Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla Writer Talks Power Scaling Impossible Crossovers
Nick Marino joined his fellow comic writers in San Diego at Comic-Con, a short trip from his comic book store in Los Angeles, to promote the new highly anticipated crossover Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla. The first issue, which came out this July, features a fight between the Sonic gang, Doctor Eggman, and Mechagodzilla. Marino’s humor, creativity, and sense of collaboration is vibrant in the first issue, leaving promising potential for the upcoming saga. We had the opportunity at SDCC to catch up with him and chat about his creative process and what it took to get this comic to the world.
Marino explained that his ideas often come to him in the early morning, “What’ll happen is when I’m trying to fall asleep again, I’ll say to myself, ‘Oh, I’m gonna think about this next script I have to finish,’ and I’ll start letting my mind wander.” He adds that Transformers tale The Morphlingsspecifically came to him when he went back to sleep and had a lucid dream.
When asked to reminisce back to the very first comic he ever wrote, it didn’t take much digging for him to think back to his “golden book” for school.
“When I was eight, I wrote my own book called Toxic Killer, and it was very similar to what I write now,” he says. Toxic Killer features the main character getting kidnapped and having to find out where he is and escape. “There’s a car chase. There’s all kinds of weird stuff.” But Marino revealed that he “didn’t think of himself as a writer after that” until further into his adult life.
For Sonic the Hedgehog x Gozilla, Marino was inspired and excited to experiment with the “scale of life” between the drastically different sized characters.
“Power is not based on size. Power is based on what you’re capable of doing at your size,” he muses.The first issue of the comic displays Sonic’s advantage through his control and agency by making his first instinct in an attack to save the citizens on the ground that could be stepped on by Mechagodzilla. Marino adds that teamwork is another core part of why Sonic and his team are strong and capable for their size, “I find with that core four of Team Sonic [Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy], I really enjoy them for the ways that they complement each other.”
Marino has his own team that helped bring this comic to life. Jack Lawrence and Reggie Graham were behind the art and colors and helped Marino visualize this “scale of life” theme. He says he “was so lucky” to work with Lawrence and Graham and emphasized that they have “to be together because that’s their magic, it’s their alchemy.” The collaborative discussion among them did not need to be expansive because he makes an effort to entertain them through his writing and, “make them fully immersed in the illusion to the point where they are drawing from a place of feeling.”
Getting published is a notoriously challenging feat, and Marino says that this comic, “took a lot of force of will to stick with this project because there’s a lot of people that you need to be patient with.” The people in question are the number of editors and brand executives that have to get on board when they already have busy schedules with projects in the works.
“You’ve got to empower your editors to empower their superiors to all work together to empower the approvals people at the American or international branches to inspire their bosses at the Japanese branches to say yes,” Marino says of a long process that he nevertheless had patience for, and a team of “kind and open” editors that aided him in the publication process.
Marino’s excitement to explore the themes of size and dynamic between Sonic and Godzilla are what ultimately got him to stick with the project, “I get so much motivation from playing with themes that fascinate me. So I was so excited to play with the scale dynamics and try to imagine ‘How does this small creature with great speed perceive a creature with great scale?'”
The prospect of future readers also keep Marino motivated and inspired in the writing process, “That’s great to have your story, your narrative inspiration, but the other thing you have to do is hold on to the self belief in your story, It’s one thing to feel like I will be entertained, it’s important to hope they [the audience] will be entertained.”
Marino’s debut to this epic crossover in the first issue of Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla is an exciting display of his and his collaborators creativity and inspiration behind the iconic characters, and how Sonic and Godzilla’s different sizes and mentalities play out on the page.
Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #1 is available in comic book stores and via IDW Publishing now.
Todd McFarlane Talks Expanding the Spawn Universe Ahead of its Big Anniversary
As Image Comics prepares for its 35th anniversary next year, 2027 also marks 35 years since the debut of Spawn. The creator of both iconic comic entities, Todd McFarlane, remains incredibly busy as these celebratory dates loom. The Image Comics co-founder and founder of McFarlane Toys keeps a lot of plates spinning but thankfully took the time to speak with us at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 to provide an update on his latest projects. In an exclusive interview with Den of Geek, McFarlane teases what’s next for Spawn, unveils the latest product line at McFarlane Toys, and offers his thoughts on the long-gestating Spawn cinematic reboot.
The next big thing for Spawn on the immediate horizon is Spawn 77, a comic book limited series by McFarlane and collaborator Mark Spears set to debut this September with a 64-page supersized inaugural issue. The series is based on the original sketches McFarlane made of Spawn as a teenager in 1977, 15 years before the superhero made his official comic book debut. While McFarlane Toys has since released an action figure based on these sketches, it was Spears’ idea to release a comic book story surrounding this version of the character. Spears provides the comic book with gorgeous painted interior artwork while co-writing the story with McFarlane and its exploration of the hellish world before Al Simmons took on the mantle of Spawn in 1992.
“One of the things that he wanted to do, as a tribute, was set it in 1977 New York, which is the gritty, ugly world of New York that you see in all of those cool movies I watched as a kid when I was growing up,” teases McFarlane, while explaining the storytelling rules he provided Spears in respecting the main series’ established mythology. “I don’t want to diminish the character of Al Simmons. I don’t want the world to think that there was a hellspawn 15 years earlier, because it diminishes him. If we can come up with a story that is true to the mythology of what I’ve set up about the legend prior to Al Simmons, because he hasn’t come yet, and it’s not a true hellspawn.”
Spawn 77 joins a growing number of Spawn comic book series published through Image that have significantly expanded the fan-favorite superhero universe over the past several years. All linked in the same continuity, these titles explore different facets of the world that McFarlane created, from the popular Wild West character Gunslinger Spawn headlining his own book to other hellspawn getting their own adventures. For McFarlane, there wasn’t a worry that this would dilute Spawn but instead let the character resume his focus on solo adventures while adding to the universe.
“It felt like Spawn was becoming a little bit like a team-up book,” McFarlane recalls. “I think Spawn works best when he’s a solo act. As part of that expansion, I also gave Spawn another book, King Spawn. Now that I’ve got even more breathing space to show who Spawn is. Gunslinger Spawn, who I thought could be a breakout character, deserved some more room. The Scorched, to me, was a place where it was technically a team-up book and I could rotate different characters coming in and out.”
On the McFarlane Toys end, the company has unveiled a new line of highly detailed and accessory-loaded figures under the banner McFarlane Elite Edition. With the price of, well, everything increasing, the line was created to cater to toy collectors rather than compromising on the quality of the toys themselves. While retailing for a higher price point, the toys are not only more impressively rendered but include features like signed items that are more than worth the price of purchase alone.
“It’s us being able to make the toy exactly the way that we think the toy should be made,” McFarlane observes. “Instead of doing everything more cheaply, what if we made another division called the Elite Division? The price is going to go up, but it’ll let us make the figure the way that we want, give extra accessory pieces and get the articulation down, maybe throwing in a card or a signature in there. We’re actually doing a value box that hopefully people will respond to, saying that they got a lot for their money.”
One of the longstanding projects that McFarlane has been working on is a cinematic reboot of the character, following the 1997 superhero movie. With Jamie Foxx attached to play the hellish superhero, McFarlane notes that the project is still very much in the scripting phase, and the creator is looking for a screenplay that captures his dark and creepy vision for the character. Without having to worry about the property being tied to a corporate entity like DC and Marvel’s library of characters, McFarlane is holding out until the project goes all-in on how vicious and twisted Spawn can truly be.
“I’m not bound by having to worry about some big licensing program that’s out there in the world. I just want a cool movie and if that means I don’t sell a single T-shirt, that’s okay.” McFarlane notes. “Jamie can still do that level of intense acting that I think needs to come. There’s a love story component to the Spawn character and if you watch something like Django Unchained and you see the scenes in that movie where he sees them doing something to his wife but he can’t do anything about it, I feel the burn in his eyes. I feel that anger welling up inside of him as a character and that’s what I’m trying to harness.”
Written by Todd McFarlane and Mark Spears and illustrated by Mark Spears, Spawn 77 #1 is published September 9 by Image Comics.
Marvel’s New Strategy Shift May Put an End to Its Live-Action Shows
Marvel’s Disney+ era has been a mixed bag, to say the least.
When the burgeoning streaming service first rushed to fill its roster with post-Avengers: Endgame content for a hungry Marvel fandom mourning the halcyon days of Iron Man and Captain America, audiences were certainly treated to some real live-action gems from Marvel Studios as the pandemic lingered and kept many people inside glued to their screens.
WandaVision captured people’s imaginations by provoking endless theories, while Loki gave us some fantastic retro-futuristic visuals and time-traveling adventures. Meanwhile, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier brought Steve Rogers’ winged sidekick Sam Wilson and a traumatized Bucky Barnes together for some pricey, globetrotting action.
People wanted more, and they got more. Hawkeye returned for his own solo show, and Phase 4 soon introduced Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk. Opinions were hit-or-miss, but became more miss than hit when Phase 5 began with the disastrous Secret Invasion and continued with two more underwhelming projects: a “Marvel Spotlight” spinoff for Echo and the long-awaited Ironheart. Even the Netflix-Marvel era got time to shine again as Daredevil returned to screens, but that didn’t make much of a splash either.
With the exception of Agatha All Along and the rather left-field Wonder Man, Marvel’s recent live-action series just haven’t matched the quality of the ones it dropped onto Disney+ in its infancy. Disney and Marvel also seem to have realized that too much content has diluted Marvel’s brand. The MCU just hasn’t felt as “special,” not when you can watch its endless superheroes arrive with a new project at home every few months alongside its blockbuster movies. It’s all been too much. Too many sequels, too many characters, too many plotlines, and too many post-credits scenes teasing things that may or may not ever be revisited.
In response to its own whiff of “superhero fatigue,” Marvel’s strategy shift has been to dial back the number of projects it’s putting out. Head honcho Kevin Feige recently addressed that shift in strategy at SDCC while promoting the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, saying, “A lot of it is a strategy we’ve talked about for a while, of focusing on quality. We always try to focus on quality, but when quantity is so much, you get spread thin. We didn’t want to be spread thin, and the Avengers is as important as it comes.”
But this shift in strategy isn’t just about generating fewer MCU movies; it also seems to have been applied to the studio’s Disney+ output. Wonder Man recently saw its season 2 renewal revoked, and Nova is now set to become a movie instead of a show. Indeed, after this year’s WandaVision trilogy-capper VisionQuest, the only live-action show in the works is an already-wrapped third season of the viewership-challenged Daredevil: Born Again.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that third season of Born Again was its last. Nor would I be surprised if Marvel puts an end to its live-action Disney+ shows completely. While the studio seems committed to continuing its foray into animation, with further seasons of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies, and X-Men ’97 on the way, it appears ready to take a well-earned break from its live-action projects.
Would this really mean no more live-action Marvel projects heading to Disney+? Perhaps. I do think the studio might be swayed by further one-off passion projects or “Special Presentations” like Werewolf by Night or the recent Punisher: One Last Kill in the coming years, but with quality over quantity in mind, all of Marvel’s focus needs to be on making the MCU feel like an exciting reason to visit the multiplex again. The studio will be encouraged by Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s incredible box office and pre-sales for Avengers: Doomsday, but only time will tell if Marvel can build the MCU back up to its former glory and put the lows of its Disney+ crunch era behind it.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Jean Grey Reveal Resurrects Abandoned Marvel Comics Story
This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day
By the time Spider-Man: Brand New Day made it to theaters, the revelation that telepath Jean Grey was behind the attacks on the Department of Damage Control didn’t shock anyone. Those who don’t know the name Jean Grey just nodded along, and those who recognized the name as belonging to one of the most important X-Men characters have likely been aware of recent speculation about the role Sadie Sink would play.
What did come as a surprise was the motivation behind Jean Grey’s actions. Jean attacks Damage Control because they captured her sister Sara, a character who existed in the comics. However, the film goes on to reveal that Sara Grey shares the same power set as Jean and in fact taught her how to use her telepathic abilities. That twist deviates from the comics that Marvel published, but it also brings to mind a storyline that could have been one that X-Men writer Chris Claremont would have preferred.
The Other Grey Sister
Sara Grey first appeared in 1980’s Uncanny X-Men #136 by Claremont and John Byrne, one of the final issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Having been fully transformed into the Phoenix and already wrestling with the consequences of her vast power, Jean returns to her home to speak to her family one last time. Sara thrills to see her sister as a superhero, but Phoenix’s powers scare her parents. Aftereward Jean’s father orders her out of the house. She and her parents appear a few issues later for Jean’s funeral, but Sara doesn’t really get attention until the story “Phoenix” by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum in 1981’s Bizarre Adventures #27, a black and white magazine intended for more mature audiences.
“Phoenix” follows Jean and Sara two years before the latter’s death, shortly after she developed her Phoenix abilities. The sisters take a boating trip that goes wrong when they’re attacked by the Atlantean supervillain Attuma, who transforms them into underwater-breathers to become his brides. Jean changes into the Phoenix to defeat her enemies and escape with her sister, eventually using those powers to restore Sara to her natural state. But the event only intensifies Sara’s fears about mutants, and her worry that her young son will also be a mutant and deal with the same bigotry Jean faces. After that, Sara only has one brief appearance before she dies in X-Men #36 (1994), subsumed into the techno-organic alien species known as the Phalanx. A few flashback issues later on fill in some details about Sara’s life, revealing that she and her husband became mutant rights activist who clashed with Friends of Humanity leader Graydon Creed, but that’s pretty much all there was to Sara Grey.
But there was almost so much more, and it goes all the way back to the Dark Phoenix Saga.
The Sara Grey Saga
Originally Claremont and Byrne had wanted Jean to overcome the Phoenix and have a redemption arc, even after she destroyed a planet. But for Marvel’s EIC at the time, Jim Shooter, Phoenix had gone too far. She needed to die, so Claremont and Byrne wrote her bravely sacrificing herself to save her teammates.
The Dark Phoenix Saga was instrumental in helping Claremont make the X-Men into the premiere superhero team, and its huge sales numbers got Marvel hankering for more spinoffs. An informal brainstorming session between Shooter, artist Jackson Guice, and writer Bob Layton led to the idea of X-Factor, a new team consisting of the four surviving original members of the X-Men—Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel—with a new fifth member to take the place of the late Jean Grey. But Shooter saw a promotional opportunity, which trumped his demand that Phoenix must die. When X-Factor #1 hit stands in 1985, it would feature all of the surviving OG X-Men, plus a resurrected Jean Grey.
The idea may have excited readers, but it irritated Claremont. Beyond the irritation that a major X-book was launching outside of his purview, Claremont had used Jean’s death to mature and advance his other characters. In particular, Cyclops had, by this point, retired from the X-Men, married another redhead named Madelyne Pryor, and had a son with her, the infant Nathan Christopher. To resurrect Jean and send Cyclops running back to her would be to ruin all the character development he had done.
So Claremont offered a compromise: instead of bringing back Jean, what about having Sara’s mutant powers manifest? Claremont had always toyed with the idea that Sara had latent abilities, which never manifested for a few reasons. Sara never had a triggering traumatic event, unlike Jean, who watched her childhood friend die in front of her. Furthermore, Sara’s internalized fear of mutants would keep her from exploring those abilities. In this version of X-Factor, a traumatic event would cause Sara’s powers to fully manifest as an adult, and the original X-Men would convene about her to help her work through it.
No New Day
Of course, Shooter said no. Instead Jean was brought back to life, Cyclops ditched his family to be with her and join X-Factor, and we got a few utterly terrible comics. Eventually X-Factor sorted things out and the entire situation led to some compelling stories for Cyclops and Jean… but not for Sara. Still, Brand New Day gives a look at what could have been, in another universe, where mutants were still feared and hated. A world where Sara embraced her destiny alongside sister Jean.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Box Office Puts Wallcrawler in League of His Own Among Superheroes
For generation after generation, folks have loved Spider-Man. That’s no secret after the O.G. Spider-Manstarring Tobey Maguire was the first movie, period, to gross over $100 million in a single weekend back in 2002. And before there was Top Gun: Maverick, there was Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 bringing audiences back to multiplexes at the tail-end of the pandemic with its $260 million opening.
Still, nothing could quite prepare us for how big Spider-Man: Brand New Dayturned out to be this past weekend. The superhero epic marked Tom Holland’s return to the webs after nearly five years and it absolutely dominated multiplexes around the world. In the U.S. alone, the film opened at an astonishing $355 million, the best record since Avengers: Endgame’s still unbeaten $357 million in the long ago times of 2019. More difficult to fathom is that Brand New Day also grossed $927 million worldwide, a bigger global bow than any movie in history, sans again Endgame. For context, Christopher Nolan’s wildly successful The Odyssey, which also features Holland, has grossed “only” $911 million total to date after three weekends. And that was with the precious IMAX screens in its camp.
So Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a massive hit, and one that probably could not come at a better time for Marvel Studios. While the film’s production and rewards are shared with Sony Pictures, this is in the ballpark of the mega-blockbuster event that Marvel Studios at its peak in the late 2010s was churning out a few times a year (if BND is obviously at the upper end of that scale). Clearly every once in a while they still can, as gleaned by Deadpool & Wolverinein 2024, which grossed $1.3 billion in its total run. More often, though, Marvel Studios has recently seen a couple of valleys like Thunderbolts*($382.4 million) and The Marvels($206.1 million), as well as films somewhere in the middle Fantastic Four: First Steps($521.9 million).
So another almost instantaneous billion-dollar grosser is a big deal and can do nothing but rekindle fond memories of Marvel heroes ahead of what might be the brand’s most important film of the decade, Avengers: Doomsday, due out in December. While Spidey is still flying high, the sum of Avengers’ many parts could use some of that high-flying Spidey love which hasn’t abated at all in the last seven years. In fact, it seems bigger than ever.
One of the few characters out of Marvel’s 1960s golden age not partially or largely created by Jack Kirby, Spider-Man was purely the idea of Stan Lee and then given eventual shape and crucial detail by Steve Ditko. He’s a superhero who rather than being a golden boy like the DC archetype, or even Marvel’s own Captain America, was closer in age to their kid sidekicks. Save he was just a kid. And an unpopular, self-pitying one at that.
The universal appeal of the underdog, adolescent spirit trying to find their way in the world, even with spectacular powers that let them soar through the canyons of Manhattan like Tarzan, has proven to have eternal appeal as long as every generation has more young people struggling to find their tribe, their love, and/or their careers in a world that will leave us all feeling battered and broken at some point. As pivotal Spider-Man artist John Romita Sr. surmised, the secret of Spider-Man is he offers a soap opera where every once in a while a fight breaks out.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day pinpoints that perhaps better than any MCU Spidey flick to date. And more impressive, the audience seems to prefer it, at least right now. Five years ago, No Way Home was the biggest show in town anywhere in the world because it had the novelty of bringing back all the old villains from the 2000s and 2010s, as well as previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Conversely, even with the Hulk, Punisher, and a secret surprise villain (that probably surprised few hardcore fans), No Way Home is a one-man show hyped up purely on the excitement audiences still have for this character and this interpretation. They didn’t even mind the film was essentially marketed without a villain, which has long been one of the selling points of every Spider-Man movie since 2002.
It says something about this moment in the ongoing saga of “superhero fatigue.” This phenomenon is definitely present. In the 2010s, almost any superhero movie with a decent marketing budget and some splash page worthy imagery could be a hit. Spider-Man and Batman movies, sure, but also Guardians of the Galaxy with its talking tree and raccoon, or “B-tier” heroes like Ant-Man and Aquaman. Even the not-great first Venom movie grossed over $850 million worldwide. Compare this to Venom: The Last Dance doing barely better than half that in 2024 with $479 million, which is still a lot better than this summer’s other major superhero release, the much maligned Supergirl—a movie we might add also was unceremoniously dropped on PVOD last week.
Audiences seem to be tiring of obscure or middling superhero movies. Luckily, Brand New Day is neither. Instead it proves that even in an era of “fatigue,” some superheroes’ popularity remain bulletproof. And perhaps not surprisingly, swinging to the top of the heap seems to be Spider-Man. Makes you wonder which other heroes might join him there as the genre’s salvation?
Spider-Man: Brand New Day – What Really Happened Between Peter and Ned at the End?
This article contains Spider-Man: Brand New Day spoilers
An amazing and uplifting moment at the very end of Spider-Man: Brand New Day has got Marvel fans talking and unsure of what they really saw when Peter Parker (Tom Holland) finally shook his former best friend’s hand and revealed his real name.
Some people believe that Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) remembers who Peter is in that moment. Others strongly disagree, believing that their iconic handshake is just muscle memory and Ned is simply remembering that MJ let slip that Spider-Man’s real name is Peter earlier in the movie. As one of Spidey’s biggest fans, Ned would certainly be excited to suddenly know he’s actually meeting and making friends with Spider-Man.
So, does Ned remember Peter Parker in those final moments of Brand New Day, or doesn’t he? Let’s dig deeper.
What Do We Actually See Happen?
In the closing minutes of Brand New Day, Peter goes to buy flowers at the bodega after realizing that isolating himself is not the answer. His Spidey DNA has been taking over because he’s been neglecting his own identity, and Peter has decided to make more time for himself so he can find a real balance between being Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
He spots his erstwhile best friend Ned sitting at a table and plucks up the courage to go over and talk to him. Ned can’t remember his name. This time, Peter tells him the truth (not Maynard!) and reaches out to shake Ned’s hand. After they do a traditional handshake, Peter begins transitioning into their special “best friend” handshake moves, and Ned immediately mirrors him. Ned looks up with a surprised expression: “Peter!” Cut to credits.
