Hello comics fans, and welcome to your weekend edition of Comics Relief! Lots of news in today’s edition, but before we get to all that, DC Comics has released a tribute to the recently departed comics legend, Darwyn Cooke. Read on for all the details…

DC Pays Tribute to the Late Darwyn Cooke

It’s been only a few weeks since the world of comics lost one of its best and brightest creators, when Darwyn Cooke lost his struggle with cancer. Although he was known for many different comics across many different publishers, thanks to his work on books like Catwoman, The Spirit and especially The New Frontier, he was especially loved at DC Comics.

This week as a tribute to their fallen friend, DC put out a two page spread honoring him with a quote from the late, great Jack Kirby, one of Cooke’s idols, and featuring art from The New Frontier. You can check out DC’s loving tribute down below. [Comic Book]

Marvel’s Disney Kingdoms Brings The Enchanted Tiki Room To Life

Ah, the Enchanted Tiki Room. If you’re a Disney theme park regular, its the chill place to cool off and have a Dole whip on a hot summer day, and listen to the birdies sing, as the song goes. Now Marvel is taking the same singing birds of the Tiki Room and is giving them their own limited comic book series as part of their Disney Kingdoms line. The five part Enchanted Tiki Room comic will be coming to us from writers Jon Adams and Horatio Domingues, with covers by Brian Kesinger.

The new series is being described as an “anthology-like” story, with each issue featuring a different tale. According to writer Jon Adams, “Essentially what we have is sort of a ‘Fantasy Island’-like scenario, where each week, visitors are coming to the island. And for this series, everyone that’s coming there, whether or not they know it, they’re facing some sort of personal issues. And through the series they learn and grow and eventually, if all goes well, then they resolve those issues and are better for it in the end.” The first issue arrives in October 2016. [Inside the Magic]

Go Behind the Scenes of Hasbro and IDW’s Revolution

Just last week, IDW broke the news that all of their Hasbro toy properties they license would all come together in a giant shared universe event called Revolution. Now the folks over at Comic Book Resources have the real behind the scenes look, with a new  video featuring  Revolution creators and editors discussing the impending Hasbro crossover, along with a look at art from the upcoming series. Revolution starts in September with a biweekly, five-issue main series co-written by Cullen Bunn & John Barber, with art by Fico Ossio. You can watch the video below:

[CBR]

Archie Gives Josie and the Pussycats a 21st Century Revamp

Archie Comics is bringing back its most successful Riverdale spin-off, as comics’ most famous all-girl rock group Josie and the Pussycats are getting a modern day revamp from the publisher this fall. The new ongoing comic series is coming from the creative team of co-writers Marguerite Bennett, Cameron DeOrdio and artist Audrey Mok.

This new Josie and the Pussycats series is said to “explore the foundations of the friendships between Josie, Valerie, and Melody and their rivalry with Alexandra Cabot.” In a statement, new series writer Marguerite Bennett said “I am incredibly grateful and outrageously stoked to be working on Josie. Josie and the Pussycats is zany, high-energy, hilarious, and utterly sincere. The book can’t launch soon enough.” You can read our full story on the Josie relaunch right here: [Nerdist]

Is A Comic-Con Museum Coming to San Diego?

Could a museum celebrating all things Comic-Con be coming to San Diego? Maybe. It seems that organizers of the San Diego Hall of Champions sports museum announced this week they’ve been in talks with Comic-Con International about creating a comics-focused museum in the city’s Balboa Park.

These are very early talks apparently, although it seems as  though discussions have been under way for at least the past year. “There’s no hurry to move it along,” said Hall of Champions board member Dan Shea. Hopefully, if this happens, it means Comic-Con is staying put in San Diego, otherwise visitng that museum might be a bit…awkward. [CBR]

Lea Thompson and Howard the Duck Reunite. Kind of.

The Marvel movie universe did not start out with a bang, but with a whimper. Long before Iron Man, the X-Men or even Blade, the very first Marvel movie was the 1986 movie Howard the Duck, based on Marvel’s famous comic from the ’70s. Produced by George Lucas, who was then riding high off the original Star Wars and Indy movies, and starring Back to the Future’s Lea Thompson. Despite that pedigree, the movie was a notorious box office bomb.

But it seems time heals all wounds, and thirty years is a long time. Actress Lea Thompson has agreed to allow Howard the Duck writer Chip Zdarsky to use her likeness and name and appear as “herself” in an upcoming story. In the upcoming Chip Zdarsky-written and Joe Quinones-drawn Howard the Duck #8, we see Thompson show-up at Howard’s office to hire him for a missing persons case. The actress told the Hollywood Reporter that in the story “my career goes into a 100 different directions and I embrace them all…They asked me to appear in the comic and I was like, ‘Sure, why not?'” For our full story on Lea and Howard’s reunion, click the following link: [Nerdist]

Marvel Previews first “Death of X” Variants

So with all the excitement over Civil War II, it’s easy to forget that Marvel has another event coming up soon, this time centered around the apparent death of a prominent member of the X-Men universe, titled The Death of X. Who could it be? Wolverine is still currently dead, as is Cyclops and Jean Grey, and Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Cable have all died and come back too recently. In any event, Marvel is doing a series of variant covers surrounding The Death of X which all show different X-Men characters biting the big one. You can check out the first few in our gallery below: [Newsarama]

Have a great weekend, folks!

Images: DC Comics / Marvel Comics / IDW / Archie Comics