New York Comic Con Special Edition 2018

DAREDEVIL • DC UNIVERSE'S TITANS CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA

FALL PREVIEW

BUMBLEBEE • MORTAL ENGINES SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

NEW YORK COMIC CON | OCTOBER 2018 | DENOFGEEK .COM

SCREAM

QUEEN 1 DEN OF GEEK

JAMIE LEE CURTIS EMBRACES A LIFETIME OF HALLOWEEN

PRINT EDITOR Chris Longo

p FALL TV

PREVIEW

Witches, superheroes, and maniacs are coming to a TV (or screen) near you.

PG. 20

IN THIS ISSUE

Assistant Print Editors Nick Harley, Alec Bojalad David Crow, John Saavedra, Kayti Burt, Brian Berman Creative Directors Lucy Quintanilla, Joshua Moore Design and Illustration Hannah Kneisley, Jessica Koynock, Samantha Güt Copy Editor Sarah Litt

DENOFGEEK.COM CEO Jennifer Bartner-Indeck

MOVIE PREVIEW ‘Tis the season of Blockbusters and Oscar contenders.

PG. 42

PUBLISHER Matthew Sullivan-Pond Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini

Associate Editors Alec Bojalad, Kayti Burt, David Crow, Don Kaye, John Saavedra, Tony Sokol

HALLOWEEN

Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter return to the source of evil in Halloween.

PG. 32

Founder & UK Editor Simon Brew

MARS

Can space fiction help influence reality?

PG. 62

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IMAGE CREDIT: UNIVERSAL (COVER, HALLOWEEN), PARAMOUNT (BUMBLEBEE), NETFLIX (SABRINA), NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (MARS)

Deputy Editor Chris Longo

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

THE LESSON OF HALLOWEEN We always remember the monsters, but we can learn more from horror movie heroes. BY MIKE CECCHINI IF YOU’RE A FAN OF GENRE-DRIVEN pop culture, there’s no better month than October. The new TV season is still revealing its secrets; the next batch of the year’s biggest movies are right on the horizon; and best of all, it’s Halloween, the best excuse of all to indulge in the

eerie delights entertainment has to offer.

Perhaps there’s a reason for the recent year-round horror renaissance in movies, on TV, and even in comics.

Horror movie villains are easy to grasp.

Imagined horrors can be understood.

Like the relatively recent dominance of

IMAGE CREDITS: UNIVERSAL

ELECTION DAY IS NOVEMBER 6 If you are reading this during New York Comic Con, Oct. 4 – 7, then you still have time to register to vote in November’s general election. In many states you can register to vote online, meaning some of you may even be able to do it while you take a break from the show floor or in between panels this weekend.

Voter registration deadlines vary by state. Here in New York, the deadline is Oct. 12. In neighboring New Jersey, it’s Oct. 16. In Connecticut, it’s Oct. 30.

Some states require a longer window, and in some (such as Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, or Utah) the deadline is a full 30 days before Election Day. But don’t worry, even if you live in a state with a relatively unforgiving deadline, as long as you register before midnight on Oct. 7, you’re still clear to vote on Nov. 6. www.vote.org provides a full suite of voter resources and information. You can find out if you’re registered, register if you aren’t, and locate your local polling place for when the big day comes.

superhero movies and television, horror helps us define an increasingly chaotic world in clearer tones.

It’s often the monsters we remember.

Their extraordinary powers, iconic looks, and terrifying brutality grant them a hold on us that borders on the supernatural. The survivors, the heroes, and the antiheroes who defeat them, are always decidedly ordinary. They represent resilience, grit, and the individual’s ability to do what must be done to achieve victory in the face of overwhelming odds.

Our cover story focuses on the horror genre’s single greatest example of an ordinary person overcoming extraordinary odds: Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode from the Halloween franchise. Laurie does the best any of us could hope to do in the worst situation and she does it without powers, without mystical weapons, and even without perfectly timed one-liners. As October gives way to November, remember how relatively simple actions can add up to meaningful victories, no matter how dark the night may seem.