Was Doctor Strange’s No Way Home Spell Broken?
Spider-Man: No Way Home saw Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) cast a spell to make everyone forget Peter Parker. When MJ (Zendaya) unexpectedly discovers Peter’s letter explaining who he really is and why the spell was cast during the events of Brand New Day, she categorically tells him she can’t remember him and doesn’t love him. She reasons that the spell that Strange performed really did work, and nothing has changed. Being around Peter again, even seeing his face or being in his arms, has not broken the spell.
Ned also has no idea who Peter is, despite being obsessed with Spider-Man and creating a tracker to follow his every move. They build Lego together and banter like old times, but none of their interactions moves the needle. Ned and MJ clearly do not remember Peter, but when Peter tells the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) who he really is while they’re fighting, the Hulk suddenly pauses and backs down. Though Strange’s spell may have worked on Banner, it may not have worked on the Hulk, yet it’s also possible that Peter’s honesty in that moment with the Hulk changed something.
Jean Grey’s Psychic Bubble
We also meet the MCU’s version of the X-Men’s Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) in Brand New Day. At this point, she is in the midst of being able to harness just some of her powers. Jean is not yet an Omega-level mutant, but when she is faced with her sister’s killer at the end of the movie, her fury fuels her powers, and she creates a psychic bubble that traps everyone within a certain radius inside it. MJ and Ned are also trapped in this bubble.
Before this happens, Jean hops into MJ’s mind and possesses her body. She fools Peter into thinking she’s the real MJ, and romances him until they kiss. Peter is horrified when Jean reveals it’s not the real MJ kissing him, and she mocks him for thinking “true love’s kiss” will unlock MJ’s memories of him.
Yet, by the end of the movie, it’s clear that she has come to trust Peter, and even keeps him alive using her powers when he is fatally wounded protecting her from Frank Castle’s sniper bullet. Jean and Peter are perhaps far from friends, but she owes him her life.
Since Jean’s powers can canonically restore repressed or erased memories, it’s possible she may have given MJ and Ned back the opportunity to access their memories deliberately or accidentally, either when they were trapped in the bubble or afterwards, waiting to be unlocked by “true love’s kiss” (or “true love’s handshake” when it comes to Ned).
Ned’s Latent Magical Powers
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, we discover that Ned has some latent magical powers. While it took Doctor Strange months to unlock the simple sorcery of using the Sling Ring, Ned is able to immediately wield it and open interdimensional portals to other universes, bringing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men through into the MCU when he says he wants to find Peter. Ned’s grandmother always believed he was magical, and he tells Strange that he experiences tingling in his hands.
It’s unlikely that Ned remembers that he finds it so easy to perform real magic after Strange’s memory-erasing spell in No Way Home, but his lingering determination to track Spider-Man and his handshake connection with Peter may have unlocked Ned’s magical abilities on some level.
It’s definitely possible that Ned could have accidentally broken Strange’s spell in the handshake moment, but the same honesty Peter used on the Hulk also seems to trigger something in Ned when Peter tells him who he really is. Though that honesty didn’t work on MJ, it could have very well worked on both Ned and the Hulk.
MJ and the Black Dahlia
MJ states she has no memories of Peter, but we see her crying and touching the Black Dahlia necklace Peter gave her in Spider-Man: Far From Home when she is trapped in Jean’s bubble. It feels important that she is still wearing it, and her emotional reaction at this point in the movie suggests she is connecting with what the necklace means to her.
Whether this means MJ is regaining memories of Peter while trapped in the bubble remains to be seen, and there is certainly no clear proof that she has had any of her memories restored during the events of Brand New Day. However, she tells Ned during one of their conversations that she feels like she’s “waiting for something,” and is unable to make any big decisions. Her relationship with her new boyfriend also seems somewhat strained. On some level, she knows that Peter is missing from her life.
We will have to wait and see whether MJ ever unlocks anything beyond those vague feelings, and whether Ned really does remember Peter. Luckily, we have been promised that Spider-Man will return!
The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 2 Review – Booby Trapped
This review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 episode 2, “Haven.”
This solid and entertaining second episode of Dead City’s third season really offers up some plum visuals. It begins with a shot of the Statue of Liberty’s dilapidated head turning on its side and transitioning into that of a walker flat on the pavement as Maggie unceremoniously sticks a knife in it, and “Haven” makes the neoclassical sculpture a pretty great motif for Maggie’s decision to open up the hospital shelter to anyone and everyone—as long as they’re good people or could potentially become good people.
A happier Maggie is now embracing the notion that those outside her wholesome refuge should have the right to pursue a better life, even if that puts Renata, Luis, and the rest of the hospital’s denizens in danger. The greater their numbers, Negan reasons, the greater the chance they have of enduring. And Negan? Well, no matter what he tells Maggie, he’ll always be there to take out the trash.
My fears after last week’s installment that the show would spend a frustrating string of episodes toying with the concept of killing The Dama were completely unfounded. And I could not be happier to be wrong about that. Indeed, The Dama is almost immediately captured here in a hilarious, Scooby-Doo-esque scene of ineptitude, as she yells at Maggie and Negan from the shadows of a theater before dropping a chandelier on them and almost falling prey to a hungry walker as she scurries away. Maggie inevitably wrings her hands over what to do with their new captive, while Negan looks Maggie dead in the eyes and tries in vain to convince her that The Dama is a lost cause and her death is inevitable.
Negan, having thrown himself into a holding pattern of booze and video games at Dillard’s bar instead of helping the hospital effort, doesn’t know where he fits into this new world. Is he the kind of good person or potentially good person who could fit into Maggie and Renata’s community? Or is he still a one-man justice system who will do the violent things no one else has the balls to do before a real justice system manifests itself? By the end of “Haven,” we have our answer: he’s still very much the latter.
Negan’s own little haven is a good contrast to the sprawling hospital, with its burgeoning teaching program and its many plans of action. Dillard’s bar has been treated to some excellent production design, and its lights and festive decor make it seem like a relatively cool place to hang out in the apocalypse, especially for someone like Negan, who has no plans of action. He doesn’t seem at all distracted by the filth on the floor or the smell everyone keeps yapping about; it’s Dillard’s preoccupation with making the walkers part of the bar’s charm that irritates Negan. He doesn’t want to be reminded of what’s happening out there. When he steps outside for a smoke, he levels his eyes dispassionately on a bunch of rats gnawing at a barely-moving walker on the ground and figures out how he’s going to play things for the time being. That blinking red light and Maggie’s guilt trips mean he can’t fully disassociate from the world, so he falls back on the only way he knows how to maintain.
A future where Negan feels morally torn over offing his enemies is still a possibility …just not today. As he squints at a random painting of “the two hilltops of kinship” and one of The Dama’s minions tries in vain to explain how they “form the foundation of civilized” yadayadayada, Negan can’t help but see some “sweet-ass boobies” instead. And once we see it his way, it’s almost impossible to view the painting as anything other than of two huge, entirely unsubtle tits.
It’s not a subtle character study of the man, but I love how ludicrous his fixation on the “boobs” painting is. It’s no wonder he became The Saviors’ leader. Maggie may implore Negan to “help build something,” but Negan is always going to see her peaceful haven as something other than what it should be, whether that’s a vulnerable target or just a futile effort in pretending the world isn’t deeply fucked. He can contribute to (and even bolster) Maggie’s vision by suggesting she grows her community, yet Negan is living out the timeless philosophical adage of “wherever you go, there you are,” and just doesn’t know who else he can become yet.
When Maggie lights up the Statue of Liberty like the Bat-Signal and attracts the attention of a group of armed people across the water, Negan slips into The Dama’s prison and uses Maggie’s knife to kill her, giving everyone the illusion that she took her own life so they don’t have to deal with whatever consequences she’s got coming. No need to worry about The Dama anymore; Negan’s justice has been served. And would we really have it any other way?
Things are moving pretty quickly this season. Maggie is even talking about “ploughing Central Park,” and the hospital will have more than enough resources to support a lot more people. Whether its population will reach a level where it will be hard to take down remains to be seen, but season 3 of the show seems to be dead set on giving Maggie a greater mission beyond vengeance, and that’s a joy to behold.
New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 premiere Sundays on AMC.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 7 Review: Kill Him, Caraxes
This review for HOUSE OF THE DRAGON season 3 episode 7 contains spoilers.
Say what you will about House of the Dragon (and we do – in great detail – week after week) but one cannot deny that it certainly has some dragons…a whole house full of them, in fact.
Before the Game of Thrones prequel series premiered in 2022, HBO made sure that the fire-breathing inspiration for House Targaryen’s scaley sigil was front and center in marketing. This made sense from a purely promotional perspective, of course, as the beasts serve as the best bit of visual spectacle that George R.R. Martin’s universe has to offer, and therefore its chief appeal for casual viewers who simply want to watch Medieval scenery go up in flame. What a delight it’s been, however, to discover that the centering of the dragons serves tremendous thematic importance as well.
In the immortal words of Ben Wyatt: “You forgot about the essence of the game [of thrones]. It’s about the cones dragons.”
Yes, it turns out that Vhagar, Syrax, Caraxes, Sheepstealer, and friends aren’t just flying nukes (though they are that), they’re also the living embodiment of House Targaryen’s downfall. Both readers of the source material Fire & Blood and watchers of Game of Thrones understood that well enough going in. But the way in which House of the Dragon has used its dragons as independent operators in that downfall (and not merely symbols of royal decadence and hubris) is a pretty remarkable thing.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the opening and closing scenes that bookend the penultimate episode of the show’s penultimate season. Here we begin with Helaena (Phia Saban) sweatily tossing and turning in bed, experiencing several of her prophetic Targaryen “Dreams” (or perhaps the symptoms of Mommy’s Suspicious Soup from last week). After being rudely awoken by Her Grace Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), the two half-sisters share a conversation about prophecy and… what else? dragons. For her part, Rhaenyra wants to know why Helaena no longer rides her mount, Dreamfyre.
“When I was a girl I wanted to fly but now when I’m with Dreamfyre it’s … too much,” Helaena says. “You believe the dragons alter us in some way?” Rhaenyra questions, undoubtedly thinking of her father’s own skepticism regarding the family familiars. “You now have many dragons. Are you yourself not altered?” responds Helaena.
Naturally, Rhaenyra does not believe herself to be altered by the presence of dragons in her life. Then, in the scenes to follow, the woman once known as the Realm’s Delight throws her Master of Coin under the bus, gets eaten out by her Master of Whisperers, and takes part in a Mexican standoff with her husband/uncle, her cousin/step-daughter/niece-in-law, her other cousin/step-daughter/niece-in-law, some guy named Addam, and all of their dragons.
So yeah, it’s probably safe to say that Rhaenyra has been altered by the presence of dragons in her life. Part of that alteration is undoubtedly the byproduct of the power dragons represent. They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely and in the World of Ice and Fire there is no power more absolute than a dragon. While that is compelling enough a concept on its own, what House of the Dragon adds to the Westerosi gumbo is even more compelling.
These things quite simply cannot be controlled.
We’ve previously seen examples of How NOT to Train Your Dragon including Aemond being unable to stop Vhagar from chomping down on his cousin Lucerys, and Rhaena proving helpless to prevent Sheepstealer from running roughshod through the Battle of the Gullet like a Border Collie off-leash at the dog park. We see it again now as that aforementioned standoff among Rhaenyra, Daemon (Matt Smith), Baela (Bethany Antonia), Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell), and Addam (Clinton Liberty) devolves into a 4 v. 1 beatdown of Sheepstealer for no reason other than Syrax, Caraxes, Moondancer, and Seasmoke deciding that it was their weird Vale cousin’s time to go.
“Call off your dragon!” Daemon yells to Rhaenyra across the battlefield. But she could no sooner call off Syrax than she could take flight herself. In fact, the only command any dragon heeds amid the melee is Daemon’s “Kill him, Caraxes,” to put an injured Sheepstealer out of his misery. Turns out dragons really like that one.
Though the dragonriders of the Dance of the Dragons are the ones in the saddle, they’re not the ones behind the wheel. Even the name of the conflict itself, the Dance, connotes a whimsical pastime for the weapons being deployed, and not the righteous war for the Iron Throne being waged by a very messed up family.
Speaking of a very messed up family: Aegon Targaryen, everybody! In my review from the episode two weeks ago (big thanks again to Mr. David Crow for pinch hitting last week), commenter “yorkslado” respectfully wondered if I was wrong to compare Aegon’s journey through his kingdom to other fantasy examples of a king slumming it with the common folk and coming to better understand their plight. Upon some reflection, I must concede that the yorkslado was right. Aegon’s arc this season isn’t about learning to empathize with the smallfolk. It’s about him learning that they have their place on the totem pole: well under him.
Recall that Aegon never actually wanted the Conqueror’s crown thrust upon him. He enjoyed all the excesses of royalty without any of the responsibility – so much so that Cole and Aemond had to literally hunt him down through the streets of Flea Bottom to bring him back to the Red Keep and sit his ass down on the iron chair. Actually sitting on that seat for a time did little to ignite a passion for rule inside him. Even roughing it out in the country with Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) and Ser Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Lannister) didn’t light a fire under Viserys’ eldest son.
But now Aegon has suddenly found his voice as he screams his identity to a gathering of Rivermen allies of the queen, right before a recovered Sunfyre arrives on the scene and torches them all.
Aegon’s re-embrace of his destiny would feel sudden if it weren’t for that aforementioned reunion with his dragon. Sunfyre means everything to Aegon and this season has done an excellent job of capturing the dynamic described in the book. Sunfyre is not only uniquely beautiful among his kindred creatures, he is also uniquely close to his rider. It’s through Aegon’s bond with something so otherworldly and ethereal that he seems to be fit for the Iron Throne… even if he very much is not.
It’s telling that Aegon grows more confident the closer he gets to Rook’s Rest where Sunfyre’s supposedly slain body lays. It’s also telling that Aegon insists on a path for himself, Larys, and Tyland that brings them nearer to the danger of the Riverland armies en route to a ship to Braavos and not to the sure safety of Tyland’s home at Casterly Rock. It’s also as though… something is drawing Aegon closer for mystical purposes unknown. Within that context, Larys’ defection of the game isn’t about his fear of Black-aligned foes, it’s about his fear of Aegon.
Of course, Aegon should be afraid of Aegon as well. While his declaration of purpose is undeniably cool and will serve as the narration for many hype videos on TikTok, it’s also just words. And as George R.R. Martin always tells us “words are wind.” The real power behind Aegon and his claim is the literal dragon that shows up to kill some folks. Aegon undoubtedly believes that Sunfyre sprang into action to save its master, inspired by his courage and words. But as we’ve seen time and time again, no one truly knows why the dragons do what they do. A groggily-revived Sunfyre could have just as easily been draw to the slaughter by simple sights and sounds and chosen to burn all those men because it was a fun thing to do.
Aegon finally truly believes he should be king. And he believes that because Sunfyre seems to believe it. Unfortunately, Westeros doesn’t have any Blu-ray copies of Jordan Peele’s Nope lying around for a parable on what happens to people who believe they’ve bonded with nature.
While House of the Dragon season 3 episode 7 both opens and ends on a very strong note, the rest of the installment is more of a mixed bag filled with the same cliche dialogue and uninspired direction that has dogged much of the season. Even that climactic dragon confrontation comes along with some “Are you still watching?” streaming prompts like “She was Sheepstealer’s rider! All this time, you knew!” Still, even when this hour isn’t at its best, it remains thematically on point.
A lack of control looms large throughout this chapter, even when the dragons aren’t present. Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), bless him, is now completely in the thrall of Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) in Harrenhal. Though he still believes himself a king ready to re-establish his kingdom from the burned out husk of Harren the Black’s old castle, it’s clear that Alys is Aemond’s puppeteer. No, scratch that, she’s something more powerful than Aemond’s puppeteer… she’s his mother.
That much becomes apparent when Aemond’s actual mother makes her arrival at Harrenhal (the Westerosi “fast-travel button” is getting pressed quite liberally these days) to give Aemond that spiced wine that he loved so much as a lad. When Aemond collapses from the poison in the chalice – just like his new mommy Alys wanted him would happen! – she responds with a maternally exasperated “idiot.” Now she’s got to use her river magic to revive her dumbass son, who is also her lover in true Westerosi fashion.
This family, man. Perhaps it’s for the best that the dragons are making all the decisions.
Even the folks who think they’re in control of their destiny are hilariously out of their depth. Ormund Hightower (James Norton), learned man of letters that he pretends to be, has what I’m sure he believes is a productive conversation among equals with a very much alive but very much kidnapped Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint). His proposal to the elder statesman is so unclear and ill-considered that it proves to be the catalyst for Ormund’s captive family Gwayne (Freddie Fox) and Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) to finally openly imagine what life without Ormund would be like.
Of course, by episode’s end Ormund will finally make an alliance with one of the few other Dance combatants as dumb as he is. Ulf (Tom Bennett) agreeing to sell out his friends has a distinct “Cypher meets Agent Smith scene in The Matrix” energy. Hell, Ormund even shares Agent Smith’s aversion to bad smells! Combine Ulf’s treachery with Hugh’s (Kieran Bew) disappointing reunion with his wife last week and the (dragon)seeds of treachery have now firmly been planted.
Given House of the Dragonseason 2’s unusually truncated ending and season 3’s unusually epic beginning, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of momentum heading into next week’s finale. But if the forecast provided by the dreams and dragons in this penultimate episode are any indication, we should soon have plenty of fire and blood on our doorstep.
The House of the Dragon season 3 finale airs Sunday, August 9 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Shows How to Do a Shared Universe Right
This article contains so many spoilers from Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man finds himself with a bit of a conundrum. He’s heard about something called V-Max, something that a mysterious body-jumper is attacking the Department of Damage Control to find. Even with an AI-driven 3D-printer at his disposal, Spidey lacks the top-secret access to learn about V-Max. So what does he do? He goes to check in with fellow superhero Yelena Belova, aka the new Black Widow.
For some, Florence Pugh‘s brief appearance in a tub and on a zoom screen is everything wrong with modern blockbuster movies, a key-jangly use of a fan-favorite character to distract from loose plotting. But in fact Black Widow’s appearance—along with the appearances of Bruce Banner, Punisher, Jean Grey, and even the Hand Ninjas—are all realistic and reasonable ways to tell a Spider-Man story in a shared universe filled with heroes.
Without question, Brand New Day is stuffed with ancillary characters. The most obvious example is the chief antagonist Jean Grey. Most people know Jean Grey as a flagship member of the X-Men, the central figure in the famous Dark Phoenix Saga. The arrival of Jean into the MCU raises huge questions about the status of mutants in the universe and the future of the X-Men. But here’s the thing: Brand New Day answers none of those queries! It doesn’t even gesture toward the answers. Instead it treats Jean as a reflection of Peter’s story, as the latter finds himself mutating with his arachnid DNA overtakes his human DNA. He fears it will make him something monstrous, and as a mutants Jean and her sister Sara get treated like monsters all the time. So her actions show Peter one path he can take.
And yet, he doesn’t go that way, even as Peter comes to empathize with the young woman who opens his eyes about the moral compromise of aligning with Damage Control.
Brand New Day is a story about characters, chiefly Peter; it’s not a bunch of nods to X-Men lore, nor does it reveal Professor X in a post-credit sequence where the kindly benefactor offers Jean admission to his School for Gifted Youngsters. Why? Because this is a story about Spider-Man. Not Jean.
To be sure, some would prefer that Xavier appear in a post-credit scene. In the early days of the MCU, teasers for upcoming stories heightened the sense of a shared universe and an ongoing narrative. So when Captain America: The Winter Soldier ends with a glimpse at Baron von Strucker holding the Maximoff Twins, few people felt teased or cheated. But at this point, the novelty has long worn off and even the post-credit scene we do get in Brand New Day—which is Spidey-related, but may very well refer to someone other than Tom Holland appearing in Avengers: Doomsday—distracts from the story we just saw.
You know what doesn’t distract? The Hulk, the Hand, or the Punisher. Yes, all of these characters come into the movie with their own agendas and baggage, but none of that matters for Brand New Day‘s overall story. Hulk shows up because Peter needs some advice on genetics and he happens to know an expert, and his presence opens the door for Jean to mind-control him to increase her attack. The Hand are there to show how far Damage Control has gone to expand their reach into super-humans. Even the Punisher shows up to demonstrate how far Peter has ignored his human side, sinking to a point where Frank Castle of all people is his only ally, an ally who warns him against continuing to walk an isolated road.
Sure, all of these roles could have been filled by other types of characters. We could have had Peter visit Curt Connors to discuss genetics, Damage Control could have used the Lobo Brothers as enforcers, and Peter could have brought MJ to the Prowler’s lair to hide out. All of those characters have more history with Spider-Man in the comics, but they haven’t appeared in the Holland movies and thus would have required more exposition. The shared universe allowed Brand New Day to pull in characters that audiences already knew and save time telling their story.
And how does Brand New Day use that time? By focusing on Spider-Man. Whether he’s talking to Jean Grey and fighting the Hulk or reuniting with MJ and Ned, Spider-Man is at the center of the story. It’s good storytelling, made more efficient and effective because of the shared universe.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in theaters.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day: Where Does Spidey Go from Here?
This article contains Spider-Man: Brand New Day spoilers.
