Welcome to the second to last Comics Relief of 2016, comics fans! We start this week with Marvel’s plans to honor the legacy of Carrie Fisher in the pages of their Star Wars comics. Read on for all the details.

Marvel’s Poe Dameron series will pay tribute to Carrie Fisher

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— Phil Noto (@philnoto) December 27, 2016

The world is reeling from the untimely death of Carrie Fisher earlier this week, and right now the folks at Disney/Lucasfilm are probably figuring the best way to properly honor Fisher’s iconic Princess Leia in future Star Wars films. But comics take a lot less time to produce than movies, and already comics creators who grew up with Fisher’s iconic portrayal are finding ways to pay tribute.

Because of Fisher’s sudden passing, Marvel’s Poe Dameron writer Charles Soule announced on Twitter that he has plans to reshape a scene in an upcoming issue to recognize the Star Wars legend. In his tweet, Soule said, “There’s a funeral in Poe Dameron #14, and Leia’s present – writing that scene today. Wasn’t originally about her, but now it will be.” The current Poe Dameron series is drawn by artist Phil Noto, who released a lovely rendition of Fisher as Leia on Twitter, which you can see above. Issue #14 of Poe Dameron is set to hit in early 2016. [CBR]

DC Comics releases trailer for Rebirth titles

DC Comics’ Rebirth was a huge success for the company in 2o16, and now the publisher has created a trailer for the upcoming collections of the first Rebirth story arcs, which are due to hit early next year. You can watch the first full Rebirth trailer above.

Brian Bendis announces departure from Guardians of the Galaxy

A little more than a year and a half after leaving the X-Men behind, Marvel’s number one writer Brian Michael Bendis is now departing the world of the Guardians of the Galaxy as well. Bendis has been the primary writer for the Guardians of the Galaxy since since 2013, a good year before the movie version made Star-Lord, Groot and Rocket household names. Now Bendis has begun his final Guardians storyline, “Grounded,” is last week’s Guardians of the Galaxy #15.

As to why Bendis is leaving the Guardians now, he told ComicBook.com, “Number one, I had an end story that I’ve been building to and it’s time to unleash it. Number two, there were other projects offered to me that I was like, ‘Oh, I do want to do that!’ and something has to go. Even I have a bandwidth cap, even though no one in Marvel thinks that I do.” What could those projects be? Mum’s the word, just as it is with who the new creative team will be for the Guardians once Bendis leaves, although he already knows who it will be. For more on Bendis’ departure from the title, read the full interview at the following link: [Comic Book]

Scott Snyder teases Batman event series

In last week’s Comics Relief, we mentioned a big Batman-centric event from DC Comics coming next year, from the award winning team of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, whose Batman run was one of the highlights of the New 52 era. Now in an interview, Snyder has shed a wee bit more light on just what this series will entail, saying the series will be “celebratory, and huge, and crazy.” Snyder also revealed that he recently spent time breaking the story with DC CCO Geoff Johns, who is of course the man behind the current success of  DC Rebirth.

“Greg [Capullo] calls it our Batman heavy metal rock opera. It’s going to be a big, epic Batman story with flaming armor, an over-the-top capstone to a lot of the stuff that we’ve done with him. It’s all mapped out. I’ve just been out to Burbank with Geoff Johns going over it, and going over what he’s doing. It was great. It was one of the best story meetings that I’ve ever had. We sat there for a couple of days and really tightened up some of the screws. Geoff was incredibly generous and helpful with it.”

Snyder then added, “I don’t want it to be grim. I don’t want it to be superheroes arguing over something. Superheroes won’t be fighting superheroes. I want it to be celebratory, and huge, and crazy. I am going for out of control dinosaurs and lasers. It should be fun.” For more hints at this new DCU event, click on the following link for the full interview: [CBR]

Frank Miller makes Trump reference in Dark Knight III: The Master Race

In Frank Miller’s original Dark Knight Returns, the story was filled with talking heads from the news media commenting on the event of the series, as meta-commentary on the then-new phenomenon of 24 hour cable news. In 1986, Miller could not have imagined social media like Twitter, where people who were about to become President of the United States would be able to go off on random tangents in a very public way.

So in keeping with the original Dark Knight series providing commentary on our cultural climate, the current issue of Dark Knight III: The Master Race has talking heads, but they are all from the world of social media…including a dead ringer for our President Elect. The panel (seen above) has him commenting on the recent Kryptonian invasion of Earth, which was defeated by Batman and Superman. I say the panel pretty much speaks for itself. [CBR]

March is Venom month at Marvel

In March, Marvel Comics celebrates everyone’s favorite alien symbiote antihero Venom, with a series of “venomized” variant covers. Among the 23 covers are the following:  Invincible Iron Man #5 by Rick Leonardi, X-Men: Prime #1 by Kris Anka, Doctor Strange #18 by Tess Fowler,  Black Panther #12 by Elizabeth Torque, Captain America: Steve Rogers #13 by Tom Raney, and several more. You can see all the available covers are in our gallery below. [Bleeding Cool]

Images: Marvel Comics / DC Comics