Among the numerous panels announced for Comic-Con@Home, Dark Horse Comics has unveiled its four virtual panels, which includes an early look at the upcoming Netflix animated series Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles. Other panels feature a celebration of 2021 being Dark Horse's 35th anniversary, the creative team of Groo Meets Tarzan, as well as a look at their various comic book adaptations of small screen media. These offerings will be available online and premiere on July 23 and July 24.
Comic-Con@Home is an online convention experience run by the San Diego Comic Convention as a result of the pandemic canceling SDCC back in 2020. This is the second time the convention will be held online and it will run from July 23 to July 25, 2021. However, just like last year, Marvel Studios and DC Films will be skipping Comic-Con@Home. This leaves a lot of room for smaller publishers to take the spotlight on the television and film fronts.
Dark Horse Comics announced its programming for Comic-Con@Home on its official website. The first virtual panel, titled "Stan Sakai and the Usagi Chronicles," will be on July 23 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.. The cast and the creators of the upcoming CGI animated show on Netflix, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, will be joined by Usagi's creator and comic book legend Stan Sakai to talk about the series. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans may be familiar with Usagi as he appeared in several versions of the TMNT show. Folks on the panel include the voice cast and the show's behind-the-scenes artists. The host will be Terry Kalagian, an executive producer on the show who works with Gaumont Film Company, who is working in collaboration with Netflix to bring the show to the streaming platform.
The second panel, "35 Years of Dark Horse: Past and Present," celebrates Dark Horse's 35 years in the industry and takes a look at what the future for the company will hold. Members on the panel include key people in the world of Dark Horse: Karen Berger, overseer of the Berger Books imprint and one of the founders of DC's Vertigo imprint; Cullen Bunn, a comic book writer known at the publisher for his series Harrow County and Lucky Devil; Christopher Golden, another comic book writer known for Lady Baltimore as well as Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.; Faith Erin Hicks, a comic book writer and artist whose worked on the titles Avatar the Last Airbender and Pumpkin Heads; and Roye Okupe, the head of YouNeek Studios, who partnered with Dark Horse earlier this year to promote African stories and creators. The panel will be on July 23 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The third panel, "The Sergio, Mark, and Thomas Panel," will discuss the upcoming comic book mini-series Groo Meets Tarzan. The panel features co-writer and co-artist Sergio Aragones (MAD, Sergio Aragonés Groo the Wanderer), co-writer Mark Evanier (Garfield, Sergio Aragonés Groo the Wanderer), and co-artist Thomas Yeates (Prince Valiant, Conan). This panel will be held on July 24 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. The final panel for Dark Horse will be "Dark Horse Comics: From Page to Screen and Screen to Page," which puts the focus on how writers adapt works outside the medium to comics. The round table discussion will include the talents of David Goodman (The Orville), Jody Houser (Stranger Things, Critical Role), and Paul Tobin (Plants vs. Zombies), moderated by PR coordinator Anthony Mauro. It will be held on July 24 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Be sure to join Dark Horse and a bunch of other companies during Comic-Con@Home from July 23 to 25, 2021.
Source: Dark Horse Comics