One need not look at the box office returns for Brand New Day to know that Spider-Man is the most popular character of all time. He’s recognizable around the world and has starred in a constant stream of comic books, movies, video games, television shows, and of course merchandise. Almost immediately after his debut in 1962, he has been the face of Marvel Comics, if not superheroes in general. And yet, because of Marvel’s decision to sell adaptation rights to Sony decades ago, he’s been a side player in the MCU, sneaked into the franchise through Captain America: Civil War and always subordinate to big-hitters in the Avengers.
But with Brand New Day, that’s not the case. Not only is Spider-Man the central figure that connects everything from the X-Men and the Avengers to Hulk and Punisher, but he ends the film with a new sense of purpose. Brand New Day plays as a coda to the trio of movies starring Tom Holland as a teen Peter Parker, hanging out with his high school pals, and opens the door to not just more grown-up adventures but perhaps a life beyond wall-crawling.
Gone From Home
In the final moments of Brand New Day, Peter starts to buy the flowers to put on May’s grave, continuing a practice he’s been doing since her death four years earlier. But upon seeing Ned, who still doesn’t remember Peter Parker, he stops and decides to engage. The shot of recognition dawning on Ned as he and Peter reenact their signature handshake hints at the restoration of their friendship—but that’s all it does, hints. We don’t see them fall back into their familiar banter, nor did we see Peter and MJ declare their love for one another again.
Instead the movie ends by opening the door to a different type of friendship with Ned, just as it did a different type of relationship with MJ. Or, in other words, the ending saw Peter finally grow up.
The ending of Peter’s arcs with MJ and Ned completed his transition from not just high school, but the previous MCU Spider-Man movies. Those three films made use of Peter’s status as a high schooler, both in their supporting cast of teachers and friends and in set-pieces built around prom and school trips.
But now, Peter’s free to make new relationships, which has always been one of the most interesting parts of Spider-Man comics. Of course, this Peter has not yet met his best friends from the comics, Harry Osborn, son of Norman. That may be because Norman and Harry don’t exist in the MCU—Willem Dafoe‘s Osborn said as much when he visited the universe in No Way Home—but it also means that Harry can be Peter’s adult friend, not an old pal he somehow knew back in school.
Even more exciting are other pals from the comic that Peter has yet to meet, from girlfriends Felicia Hardy (aka Black Cat), Gwen Stacy, and Carlie Cooper to mentor Robbie Robertson and his son Randy, or fellow scientists Max Modell and Hector Baez. Like all young adults, Peter has to realize that there’s a whole world for him beyond high school. Perhaps most important of all, this version of Spider-Man has fully moved out of the shadow of his mentor Tony Stark, which can change the ways he interacts with his villains.
Bring on the Bad Guys
Peter’s move into adulthood also opens the way for a different set of bad guys. Both Homecoming and Far From Home had incredible villain performances, strong takes gave well-known baddies from the early days of the comic, under the direction of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, refreshing twists. However, both Vulture and Mysterio were fundamentally laborers who had a grudge with Tony Stark, making Spider-Man a class-warrior for the rich. No Way Home didn’t have Spidey fight the working class, but he was saddled with retreads of other villains who fought other Spider-Men, all of whom were also from the Ditko era.
Brand New Day gave Spidey a different type of conflict. His mistakes pit him against the desperate mutant Jean Grey, and when he realized his error, he fought against an oppressive government organization in the form of Damage Control, complete with its army of Hand Ninjas. Even if the movie ended with Peter still very much aligned with the police, it still put him on the side of the downtrodden and vulnerable and against more powerful enemies.
Then there are the movie’s secondary villains. While Scorpion is another early Ditko creation, Boomerang and Tarantula are later additions, each with their own interesting motivations. Boomerang is a jobber who does crimes for cash, while Tarantula is a thug who works for an oppressive government. Most compelling of all is Tombstone, who only appeared in one scene of the movie. With his striking appearance and rock-hard skin, Tombstone poses a formidable physical threat. But Tombstone operates as a gangster, a part of the New York mafia (or Maggia, to use the term from the comics) that frequently shows up in Spider-Man comics but not in the movies.
A grounded, adult Peter, free of Tony Stark’s class warfare, has room to engage these more complicated villains. He can clash with people who wield not alien weaponry or advanced AI, but just their fists and guns and a complicated web of relationships. All of which could build to one of Spider-Man’s most dangerous enemies, someone who has appeared in plenty of MCU projects, but never against Spidey: Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime.
Kingpin first debuted as a Spider-Man antagonist, but in the MCU he has existed entirely in the orbit of Daredevil and Punisher. But maybe it’s just as well that Peter Parker doesn’t fight the Kingpin. Because maybe, it’s better for a different wall-crawler to get some of the action?
Spider-Man… No More?
For as much as Peter suffers throughout Brand New Day, the movie finds a positive note on which to end. Instead of ignoring his lost identity as Peter Parker and immersing himself in Spider-Man, he declares that he’s both Peter and Spidey. As triumphant as that moment is, one has to wonder: did Peter go far enough? Is he moving to embracing his identity as Peter so much that he’ll let the Spider-Man identity fall away?
For as many times as Marvel has tried to replace Peter with a different spider-person, the answer to this question is obviously, “No.” But the question gains more validity in relationship to live-action. Tom Holland cannot play Spider-Man forever. So can the franchise go on without Tom Holland? Can it go on without Peter Parker?
Obviously, there have been Spider-Man actors before Holland and there will be more after. Further, Avengers: Doomsday and its follow-up Secret Wars do offer an opportunity to soft reboot the universe, giving an opportunity for a new actor to take the role of Peter. However, that need not be the only choice. We may get a different web-head swinging around New York.
Most obviously, there’s Miles Morales, the main character of the Spider-Verse movies. Miles hails from a different universe but with so many multiversal things happening in Doomsday and Secret Wars, it wouldn’t take much to bring him to the mainline MCU, allowing Marvel to capitalize on one of its most popular characters. We could see the MCU toy with something like The Clone Saga, introducing Ben Reilly as a new Spider-Man or bringing Miguel O’Hara from the year 2099 into present-day. These options could give Holland a break to do other work while leaving the door open for his return, giving fans deep-cuts from the comics to keep them entertained while the main Spidey is elsewhere.
Then again, Holland has already said bringing Miles Morales into the MCU is something “I’m really working towards,” and that he’d love to “shepherd” an actor playing Morales in the same way that Robert Downey Jr. mentored him. So… it seems pretty likely we’re getting Miles sooner than later.
Swinging Into the Future
Clearly Marvel has plenty of options for Spider-Man. With Brand New Day providing a palette-cleanser, the MCU Spidey has a new lease on life. It’s the perfect opportunity to let Spider-Man grow up a little, make some more complicated friends and fight a different breed of bad guy, if not step aside altogether.
Whatever Marvel intends to do, there’s one thing they must keep in mind from here on out: Spider-Man is the best superhero in their bullpen, and he needs to be the center of their universe, forever showing the rest of the heroes how to take great responsibility for their great powers.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in theaters.
Samara Weaving as the MCU Emma Frost Is Perfect X-Men Casting
Bow down, peasants. The White Queen has arrived.
While Spider-Man: Brand New Day had to swing into theaters through a cloud of rumors about Sadie Sink playing Jean Grey, Marvel has no intention of playing such games for another lady love in the life of Scott Summers. Deadline is reporting that Samara Weaving, best known for the Ready or Not films, has been cast as Emma Frost, the haughty mutant telepath who has fought with and against Marvel’s Mighty Mutants. And it’s hard to think of a better casting choice.
Frost made her debut in the all-time classic Uncanny X-Men #129 by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the 1979 issue that also introduced the Hellfire Club and Kitty Pryde. Based on the sex club featured in an episode of the 1960s British TV show, The Avengers, the Hellfire Club was a social club for the most wealthy and powerful people in the world. The exterior of the Hellfire Club makes it seem like an organization for the rich to indulge their fantasies, complete with men dressed in 18th century garb and women in lingerie. However, the inner circle of the Hellfire Club is run by influential mutants, most notably the Black King Sebastian Shaw and the White Queen, Emma Frost.
In those early stories, Emma plays like a straightforward supervillain in a skimpy white outfit. She uses her telepathy and her army of Hellfire Club soldiers to attack the X-Men and shore up her power, mocking her enemies for daring to stand up to her. But Claremont soon begins fleshing out Emma, first by introducing the Massachusetts Academy, an elite prep school for young mutants that Frost operates as counter to Xavier’s School for Youngsters. Even in these stories, Emma reveals herself to be someone who cares deeply about young mutants and, despite her love of money and power, wants only the best for the next generation. When her young students, the Hellions, get slaughtered by a rival group called the Upstarts, Emma teams with former X-Man Banshee to create Generation X, a new group of young mutants that includes Jubilee.
Ever since then, Emma has moved into the center of the X-Men universe, becoming a traditionally heroic figure that best serves mutant children. However, she has lost none of her snarkiness, even when teaching a group of platinum blonde teen telepaths called the Stepford Cuckoos or having a psychic affair with Cyclops, with whom she has a long and rich romance after Jean’s death. She even managed to form a strong friendship with the now-grown Kitty Pryde, the girl she once tried to kill, who can appreciate Emma’s snobbiness and also remind Ms. Frost that she’s just a Bostonian who puts on airs.
In short, Emma Frost must be at once arrogant and vulnerable, domineering and funny. And that’s what makes Weaving such a great choice. Where X-Men: First Class didn’t give January Jones much space to build her disaffected take on Emma, one imagines Weaving will get a lot to do. The Australian actress has made a name for herself in horror and thrillers like Ash vs. Evil Dead and The Babysitter. She also has revealed a sense of humor that can be goofy (see her self-deprecating cameos in Babylon or Scream VI) or absolutely ruthless in a way that Ms. Frost would appreciate. Her role in the recent Over Your Dead Body, where she plays an unhappy spouse who realizes her husband is trying to kill her and decides… to screw with him before offing him instead is pitch black fun, especially when Weaving is at her iciest.
She also proved in the more recent Ready or Not 2that she has more than enough charisma to anchor an entire franchise of demonic mischief, finding space to play both the comedy and humanity of a woman who married into the eccentricities of the wealthy and damned.
Weaving makes so much sense as Emma Frost that we really only have one question: who can be the more powerful telepath, Emma or Jean Grey? For that, we’ll have to wait until the X-Men fully arrive on screen in the upcoming movie from Jake Schreier.
X-Men is now in pre-production.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day – How Sadie Sink’s Character Will Change the MCU Forever
This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
After months of speculation, we can finally say for sure that the X-Men have arrived to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, one of them, anyway, but it’s a founding member! Sadie Sink is indeed Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a mutant telepath and one of the most important characters in X-Men history.
Even so, and with Jean Grey at the center of the movie, the film didn’t actually do much setting up for the future of the X-Men. Neither Cyclops nor Wolverine appeared, and the post-credit scene didn’t involve her getting an acceptance letter for Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. We didn’t even see an exit sign for Salem Center, New York, when Jean rode away on a bus presumably upstate. But the mere existence of a high-profile mutant in the MCU means that the universe will be changed forever. Here’s how.
Feared and Hated?
In a lot of ways, the original Fox movies had it easy. When Senator Kelly complains about mutants who can walk through walls and into any house, or even control someone’s mind, at the start of 2000’s X-Men, we understand why people would be afraid. Such powers are new to human characters we meet in the movie, and they’ve never seen anything like this before, used for good or ill.
But that’s not the case in the MCU. Over the course of 36 movies, the MCU has shown time and again how people with incredible abilities can help regular people. Even though the citizens of the MCU have seen villains like Thanos and Loki try to wipe them out of existence, they’ve also watched the Avengers save the universe again and again. Moreover, regular people celebrate the powerful, enshrining them with celebrations like AvengerCon (seen in Ms. Marvel) and Rogers: The Musical (seen in Hawkeye).
So what makes mutants different? Why would someone love Thor but fear Storm?
Brand New Day gives us an answer. As an impulsive teenager, Jean will stop at nothing to retrieve her sister, Sara. She hops into anybody that suits her needs, treating even people who just happen to be on the street nearby as a tool. Consider the young man who talks to Peter after the first failed suppressor field test. As far as we can see, the man did nothing to threaten Jean or Sara. And yet, Jean took over his body, used him to threaten Peter, and allowed him to get stuck in Spider-Man’s webbing.
The climax, with Jean’s psychic attack only intensifies this fear. Hundreds of people who had nothing to do with Damage Control or its treatment are trapped in a bubble, held frozen but conscious and, if the tears on MJ’s face are any indication, terrified. To his credit, Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton pays attention to the average people in New York in a way we haven’t seen since the days of the Sam RaimiSpider-Man movies. The camera holds on the faces of the frozen people, even before Punisher walks us through them, showing us how regular people react to this attack upon their lives. This attention to regular folk helps Jean’s attack feel more immediate than even the climax of Thunderbolts*, when the Void zapped away citizens, but did it while floating above them.
In Brand New Day, we can see why people in the MCU consider mutants something strange, different, and scary.
Mutants Among Us
Surely, the decision to make Jean Grey a central character in a Spider-Man movie will rankle some. While there’s certainly something to be said for letting Spidey get all the attention and letting Jean co-exist with Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel, the strategy works for building up the mystery of the mutants. Spider-Man does not recognize Jean and Sara as harbingers of an evolutionary step up. He just sees them as two girls who happen to have powers.
Jean may be the most prominent X-Men to officially appear in the MCU—X-Men ’97 and Deadpool & Wolverine don’t count—but she’s not the only mutant. We’ve already confirmed that Namor and Ms. Marvel are mutants, and the same might be true of She-Hulk: Attorney at Lawguest characters Mr. Immortal and El-Aguila, even if they aren’t identified as such in the show. What happens if the information from Damage Control leaked to Detective Jean DeWolff got out into the public, and they saw that these five people were all just born with their powers? What seemed like a random coincidence starts to feel like a pattern—and then it becomes scary.
Jean’s introduction in Brand New Day could set the model for bringing mutants into the MCU. We could have Hank McCoy show up as a science student in VisionQuest. Warren Worthington III could be hiding his wings at a high society event with his father on season three of Daredevil: Born Again. In Black Panther III, T’Challa’s son could encounter a white-haired thief called Ororo Munroe, on the run from a mysterious villain.
For those dying to see the X-Men in the MCU, this drip-drop approach is likely maddening. But it would replicate the feeling that regular citizens have in the Marvel Universe when they slowly realize that mutants have become more prominent. Instead of comparing these adolescents to the super soldiers, Asgardian gods, and tech geniuses who make up the Avengers, mutants will feel like something uncontrollable, slowly taking over their lives.
The Dawn of the Dream
Even though Brand New Day wisely revealed their Homeland Security analogue Damage Control and its ICE-styled agents were the true bad guys, the film did not hesitate to show just how much damage a mutant like Jean can do. On first glance, that seems like a strange place to properly introduce the X-Men, some of the most popular heroes in all of comics. However, making the first major mutant feel so scary is exactly how the MCU can show the importance of Professor X and his school.
Professor Charles Xavier built his School for Gifted Youngsters to advance his dream, a dream of mutants and humans living together in peace. Using the supercomputer Cerebro to enhance his formidable mental abilities, Xavier finds young mutants and brings them to the school where he can provide shelter and community for them while teaching them to control those powers. From that group, he selects his X-Men, a superhero team who shows the world they have nothing to fear from mutants by using their powers to help people.
In a vacuum, Xavier’s dream can feel like optimistic nonsense. But after Brand New Day, his dream seems urgent, difficult, and necessary. If Jean is just the first of the young mutants to show up in the MCU with incredible powers, then there is already a need for someplace where mutants can see themselves as heroes instead of villains, safe instead of feared; a way for them to turn the things that make them different into a force for good.
Xavier’s school is exactly that place and the X-Men are exactly that way. And one by one, movie by movie, Xavier can start recruiting these kids to a better future, not unlike a guy name Nick Fury did once upon a time. Thanks to Jean’s arrival in Brand New Day, the MCU is ready to evolve, ready to finally realize the X-Men’s dream.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.
Everything We Saw At San Diego Comic-Con 2026
Perhaps it’s not surprising to learn that, for a website called “Den of Geek,” San Diego Comic-Con is basically our Super Bowl (or Champions League Finals or something for you Brits).
No event on the pop culture calendar commands more nerd respect than SDCC. So, just as we’ve done every year for more than a decade, we hit the streets of San Diego and the halls of the Hilton Bayfront to cover it all. Whether it was hosting our own video interview and portrait studio, attending panels and press rooms, or dropping by some screenings, we made sure to take in everything we could.
Base Edition: Free with purchase at select stores within the Den of Geek Comic Store network nationwide and was distributed for free to fans in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter via the Den of Geek brand ambassador team.
Now, please enjoy our recap of San Diego Comic-Con 2026.
Den of Geek Studio Interview
Air Bud Returns
Iconic Air Bud golden retriever Buddy made an unforgettable entrance at the Den of Geek studio in San Diego decked out in his Timber-Wolves basketball jersey, brand new sneakers, and in tail with his best bud and director Robert Vince. After Buddy’s incredible modeling in the photo booth and listening skills he can officially be crowned the “good boy” of actors.
Vince discussed the excitement of coming back to the Air Bud franchise and the good memories tied into making movies over the last 30 years. The story Vince has crafted for Buddy’s return is a special one, inspired by paralympics wheelchair basketball. Vince has always been inspired by stories featuring the “underdogs” (no pun intended), so Buddy’s newest basketball teammate is Jacob, played by Aydin Artis, a wheelchair-user and basketball player on team RMF
Air Budfans are truly in for a treat with his return and bond between his new friend Jacob. Vince has captured another classic story giving the underdogs the spotlight and proving that your goals are not far from reach. Stay tuned for Air Bud Returns coming January 22, 2027. – Grace Schmidt
“Kick it up a notch,” showrunner James Tucker says. “More of everything: more action, more mystery, more messed up Batman stuff. We thought ‘how can we pull him as far away from humanity as possible?’”
“It’s a story of a man learning to be a person,” adds new season 2 head writer Geoffrey Thorne about the show’s Bruce Wayne (played by Midnight Mass’ Hamish Linklater). “He learns more about what it’s like to be a person among other people, but in the process, fights a lot of other people in spandex and blows stuff up.”
Developed by Tucker and Bruce Timm, who created beloved ‘90s animation Batman: The Animated Series, Caped Crusader borrows the Art Deco aesthetics from its acclaimed predecessor while moving the story more explicitly into a 1940s timeline filled with organized crime and sleazy, self-dealing politicians for Linklater’s Bruce Wayne to deal with. Now, in season 2, Batman will have to confront an even more challenging force. That’s right: it’s Joker time.”
“Yeah, it’s fine. It’s no big deal really,” Mathew Needham (House of the Dragon) jokes about stepping into the role of comics’ most iconic villain “It’s still surreal. It’s so strange. The audition was very clear and had two instructions [for how to voice the Joker]: European and ludicrous.”
European? Ludicrous? Count us in. – Alec Bojalad
Batman: Knightfall
Michael Mando, supervising producer Rick Morales, and producer Jim Krieg discussed Batman: Knightfall – Part 1: Knightfall, the first installment in an animated film trilogy adapting the classic 1993-04 comic storyline, which follows Batman as he’s pushed to his physical and mental limits while confronting the escaped inmates of Arkham Asylum freed by Bane.
Asked how the dense source material was balanced for both longtime readers and newcomers, Krieg acknowledged the challenge of stepping outside personal familiarity with the comics. “That is a challenge because most of us who work on [the film series] know this material really well. You do have to take a step back and not assume the audience is going to know who these characters are.”
Morales added that the team had to boil down decades of storytelling to its core to achieve equilibrium, explaining, “There’s so much in the series that was done over multiple years with a bunch of different creators that we want to try to get as much of that into [the films] as we can, but you have to distill it down to what’s the essence of the story.”
For Mando, voicing Bane opposite of Batman carried personal weight. “Batman’s been a part of my life since a very young age, and I had one of the biggest geek out moments of my career when I saw the playback of what we had done with Bane,” Mando said. “That’s when it hit me, and I said, ‘That’s my childhood, and it’s just beautiful.’”
Mando also spoke to what makes Bane compelling beyond the muscle. “Bane is not a villain, his point of view is actually very intelligent and relevant, and he says ‘Listen, Batman runs the underworld, the underworld is chaotic. Bruce Wayne runs the overworld, the overworld is corrupt. Something in the power structure needs to change. I need to break the power structure.’ And he’s not completely wrong in that.”
Knightfall arrives to break the internet digitally on August 25, 2026. – Isabella Ardetto
Blade Runner 2099
The Blade Runner story is continuing 50 years after the events of sequel Blade Runner 2048 in Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099. The series is set in a post-war world in which humanity’s greatest fear is now reality: Replicants are the dominant species. The audience follows Cora (Hunter Schafer) a human on the run disguising herself amongst the replicants and Olen (Michelle Yeoh), a replicant at the end of her life.
Shaffer and Yeoh’s respect for one another and the franchise was evident in the Den of Geek studio at Comic-Con, and Yeoh credits showrunner Silka Luisa’s passion for the successful execution of the series “I think my biggest thanks would be to Silka, who imagined this new TV series which gave us a very good and solid premise to play on.”
Schafer and Yeoh gave the studio a look into their characters’ interesting partnership at the center of this series. Yeoh explained that Hunter’s character blends in with the replicants “because she’s been running away so much, she’s lost her humanity in some way that even Olen cannot detect anything in her anymore.”
