Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the weekend. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
– Tess Fowler announced via Twitter on Sunday that she was stepping down from “Rat Queens” at issue #16. “Sometimes despite the best maps,” she wrote, “you just can’t foresee every hurdle thrown in your path.” She then assured everyone that there was “no ill will”. Shortly later, series writer Kurtis J. Wiebe also announced he “decided to put ‘Rat Queens’ on hiatus”. Fowler was the third artist on the series, following original creator, Roc Upchurch, and Stjepan Šejić. As of this writing, the animated television series currently remains in development.
– Potter fans have no shortage of merchandise, spinoffs, and errata to accentuate their experience with the Wizarding World. (I honestly had to pull myself away from a Harry Potter creatures coloring book page in order to write this update.) Well, turns out, in the early 2000s, Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon actually pitched a Harry Potter comic to WB and J.K. Rowling. At the time, Rowling said she’d never do comics. But with the upswing in the medium’s popularity and the current branching out of the Wizarding World, who knows if that will stay the same? Dillon admits that he and De Liz did get “The Last Unicorn” job from their pitch, which helped lead them to “The Legend of Wonder Woman.” And we’ll always have “The Books of Magic” if we wanted a magical schooling comic fix.
– Speaking of projects that never saw the light: Alex de Campi shared some character sheets of a potential “Josie and the Pussycats” reboot she was working on with Lara Margarida. De Campi and Margarida pitched this back when “Archie vs. Predator” was coming out, but alas.
– Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment have accepted an R-rating for the upcoming animated adaptation of The Killing Joke. This is the first animated DC movie to receive the rating, and who knows how that will bode for the character. This follows an M-rating for the last Arkham video game and the R-rated upcoming Director’s Cut of Tyrant Lizard Batman v. First Order Superman. I guess DC still believes they’re not for kids anymore. Or at all.
At the very least, The Killing Joke reunites Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill with Batman: The Animated Series co-creator, Bruce Timm.
