October 25, 2014

SATURDAY MORNING NEWSBREAK

ITEM! JEM AND THE HOLOGRAM COMICS FROM IDW

IDW has announced that Jem will be joining their line of licensed comics beginning in April of 2015. You can read the release here. Jem was a cartoon series that ran from 1985-88 as a promotion for Hasbro's line of dolls designed to combat Mattel's Barbie

The series, helmed by writer Christy Marx, showed Jerrica Benton inheriting her father's music label, Starlight Music, which had been gutted by crooked executive Eric Raymond. Discovering a holographic supercomputer named Synergy, Jerrica was able to use projector earrings to become Jem and save Starlight Music with her friends.

IDW has a line extensively made-up of licensed properties, particularly from the 80s. Amongst them are the ongoing various G.I. Joe and Transformers series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles both as original works and based on the Nickelodeon cartoon, and the recently-ended Ghostbusters. IDW's other Hasbro properties include two series based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Littlest Pet Shop.

ITEM! MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE IN 2017

Variety reports that Hasbro has announced that their flagship franchise, My Little Pony, will be coming to the big screen in 2017. The film will be the first to be produced through Hasbro's Allspark Pictures where the company will either self or co-finance movie projects.

My Little Pony first hit the market in 1983 and made the jump to Saturday morning programming. After several years in a direct-to-video film market, Pony made a huge comeback with the 2010 debut of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The series has also spawned two limited-release movies called Equestria Girls, which portrays the familiar characters as humans. The fifth season is set to begin in early 2015.

ITEM! DARKWING DUCK RETURNS TO COMICS

Comic Book Resources reports that Darkwing Duck will be returning to comics in 2015 published by Toronto-based Joe Books after the release of an omnibus containing the previous series published by BOOM! Studios. Darkwing Duck: the Definitely Dangerous Edition will be released in January and will feature some revised content, including continuity tweaks to tie it into the animated series better and some new artwork by series artist James Silvan. The comics take place one year after the series finale.

Darkwing Duck was Disney's parody of the superhero genre spinning out of DuckTales that aired both on Saturday mornings and as part of the popular Disney Afternoon weekday syndicated block of programs. After Disney's acquisition of Marvel Comics in 2009, all outsourced Disney licenses were gradually ended and placed in limbo. Until now, only Disney's Toy Story franchise made the jump into a Marvel publication after a run at BOOM!.

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