The set design played a huge role in fully immersing the actors and their characters into the previously established setting, but Luisa brought her own life to it by making the weather hot and sticky, different from the previous movies gloomy and cold weather. “There’s something about having very volatile weather. You know, it’s like it creates this sense of unease all the time.”
More is yet to be revealed leading up to the show’s release date on November 25 but the sneak peaks shown at Comic-Con and their further input on the series at the Den of Geek studio leaves fans highly eager to step back into this franchise. – GS
Brian Volk-Weiss
Nacelle Company founder Brain Volk-Weiss came to the Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con with a lot up his sleeve.
When it comes to creating toys for Star Trek, Volk-Weiss is vocal that he makes the toys he has always wanted to see on the shelves, “I’m friends with a lot of people that either work at toy companies or even own toy companies and what I would say to them for years, ‘Why don’t you do Captain Garrett? Why don’t you do Captain Jellico? I said that for years and, right or wrong, no one listened to me, which was very good for us.”
And Volk-Weiss was right: the fan response has been overwhelmingly supportive. “We came here fully loaded, this is the first time we’ve actually had product at a convention to sell, and we’re sold out and we have two days left,” he says.
Volk-Weiss has gone from making toy documentaries to selling the toys at Comic-Con and he describes witnessing that instant gratification, “It doesn’t feel real. I hope next year or a year from now, if I’m lucky enough they want to talk to me, I won’t keep saying this over and over again how surreal it is.” – GS
Carrie
As coined by Den of Geek‘s own Sam Stone, Carrie (2026) creator Mike Flanagan is bringing blazing heat to Prime Video, adding another cataclysmic addition to his “Armageddon Era.” Stepping away a bit from the original Stephen King novel, Flanagan is making his own spin on the iconic traumatized teenage telepath with a cast of rising female stars and some iconic horror OGs.
Summer H. Howell stars as the tale’s iconic protagonist Carrie White with Samantha Sloyan playing Carrie’s religious fanatic mother, Margaret White. Amber Midthunder plays Carrie’s gym teacher, Miss Desjardin; Alison Thornton plays Chris Hargensen, Carrie’s primary antagonist; Siena Agudong is Sue Snell; Joel Oulette is Tommy Ross, Sue’s boyfriend and Carrie’s prom date; and beloved Scream star Matthew Lillard plays Principal Grayle.
The eight-episode miniseries will take a new look at the source material, reimagining it for a modern Chamberlain, Maine, and examining how the landscape of social media changes the dynamics of Carrie’s bullying.
When talking with Den of Geek, Howell explained that she intentionally stayed away from the previous incarnations of Carrie to stay true to the new version they were creating, relying on Flanagan’s writing and the chemistry of the cast to portray a modern teenage girl who deals with bullies, love, and public school all while having special abilities.
“I mainly went off of the writing, and the writing was so good,” Howell says. “I felt so connected to Carrie from the start. She starts off so optimistic and curious about the world because she’s finally stepping into it. And I mean, it’s a public high school. She has no idea what she’s getting into. So yeah, just, just working with the girls and feeding off of their [energy]. It felt easy.”
Sloyan also talked about playing a vastly different Margaret White than has been previously portrayed; instead of being a religious fanatic, Margaret will be a mother who genuinely worries, protects, and advocates for her daughter.
“This is a new Margaret. This Margaret actually loves [Carrie], she’s her protector, she’s her advocate, and I feel like that just changes the whole game of who Margaret is,” Sloyan says. “I think both of us didn’t want to just bring you the same character or a similar character.”
Carrie will make her next bloody on-screen appearance on Prime Video on October 7. – Nyla Gilbert
Coyote vs. Acme
After being scrapped by Warner Bros. Discovery as a tax write-off, Dave Green’s Coyote vs. Acme is set to hit theaters August 28, documenting the explosive lawsuit between one Wylie E. Coyote and major Looney Tunes tech conglomerate Acme. Green, along with To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before star Lana Condor, who plays law student Paige, talked to Den of Geek about the comedic hybrid animated movie’s journey to the big screen.
The chaotic feel-good film stars Will Forte as an attorney who takes on Coyote as a client and faces the public pressure and private pressures of going against a major tech giant whose technology isn’t just untrustworthy, but nefarious. John Cena plays Acme’s corporate counsel and does everything in his power to stop Coyote from exposing Acme’s felonious catastrophes.
Green, inspired by the 1990 New Yorker short story Coyote v. Acme, stuck true to the source material to give viewers a creative and honorable representation of the Looney Tunes’ iconic “super-genius” resource-hunting schemer.
“It really set the tone for the whole project, and I think the thing that made that piece so great was that it really did honor the tone of the original Looney Tunes,” Green says. “We were really taking notes from that piece, and taking notes from the original Chuck Jones shorts the whole time and really doing our best to honor that kind of wry sarcasm, the kind of blunt animation style that was like quick and snappy and violent and funny, so it really, it really set the tone the whole time, that first piece.”
Fans are in for a treat, with this fun and adventurous new addition to the Tunes verse that gives heartwarming and emotional meaning to the life of Wylie E. Coyote. Coyote vs. Acme is set to crash into theaters on August 28. – NG
The Cycle
Deborah Ann Woll and writer-director Jordan Downey joined Den of Geek for a studio interview to discuss Shudder’s upcoming supernatural horror-thriller, The Cycle.
The Cycle follows Woll as Meg, who investigates her estranged father’s disappearance after his body turns up 36 years later at the scene of a bizarre crime. It falls to Meg to confront her family’s secrets as her father’s dark past unravels before her, unearthing the life he kept hidden for so long.
Woll described Meg as defined above all by her curiosity. “She is a curious person. She’s an investigative person, and I think, in a way, a mystery is her greatest vulnerability, because she never lets a question go unanswered,” she says.
To prepare, Woll and the team consulted real forensic anthropologists, and came away struck by their objective relationships with death. “Their perspective on death is kind of matter-of-fact. There isn’t much fear or unknown wrapped up in it, and it’s a little rock and roll, you know? It was metalForesenic anthropology is totally metal.”
The choice to root the story in Meg’s expertise also shaped how Downey built suspense for the film. Rather than letting the audience get ahead of her, he kept their understanding directly tied to Meg’s. “We’re ideally not too far ahead of her when we’re watching the movie, so that as she is uncovering things, we are uncovering things,” Downey says. “I find that more compelling, so that we’re all in on it together. It’s a shared experience with the crowd and the people on the screen as well.”
Follow Meg as she endeavors to uncover the truth of her father’s death and life when The Cycle releases October 23, 2026, exclusively on Shudder. – IA
Dark Matter
No matter the medium, the multiverse continues to be one of the most captivating concepts of the 21st century. Now Apple TV’s Dark Matter season 2 is taking audiences to multi-dimensional new heights. The cast of the show, based on Blake Crouch’s best-selling novel, spoke to Den of Geek about their experiences taking on these challenging characters, while also telling deeply profound human stories about identity and family.
“It’s a very exciting show, and it keeps you on your toes,” Joel Edgerton, who plays Jason Dessen, says. “And I think through that it gets to constantly return to exploring very real human questions that we ask daily.”
The show centers around Jason Dessen, a Chicago physicist whose life is upended when he is abducted by an alternate-dimension version of himself, known as Jason 2. Jason discovers that his alternate version has made different decisions, flipping his world upside down and threatening the safety of his wife Daniella (Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). Season 2 picks up where the first season left off, showing the family now on the run from the Jasons while having to figure out a way to survive.
The cast is tasked with playing multiple versions of themselves, while also navigating interacting with multiple versions of each other while challenging.
“I’ve heard many of the cast say why we got on board is for that very reason — take one character and look at all the different dimensions… look at what they might be like under different circumstances and under different pressure. That has always been one of the joys of it,” Edgerton says.
This season has given cast members even more dynamics to explore, including personal conflicts that, while challenging, have left the actors gratified.
“It was a really rewarding experience,” Connelly says. “I really loved the scenes, and I loved being able to dive into the marriage a little bit more in this season and explorewhat she was going through personally and how the fallout of all these experiences impacted the marriage.”
Answering and exploring questions about humanity in ways that would never happen in real life, at least in the foreseeable future, the cast does an amazing job showcasing how our decisions mold who we become.
Dark Matter season 2 begins streaming on Apple TV on August 28. – NG
Dugout Dads
Fans of the classic 1993 film The Sandlot are finally getting a win; a free YouTube television show directed by Patrick Renna will be coming to the platform August 28. Starring several of the original cast members including Renna, who played Ham in the original Sandlot, Dugout Dads is a retelling of its source material for the modern era of youth sports.
Dugout Dads follows Renna, who plays a frustrated dad taking over the coaching duties of his son’s baseball team and to encourage its young players to focus more on having fun and less on winning. He and his wife, played by Danielle Fishel, confront a new challenge keeping this goal from coming to fruition: their fellow parents. Made up of several five-minute episodes that will be released directly weekly on Renna’s YouTube, Dugout Dads promises to be a romp about rowdy parents, twisting the original concept of The Sandlot for a new sports landscape.
Renna and Fishel joined Den of Geek for a studio interview where they discussed the nostalgia of reuniting The Sandlot, what real-life inspiration they drew on for Dugout Dads, and what fans can look forward to when the series makes its debut.
“You want your kids to do well, so you take it a little too serious,” Renna says. “You want to watch them grow, and I think, you know, when, when you watch your kids, they are hopefully just having fun, and they sort of leave it behind them the second they get off the field. The parents, on the other hand, don’t, so it kind of was a show that needed to be made.” – Jackson McCoy
Eternally Yours
The TV pilot process goes pretty smoothly most of the time. Step 1: Somebody writes a script. Step 2: A network likes that script and commissions a pilot episode. 3. The final result either makes it to series or ends up in the pilot dustbin of history alongside Mockingbird Lane and Peyton Place: The Next Generation. CBS’ latest comedy Eternally Yours, however, isn’t like all those other pilots.
First written in 2015 by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, Eternally Yours was well-received but its story about a vampire couple experiencing the 500-year itch didn’t feel quite fresh enough in the wake of the release of 2014 vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows. The project was revived during a podcast taping in 2019 only to be hamstrung once again by a near-identical foe: the TV adaptation of What We Do in the Shadows.
Now, following multiple false starts, two Hollywood work stoppages, and a pandemic, the little pilot that could is finally able to see the light of day (or more accurately: the light of the moon for its characters’ safety). And it’s largely thanks to the success of another supernatural CBS comedy produced by Port and Wiseman.
“I did a podcast called Dead Pilots Society,” Eternally Yours star Ed Weeks explains. “My buddy Andrew Reich does staged readings of pilots that were never picked up, and this was one of them. I kind of thought I did a terrible job. Then seven years later it showed up again in my inbox. I guess, in the interim, Ghosts had become a huge success and CBS gave Eternally Yours another chance. It’s been a dream.”
When stopping by the Den of Geek studio to discuss their show’s journey, stars Weeks, Allegra Edwards, Helen J. Shen, and Parker Young were sure to pay proper homage to their ghostly ancestors… even if Young objected to the behavior he witnessed from the Ghosts cast towards yours truly in the preceding interview.
“They’re our big brother. We’re excited to be here but I was nervous so I was going to watch what they did [in their Den of Geek interview]. And I watched them be so unprofessional with you! Like they were just cracking jokes, talking about being pantless and stuff. They haven’t been helpful at all.”
Thank you, Mr. Young. I appreciate the support. [Important Editor’s Note: That was all a joke, obviously. We had a blast with the cast of Ghosts, as you are about to discover in 3… 2… 1…] – AB
Ghosts
As it is wont to do, CBS comedy Ghosts ended its fifth season on a major cliffhanger. Viewers could only watch in horror as fan-favorite specter Pete (Richie Moriarty) slowly disappeared into nothingness, having seemingly been “sucked off” to paranormal parts unknown. That’s why, when it came time to speak with actors Utkarsh Ambudkar, Román Zaragoza, and Asher Grodman about the show’s incoming sixth season, we just had to ask the question on everyone’s minds: how did Knicks superfan Jay Arondekar (Ambudkar) watch his team win the NBA Finals?
“Probably on his phone on the toilet,” Ambudkar says. “That’s probably what he was doing – hiding in some nook and cranny of the mansion where WiFi actually is connected, silently screaming because he’s the only Knicks fan in the house.”
OK so we didn’t ask about Pete. Sorry about that. But if it’s any consolation, the Ghosts team assured us they wouldn’t have answered any questions about that anyway. What they did answer, however, was what it is like to act on a show in which their incorporeal characters can’t interact with the environment around them.
“I haven’t used props for the last six years or even interacted with set pieces. I’m terrified to work on other projects,” Zaragoza says.
Adds Grodman: “I did this episode of Bookie where the shot was simply to just move a suitcase from one car to another car. For me it was like a three-act play because I hadn’t held anything in so long.”
Will a ghost finally be able to touch an item? Tune in to season 6 to find out! – AB
Grimm
NBC’s Grimm celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, with the cast reuniting at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 for a panel to support their still energetic fan base. The cast joined Den of Geek at San Diego Comic-Con for an interview about the urban fantasy show’s legacy and updates on announced new projects. Grimm stars David Giuntoli as Nick Burkhardt, a Portland detective who discovers he is the latest in his family to take on the mantle of “Grimm,” a lineage of guardians tasked with keeping the balance between humans and supernatural creatures called “wesen.”
Alongside Giuntoli, Silas Weir Mitchell (Monroe), Russell Hornsby (Hank Griffin), Sasha Roiz (Captain Sean Renard), Reggie Lee (Sgt. Wu), Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch (Eve/Julliette Silverton), and Bree Turner (Rosalee Calvert) thanked fans for their long lasting support of the show, and spoke on the long lasting friendships that they have carried with them nine years after the show’s ending.
“I think that there’s always a dream that the cast that you fall in love with, they’re all friends in real life, and I don’t think that’s always true. In our case it really is, and what you’re seeing on the screen is genuine love,” Ginutoli says. “And we wanna say, I would imagine we all do, thank you so sincerely to the fans.”
While fans can enjoy seeing their favorite castmembers back in the whimsical spotlight; there is an update on the Grimm movie in development at Peacock that was announced a year and a half ago now. “It hasn’t been greenlit. We don’t know what’s happening,” Tulloch says.
It seems as though fans must keep the momentum going to hopefully see this joyful cast back on their screens, maybe with even more Grimm projects in the future. – NG
House of R
No disrespect intended to any of the talented artists who stop by Den of Geek studio to talk shop but it’s always extra special when our fellow geeks come over… especially podcasting geeks. Joke about the medium all you like but podcasts can be intimate experiences – one-sided conversations about the topics you most love from the voices you grow accustomed to and fond of. That’s why it was a particular joy to welcome in pop culture experts Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin, hosts of Spotify’s Ringer-verse podcast House of R, among many other Ringer pursuits.
Mal, Jo, and an increasingly giddy interviewer discussed the Comic-Con experience and the state of nerd culture. Topics included the hype for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 2, predictions for the upcoming Marvel panel (of which we were all incredibly wrong), and even a proposed MLB baseball trade. Suddenly that one-sided podcast conversation wasn’t so one-sided at all! – AB
Ice Cream Man – Eli Roth
Eli Roth visited the Den of Geek studio to discuss his new horror film coming August 7, Ice Cream Man. Roth got the inspiration for Ice Cream Man during the Cabin Fever press tour.
“It was during the summer, I saw an ice cream truck, and that music just makes you want to eat ice cream,” he says. “We don’t know who that dude is, that guy could be a serial killer. I thought ‘what if he was like the Pied Piper and somehow the combo of the music and the ice cream could program the children to kill?'”
Ice Cream Man follows in the footsteps of witchcraft cinema. Roth says he was thinking about how “stick break horror” in movies like Obsession and Weapons have become a subgenre that “works so well.” And it seems for this movie the stick break for these children is the ice cream man’s music. He admits leaning more into the supernatural elements in this horror film because, “especially with kids going crazy, there has to be a slight supernatural element for you to enjoy it.”
The movie is an exciting new paranormal adventure for Eli Roth adding a horror twist into a previously beloved childhood memory and may give the classic ice cream truck tune an all new creepy undertone. – GS
Mayday
Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein sat down at the Den of Geek studio to discuss their new Apple Original film, Mayday. The action-comedy stars Ryan Reynolds as a Navy pilot stranded behind enemy lines during the Cold War who forms an unlikely alliance with a gruff ex-KGB agent, played by Kenneth Branagh, to survive.
Asked what he hoped to bring to the action comedy genre, Daley (who co-directed previous action comedies Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thievesalongside Goldstein) pointed to a lack of care in recent entries. “Comedy has gotten such a bad rep lately, and I think part of that is because it has been done somewhat lazily, especially in the action-comedy world,” he says “It was really important to us to bring the amount of time and work that we would spend on either genre by itself. It just requires a lot more planning, a lot more prep, but ultimately I think it pays off.”
Adding to that sentiment, Goldstein expressed being proud that the film exists in an industry increasingly resistant to originals. “The studios these days are not eager to make things without IP behind them, without a book or a comic book or a video game,” he says. “This was just an idea that we had, and somehow we got it turned into this giant movie, and that’s exciting in this climate to be able to do that.”
Mayday crash-lands on Apple TV globally September 4, 2026. – IA
Onslaught
The incoming subversive horror action thriller directed by Adam Wingard is set to be a bloodsoaked hit. Wingard, joined by cast members Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, and Drew Starkey, spoke at length about their individual inspirations for the film and the worldbuilding that went into its creation.
“Well, you know, with this film I really wanted to reinvent the slasher genre in a way that I think the closest thing I’ve ever seen was like Terminator,” Wingard said. “Normally the slasher villains are kind of serial killer adjacent and for me as a filmmaker…some of my favorite movies are things like Halloween; I love the aesthetic, that John Carpenter thing, he’s obviously a big inspiration. But I’m looking at ‘What’s the modern-day version of that?’”
In Onslaught, a small group of genetically engineered super soldiers break loose from a government lab and raise hell across the desert. It’s up to a former U.S. Army sniper, played by Arjona, to stop them and protect her young daughter.
Despite the very inhuman forces attempting to wreak havoc on the trailer park Arjona’s character Celeste has found herself in, the cast emphasized the movie has a very human core. Onslaught explores historical injustices, the military industrial complex, and the horrors of war.
“(Celeste’s) post-traumatic stress has taken a huge toll on her, and I don’t think she wants to pass that down to her child, so she believes staying a little bit back is helpful,” Arjona said. “I think she’s trying really, really, really hard, until, you know, we have these people coming into our trailer park and they did mess with the wrong trailer park.” – JM
Ray Gunn
Few artistic collaborations have proven as fruitful as the one between writer/director/animator Brad Bird and composer Michael Giacchino. Together the duo have provided the sights and sounds of some of the century’s most beloved films like The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Now they’re teaming up again for Ray Gunn, an epic retrofuturistic neo noir that Bird has had rattling around his head for three decades.
“People are surprised that I could stay interested in an idea that long. But if something is interesting, I always find it interesting,” Bird tells us during his and Giacchino’s trip to the Den of Geek studio.
And Ray Gunn is nothing if not interesting. Starring Sam Rockwell as the titular ray gun-wielding private detective and arriving to Netflix this December, the project brings together many of its creator and composer’s shared sensibilities…including an appreciation for a very particular aesthetic.
“Art Deco is kind of a utopian thing,” Bird says. “There’s something romantic about it and I just think that it’s time was too short. Ray Gunn is asking ‘What if World War II didn’t happen and Art Deco just kept going? Buildings got to be a mile high, cars could fly, and jetpacks were something everyone had.’ I thought it would be interesting to have utopia and still have desperate characters and an underbelly with corruption. Those two ideas were rubbing up against each other in a good way.”
“It’s in the same way that we approached Ratatouille,” Giacchino adds about the film’s music. “You go into the kitchen, see what you have available, and make anything you can with the ingredients you have. Go into the noir store – get a side of action, maybe a little bit of comedy for dessert, and sprinkle some theremin in there as well.”
A little bit of sci-fi, a little bit of art deco, a little bit of theremin – that’s a Ratatouille-quality recipe right there. – AB
Robert Kirkman
Co-creator of the Invincible franchise and prolific comic writer Robert Kirkman joined Den of Geek in the interview studio to talk about a wide range of current projects, including more than just the expansion of Invincible into the video game world. Announcements about the Energon Universe (including a new Transformers comic arc) as well as the world of Invincible filtered through excitement about his new comic series Terminal.
The first issue of Terminal hit shelves the first day of Comic-Con, bringing completely new characters to the thousands of attendees and fans of Image Comics everywhere. Kirkman shared the inspirations he and series co-writer Joe Casey pulled from for their new story.
“The ‘90s era of the X-Men, when you had Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee and Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri and everybody firing on all cylinders. There were guys like Andy Kubert; we had Arthur Adams in the mix, and then later on David Finch doing things. There was just this really complex ornate story that was going on, but it had so many different characters and separate storylines, and there was such a deep mythology at work there and it was just really special,”
Kirkman assured fans of Invincible that they had much to look forward to in the near future, ranging from comics to the expanding Invincible VS world to the hugely successful TV show.
“If you saw the conclusion of season 4, and that truce between Thragg and Invincible, you’re very aware that the Viltrumites are now on Earth, and I think that there’s unlimited possibilities with that revelation into the story,” Kirkman says. – JM
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
The cast and executive producers of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, including Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Celia Rose Gooding, Paul Wesley, Melissa Navia, Christina Chong, Akiva Goldsman, and Henry Alonso Myers, landed in the studio to discuss season 4, which premiered on July 23 on Paramount+ and continues the prequel’s build toward the crew fans know from The Original Series.
