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.
– Upon announcing a new, year-long arc called ‘Gwenom’ (GET IT?), Robbi Rodriguez has said that he will be retiring from comics once that story is over. While he hasn’t ruled out doing some comic work ‘for fun’ in the future, it seems as if his professional energy will be spent elsewhere. As a fan of his work, this is a huge bummer, but hopefully this will mean greater happiness for Robbi going forward. Good luck, sir.
– Zach Snyder discussed why he passed on Grant Gustin as “his” Flash for Justice League/Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and he can barely hide his contempt for the tone of DC’s television universe. “I’m very strict with this universe and I just don’t see a version where…that [tone is] not our world.” So, reading between the lines, Snyder doesn’t want any hero that people might actually root for and/or empathize with/genuinely think could/would help them. From all the reviews that have been rolling in (look out for ours in a few hours), I think Gustin will probably be playing the Flash far longer than Ezra Miller will, so I doubt he’s losing too much sleep over Snyder’s comments.
– Faith Erin Hicks, writer/artist of Friends with Boys and The Nameless City, is prepping a new novel, her first to not feature sequential artwork. Comics Will Break Your Heart is an interesting idea for a prose book, because it involves the creation of comic characters. I’m interested to see how this works without illustrations; the book is due in 2018.
– At this point, the remake of The Crow is synonymous with departures and false starts. Well, add director Corin Hardy to the list, who departed the project yesterday after being involved since late 2014. To quote Jane Sibbery from the original soundtrack, “It won’t rain all the time / the sky won’t fall forever…”
– Former WWE Diva Eve Torres will play Maxima – a George Perez/Roger Stern creation – on Supergirl later this season. The character also appeared on Smallville years before Superman actually did.
– The AV Club decided to see what the most dangerous weapon one could purchase for under $20 at C2E2 was, and the results made me feel better than the headline did: aside from some plastic weaponry, the staff couldn’t find too many cheap instruments of pain. As someone who hopes to bring his kids to a con one day, this made me feel slightly better about that prospect.
– IDW will be publishing a new, weekly, 5-part miniseries called “TMNT: Bebop and Rocksteady Destroy Everything,” which will be written by Dustin Weaver and Ben Bates. Bates will handle art for issue one, with Ryan Browne, Nick Pitarra, Damian Couceiro, Sophie Cambell, and Giannis Milonogiannis contributing art to the subsequent issues. That is, if I must say, totally tubular.
– And, finally, folks that know me well know that The Monster Squad is among my favorite movies from the 80s; yes it is cheesy, but it is my cheese. Anyway, someone made a Suicide Squad/Monster Squad mash-up trailer, and even cutting footage of the film over “Bohemian Rhapsody” can’t make the film look as overdone as Suicide Squad. Real quick, though: if you haven’t seen The Monster Squad, here are five quick reasons why:
1) The “Rock Until You Drop” montage
2) Frankenstein’s monster is incredibly sympathetic. My then 30 year old wife cried at one part with him unironically when I first showed it to her a few years ago.
3) Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite plays the Wolfman.
4) Rudy is still the coolest character in cinematic history
5) Spider with Human Head.
