The Rundown: Bill Watterson Guests on “Pearls Before Swine”, “Doctor Strange” Actors Line Up, and more

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 either david@multiversitycomics.com or brian@multiversitycomics.com.

– In a story that was at first excitedly speculated about and then strongly rumored and now confirmed, Bill Watterson provided guest work for “Pearls Before Swine”, a comic strip by Stephan Pastis. Watterson, someone who has VERY RARELY worked since the end of his seminal work “Calvin & Hobbes”, guested on the strip simply because Pastis reached out to him, and Pastis shares the story on his site. It is literally the coolest story I’ve read in forever, and it makes me tremendously happy that this randomly happened.

– Apparently the short list for Marvel to play “Doctor Strange” is pretty short indeed: Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy (or at least that is who is currently known). It seemed Twitter was against this, strangely, but I can tell you one thing: I am all in for either of them. They are two of my favorite actors around, especially Hardy, and I think they’d both bring some seriously interesting things to Stephen Strange. Here’s hoping we see one of them get the role.

– Chip Zdarsky shared photos from a recent trip he took to Image Comics’ offices – and then to Applebee’s – and the results are amazing.

– The School Library Journal looks at how diverse comics and graphic novels are, and while it’s a nice piece, it’s weird how it only looks at Marvel and DC and graphic novels. It’s like the piece was willfully ignorant of Image, Dark Horse, IDW and many other publishers, which seems like a fairly substantial omission.

– Ever wished your town had a Spider-Man statue with a raging boner? Busan, South Korea might just have a deal for you in that case.