Asked about playing a younger, rawer version of Kirk, Wesley said the goal is uncovering the vulnerabilities beneath the icon. “That’s the whole point of this prequel for my character. It is to dig into the vulnerabilities of Kirk to understand why he is the Kirk that we know from TOS, who is a much more poised, decision-driven man,” he says. “He seems infallible in a way, and we wanted to show his vulnerabilities and the things that led him to embrace that sort of shell that he creates.”
Peck spoke about Spock’s evolving dynamic with Kirk, praising the chemistry he and Wesley naturally share off-screen. “We get to bring a lot of our off-screen chemistry to screen,” he said. “I enjoy the job of scrutinizing Kirk and his rash decision-making and impulsive behavior. Kirk has this belief and trust in Spock right away, and he’s kind of amused. Spock’s very skeptical and uncertain of what this is.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds beam down to Paramount+ every Thursday. – IA
Stuart Fails to Save the Universe
Anything is possible in the multiverse. Even a spinoff of a popular network sitcom that recasts a deep background character as a timeline-hopping hero. That’s the premise of HBO Max’s Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, which plucks Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman), The Big Bang Theory’s mild-mannered owner of The Comic Center of Pasadena, and sends him off on an unlikely multiversal adventure to rescue his girlfriend Denise (Lauren Lapkus).
When stopping by Den of Geek studio, the series star reflected on what it was like to move from the bottom of the callsheet to the center of building-sized billboards for his own show.
“It hit me on the first day of work when I showed up to the studio and all the little golf carts driving around had my character’s name on it. ‘I was like ‘holy moly, can I even handle this?’ But it really is such an ensemble show. Just being able to work with these guys who I’ve known for years it became about how fun it was to work on the show,” Sussman says.
Similarly excited was Lapkus, an accomplished comedic improviser who appreciates the “yes and” storytelling opportunities the multiverse has to offer.
“It’s so fun! One of the things I really love about this show is that every episode is so different from the one before. We meet my character in different universes, so there’s variations on who she is. I really, really enjoyed that as an improviser and getting to work with these guys who are all so funny.”
Of course, access to the multiverse means that plenty of other Big Bang Theory favorites can stop by for a high-stakes cameo or two.
“The [Big Bang Theory] people who came to do the show were so excited to do something weird,” co-creator Bill Prady says. “One of our legacy cast got to do some motion capture work. She was having such a good time that she didn’t want to stop. They said ‘Oh we got it, we got it’ and she was like “No, I’m gonna keep going. I’m having fun.” – AB
Super Troopers 3
The newest film to follow state troopers in Vermont is here and is set to be as outrageous as its predecessors. Super Troopers 3 will be just as raunchy and immature as the cast was all the way back in 2001 when the first film released.
“When people ask us if we’ve matured, generally speaking, we all say no because I think our sense of humor has not matured, and I say that as a compliment to all of us,” Paul Soter said. “But I think we are all a lot further along in life.”
Super Troopers 3 follows the chaos of Farva’s extravagant Indian engagement to Thorny’s sister and Thorny’s subsequent scheming. It reunites the original cast alongside newcomers such as Chace Crawford (of “The Deep” onThe Boys fame).
Steve Lemme, who reprises his role as the prankster Mac, said the new film builds on the best parts of the franchise.
“If this was happening in real life we wouldn’t be helping him break up the wedding, we would be absolutely thrilled that they would say, even in conversations that have nothing to do with it, we’d be like, and by the way, ‘Farva’s sleeping with your sister’ and you’d walk out the door,” Lemme said. “That’s what a real group of friends would do and I think that’s what resonates with the audience is about all the Super Troopers movies, it’s about watching a real group of friends go through life together.” – JM
Around the Con
Apple TV
Apple TV made its star-studded San Diego Comic-Con debut this year with a bang! Premiering and promoting brand new seasons of shows such as Silo, Dark Matter, and Widow’s Bay. It also announced some brand new films driving in this fall such as Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s genre-bending action packed buddy comedy, Mayday. Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh star in this genre-bending action packed buddy comedy on September 4 on Apple TV.
Mattel’s Matchbox the Movie premiered a trailer for the new film during the convention as well. The action film details lead actor, John Cena, as an ex-CIA agent who returns back to his hometown with his childhood friends, and lead to be tasked with an international pursuit in saving the world. Alongside Cena, fans can expect to see Arturo Castro, Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, Corey Stoll, Bill Camp, Danai Gurira and Golshifteh Farahani when the film premieres on October 9. – Matthias Agganis
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence
Clad in identical tomato-themed letterman jackets that have me kicking myself for not requesting a photo (see above for a promo image), three stars of upcoming comedy horror flick Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence caught up with Den of Geek at this year’s con. The topic that the trio – Dan Bakkedahl, Myrna Velasco, and Noor Razooky – wanted to discuss? The deadly serious business of killer tomatoes and how they attack.
Dan Bakkedahl: “I read the script and realized, ‘oh, this is an attempt to expose the cover-up, to spread the truth about the dangers [of killer tomaotes].’ I hope this doesn’t affect my career trying to get the truth out there, but you do what you have to.”
Myrna Velasco: “We need every single person who is willing and capable to stomp a tomato to please make that your mission as a human being.”
Noor Razooky: “It’s us against them.”
From indie cult classic in 1978 to brave, unflinching documentary in 2026 – the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes franchise has truly come a long way. – AB
Bear McCreary
Composer Bear McCreary is no stranger to scoring epic fictional works. He’s worked on the music for Outlander, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and God of War. Now, he’s combining the symphonic and the heavy for his second studio album, The Singularity: Ekleipsis.
McCreary talked about working with rock stars like Duff McKagan and bringing his passion for film scoring to a studio album, focusing on his love for melody and narrative in music.
“It’s incredible the power that music has and melody is a big part of how that works,” McCreary says. “So you make those assignments. Look at the God of War scores. When that first was unveiled to the world in 2016, when we were rebooting God of War, Kratos walks into the screen and you hear ‘bom bom bom.’ To the point of almost being a joke, like, literally every time he walks in a room, I do that. I am not subtle about it, right?
“It’s conditioning,” McCreary continues. “It teaches you that melody teaches you something about him. It sticks to him, and then you can use it in other contexts because you’ll always have all those memories.”
He also discussed his previous work bridging the gap between medieval aesthetics and modern pop artists, avoiding AI in film and television, and his upcoming score on the new season of Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power.
“I want to write music for the people of Númenor, for the Harfoots, for Sauron, for Gandalf, and I want to write music that is meaningful to me, that lives up to my standard and makes me feel something,” McCreary says. “And if I do that, I feel confident it will make other people feel something, but that is all I have to put blinders on to the rest.” – JM
Bill Sienkiewicz
“At one point in time, every one of these was the most important piece in the world to me.”
Ahead of the release of Bill Sienkiewicz: That Polish Guy, the documentary movie about his life and career as an artist, Bill Sienkiewicz reflected on his celebrated work in comic books. Sitting down with us, he shared his personal inspirations, offered insight on his creative process, and reflected on his own multimedia legacy and growing influence.
“People would ask me early on when I first started what my drugs of choice were because they thought my work was just so crazy. It was disconcerting for them to hear that the work was the drug.”
Sienkiewicz also revealed the origins of the documentary and how it contrasted his own tendencies not to look to the past but instead focus on the here and now. – Sam Stone
The Guild: Reunion Movie with Felicia Day
Felicia Day’s 2007 web series The Guild has gathered many fans throughout the years who have grown attached to her story and goal to “change the stereotype of gamers in Hollywood.” Now, 20 years since its debut, The Guild is making a reunion movie with Day returning to her beloved story and more excited than ever.
“We did a 12-hour live stream at the launch and just realizing that people were showing up, and they were showing up in incredible numbers with incredible support, at one point I just started sobbing,” Day says.
Day looks back on the memories made in the last 20 years with so much pride for her story and the viewers’ support of it. One of her favorite moments being the outpouring support she got in 2008 for her viral music video, “Do You Want to Date My Avatar.” That year Comic-Con gave her a small room for her panel, “We were in this small room of 250 people and there were literally, I’m not kidding, 1,000 people outside waiting to get in. It was probably the most electric cool moment I’ve ever had in my life,” she says.
There is no denying that Day has received an overwhelming amount of support for her upcoming project and fans are excited for her to bring her story back to life in The Guild: Ren Faire’d. – GS
Hannah Rose May
Hannah Rose May, Irish model and actress-turned-comics writer behind The Exorcism at 1600 Penn discussed writing Smile: For The Camera, her new series Fatal Fest, and seeing her breakout comic head to film.
Smile: For The Camera is a 2005-set prequel following international models during Fashion Month in New York, before the events of Smile and Smile 2. May built the series around the franchise’s infamous death toll, but grounded each death in character exploration, explaining, “I wanted to make sure that we were delivering a death every issue…but for them to die, you have to see what’s traumatic to them, what their past trauma is on the surface. It’s not just girl number 3.”
Her new series, Fatal Fest, follows six emerging horror filmmakers competing at a mysterious festival where the producer’s one rule is that true fear must be experienced firsthand. While no concrete release date has been set, May promises the series will push the horror and gore to the absolute limit. “I hope that you read one issue and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I wasn’t expecting that,” May says.
Meanwhile, her comic The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, about the first female U.S. president facing a demonic White House, is being adapted into a film by Blumhouse and Atomic Monster, though no release date has been announced for this project either.
When asked how the film might attract Gen Z, who seem the prime audience for horror now, May explains that the film’s appeal actually spans generations, since viewers can relate to the characters themselves rather than the specifics of their circumstances: “Parents will be able to relate to our first female president, our first gentleman, and Gen Z will be able to relate to being those children and the expectations that are set for you.” – IA
Liam McIntyre and Krizia Bajos
The stars of Sony’s upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine game, Liam McIntyre (Wolverine) and Krizia Bajos (Jean Grey), brought infectious energy to a sit-down interview that covered everything from their impressive careers to changing the landscape of voice acting.
McIntyre, who has played many iconic characters including Spartacus, Weather Wizard, and Aquaman, spoke in depth about how understanding the character is key to some of his most iconic roles. He emphasized that, despite the differences between on-camera and voice performances, the fundamentals of acting remain the same.
“I think it starts at trying to find the heart of the character, like ‘what are they about? What matters to them?’ You know, it’s their worldview kind of thing,” McIntyre says. “But acting is acting at the end of the day. I started on stage. That’s quite pure and organic You sort of get used to building your imagination and trying to create things. It’s that old cliché of acting is reacting.”
Both McIntyre and Bajos highlighted the importance of collaboration and finding joy in creative work — with strong performance coming from genuine human connection bleeding into their works. McIntyre praised Critical Role in particular, as the group of friends made a multi-million dollar company by connecting through a game of Dungeons & Dragons, which has created a community of loyal and welcoming fans. Bajos’ impressive 181 acting credits include Hulu’s Fright Krewe, which she shared was meaningful to play a nurturing maternal figure who led in a position of high regard in her community, while also being able to honor elements of her Latin American heritage. Fright Krewe stands out for its vibrant animation, nostalgic coming-of-age atmosphere, and supernatural horror elements, blending heartfelt and heart-arching friendships with spooky adventures. It is a truly enjoyable watch.
Beyond acting, Bajos founded an educational program called Voiceover Camp in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of helping aspiring performers to build confidence in their voice acting abilities. What started as informal coaching for friends evolved into a thriving community focused on mentorship, growth, and acceptance.
“I have a lot of fun on that side, but I will say the community on this side, to me, it is very near and dear to my heart. It’s like where all the beloved weirdos live, and I am 100% one of them. Everybody comes as they are,” Bajos said. “And I love teaching people that they don’t even want to be voice actors. It’s just they want to build more confidence.”
You can check out more of this duo’s amazing chemistry in the upcoming release of Marvel’s Wolverine on September 15. – NG
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had a big presence at San Diego Comic-Con to promote its upcoming third season. And, by all indications, it’s going to be a big third season. We caught up with showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay and many of the series’ stars to talk about the show’s five-year time jump forward to properly settle into the war between Sauron and the Elves and the forging of the One Ring itself.
“It’s amazing,” Sauron actor Charlie Vickers says of beholding the One Ring. “It took a while through the season before I got to actually hold it. But when I stepped onto that set and I knew I would be forging the Ring, I knew it would be incredibly special. Being able to eventually hold the Ring…it really is the most important prop in the whole universe, right?”
Meanwhile, the One Ring isn’t the only bit of jewelry to play a prominent role this season. Sauron has been busy passing out the Nine Rings of Men to very important, very corruptible mortals. It won’t take long for the magical artifacts to transform them into proto-ringwraiths that the show has dubbed the nazgnagôl.
“We knew this was the season he would start giving them out,” McKay says. “He doesn’t give them to just anyone. He finds the right political place where it’s either a territory or strategic alliance or massive armies. He’s already done some of that before we even start the season. For the other ones we get to see people put on the ring for the first time. You see their bodies undergoing this strange, horrifying, metaphysical process where they’re splitting between the seen world and the unseen world. It’s incredibly painful and they’re screaming. It’s a really cool thing.”
See, this is why we love fantasy. Where else could the excruciating sundering of the human soul between the seen and unseen worlds be called “a really cool thing?” – AB
Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla Writer Nick Marino
Writer Nick Marino has long looked forward to the ultimate crossover featured in his comic, Sonic The Hedgehog x Godzilla. At San Diego Comic-Con, Marino dove into his interpretation of the characters and how he went about writing them for this project, especially for a monster like Godzilla who has already been interpreted so many ways.
“I know who my Godzilla I want to see on the page or the screen is, so I’m always starting from that standpoint,” he says. “I was under a unique mission for this story, which was: if you just know Sonic, you’re going to come into this and learn about Godzilla. If you already know Godzilla, you want to see the Godzilla that you care about represented, or if you’re like, ‘why are these two together? I don’t really know them, but let’s find out what happens.’ I want it to feel accessible to you.”
Despite the amount of support from fans for this crossover, Marino still had a tough time getting this story approved and officially published, “It took a lot of willpower to stick with this project because there’s a lot of people that you need to be patient with.” When asked how he says motivated he replies, “I get so much motivation from playing with themes that fascinate me. So I was so excited to play with the scale dynamics and try to imagine how does this small creature with great speed perceives a creature with great scale?”
“The scale of life” is a concept that Marino has credited as a main inspiration for this comic and he keeps that a theme throughout the first issue, “Sonic has agency in a way Godzilla doesn’t, and that’s why their scale starts to become so interesting. What do you do when a character who is minuscule, probably smaller than the size of a fly, compared to Godzilla, has complete agency and intense capabilities for their size?”
Marino’s first issue captures the fun and chaotic battle between these two very different sized characters and how a conflict between these two will likely play out, though Godzilla in his truest form is yet to appear, Marino’s first issue gives fans confidence the anticipated battle will be everything they have hoped for. – GS
Pan’s Labyrinth
Audiences across the world were enchanted by Pan’s Labyrinth after its release in 2006. The beautiful cinematography, intense and surprisingly grounded story, and incredible performances came together in a perfect symphony of fantasy and war movie sensibilities. Two of the stars of the film — Doug Jones, who plays Faun and The Pale Man, and Ivana Baquero, who plays Ofelia — alongside cinematographer Guillmero Navarro spoke with Den of Geek before the film’s 20th Anniversary Hall H panel Friday.
Baquero and Jones candidly talked about their performances and the inspirations they pull from, bringing new context to their dually foundational performances.
“[Director] Guillermo del Toro made it a point to really make sure that I understood the world and so there was a lot of inspiration that we drew from,” Baquero says. “He sent me a bunch of comic books and movies to watch. So I was aware of Ofelia’s world and the pain that she had to go through and I was very much present and connected to the material and (del Toro) guided me through that.”
Navarro also brought more information about his creative machinations behind the camera.
“The movie has different narratives,” Navarro said. “And the real reality we addressed as real reality in the fascist world and in the people’s fighting world. Since we had another narrative to take care of we had to differentiate them very well and in going through one to the other, we ended up finding the tools or the way to, to navigate that, you know. A lot of it is in the color palette, for instance. A lot of it is in the things that we fade in and fade out.” – JM
Todd McFarlane
“I just want a cool movie and if that means I don’t sell a single T-shirt, that’s okay, what do I care?”
Todd McFarlane provides a full look at what he’s been working on, including the upcoming prequel comic book series Spawn 77, reflecting his own initial designs of the hellish superhero. McFarlane also teases what fans can expect from his prolific company McFarlane Toys and its new line of figures that go above and beyond other contemporary toys. Finally, McFarlane provides an update on the long-gestating Spawn movie and explains why Jamie Foxx is still the perfect actor to play his iconic superhero.
“The next couple of years, we’ve got lots to start planning for.” – SS
VeeFriends
The ever-growing collectible “VeeFriends” brand was a smash hit with convention goers this week. This described cross between Pokémon and Sesame Street offered many exclusive offerings inside “PSA’s” booth on the show floor, with many of them selling-out within opening hours. Adamant fans of the brand could take home goodies such as a limited-run, SDCC-exclusive, PSA graded mystery box featuring the IP’s many characters as potential prizes.
One such prize was a copy of Issue #13 of the VeeFriends comic book series, co-founded by series executive creative director, DJ Coffman. He himself was making the rounds at the convention, organizing and showing up for fan meet-ups and signings. His presence was extremely personable and made its imprint on the legacy of VeeFriend and what the brand’s future may hold. – MA
Yaga
Den of Geek attended press conference with Yaga showrunner and executive producer Kat Sandler, along with cast members Noah Reid and Clark Backo. Set to premiere in October on AMC+, the eight-episode half-hour drama reimagines the myth of Baba Yaga as a contemporary mystery thriller.
Set in a small coastal town, the show follows private investigator Rapp (Reid) as he arrives to uncover the mysterious disappearance of a young heir to a powerful fisher while finding himself at odds with a local detective, an enigmatic professor, and a tangle of secrets and ancient magic.
Asked what drew her to reclaiming Baba Yaga as, in her words, “an incendiary feminist antihero,” in this cultural moment, Sandler pointed to the folklore figure’s rare distinction of having a name at all.
“Baba Yaga always has a name. She’s always named. It’s not like the Wicked Witch of the West, or the one from Hansel and Gretel, or The White Witch. I feel like witches are so often defined by geography or colors,” she said. “[Yaga] is women reclaiming a story that has always been told a certain way about them. So the ‘wicked old witch’ is really getting a voice to retell the story in her words.” – IA
Panels
Dave Bautista, Jessica Matten, Dionne Quan, Eric Nam and Román Zaragoza at the Paramount+ Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Panel at San Diego Comic Con on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in San Diego. Photo Credit: Todd Williamson/JanuaryImagesfor Paramount+
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender – Nyla Gilbert
Nearly two decades after we were introduced to the four nations and the disappearance of a certain young air nomad, San Diego Comic-Con gave a spotlight to Avatar Studios’ upcoming projects, including the recently released Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender film on Paramount+ and an upcoming series, Avatar: Seven Havens, starring a new avatar.
Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and director Lauren Montgomery joined the film’s cast, Jessica Matten (Katara), Eric Nam (Aang), Román Zaragoza (Sokka), Dionne Quan (Toph), Steven Yeun (Zuko) and Dave Bautista (Tagah), on a panel to discuss the production of the film and the state of the Avatar universe. With the recent boom in 3D animation, the creators talked about their decision to stick to the 2D animation style that the series is known for.
“One of the first things that we talked about was what the medium was going to be, and no one told us, but we just assumed [3D]. I guess that’s what we’ll do,” Konietzko said. “We started trying to figure it out. But then one day it just hit me. I was like, ‘What are we doing?’ This is Avatar. This is a love letter to Japanese anime. This needs to stay 2D. These characters need to be hand-drawn.”
The cast and crew discussed in depth how to stay true to the original material, creating something that feels like a continuation of the franchise while remaining fresh and captivating. Bringing in new cultural and narrative devices, like the new Avatarian language, fans were also introduced to the next avatar to be given their own series.
Avatar: Seven Havens follows a young earthbender who discovers she is the next avatar after Korra, who is said to have failed the world in a calamity that merged the spirit world with Earth, creating a dangerous reality that has turned the mantle of the avatar into a destroyer rather than a savior. The story will catch up with the young avatar and her long-lost twin sister as they investigate their mysterious origins and save humanity before society collapses. – NG
Blade Runner 2099
The Blade Runner 2099 panel was hosted by Josh Hortowitz and featured cast members Hunter Schafer, Michele Yeoh, showrunner Silka Luisa, and executive producers Broderick Johnson, and Andrew Kosove.
Kosove and Johnson started the panel discussing the highly anticipated return of the franchise and finding the right story for its ultimate comeback. Luisa’s was the approach that emerged: a post-war role reversal that leaves the replicants on top and humans fighting back for their place in society. This series furthers the franchise’s question on what it means to truly be human whether robots can develop empathy. The divide between human and replicant is still evident, but may be blurred between the unlikely pairing of Cora (Schafer), a human, and Olen (Michelle Yeoh), a replicant nearing the e end of her life.
Luisa acknowledged the love and care everyone on set had for this story and doing it justice, “[Blade Runner] is the film that inspired so many of us to actually pursue anything in the arts, and it’s just one of those movies that you never forget the first time you saw it.”