DEN OF GEEK 5

BOOKS & COMICS

A peek at the cover of Aquaman #43, with art by Robson Rocha.

DOWN IN THE DEPTHS

Kelly Sue DeConnick previews her upcoming turn as writer on Aquaman. BY DELIA HARRINGTON AQUAMAN IS HAVING A MOMENT. The character will make his solo movie debut in December, Dan Abnett’s recent tenure as writer has been politically prescient, and interest in the character is at an all-time high.

This makes the arrival of writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Captain Marvel, Bitch Planet) and artist Robson Rocha (Green Lanterns) all the more exciting.

To be clear, DeConnick’s run is not a reboot. “Unspoken Water” will pick up with Aquaman #43 in December, launching out of Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV’s “Drowned Earth” Justice League/Aquaman crossover.

“Eighty percent of life on Earth is in the ocean,” DeConnick says. “He is the ocean’s protector. If the ocean dies, everything else dies.” But before you start picturing Arthur Curry in Al Gore’s khakis, DeConnick thinks of each of her books in terms of music, and Aquaman is Led Zeppelin, “big, mythic, and the kind of thing you’d have on the side of a van.”

Speaking of art, DeConnick is excited about working with Robson Rocha. “The art that’s coming in is phenomenal,” she says. “It’s mystic and huge.”

The story begins as Aquaman and water gods from other cultures wash ashore for reasons unknown. This

move toward land means the typical mixed-heritage-outsider model doesn’t work as well to motivate the story. As DeConnick points out, “There’s no real cost to him for being half-Atlantean on dry land. He’s a handsome member of the Justice League who’s literally bulletproof.”

DeConnick looked to the character’s history for inspiration. In Geoff Johns’ run, Arthur’s Atlantean mother made the difficult decision to leave her human husband and their child to fulfill her royal duties in Atlantis.

This trauma is distilled in the daily trips father and son took to the water in search of his mother, something DeConnick refers to as “about as foundational a pain as I can come up with. That is extraordinarily traumatic.”

From there, the important point for DeConnick is how to connect Aquaman’s pain to his power. “He has the power to pull every creature in the ocean back to him, except his mom,” she says.

DeConnick posits that people who have been abandoned are often overachievers, because they’re trying to prove to the parents who left them that they made a mistake. But since Arthur’s mother left out of a sense of duty, it instills in him a similar sense of responsibility and stewardship. So she’s not actually doing stories about, “Aquaman wanting his mommy,” but rather looking at how the foundational pain in his life influenced his character traits.

Lest you think Aquaman is about to become all doom and gloom or highminded meditation, DeConnick assures us otherwise. “Superheroes, when they work best, bring us hope,” she says.

“That’s ultimately what we’re trying to do. A big, cool story about saving the ocean and overcoming challenges.”

Kelly Sue DeConnick will appear as part of the “DC World’s Finest” panel on Saturday at 12:15p.m. in Room 1A24.

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IMAGE CREDIT: DC COMICS

VENOM COMICS PRIMER PG. 8 • YOUR (GEEKY) FALL BOOK GUIDE PG. 10

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BOOKS & COMICS

So you liked the Venom movie? Check out these comics! BY GAVIN JASPER

1

SPIDER-MAN: BIRTH OF VENOM It helps that Eddie Brock wasn’t an established character before attacking Spider-Man as Venom.

He offers a flashback during his first storyline to get us up to date, and from there we get plenty of fighting plus an introduction to that unique Spidey/Venom dynamic. Not only is Venom stronger than Spider-Man, but he’s invisible to his spider-sense and knows his identity, meaning that in order to survive, Spider-Man has to think outside the box at every turn.

2

VENOM: LETHAL PROTECTOR Venom’s popularity hits a level where they decide to have him step out on his own. No longer driven by false revenge, Venom moves to San Francisco to get in some solo adventures before eventually returning to New York City where all the important characters are.

