the big screen hasn’t: coherent and enjoyable. This new series looks like a way to open up the character toolbox, and seeing them mention characters like Rip Hunter & Kendra Saunders’ Hawkgirl has me much more excited than listening to how many different writing teams WB is burning through to find an ‘acceptable’ take on Wonder Woman.
– Hugh Jackman’s retracting the claws for good after Wolverine 3. No word on whether or not he’ll throw in an X-Men: Apocalypse appearance next year before his final film in 2017. Seventeen years is a pretty good run for a role he only got a shot at because Dougray Scott, everyone’s main choice at the time, got injured. Kinda like Tom Brady, but without the scandal. No, the other one.
– It’s one thing to hear that a comic shop is doing well; it’s another to see the numbers. District of Columbia-based Fantom Comics put up a very detailed 2014 in review post on their website. While there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all recipe for success to running an LCS (although there are some very basic strategies to surviving in this market), seeing a shop like Fantom being this open about how they do what they do and whether it works or not can’t help but be a good thing.
– Even if you haven’t liked the last few offerings from either J. Michael Straczynski or the Wachowski siblings, I’d argue there’s too much of a body of work between the two that is enjoyable to not at least give their new Netflix series Sense8 a look. You’ve already paid for that streaming subscription and Daredevils over, so what ELSE were you going to do with it. You can see the series trailer here.