Luisa made the story authentically hers while simultaneously tapping into her inspiration from the original film ,keeping the question of humanity as the focus of the series, “What I remember most was rooting for all the replicants. For Rachael, for Roy Batty, even Leon. I don’t know if that’s what everyone else was feeling, but that’s who I empathized with, and that was such an unsettling and beautiful idea that it might not be humans who teach us what humanity is.”
Yeoh discussed the impressive set design stating, “It felt so organic. I felt like I was in the future, and this is what the future could possibly look like.” Care for the set design and CGI was evident in the teasers shown throughout the panel. The setting felt organically Blade Runner while also utilizing the advancement in technology. The teasers at the panel revealed the official release date of the series to Prime Video on November 25, successfully building excitement in loyal franchise fans. – GS
Carrie
Mike Flanagan’s newest Stephen King adaptation is the writer-director’s favorite, he told attendees in Ballroom 20 of the San Diego Convention Center. Carrie, a limited series produced by Prime Video, reimagines the 50-year-old novel by King for a modern audience.
Members of the “Flanagan Family” (frequent collaborators with the director) including Samantha Sloyan and Matthew Lillard unite with young actors and actresses on this modern retelling of Carrie, which Flanagan and his ensemble say will focus on social media and isolation. It flips many of the original scenes and characters from its source material, complicating its narrative and relationships. Flanagan also said this is one of his most intensive film sets, acting as the culmination of his previous work on shows such as TheHaunting of Hill House and The Fall of the House of Usher.
Early looks at various scenes in the upcoming show revealed both classic moments and fresh nuance.
“[Margaret White] loves her daughter. She’s also a fierce woman, so it’s not that she’s a big softy by any means, but I do think that her ferocity is protecting her daughter, the thing she loves most in the world,” Sloyan said, when talking about the difference between Flanagan’s Margaret and King’s Margaret. “Just like her daughter, she has been in this house for 15 years and, you know, she had a life before, but if you just think, if you missed the past 15 years and walked outside, the like, you know, the world would be quite terrifying.” – JM
Lanterns
Lanterns had a glowing presence for HBO Max’s lineup this Comic-Con season, featuring immersive activations where attendees could be fitted with a Green Lantern Power Ring of their own, alongside a “training bootcamp” themed around the show. Fans of the DC character additionally lined up at Hall H in droves just to get a sneak preview at the show during their exclusive panel.
The panel featured show cast members Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Garrett Dillahunt, and Poorna Jagannathan answering questions and dissecting their experience working on the show. With executive producers Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King offering key insights about how they transformed the world of Green Lantern into this new series. HBO Max subscribers can expect this show to premiere August 16. – MA
Pan’s Labyrinth
As acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro walked onto the stage of the prestigious Hall H, he was met with thunderous applause. Immediately asking “What the f—?” and then apologizing for cursing, del Toro’s playful attitude communicated a love for cinema unmatched by many of his contemporaries.
Flanked by Pan’s Labyrinth stars Ivana Baquero and Doug Jones, as well as the movie’s Oscar-winning cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, del Toro and co. shared stories and announcements about the film 20 years into its legacy and the upcoming theatrical rerelease. It was abundantly clear that despite the film being two decades old, the film’s cast and crew are still as close as they were when Pan’s Labyrinth first hit the big screen. It was also clear that the film hadn’t left del Toro’s mind since its release in 2006; he directly oversaw the retouches and 3D screen augmentation for the re-release.
The director also made his love for art apparent, lambasting AI in film and emphasizing the importance of connecting people to human stories.
“Art saves your life sometimes,” del Toro said. “You know, sometimes, especially when you’re young, you’re vulnerable and you’re down and you’re crushed, and in comes a piece of music, a song, a movie, an illustration, an image, a character that tells you, hang on, hang on, it gets better, you know, and, this movie connects like that with artists.” – JM
Spaceballs: The New One
Almost four decades after the release of Spaceballs, the long-joked about sequel is finally making its way to the big screen. Spaceballs: The New One is set to spoof the newest Star Wars films and television shows, focusing particularly on the sequel trilogy and the latest installments of the Skywalker Saga.
During the joke-laden Hall H panel featuring the new movie’s stars, writers, and director, it became increasingly clear that more thought went into the new Spaceballs movie than people may have expected. Writer and star Josh Gad spoke highly of original director Mel Brooks and said the new film was a tribute to his humor in addition to the comedy of John Candy. Spaceballs: The New One brings back several of the original actors, including Rick Moranis and Daphne Zuniga, who spoke on the panel.
The entire panel often felt like an homage to Brooks, who turned 100 years old in June. Clips of him reuniting with the cast of Spaceballs, meeting the sequels new cast, and doing behind-the-scenes VFX work were sprinkled between conversations with the sequel’s cast. Additionally, attendees got to see the new trailer for Spaceballs: The New One, getting exclusive early access to the Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman-led film.
In the final half of the panel, Gad and fellow writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit teased the Almighty Schwartz Saga whole (ASSwhole).
“We have enough content until 2148, and we are very excited,” Gad said. – JM
Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat _ Episode 07 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC
The Vampire Lestat
Like bats clustered together in a dark cave, The Vampire Lestat fans roosted in the dark, patiently awaiting for the signal for the Hall H panel to begin.
Moderated by Rotten Tomatoes editor Jacqueline Coley, the panel featured executive producers Mark Johnson and Hannah Moscovitch alongside cast members Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, and Sheila Atim. Sam Reid was unable to attend due to starring in Doubt: A Parable. Giving fans a sneak peak at what they had missed, the panel opened with a highlight reel from The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only LIVE, the June 2 performance at NYC’s Beacon Theatre, which was revealed to stream exclusively on AMC+ starting August 23, 2026.
Discussion mostly centered on season 3’s final two episodes. “I didn’t know anything. I was led by [showrunner] Rolin Jones and Hannah Moscovitch down that weird road. Who takes a penultimate episode and decapitates the two leads? It’s unheard of,” Johnson said, admitting he was blindsided by the twist.
For Moscovitch, the twist was intentional all along. “We wanted episode 6 to reunite Louis and Lestat, and for us to get to see their love again. And then we wanted to cut their heads off,” she said. Moscovitch added that Lestat’s arc required him to “face his own trauma and run through the different rooms and hallways of his mind until he understood that Gabriella had been abusing him and that Louis really loved him.”
Anderson reflected on shooting intense scenes with Reid. “Weirdly, that’s the most comfortable I feel making this show. Whenever they’re screaming, just know they’re having a blast,” he said, referring to Louis and Lestat. Zaman called playing Armand’s scheming side, “very delicious,” noting he wanted to explore the character’s ability to be “way more conniving and methodical.”
When asked what his favorite line was, Bogosian revealed it was Lestat struggling to pronounce “Worcester.” “That means Massachusetts and it’s ‘Woostah.’ Very simple but he cannot get the words out,” he laughed. This prompted Anderson to add, “Can we also give it up for ‘It’s your boy, Daniel Malloy’?”
Atim discussed tackling Akasha’s four-page, punctuation free monologue, saying she focused on “charting the journey through the questions Akasha is answering.” Atim revealed that she initially paced around her hotel room while learning the speech, only to find out she would be delivering it while strapped to a stone table. To come to the role as prepared as possible, she “decided to learn [the speech] sitting on my bed with one leg up and one leg down, in the exact position I would be.”
The panel closed with the reveal of season 4, Queen of the Damned, and an exclusive trailer that sent Hall H into a frenzy. – IA
Den of Geek Events
Cracked Comedy Club
On Saturday, July 25, San Diego’s Gas Lamp Quarter got a reminder that comedy is its own kind of superpower. Cracked Comedy Club teamed up with National Lampoon’s Yellow Door for a live showcasing event.
Kicking off at 9:30 p.m., host Ryan Archuleta welcomed a lineup stacked with talent clearly on the way up: Charlie James, Mary Houlihan, Vince Caldera, Noah Findling, Fatimah Taliah, Austin Kress, Ben Brainard, Max Castillo, and Willie Macc. Each comic brought their own flavor to the stage, and the crowd, packed chair to chair, ate up every minute of it. The laughs came fast and often, and if the crowd’s reaction was any indication, don’t be surprised if a few of these names start popping up on much bigger venues very soon.
Between the packed house, the late hour, and a sharp lineup, the Yellow Door proved for one night that Comic-Con isn’t just for capes and cosplay, it’s for punchlines too! – IA
Dark Matter Season 2 Premiere Screening
Huddled together in the cavernous Ballroom 6DE of the San Diego Convention Center, fans of the Apple TV sci-fi television series Dark Matter joined together for an exclusive screening of season 2’s first episode.
A brief Q&A with Dark Matter’s cast and crewpreceded the screening, giving a few minutes for the show’s talent to talk about their ever-expanding world. Den of Geek hosted the screening, bringing only the most tireless Dark Matter fans to the after-hours event.
“It’s a very special thing to get to watch a TV show that you create with strangers,” author and co-showrunner Blake Crouch said. “You know, if you make a movie, you could always slip into a theater and see what people are feeling. In television, unless you have a premiere, which is generally friends and family and crew, you don’t get that. So to get that kind of a reaction was so gratifying.”
“Extremely humbling too, for somebody to sacrifice their Friday night at 10:00 p.m. to come out and watch our show and be a part of that. It’s everyone’s dream,” co-showrunner Jacque Ben-Zekry added.
Dark Matter follows physics professor Jason Dessen after he’s swindled into an alternate version of his life. The show is an odyssey across dimensions as Dessen tirelessly tries to return to his home reality and family.
The second season picks up shortly after where the first season left off. Without spoiling anything, viewers will get a much more paranoid, and at times desperate, ensemble of characters. – JM
eBay Live Charity Auction
This year, Den of Geek hosted a live charity auction on eBay Live, hosted by Sam Stone and Nick Morgulis. The money raised goes to the Book Industry Charitable (BINC) Foundation, whose mission is “to strengthen the bookselling and comic retailing communities through charitable programs that support employees, owners, and their families.” BINC is dedicated to helping book and comic professionals in need to keep the industry alive, and to create a caring community for people to rely on.
The auction included the extraordinary work of legendary comic creator Frank Miller. Fans had the opportunity to bid on an incredible collection of books and graphics from Miller’s career, all of which were signed by Miller himself. This collection included several signed copies of his new memoir, Push the Wall, with 1-of-1 Batman sketches that Miller personally sketched for Den of Geek during SDCC.
Miller’s autobiography includes numerous sketches of his works, as he tells his story from teenagedom to reviving the Batman comics to his retelling of the Spartans’ last stand in 300 — this goes over the complete works of his career and is a masterclass for anyone looking to join the comic industry as a storyteller.
Push the Wall: My Life, Writing, Drawing, and the Art of Storytelling is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Audible. – NG
Live from the Con @ Mission Brewing
Den of Geek hosted a giveaway event this year at San Diego Comic-Con, “Live From the Con with Roddenberry Entertainment,” sponsored by Fourth Wing: Rise of the Wingleader. Hosted by Sam Stone alongside Elly Glitch and Nick Marino, the event celebrated the release of Goliath Games’ board game adaptation of Rebecca Yarros’ bestselling series.
The evening featured live taping of Roddenberry Entertainment and Nacelle Company’s Does It Fly? And POWER-UP by Den of Geek, putting dragon flight and game strategy under some good-natured scientific scrutiny. Oh, and of course there was some Xaden thirsting along the way that only free beer courtesy of Mission Brewing could quench.
Discussing the source material, Marino praised how the books elevate the familiar fantasy structure. “I love how this took the structure we’ve seen before but upped all the fantasy, the risks, everything going into it, it’s heightened,” he said. Glitch added that the story kept readers guessing, “It also subverted a bunch of expectations.”
Of the game itself, Marino expressed his excitement for the story being redefined into a more hands on experience for fans. “This is a story that is in a conversation with its audience, and to take that and make it interactive on a different level as a game, that’s a dope idea,” he said.
Attendees had the chance to win complete copies of the book series as well as get glimpses of the game, which is now available at all major retailers. – IA
Wattpad @ Mission Brewing
The Den of Geek and Wattpad-hosted event at Mission Brewing invited independent writers to come connect and celebrate each other’s work. The event had free Wattpad writing pads with writing prompts to spark inspiration and authors Punko, Derek V. Song, ROSEOAK, and E.M. Wilson, who had a signing table for her book Breakup For Two.
Wilson says she started her writing career reaching out to agents. After one got back to her and said, “not everybody has a strength in writing, you don’t really have an author voice that’s discernible, so maybe take a step back and see if this is something you really want to pursue,” the author thought that she had to “pack it up.” But she persisted and started writing on Wattpad, eventually getting herself a publishing deal under the Wattpad/WEBTOON umbrella.
The party was a space for authors to discuss how their love for writing began and how platforms like Wattpad aided their careers. Derek V. Song, author of Fantasy High, talked about his first memory of him writing at the age of six in the backroom of a bar his father worked at, “They had this big boxy computer that was too old to do anything but open up a Word program. So a lot of hours were spent typing because it was one of the only things I could do.”
Punko, author of Cinderella Boy, talked about how platforms like WEBTOON and Wattpad give a space for authors like her to receive constructive criticism and grow as an artist, “Your goal as a writer and creator is to create the best possible stories you can. You will not do that if all you do is seek out praise, because you don’t grow from praise, you grow from criticism.”
The Den of Geek Wattpad party was a successful gathering of independent artists that further promoted their stories and sparked inspiration in others at San Diego Comic-Con to get started on their own creations. – GS
Silent Hill: Townfall Previews an Intense Ride Through a New Haunted Town
After last year’s Silent Hill f took Konami’s long-running horror series to Japan for a terrifying expansion of what the franchise can be, Screen Burn Interactive and Annapurna Interactive are taking the series to another global location for their upcoming title Silent Hill: Townfall. Set in the Scottish coastal town of St. Amelia during the ‘90s, the game follows amnesiac protagonist Simon Ordell as he investigates the ominous hamlet to learn about his past and connection to the location. Den of Geek was invited to a special early hands-on preview of the game in Los Angeles and we’re ready to share our thoughts about it ahead of its September launch on PlayStation 5 and PC.
In a first for the venerable series, Silent Hill: Townfall is played from a first-person perspective rather than the franchise’s third-person norm, providing a much more immersive experience to players. This is aided by the game taking full advantage of the PlayStation 5 hardware and enhanced for those who play the title on a PlayStation 5 Pro, which is what I played the demo build on. With this change in perspective, environments are incredibly detailed and everything from fog and lighting effects set the eerie mood perfectly. Simply put, Townfall is a gorgeously rendered game and arguably the best-looking game in the entire Silent Hill series so far.
Several of the game’s development team at Screen Burn Interactive previously worked on 2014’s Alien: Isolation and those suspense-fueled sensibilities are apparent throughout the build that I played. Players can use a handheld CRTV which crackles with static whenever enemies or clues are nearby, in a clear nod to the classic Silent Hill mechanic of using radios for the same context clues. But aligning with Alien: Isolation, the CRTV also lets Simon glimpse where enemies are once they’re detected and plan accordingly to advance, either to confront them head-on or distract and evade them. Getting into my fair share of combat situations and resulting game over screens, believe me, evasion and stealth is an approach that is strongly encouraged.
Every Silent Hill game places an emphasis on melee combat, especially Silent Hill f, with occasional moments of gunplay. These skirmishes are never stylized, but always carry an air of brutal desperation about them, as players do whatever they can to fight to survive enemy encounters. That element is heightened in Townfall, with even crossing paths with a base enemy feeling like this grueling confrontation could result in a game if players aren’t careful. There is a guard mechanic to block incoming blows, but enemies are absolutely vicious here and naturally try to flank you to move around your guard. The foes aren’t quite as seemingly unkillable as the Alien: Isolation xenomorph, but no less tension-inducing in how formidable they are.
What that means is the game places a heavy emphasis on stealth to navigate St. Amelia – while straightforward combat is an option, an enemy can kill Simon within a handful of hits if you’re not careful and just try to go in swinging. That first-person perspective makes the whole combat and evasion experience all the more visceral, especially when you’re playing while wearing headphones like I was, trying to ascertain how close enemies were, listening to their footsteps while hiding in dingy bathrooms or behind parked cars. Yes, there is also an element of gunplay to Townfall, but I quickly realized that a gunshot can clue in multiple monsters to my immediate location so any firearms that I picked up became a last resort option.
The series’ penchant for puzzle-solving makes a return in a big way too and in my multi-hour sitdown with the game, I found myself solving several puzzles built around environmental clues in my immediate surroundings to proceed. Some puzzles also use the motion inputs within the DualSense PlayStation 5 controller, but fortunately those can be toggled on and off. The difficulty of the puzzles themselves weren’t too bad for me – I fared much better at puzzle-solving than combat – but solutions aren’t spoonfed to players either. It’s also important to note that, like other modern Silent Hill games, the difficulty in combat and puzzles in Townfall can be adjusted by players according to their individual preferences.
Arguably the most intensely challenging of the new wave of Silent Hill games that began with the 2024 Silent Hill remake, Silent Hill: Townfall has me intrigued after playing through an early build for several hours. The atmosphere hews closer to the classic aesthetics of the franchise more than the radical direction that Silent Hill f took while the series’ gleefully melancholic tone and many of its usual hallmarks are retained. I want to go back to St. Amelia and dig deeper into its sad mysteries, including how Simon is connected to it, even knowing how formidable its monsters are. Continuing Konami’s successful revival of Silent Hill, Townfall brings an exciting new perspective to the series, both literally and figuratively, while celebrating the ethos of the franchise itself.
Developed by Screen Burn Interactive and published by Konami and Annapurna Interactive, Silent Hill: Townfall releases September 24 for PlayStation 5 and PC.
Street Fighter Sneak Peak Corrects the 1994 Movie’s Biggest Mistake
The influx of Japanese culture into the United States meant lots of misunderstandings and mispronunciations happened on American schoolyards, especially around the Street Fighter franchise. We kids found the most ludicrous ways to say the words “Guile,” “Dhalsim,” and especially “Ryu.” While you can chalk most of those mistakes up to unfamiliarity with other languages, the tendency to say Rye-oo came straight from the 1994 movie, where director Steven E. de Souza treated accurate pronunciations with as little care as he did everything else in his adaptation.
But the upcoming Street Fighter movie from director Kitao Sakurai takes pains to bring the games to the big screen in every way, including pronunciations. That attention to detail is on display in the latest clip from the film, which sees M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) force Ryu (Andrew Koji) to duke it out with the Brazilian monster man Blanka (Jason Momoa). The clip shows off lots of stuff from the games, including an electrical blast from Blanka, but for ’90s kids, the most important moment occurs right at the start, when Bison addresses his combatant as “Ree-you.”
As much as we like to rib the ill-fated ’90s movie, one can understand why de Souza took so many liberties. Street Fighter has a narrative, as demonstrated by the numerous cartoons, comics, and books it has spawned. But at its heart, it’s about two outlandish characters getting into a ring and pummeling one another like so many luxury cars. Maybe expanding that premise into a tale about fake money, reporters who also do martial arts, and Jean-Claude Van Damme as an American working with the UN was a mistake, but it made for some delightful viewing.
At this point, it’s not clear how Sakurai and his co-writer T. J. Fixman, working from a story idea by Dalan Musson and Gary Dauberman, plan to construct their narrative. But it is clear that Sakurai puts a priority on faithfulness to the game, especially in the new clip. It’s not just that the fight occurs in an unlikely location—a jail cell—and surrounded by randos who get involved in one way or another. It’s that Blanka is a big green weirdo with wild orange hair.
Momoa’s take on Blanka feels like another rejoinder to the 1994 movie, which did feature Blanka as an important subplot. In fact, Guile gets involved in the mission against Bison primarily to save his old pal Charlie (Robert Mammone), who gets tortured by unwilling scientist Dr. Dhalsim (Roshan Seth) throughout the film. But when he finally emerges in his green and orange form, Blanka plays more like a tragic figure than a cool favorite player character.
As demonstrated by the latest clip, Street Fighter 2026 leans hard into the wacky fun of Blanka. It doesn’t look much better than the 1994 take—Momoa’s face peering from a green blob of CGI is unsettling in a compelling way—but it does look fun.
Will that be enough for today’s fans to pronounce Street Fighter a proper video game adaptation? We’ll find out soon!
Street Fighter blasts into theaters on October 16, 2026.
Bill Sienkiewicz Brings His Expansive Legacy Into Focus in a New Documentary
“People would ask me early on when I first started what my drugs of choice were because they thought my work was just so crazy,” recalls Bill Sienkiewicz with a smile while speaking with Den of Geek. “It was disconcerting for them to hear that the work was the drug. Everything else got in the way of that.”
Coming into the Den of Geek studios at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, Sienkiewicz certainly has a lot to smile about, remaining as busy as ever within the world of art, particularly within the comic book industry where he has been a groundbreaking staple for over 40 years, reinventing pop culture icons with his breathtakingly evocative style. But more than just showcasing his eye-catching work and catching up with fans and his fellow artists, Sienkiewicz is the subject of an eagerly anticipated new documentary film, Bill Sienkiewicz: That Polish Guy. Goodnaturedly titled after a nickname that Clint Eastwood gave him while they worked together, the documentary traces Sienkiewicz’s origins in Pennsylvania before taking the artistic lead on best-selling comic books like Moon Knight and The New Mutants.
“I wish that I could take credit for the idea of looking back or coming up with a documentary, but it wasn’t mine.” Sienkiewicz admits. “It was Sal Abbinanti, my art dealer and dear friend.”
