Welcome back to The Beat Digest, a twice-weekly round-up of the biggest comics-related news stories we’ve missed, typically every Tuesday and Friday. We skipped last Friday’s edition as it was in the middle of ComicPRO, and it made more sense to catch up afterwards. Is there a story out there you think we should cover? Be sure to let us know in the comments.
§ Dark Horse revealed Avatar: The Last Airbender – Jet: Rebels and Rhinos, a new graphic novel exploring the backstory of Jet, the leader of the Earth Kingdom’s young freedom fighters in the original series. Created by the longtime ATLA graphic novel team of Faith Erin Hicks, Peter Wartman, Adele Matera, and Comicraft, it will be released on September 8, shortly after the new Legend of Korra book, Kya and the Secret of the Sand, arrives on July 28. A new miniseries, The Kyoshi Warriors, will also begin in the meantime on May 6.
§ Titan will release Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus – To Lose is to Win, a four-issue continuation of the 2024 series, written by Nancy A. Collins (who takes over from the first volume’s Kianna Shore), with art by the returning Mariano Taibo. The book will find Mead and Stix on the run from their former commanding officer Uldren, whom they discovered stole data from Tyrell to help Japanese corporation Cheshire create their own replicants. The pair will also find themselves dealing with the fallout of the yakuza civil war, and Rumika, a blade runner sent by Tyrell to destroy Cheshire. It will begin on May 6, shortly after the conclusion of Blade Runner: Black Lotus – Las Vegas on March 4.
§ BOOM! Studios announced a new BRZRKR one-shot, BRZRKR: Light Draws Breath, written by Season Butler and China Miéville, with art by Alessio Avallone (The Last Boy). Out May 20, the book tells the “grim and funny, poignant and touching” tale of a new lifeform spawned by two Bronze Age scientists using the immortal warrior B’s protoplasm. It will mark Butler’s first comic, and Miéville’s first outside DC, as well as a return to the BRZRKR universe for the latter, after teaming up with co-creator Keanu Reeves on the 2024 prose entry The Book of Elsewhere.
§ Image will release Of the Earth, a six-issue horror series written by Chris Condon with newcomer Andrew Ehrich, and drawn by Charlie Adlard. Starting May 20, it follows a woman returning to the Texan town she was raised in by her grandmother, only to find it “isn’t what it once was… and neither is Gramma.” They also announced The Cutting Garden, a gothic graphic novel by Darcy Van Poelgeest and watercolor artist Erin Connally. Releasing in September, it follows a florist in New Orleans, who’s asked by a strange girl “to deliver an earth-shattering truth in a final act of kindness and redemption.”
§ Oni Press made two reveals at IGN. Destination Kill, the solo debut of artist Joe Palmer (Time Before Time), is a four-part dystopian comedy set in 22nd century London, that follows a pair of detectives forced to fight a workers’ revolution. It’ll begin on May 13. Super Mondo Mega Mutts, meanwhile, is a four-issue homage to TMNT et al. by Curt Pires and Juan Gedeon. Set in a version of LA that was declared a no man’s land after “a fragment of an inter-dimensional civilization” crashed there, the book follows four mutated dogs battling the rogue government forces and gangs trying to conquer the city with the alien tech they’ve recovered. It will debut in July.
§ Via AIPT, Mosely creators Rob Guillory and Sam Lotfi will reteam on Innards, a sci-fi thriller starting from Ignition Press on May 6. Set in a dark future where humanity’s sole energy source is a mineral called lucifium, only accessible via “teleportation and a perilous trek across a hostile subterranean maze,” the book follows miner Roy Wilder on his first day diving for the material. However, he winds up “set[ting] off a chain reaction that exposes a corporate secret, and awakens something far more dangerous in the depths below.” It was Ignition’s second reveal of the week, following Tini Howard and Amilcar Pinna‘s Sicko.
§ Dynamite will relaunch Red Sonja with the new series Red Sonja: She-Devil With a Sword, by Rory McConville (King Spawn) and Pablo de Bonis (North Bend). Starting in May, the book will find Sonja protecting Aretha, the last descendant of a bloodline being targeted by a popular revolt for a blood sacrifice. It marks a return to the traditional version of Sonja for Dynamite, whose last reboot, Sonja Reborn (by Christopher Priest and Alessandro Miracolo), will conclude with issue #6 on March 11.
§ At AIPT, Alien Books shared more about its upcoming Zorro and Tarzan comics. Howard Chaykin & Jorge Fornés‘s three-part Zorro, which’ll pit Don Diego against Napoleon, will begin on May 20, and Dan Abnett & Aaron Lopresti‘s Zorro’s Legacy, a four-issue series following Diego’s present-day descendant David, will begin on July 8. Steve Orlando & Renato Guedes‘s five-part Tarzan Beyond, which’ll see a modern version of the hero battle an undead Blackbeard, will begin in-between those books on June 10.
§ Netflix shared Winona Ryder, Chris Sarandon, Noah Taylor, Oscar Morgan (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), and Kennedy Moyer (Task, Roofman) have joined the cast of Wednesday season three. No details were provided on their roles aside from their names. The project reunites producer Tim Burton with Ryder, who worked with him on the Beetlejuice movies, Edward Scissorhands, and Frankenweenie, as well as Sarandon and Taylor, who were respectively in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wednesday season three, which will also add Eva Green as Aunt Ophelia, is now in production for a presumed release next year.
§ Finally, Variety confirms Martin Scorsese has a voice role in The Mandalorian and Grogu. The director, who’s no stranger to cameo roles in his own work, plays the Ardennian fry cook who appears at the start of last week’s new trailer. While an amusing surprise given Scorsese’s infamous comments about the MCU, the filmmaker was one of the first people Star Wars creator George Lucas showed the original movie to, and he was briefly involved as a producer on Joker. Coincidentally, director Jon Favreau, who launched the MCU with Iron Man, also voiced an Ardennian in Solo, while the first season of the show similarly featured auteur filmmaker Werner Herzog as the villainous “Client.”
