April Fools Runaround: The Comics News That Wasn't

While it's gotten pretty uninspired at this point to engage in April Fools' Day jokes on the Internet, every year a few people try them out, to see what will and won't work. This year, the comics industry has had a few of these stories circulating, along with accompanying art and in at least one case, a press release. So--what might you have read too quickly and then rushed to share this April 1? Mars Attacks is NOT a Musical This one is a bit strange--a few days ago, Bleeding Cool reported that the rather strange news earlier this week that Mars Attacks would be adapted into a Broadway musical was in fact part of an elaborate April Fools' Day prank being played on the comics industry by IDW and Topps (we admit it--we bought it, and ran the story linked above).  They revealed today at Emerald City Comic Con (and by a press release) that the March 29 press release was in fact a hoax. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that Moriarty and Clerks 3 are both in early development for the stage.

While Bleeding Cool was more than willing to spoil IDW's and Topps' fun earlier this weekend, this morning they had a story of their own which seemed too good--or at least too strange--to be true. Hearkening back to old rumors their site had published months ago, they claimed that Jeff Lemire's The Robins had been confirmed by DC Comics at Emerald City Comic Con, but then upped the ante by telling fans that there would additionally be a Spoiler ongoing series, the first issue of which would be crowdsourced using Kickstarter. Zenescope Won't Really Reboot Their Grimm Fairy Tales While it hasn't been officially discredited just yet, the image at left (from a press release by Zenescope) seems too preposterous to be real. Still, at least Major Spoilers and Comic Related have run it without comment so far today. Of course, an "official" gotcha may not be necessary given that the image's filename contains "April Fools" right in it. Comic Book Resources didn't write anything themselves for April Fools' Day, but did have an interesting piece at their sister site, Spinoff Online, about how Hollywood has "won" April Fools' Day, because every awful gimmick/gag idea anyone could come up with has already been greenlit at a major studio. We'll keep this updated throughout the day if anything else pops up.