In addition to working with Sienkiewicz, Abbinanti has also worked closely with celebrated artist Alex Ross for years and produced the 2024 documentary The Legend of Kingdom Come, chronicling the origins and legacy of the acclaimed 1996 comic book title. Comparatively, Bill Sienkiewicz: That Polish Guy goes into much more personal territory with its subject matter, both through reflections with Sienkiewicz and interviews with his peers and close friends. For his part, Sienkiewicz wasn’t so much interested in the potential for “navel-gazing” but was intrigued by the possibility of the documentary giving him a chance to talk about his process and connect his work “with the human aspect” of bringing people together.
In revisiting his professional beginnings, Sienkiewicz reflects that he and his contemporaries were from a generation who loved superheroes and saw them as their own mythology. Naming Neal Adams and Curt Swan among his major influences, Sienkiewicz approached his deep love of the characters and stories with a desire to deconstruct them and get down their respective essence. This came from stories like Daredevil: Love and War, turning the Kingpin into a literal mountain of a man, and depicting Moon Knight as a figure constantly wreathed in the shadows.
“We were literally trying to dismantle it and add our own bits and pieces to the medium and to the lore,” Sienkiewicz explains. “I do know that if I had come in with the style that I later developed, with The New Mutants and my own work, I would not have gotten hired because I literally had to come in dressed in the wolf’s clothing of Neal Adams because he was such a groundbreaking artist. He was so loved and accepted that I came in under the cloak of being like him. Underneath that, there were so many other things that I wanted to try.”
Upon getting to know and befriend Adams, Sienkiewicz continued to see him as an inspirational figure as he started his own career as a comic book artist. Sienkiewicz remembers being impressed by Adams always being visibly enthusiastic and loving his work, with a focus that Sienkiewicz has carried over into his own career and artistic process. In working and speaking with Adams, Sienkiewicz cites a specific piece of advice from his mentor and friend that he found both esoteric and versatile.
“A line represents three things: It represents the inside of the shape, the outside, and itself,” says Sienkiewicz, quoting a piece of sage wisdom from Adams. “It sounds really abstract and artsy, but there is also something very musical and a life message about that. It can be extrapolated and taken to so many different arenas.”
Of course, Sienkiewicz’s work has touched and influenced countless fans worldwide for generations. Even more saliently, Sienkiewicz’s influence and legacy can be prominently seen in movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The New Mutants, as well as television shows like Legion. For his part, Sienkiewicz lauds the work of actors like Anya Taylor-Joy and Dan Stevens in breathing life into his characters and making them their own, while seeing his influence in other art and media forms informs his own continual process of self-discovery.
“It’s wonderful and more than I ever could have imagined,” Sienkiewicz smiles. “None of it is taken for granted.”
Produced by ComicBookPros, Bill Sienkiewicz: That Polish Guy is slated for release in 2026.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Just Complicated The Wrath of Khan
This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 2
At the climax of “The Griffin Incident,” the second episode of Strange New Worlds‘s fourth season, the haunted ship that Kirk, Spock, and La’an have been investigating nearly drives two of the Starfleet officers to kill one another. La’an stabs Kirk and then stands over his body, mocking him for saying that he wants to live for his young son, David. “Your little boy is going to die just like you,” sneers La’an. “At the end of a blade, bleeding out in a dark corner of space.”
It may not be the real La’an saying these words, but they aren’t wrong. David, Kirk’s son with the scientist Carol Marcus, does indeed get killed by a Klingon d’k tahg in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. However, everything before that moment surprises anyone who knows that movie and its predecessor, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Those films portrayed Kirk as a largely absent father, who had never worried too much about the son he left behind while traveling the galaxy with his true love, the USS Enterprise. But in “The Griffin Incident,” we get a different type of Kirk, one who wants to be a good father and hasn’t yet come to grips with the fact that he never will be.
Original Failures
The legend of James Kirk looms large for everyone who loves Star Trek, including the man who currently portrays him, Paul Wesley. “I’ve always wondered about Kirk’s relationship with his father and with his son,” Wesley explained during a press conference attended by Den of Geek. “Your relationship with your father is very important to who you become as a man. And Kirk had to go through some things in order to understand why he becomes who he is.
“What’s great about Strange New Worlds is that we have this wealth of information about Kirk. But on the Original Series, we just meet Kirk and he is who he is. He’s a sure-footed kind of man who is in command. Being able to explore some vulnerabilities with his family has, for me, and hopefully for the viewers, provided a lot of information and context as to why he became who he is.”
That context comes in “The Griffin Incident,” a favorite among the Strange New Worlds cast, for several reasons (“I enjoyed stabbing Paul,” beamed La’an’s actor Christina Chong). “The Griffin Incident” begins with Kirk, Spock, and La’an discovering a missing starship called the USS Griffin while traveling home from a retreat. As the trio investigates, they find the Griffin abandoned, with no indication of what happened to the crew. Amongst the visions and monsters that assault them, Kirk thinks that he hears the cries of a baby, cries that he believes are coming from his infant son David. Kirk had been planning on visiting Carol, with whom he has a cordial but distant relationship, and David. But instead, he agreed to attend the Future Leaders of the Federation Retreat, a decision that caused him no consternation, as he thought he could catch up with them afterward.
However, the strange effects of the Griffin cause Kirk to hear the sounds of a baby crying, sounds that he associates with David. Later, the Griffin manifests images of the Enterprise crew, including Kirk’s brother Sam. In scenes that don’t feel like horror sequences, Sam compares Kirk’s habits of bringing trinkets back to David to that of their father, whose baubles failed to make up for his absence. Worse, Sam tells Kirk that he hasn’t been able to reconcile his Starfleet duties to his family life, a confession that gains greater meaning when Sam gets sucked out into space, forever floating among the stars and away from his wife and children.
The Wrath of the Son
At the point that Sam goes through the window, we viewers know that he’s a hallucination. After all, we see Sam die in the TOS episode “Operation – Annihilate!” where he’s played by William Shatner wearing a fake mustache.
However, longtime Trekkies didn’t know that Kirk felt so deeply about his son that a haunted ship could use it as a weakness to exploit. Outside of non-canonical novels and comics, David Marcus only appears in the aforementioned two movies, where he’s played by the late Merritt Butrick. Through Butrick’s performance, we’re led to see Kirk as largely an absent father, someone whose mere existence is a problem for David. In his first scene, David stands beside his mother Carol as she listens to Chekov (secretly being controlled by Khan Noonien Singh) order her to surrender the findings of her Genesis project. When Chekov tells Carol that Admiral Kirk ordered the transfer, David’s anger at his father bubbles over, and he starts shouting about Starfleet military overriding the science division.
David’s anger doesn’t subside when Kirk himself arrives on Carol’s station, Regula I, to assure them that he did not give the order. David attacks Kirk as soon as he beams down to Regula I, and the fact that the two don’t even recognize one another only makes it worse. Throughout the movie, Kirk certainly expresses some regret about not being in David’s life more. But the narrative puts the emotional onus upon David, having him warm to Kirk over the course of the film, not so much because he feels a connection to his father, but because Jim is such an exemplary Starfleet hero.
We don’t see much change in Kirk’s demeanor at any point in David’s life. It’s only after David’s death that Kirk begins to show feelings toward his son and their relationship. He uses David’s murder as a justification for killing the Klingon commander Kruge in Search for Spock. Later, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Kirk’s anger about David’s death is cited in Klingon court as a reason that he cannot be trusted to advance peace between their empire and the Federation. Yet, all of this reads as guilt for something in the past. We Trekkies have questions about what Kirk thought of David during the boy’s life.
The Failure of James T. Kirk
In his final scene in “The Griffin Project,” Kirk sits alone starring at a screen displaying the words “Outgoing message.” It’s not clear what Kirk plans to say to Carol and David, and our knowledge of Wrath of Khan suggests that he won’t say anything at all, leaving David to grow up with no connection to his father.
Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock only further cement Kirk’s legend as one of pop culture’s greatest heroes. But that scene, and everything else in “The Griffin Incident” shows us something else about Kirk, that he’s conflicted, afraid, unsure… and ultimately very human.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.
THE ONE PIECE: Inside Netflix’s New Anime Adaptation of a Manga Classic
This article appears in the new issue ofDEN OF GEEK magazine. Find out how you can subscribe to get the full physical copy right here!
Eiichiro Oda’s ONE PIECEisn’t just a groundbreaking pillar of the anime industry, it’s a Guinness World Record-holding pop culture sensation that’s more popular than ever. ONE PIECE’s iconMonkey D.Luffy has proudly been featured in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the series has inspired a New York Fashion Week runway event, and even launched a collaboration with the NBA that recently saw Luffy become an honorary member of the New York Knicks! After 22 seasons, more than 1165 episodes, and 15 movies, it’s hard for ONE PIECE to genuinely do something new at this point. So it’s perhaps only fitting for the swashbuckling shonen series to go back to where it all began – literally.
“We got a contact from Netflix,” explains George Wada, co-founder and president of WIT Studio. “They asked me if I wanted to challenge myself to a task.” And what’s a greater challenge than reinventing ONE PIECE for a whole new generation of fans?
For nearly three decades ONE PIECE has represented the epitome of action-adventure anime. Monkey D. Luffy and his intrepid Straw Hat Pirate crew have defeated incredible rivals and covered unbelievable ground since the humble start of their voyage. Now, with Oda’s manga soaring to new heights, Netflix anime THE ONE PIECE is a bold new adaptation with cutting-edge visuals and a fresh creative approach.
THE ONE PIECE turns the clock all the way back to the original manga’s introductory East Blue Saga in which Luffy assembles his Straw Hat Pirate crew and befriends evergreen allies like Nami and Zoro. Coming from the acclaimed WIT Studio, which is responsible for Ranking of Kings, Great Pretender, Bubble, and Attack on Titan’s first three seasons, THE ONE PIECE is guaranteed to be a visually beautiful reinvention of this shonen staple. The East Blue has never looked so fresh.
THE ONE PIECE comes along at a time when modern reboots of cherished classics are having a bit of a moment between Urusei Yatsura, Hell Teacher Nube, Ranma1/2, and the upcoming Dragon Ball Super reboot. What helps THE ONE PIECE stand out from its peers is the unabashed passion that’s been assembled for this exciting vision.
“I took this project because I didn’t want anyone else working on it,” admits THE ONE PIECE director Masashi Koizuka (Attack on Titan, Moonrise) who first discovered ONE PIECE when he was a teenager in high school. “I remember the feeling of this new series making a splash even among heavy hitters. It was packed with a sense of wonder, an excitement of facing the unknown.”
This passion translates into a unique identity and voice for THE ONE PIECE, albeit a spin that’s still faithful to Oda’s sensibilities. “I had to possess him [Oda] in myself,” explains Kyoji Asano, THE ONE PIECE’scharacter design and chief animation director on the unusual process of revising an iconic classic. “For these two months, I was determined to just draw ONE PIECE, which was why I shut myself in.”
Koizuka elaborates upon the unusual expectations that arise with any adaptation, let alone for ONE PIECE. “I want you all to express, rather than copy and paste the work,” is advice that Oda wished upon THE ONE PIECE’s staff, according to Koizuka. “For example, it’s creating your interpretation and expression instead of recreating a panel from the manga.”
The people working on THE ONE PIECE are genuine fans who have lived and breathed the series. This delicate balance that celebrates the original’s essence, but still pushes the source material forward, is essential for THE ONE PIECE’s success and the whole point of this project.
The sense of adventure and enthusiasm from the Straw Hat Pirates transferred over to Koizuka. “It kept me at the edge of my seat every single week, and I remember being hooked to that feeling.” Now he’s recreating that experience for a new generation. “If kids across the world could feel the same way I did when I was a high schooler, if they could experience the same thing, I’d love nothing more.”
THE ONE PIECE does take some liberties with its characters’ designs and the presentation of its iconic story. This 2027 anime doesn’t just redesign the original, but it incorporates quality of life updates that highlight how much the anime industry has evolved in the past 27 years.
Additionally, ONE PIECE’s lofty reputation precedes itself. It’s great that there’s so much of ONE PIECE to enjoy, but it’s honestly intimidating to just casually jump into an anime after hundreds of episodes. Even with guides that attempt to streamline the ONE PIECE experience, it’s still a lengthy commitment that’s enough to dissuade curious fans. THE ONE PIECE breaks down this barrier and makes ONE PIECE more accessible than it’s ever been. It is the perfect equalizer for both seasoned Straw Hat Pirate fans and those who have been curious to set sail for the Grand Line.
THE ONE PIECE will distill the manga’s first 50 chapters into seven episodes that will accumulate to around 300 minutes. THE ONE PIECE’s first season should conclude around the point in the Baratie Arc when Luffy meets Sanji – an ideal entry point for new fans, and a fresh lens through which longtime fans can experience the adventure all over again.
ONE PIECE’s East Blue Saga would be an unreasonable binge in its current state. However, THE ONE PIECE flips the script and opts for a style of frenzied, serialized viewing. Netflix will be dropping all seven episodes of THE ONE PIECE at the same time in February 2027. A weekly release model wouldn’t have been unheard of, considering that’s how ONE PIECE has aired for decades in Japan. But a deliberate shift to a binge-watch model reflects the more modern sensibility that’s being applied to THE ONE PIECE and why it’s a fresh take on this story for a new time and audience, rather than claiming to be the definitive version of Oda’s story.
With well over 1000 chapters of manga to pull from for inspiration, the sky’s the limit for THE ONE PIECE. While there were initially predictions that THE ONE PIECE would be a one-off miniseries, WIT Studio has indicated that they’d like this version of Oda’s story to run for as long as possible and are interested in bringing all of Luffy’s adventures to life, in time. In fact, the project’s size and scope continued to expand during production. “The series has a runtime of 300 minutes,” clarifies Koizuka. “It was originally planned to be shorter than that, but I had so many things I loved and wanted to include, the runtime just kept getting longer and longer.”
Koizuka and his team were determined to tap into the manga’s timeless quality and this story’s ability to connect on a universal level, “We want you to experience a new ONE PIECE from the very beginning, all over again.”
It all feeds into a grander desire for ONE PIECE to evolve into something even greater this decade. Netflix is far from finished with ONE PIECE as its universe continues to grow between the existing anime series, the live-action series, and now THE ONE PIECE. It’s an embarrassment of ONE PIECE riches that’s fit for a king of pirates.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Post-Credits Scene Explained
This article contains Spider-Man: Brand New Day spoilers.
Spider-Man Will Return. Those words, delivered at the end of the Spider-Man: Brand New Daycredits, appear like an old-school promise of more adventure during the fade out of James Bond movies of yore. But their placement in a Marvel Studios movie, particularly on the precipice of what might be the most important MCU flick of the decade, Avengers: Doomsday, takes on a special significance during the final minutes of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Spidey will return, alright, but when, where, and in what form—or even what variant, you might say—is all intentionally left vague during the Spider-Man: Brand New Day end credits. That’s right, true believers, the single post-credits scene we get this time round has potentially multiverse-shattering implications…
The Spider-Man: Brand New Day Post-Credits Scene
There is only one post-credits scene in the new Spidey, with the typical MCU mid-credits gag being curiously omitted here. But for those who stick all the way to the bitter end of Brand New Day‘s closing titles, the final scene is less a live-action denouement than it is an ominous brain teaser.
Earlier in the movie, we learn that good ol’ Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) might have had his memory of Peter Parker wiped years ago, but his unabashed love for the guy who slings web never abated. No longer remembering Spider-Man’s secret identity, he has become obsessed with the wallcrawler, tracking his sightings and movements across New York City. He’s determined to figure out if it was more than just coincidence when the masked vigilante saved his and other classmates’ lives in Washington D.C. and Europe.
As a consequence, he built a Spidey tracker that is able to trace the Web-Head’s movements and DNA signature across great distances. And as we learn during Brand New Day’s post-credits scene, we mean really great distances. In fact, the final shot of the film is not of Holland, Batalon, or Zendaya as the perennially out of reach MJ. It’s of that Spidey tracker screen picking up a signal for a Spider-Man in space. And we mean deep space as the tracker pinpoints a Web-Head past the orbit of the moon and essentially on the second star to the right and straight on to morning. What could it mean?!
Spider-Man Will Return… But Which One?
So Peter Parker will return, but in what shape or form remains to be seen. The foreboding text “Spider-Man Will Return” not so coincidentally resembles the triumvirate of Avengers: Doomsday teasers we received last December. In each one, either Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, or James Marsden and the other O.G. X-Men cast would briefly appear along with the text, “[Insert Character] Will Return in Avengers: Doomsday.”
It is top shelf Marvel Studios marketing, and so is the way Brand New Day deliberately evokes that promise while still not confirming Spidey is returning in Doomsday. Yet if we had to guess, that is exactly what they’re setting up, if not in the way you’d expect.
As established during the post-credits scene of last year’s Thunderbolts*, to hop between realities in the multiverse sometimes requires you to enter from the stars above. Indeed, during that post-credits scene, which was so much a teaser for Doomsday that it was shot on the Avengers set by directors Joe and Anthony Russo, we learn that Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, and all the rest lineup from Fantastic Four: First Steps will be arriving in the MCU proper (aka the “sacred timeline”) by way of a space shuttle crashing from orbit.
So it seems intentionally set up for another Spider-Man besides Holland to be heading back our way in the forthcoming Avengers movies. While no Spider-Man actor has been confirmed to appear in either Doomsday or its fast 2027 follow-up, Avengers: Secret Wars, leaving out the most popular Marvel character seems close to impossible for this two-part event, albeit that doesn’t mean it has to be Holland himself.
If we are allowed to speculate, we think the table is being set for Tobey Maguire’s return for one final bow in the raised web costume in either Doomsday or Secret Wars, if not both. In Brand New Day, Holland’s Peter deliberately reminds the audience of Maguire’s classic 2000s era Spidey by developing organic web-shooters and then stating, “Peter Two had organic webbing and he was pretty cool.”
Furthermore, and perhaps most tellingly, during the recent Marvel Studios panel at San Diego Comic-Con, for the first time ever in one of Marvel’s famed Hall H panels its video sizzle reel footage of past glories wound its audience up by including Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man from the Sam Raimi trilogy, circa 2002-2007, instead of Holland’s MCU variant.
Taken together, Marvel seems to be quietly revving the core fanbase to remember how much they enjoy Maguire’s Spidey because he is about to make a grand return in the upcoming finale to the multiverse shenanigans of the last six or seven years. It might seem far-fetched, but we know that Avengers: Doomsday’s titular villain is less concerned with space like Thanos than he is the multiverse and the threat of incursions. In this context, the only reason to be off-Earth is because you’re traveling to another variation on our little blue dot. And it seems that is what’s happening with some variant Spider-Man out there in the post-credits scene. Dollars to donuts, we’re saying it’s the one who once finger-pointed his way through a James Brown montage while rocking a black suit.
… That’s our theory anyway!
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2 Reinvents the Joker for the Global Age
The Joker is one of the most important villains in history. His evil grin has appeared in everything from comics and movies and video games to every type of clothing and product to philosophical works by thinkers such as Franco Berardi. Two actors have won Academy Awards for playing the Joker on screen, and he continues to be a model for bad guys in every form of media.
So when the producers of Batman: Caped Crusader decided to include the Joker in their show’s second season, they had to think hard about a way to establish their take on the Clown Prince of Crime. According to actor Matthew Needham, best known for portraying the duplicitous Larys Strong on House of the Dragon, the audition had “two instructions” for their Joker. “He must be European and ludicrous,” Needham reveals to Den of Geek. While the latter certainly matches familiar aspects of the character, the former promises a Joker unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Of course, Caped Crusader may only have aired one season thus far, but it’s already shown a willingness to reinvent familiar parts of the Batman mythos. The series draws inspiration from the earliest Batman comics, complete with a 1940s setting and antagonists who feel more like gangsters than supervillains. The show has also had fun taking liberties with established characters, transforming the Penguin into the brassy dame Oswalda Cobblepot (Minnie Driver) and making Harley Quinn (Jamie Chung) frighteningly quiet.
By making him European, Caped Crusader clearly wants a new direction for its Joker. But Needham isn’t going to ignore what came before. “There have been so many iterations of the Joker that I love. I’m really grateful for their inspiration, and I love the direction that Caped Crusader wants to take. The idea of a cold, cool, calculating, and truly evil Joker is so exciting,” he enthuses. “I love the first animated series so much, and I really think that version of the Joker [voiced by Mark Hamill] was so much fun.”
For Batman’s voice actor Hamish Linklater, the arrival of the Joker further builds out the world of Caped Crusader because it provides the piece missing from his Batman. “When I saw the Joker for the first time, and I heard Matthew’s performance, I was like, ‘Oh, now I am complete’,” he reveals. “I had no idea what it was going to be like, and it went beyond my expectations.”
“My objective in playing this part has always been to honor Kevin Conroy,” says Linklater, paying homage to the late, great voice actor who played Batman in The Animated Series and follow-ups such as Batman Beyond and Justice League. “It’s a great honor to make more of the content I loved so much as a kid.”
Yet, Linklater doesn’t do an impression of Conroy, a feat made easier by the nature of Caped Crusader. “The period of this show really determined how Bruce Wayne was going to be. He was going to be a playboy from that period, and that was really fun. The best instruction I received during season one told me that Batman is the man and Bruce Wayne is the character he puts on. The real person is the one under the mask.”
For co-showrunner James Tucker and executive producer Geoffrey Thorne, Caped Crusader exists to upset set expectations, even those held by fans of the original animated series. “We love the quirkiness of the first season,” says Tucker. “People wanted Batman to be warm and fuzzy, strangely enough, and we thought, ‘No! How can we have him pull as far away from humanity as possible?’ Because then we can have the fun of slowly pulling him back. There’s actual humor in that, and pathos. You feel for Batman because he’s a damned soul.”
For that reason, season two of Caped Crusader will “kick it up a notch, with more of everything: more action, more mystery, more messed-up Batman stuff, with him being anti-social but fighting against it,” promises Tucker.
“We’re incrementally making it a story of a man learning to be a person,” Thorne adds. “Batman wasn’t really a person in the first season. He was all broken to pieces. And in every season—theoretically, we’ll get a million of them—he’ll become a more full human being. He’ll learn more about what it’s like to be a person among other people.
“But in the process, he’ll be fighting a lot of people and wearing spandex and blowing stuff up and all that stuff we know,” he promises with a smile.
In short, Batman: Caped Crusader season 2 will continue to explode the familiar to find new aspects of the Dark Knight’s mythos. It’s a good thing they’ve got the right Joker to help with that chaos, someone European but as ludicrous as ever.
Batman: Caped Crusader season 2 debuts on Prime Video on July 31, 2026.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Can Fix Modern Trek’s Biggest Problem
This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 2
The latest Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “The Griffin Incident” builds from a classic Star Trek premise. A group of Starfleeet officers returning from a conference—in this case, Kirk, Spock, and La’an coming from the Future Leaders of the Federation Conference—encounter a strange phenomenon, namely the missing Starship the USS Griffin. As the trio begin making their way through the abandoned ship, they realize the mystery may go beyond their abilities to solve, with Spock musing, “Perhaps the answers can only be uncovered by Division 12.”
The line will likely go unnoticed by most viewers, who will find plenty to love in the episode’s horror vibes and the lore building around Kirk’s relationship with Carol Marcus and their son David. But for those who recall Erica Ortegas mentioning the unit in the season three episode “Terrarium,” Division 12 becomes all the more compelling, especially in light of the franchise’s mishandling of Starfleet’s favorite secret unit, Section 31.
For a series devoted to exploring the USS Enterprise in the years leading up to Kirk’s command, Strange New Worlds hasn’t been afraid to expand or add to the franchise’s lore. We already saw how the show used the effects of the Temporal Cold War on Star Trek: Enterprise to alter the timeline of Khan Noonien Singh and introduce a new long-living race called the Lanthemites, in the form of engineer Pelia. But Division 12 feels distinct from even these additions, precisely because of how gradually the series is revealing it.
The first mention of Division 12 occurred in “Terrarium” and, as in “The Griffin Incident,” it only comes up as an off-hand observation. When Ortegas goes through a wormhole, she notes that she’s in a region famed for its strange phenomena, “The kind of thing Division 12 usually looks into.” In that episode, Ortegas ends up encountering a Gorn, a species she and her shipmates know well, and a Metron, one of the godlike beings who pit Kirk and a Gorn against one another in the Original Series episode “Arena.”
In “The Griffin Incident,” we get at least a little more about Division 12, thanks to some follow-up dialogue. When Spock brings up the unit, La’an describes them as “Starfleet analysts that run around investigating unexplained phenomena.” La’an’s phrasing makes Division 12 sound similar to another recently-introduced part of Starfleet, Division 14. As shown in the Lower Decks episode “Much Ado About Boimler,” Division 14 focuses on scientific and medical mysteries, particularly those affecting personnel.
Certainly, whatever happened on the Griffin affected the crew. However, where Division 14 deals with strange issues that come to them, the descriptions from La’an and Ortegas suggest that Division 12 goes looking for the unexplainable, sort of like The X-Files in the world of Star Trek.
Obviously, “X-Files in Star Trek” is an elevator pitch that would make any genre nerd excited. But it’s particularly compelling given modern Star Trek‘s obsession with a different secret Starfleet division, Section 31. First introduced in the later seasons of Deep Space Nine, Section 31 is a clandestine black ops division put into place by Article 14, Section 31 of the original Starfleet Charter.
In Deep Space Nine, Section 31 was used by writers as something that tempts our heroes, but something that they ultimately overcome. Section 31 first appeared in a storyline that saw operative Luther Sloan attempt to recruit Dr. Bashir, blackmailing him by threatening to expose him as an augment, a condition that would bar him from serving in Starfleet. Sloan wanted the doctor to help him wage war against the Dominion, and Bashir’s resistance echoed the various ways Captain Sisko and others fought against their darker impulses while dealing with an overwhelming enemy. The fact that Section 31 secretly used Odo to commit genocide against the Changelings running the Dominion undercut Starfleet’s final victory, showing how war corrupts the Federation’s optimism.
While Enterprise more or less used Section 31 in the same way, later Trek has been more eager to embrace and even valorize the unit. Although Section 31 is the true big bad of the 2013 movie Star Trek Into Darkness, that thematically messy film makes all of Starfleet feel vaguely fascist, positioning Kirk and crew as outliers instead of exemplars. Discovery seems to follow suit, making a Section 31 operative its prime villain in season two and sending Empress Georgiou of the Mirror Universe’s Terran Empire to join them. But the show is too in love with edgy cool to truly critique her actions, and so Georgiou’s inclusion ends up making Section 31 feel cool, too.
Or, rather, attempt to feel cool. It’s hard to imagine anyone who saw the Section 31 movie actually enjoyed it. But it’s also hard not to see how hard the movie wanted the audience to cheer for a black ops group that gunned down its enemies, doing the “real” work so all the dorky explorers can travel the galaxy.
Given that Star Trek is all about dorky explorers who travel the galaxy, Section 31 never deserved the amount of attention it received. But if Division 12 is indeed a unit devoted to finding the strange and unexplainable, then Trek producers may have finally found the secret organization they’re looking for. Intentionally seeking out phenomena that makes no sense fits right in the Star Trek ethos, especially if its agents approach the phenomena with reason and empathy, acting out of a desire to understand instead of responding to fear.
The Event Horizon homage in “The Griffin Incident” shows how hard it is to be empathetic instead of fearful, even for the Future Leaders of the Federation. But “The Griffin Incident” also demonstrates that boldly going into scary environments can make for excellent Star Trek, in a way that Section 31 stories rarely accomplish.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 2 Review — The Griffin Incident
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 2
Star Trek isn’t necessarily the first franchise you think of when it comes to scary stories to tell in the dark. But while horror is not necessarily a well that its series go to all that often, when Trekembraces the genre, it does so in fairly memorable fashion. From Star Trek: The Next Generationclassics like“Night Terrors” and “Genesis” to Star Trek: Voyager’s“The Haunting of Deck Twelve” andStar Trek:Deep Space Nine’s“Empok Nor,” the franchise has repeatedly proven that space can be a uniquely dark and frightening place. Rarely has that been more true than in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ “The Griffin Incident,” an hour that features everything from jump scares and steadily creeping madness to disturbing hallucinations and (a lot of) body horror. It is not an episode for the faint of heart, but it’s another shining example of the fearless way that this show plays with genre and tone on a week-by-week basis.
To be clear, this hour isn’t Strange New Worlds’s foray into horror. Season 1 episode “All Those Who Wander” is a sort of Alien vs. Predator-themed bottle episode, with literal monsters (a.k.a. The Gorn) lurking in dark corners. “The Griffin Incident” is more old-fashioned nightmare fuel, as our protagonists find themselves trapped in a familiar yet completely alien location where they ultimately can’t trust each other or their own minds. The episode’s many twists mean viewers can never entirely believe what they’re seeing either, and the fact that it’s so willing not to offer any concrete answers is just part of its overall charm.
“The Griffin Incident” is something of a genre spin on the real-life mystery of the infamous ghost ship, the Mary Celeste, which was discovered adrift near the Azores in 1872 with all the crew’s personal belongings, cargo, and provisions intact, but not a soul aboard and no sign of what happened to them. Here, the U.S.S. Griffin, a starship that was presumed lost for nearly a decade, is rediscovered in an uncharted region of space by La’an, Spock, and James Kirk on the way home from a leadership retreat. The gang notifies the Enterprise but boards the ship themselves to look for signs of what happened to the ship’s 300+ crew members, only to discover that almost everything is, as La’an puts it, “as if they’d all stepped out for a coffee break.” It’s precisely the kind of eerie setting in which strange things are almost guaranteed to happen. Which, of course, they do. Fairly immediately.
The ghost — or something like a ghost, at any rate — of the ship’s Chief Security Officer roams the Griffin’s halls. A locked and barricaded door bears mysterious phaser scorches. Did the CSO Rose Harper go crazy and murder her shipmates by transporting them straight into the vacuum of space? Or did the Griffin’s crew somehow succumb to a kind of spiraling madness as the ship’s reports of increasingly bizarre behavior — violent outbursts, incidents of self-harm — indicate? Your guess is as good as mine.
The episode’s uber-creepy atmosphere is top-notch throughout: Every scene is claustrophobic, dimly lit, and suffocating, full of strange sounds and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shadowy figures that drift in and out of a character’s periphery. Inexplicable events keep happening: a mayday beacon that seems to have launched out of nowhere, the ship’s power impossibly working once again even though it shouldn’t, computers and communications equipment that glitch in and out at random. And that’s before everyone seems to start hallucinating.
“The Griffin Incident” is full of striking and disturbing imagery. Spock, trapped in the ship’s med bay and surrounded by body bags that ooze and drip with blood, once again wrestles with his conflicting human and Vulcan sides in an extremely visceral and violent way. (Reader, I gasped when I realized he wasn’t imagining the self-mutilation and body horror of it all.) La’an begins to see herself in the ship’s video logs in Rose Harper’s place. And Kirk is trailed by haunting sounds of a seemingly lost child crying, even within the very bowels of the ship. This is all another example of the smart way that Strange New Worlds uses its frequently outlandish adventures to explore complicated character issues, from Kirk’s fear that he’s doomed to be a deadbeat dad to Spock’s continued inner turmoil about his own identity.
The series has been hinting that La’an’s recessive augment DNA might have somehow been activated by that episode last season that saw her get turned into a Vulcan, and it’s a theory that’s backed up by her increasing distance from those around her and her constantly simmering rage. (She did punch a dinosaur in the face.) And her time on the Griffin certainly seems to be further activating that tenaciously furious aspect of herself, which, let’s face it, is probably why she managed to survive at all, but is also why Kirk got stabbed. (We just won’t talk about how her dark prediction of the way his son David will one day die is actually true. Yikes.)
Smartly, “The Griffin Incident” doesn’t attempt to provide concrete answers to the questions it raises. It’s up to the viewer to decide whether ghosts are real, if the Griffin is possessed or haunted, if the Enterprise crew is hallucinating because of madness or external forces, or if everything Rose claimed happened the way she said it did. In the end, these are the kind of questions best left to the mysterious folks of Division 12, which may or may not be the closest thing the Federation has to The X-Files. Unlike the black-ops teams of Section 31, Division 12 seems to exist to investigate the unexplainable — or at least sequester the unexplainable away from the regular world. And maybe we’re all better off for it. (Even if that is, in fact, a spinoff I would watch immediately. Pay attention, Paramount.)
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+ through September 24.
X-Men ’97: Nightcrawler’s Parentage Is Even More Complicated Than You Think
This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 7.
On its surface, the latest episode of X-Men ’97, “Strange Land, Savage Heart,” plays like a standard legal drama, just with mutants. The Catholic Nightcrawler, always the moral compass of the team, volunteers to argue in defense of the anti-mutant bigot Graydon Creed against the fundamentalist Exodus, leader of the Acolytes. Along the way, the story has plenty of space for over-the-top action, not just because the trial takes place in the Savage Land, a place in Marvel‘s Antartica that remains in its prehistoric state.
But things start to get confusing right at the beginning, when the demonic-looking, blue-fur-covered Nightcrawler refers to Southern Belle Rogue as his sister. Even more confusing, he calls the blond-haired human Creed his brother. But if you think that’s weird, just wait until you read about how Nightcrawler is kin to these and other X-characters.
Mystique’s Family Tree
When Kurt Wagner a.k.a. Nightcrawler first appeared in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1, he’s alone and being chased by his German countrymen. We don’t really uncover much more about his backstory until Uncanny X-Men Annual #4 (1980), in which we learn about how he was raised by the witch Margali Szardos, alongside his “sister”/girlfriend Amanda Sefton. But almost immediately afterward, in 1981’s Uncanny X-Men #142 by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the blue-skinned shapeshifter Mystique hinted that she and Kurt may share a familial connection.
A lot of things get hinted at during Claremont’s legendary 17-year run on Uncanny X-Men, mostly involving sexual orientation. Many of the characters were written to be queer, but Marvel editorial and the Comics Code Authority (the industry-regulated censorship board) refused any open same-sex relationships. Thus, Mystique and the seer Destiny were always explicitly described as just really good friends. However, on a less despairing note, Claremont also liked to use shadowy backstories as part of his plotting, setting up things like the truth of Wolverine’s origin or the mystery of the third Summers brother as a engine that would drive future stories.
By the mid-’90s, however, Claremont had left the franchise and others took over, people who wanted to pay off plot lines set up earlier. Thus, in 1994’s X-Men Unlimited #4, by Scott Lobdell and Richard Bennett, we finally definitively learn that Mystique is Nightcrawler’s parent. That issue also makes clear that, by extension, Nightcrawler is the brother to Rogue, in deed if not biology.
In her first appearance in 1981’s Avengers Annual #10, by Claremont and Michael Golden, Rogue was a youthful member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, then led by Mystique. Shortly thereafter, Rogue has a change of heart and comes to Xavier’s, hoping they can help her break Mystique’s influence. Over the course of several decades, we learn the full story about the two, discovering that Mystique and Destiny raised Rogue after she ran away from her strict aunt. Even though she does not share Mystique’s values, Rogue remains grateful that the older woman raised her and considers Mystique her true mother, making Nightcrawler her brother.
And then there’s her other brother, Graydon Creed. Created by Lobdell and Brandon Peterson, Creed first appears in Stryfe’s Strike File #1 (1992), where he’s described as a complicating factor whose existence will tear apart the mutant community. Over the course of the Sabertooth miniseries from 1993, we learn that Creed is the son of Victor Creed a.k.a. Sabretooth, who fathered him with Mystique, then disguised as the German spy Leni Zauber. Mystique kept Graydon’s identity hidden from Sabretooth, especially when she learned that their son was a human, lacking the X-gene that made his parents mutants. Over time, Graydon grew up to lead the Friends of Humanity, an anti-mutant hate group, and his rage only grew when he learned about the rest of the family.
Father Figures
So, now that we know about how Nightcrawler is connected to Rogue and Creed through Mystique, we still have one more question: who is Nightcrawler’s father? That secret remained in place until 2003, when Chuck Austen and Takeshi Miyazawa brought us the infamously bad storyline The Draco, which ran across Uncanny X-Men #428–434. For as long as Nightcrawler has existed, his kind nature and deep faith has been a contrast to his looks, underscoring the franchise’s central message of tolerance by showing that just because someone looks like the Devil doesn’t mean that they’re actually satanic.
The Draco flushes all that away by stating that Nightcrawler looks like the Devil because his dad is the Devil. Moreover, his faith is a sham and all part of his father’s diabolical plan. The Draco states that the ageless mutant Azazel, whose red skin and forked tail inspired humanity’s ideas about the Devil, fathered Nightcrawler with Mystique, who was then married to German lord Christian Wagner. Azazel resurfaced because Nightcrawler had joined the priesthood, which would allow Azazel to bring invaders from his Hellish realm.
The Draco regularly makes the list of the worst X-Men stories ever told. Yet, Professor X and Magneto founded the nation of Krakoa in the 2019 House of X/Powers of X storyline, Azazel accepted their offer of clemency for all mutants. Writer Jonathan Hickman also had free rein to write his characters as openly queer, and even made Mystique’s fight to resurrect her wife Destiny a major plot point of the era. And with those barriers out of the way, the full truth of Nightcrawler’s history could be told.
The 2023 one-shot X-Men Blue: Origins by Si Spurrier, Wilton Santos, and Marcus To, Nightcrawler—who was, at the time, operating in the place of Spider-Man and using the code-name Creepy Crawler… we don’t have time to get into that—confronted Mystique to get the full story, a story that Claremont was rumored to have planned decades ago. Years ago, while she was married to Christian Wagner, Mystique fell in love with Irene Adler a.k.a. Destiny. She convinced Christian to hire Irene as a maid so they could be together, right under his nose.
Using her powers of precognition, Destiny foresaw Azazel’s attack and convinced Mystique to have an affair with him to prepare for his fall. But that’s not how Nighcrawler came about. Instead, the two wanted their love to produce a child, and so Mystique used her ability to control her body on a genetic level to conceive a child with Destiny. Despite Mystique’s attempts to hide Destiny’s pregnancy and the nature of their relationship, Christian confronted them, forcing her to kill him. Worse, Destiny gave birth to a completely blue baby, which required her to hide him from the townspeople. When those townspeople revolted, Destiny hid her child in the hollow of tree so she could blend in and get supplies. But when she had returned, Kurt had already been found, adopted Margali Szardos and taking the first step on the trail that would lead him to Xavier’s.
X-traordinary Love
Outside of a few nods to the familial connections between Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Creed, X-Men ’97 doesn’t get into the full history. Yet, there are some thematic similarities between Mystique’s story and “Strange Land, Savage Heart.” Fundamentally, Nightcrawler argues to both Exodus and Creed that as strange and unfamiliar as their lives have been, as different as they may look from one another, as unlikely and incompatible as their actions may be, they are all connected. And because they are connected, they must find a way to understand and accept one another.
That ethos drives everything that Nightcrawler does, from the way he practices his faith to his acrobatic swashbuckling against those who would do others harm. Turns out, he learned about the importance of love, in whatever form it takes, from his parents, Destiny and Mystique.
X-Men ’97 streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.
Brad Bird Reveals How Aborted The Spirit Movie Influenced Ray Gunn (Exclusive)
After a string of blockbusters in animation, including Ratatouille and both Incredibles movies, as well as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in live action, filmmaker Brad Bird is finally getting the chance to make his dream project via Ray Gunn. The upcoming Netflix release is a blend of retro futurist science fiction and noir mystery, with the CGI animated project following the titular gumshoe (voiced by Sam Rockwell) and his alien partner Eyera (Tom Waits) as they investigate a case involving pop superstar Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson).
Ahead of Ray Gunn’s release, we got the chance to speak to Bird about an older unmade film he worked on previously, an adaptation of Will Eisner’s legendary comic book series The Spirit. Written and drawn by Eisner throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, the original comic followed a private investigator without superpowers named Denny Colt who had been pronounced dead. Using his “resurrection” to build a supernatural mythology around himself, the Spirit went after criminals who slipped through the law’s cracks.
In the early 1980s, Bird and fellow Cal Arts grad Jerry Rees began work on an animated feature of The Spirit with Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz. An impressive pencil test animation was completed, but a studio backer could not be found. The fact that the cartoon project was geared more toward tough action/noir mystery than funny animals/songs made financiers nervous, so it was abandoned.
Bird went on to make a name for himself on television with Family Dog and The Simpsons. Eventually he took another stab at getting a more mature animated feature off the ground in the early ‘90s with Ray Gunn, which began as a hand-drawn, two-dimensional project at Turner Pictures, then at Warner Bros. before the latter studio had him pivot to The Iron Giant. With Ray Gunn now resurrected with action-packed footage presented to the public, it becomes clear that lead character Raymond Gunn definitely has Denny Colt vibes. In essence, this is a transmutation of Brad Bird’s original concept for The Spirit.
“I wasn’t consciously aware of it, but it was an unscratched itch,” admits Bird of that project’s retro pulp detective vibe. The concept for Ray Gunn was sparked by the director misinterpreting the B-52’s song “Planet Claire” (“she drove a Plymouth Satellite, faster than the speed of light”), which he mistook for the theme song from 1950s TV show Peter Gunn. The crossed wires led his mind to picture a detective like Gunn in a science fiction context.
As Bird elaborates, “Based on misunderstanding a song, I just started piling ideas into it. It wasn’t until later that I figured out, ‘Oh, it’s because you didn’t get to make The Spirit.’ It’s different from The Spirit in a lot of ways, but there was something about noir. Eisner was probably the most cinematic person to ever do a graphic novel. I found out about it because I loved movies: William Friedkin at one point wanted to do The Spirit and he said it’s the Citizen Kane of comic books, so that immediately hooked me. I was like, ‘I gotta read The Spirit.’ They started reprinting them, so I read all the reprints, and that’s how I got involved in The Spirit… but I never got to scratch that itch until now.”
His partnership with Ray Gunn co-writer Matthew Robbins (Dragonslayer, Batteries Not Included) also emerged out of the canceled project.
“Matthew was dropping by Gary Kurtz’s company when Jerry Rees and I were doing The Spirit, and that’s how I met Matthew,” Bird says. “We just stayed in touch over the years, and early on in my career people didn’t feel comfortable with me writing something alone. They wanted somebody with more experience, which Matthew definitely has. We co-wrote the third and fourth drafts of Ray Gunn together, then I went on to do five or six drafts after that. I still see Matthew all the time and talk with him. He’s a good friend.”
While The Spirit eventually came to live-action as a 1987 TV movie starring Sam J. Jones and a failed 2008 feature directed by Frank Miller, a proper animated version closer to Eisner’s work is still a dream for many comic book fans. For Brad Bird, the spirit of his film lives on in Ray Gunn.