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MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN VOL. 2: VENOMOUS The less said about Eddie’s return to villainy the better. After a couple years of writers not really knowing what to do with the character, a storyline called “The Hunger” reveals that Eddie has been afflicted with cancer from day one and the symbiote keeps him alive. Eventually, Eddie comes up with the idea of auctioning the creature off to the criminal underworld and giving the money to charity.

From here, Eddie and the symbiote are split apart for well over a decade.

4

SPIDER-MAN: NEW WAYS TO DIE A mixture of Mr. Negative’s powers, cancer, and traces of the symbiote in Eddie’s blood turns Eddie into Anti-Venom. He’s still a violent psychopath, but now he has the power to cure people of disease and even the long-term effects of drug use.

5

VENOM VOL. 1: HOMECOMING The symbiote spent some time attached to a guy named Lee Price. The twist is that the symbiote actually wants to do good while Lee is a criminal using the power for his own benefit. This leads to the rebonding of Eddie Brock and the symbiote, and a return to the old Lethal Protector status quo.

After that, Venom finds peace with Spider-Man, teams up with the X-Men, and takes part in a multiversal war alongside a lot of superheroes wearing alternate universe Venom suits. These days, he’s finding out more about the symbiote’s true nature and history via fighting Knull, the God of the Symbiotes. Comics are crazy.

And that’s all I heard about Venom and Eddie. Can’t tell you more ‘cause I told you already, and here we are waving Venom and Eddie goodbye.

IMAGE CREDIT: MARVEL

FEED YOUR SYMBIOTE

Unfortunately, his powers also suppress Spider-Man’s abilities when they’re near each other, so that’s an issue, even if Anti-Venom insists on being his ally.

After moving on from that identity, Eddie wears the Toxin symbiote (Carnage’s spawn) for a while, but remains a supporting character until he purges that costume, too.

ALL

S E O R HE v WELCOME

A retrospective celebration of the Marvel comics galaxy that is currently ruling the world.

A heartw arming and hop eful manga a bout family, lo ve, and acce ptance from Eis ner Award-w inner Gengoro h Tagame.

Visit the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Booth (2204-J) to get your copies today!

less time irit e h T sp y of stor ravery, b and gined a m rei new with a n for ratio ivid e n e g ,v ning ns. n u t s o trati illus

The Vampire Chronicles continue with the riveting, rich saga of Prince Lestat.

BOOKS & COMICS

YOUR (GEEKY) FALL BOOK GUIDE Need a good book recommendation? We’ve got you covered with these speculative fiction titles. BY KAYTI BURT JOIN THE

DEN OF GEEK BOOK CLUB! See info on pg. 11

MECHA SAMURAI EMPIRE

AN ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE THING

THE LADY’S GUIDE TO THE MONSTER BARU PETTICOATS AND PIRACY CORMORANT

by Peter Tieryas (Ace Press) OUT NOW

by Hank Green (Dutton) OUT NOW

Mecha Samurai Empire, set in the same world as The United States of Japan, follows Makoto “Mac” Fujimoto, a young man raised in Japanese-occupied California in a world where Germany and Japan won World War II. Mac dreams of becoming a mecha pilot, but his terrible grades and a botched plan to game the military test stand in the way of entrance into the mecha pilot training program. With tensions rising between the United States of Japan and Nazi Germany, Mac enters the civilian pilot program. What could possibly go wrong?

Hank Green’s debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, is the story of 23-yearold April May, who becomes an overnight celebrity when she stumbles upon a giant sculpture one night and makes a YouTube video with it. It turns out the ten-foot-tall statue wearing samurai armor is one of dozens of its kind, dubbed The Carls, which have mysteriously appeared in cities around the globe.

When the video April made goes viral, she is thrown into internet fame and her life and relationships unpredictably change because of it, as she works to understand The Carls and what they want from us.

by Mackenzi Lee (Katherine Tegan Books) OUT NOW

by Seth Dickinson (Tor Books) OUT OCTOBER 30

Set a year after Felicity’s madcap adventure as a supporting character in The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy finds Felicity back in England, dodging marriage proposals and trying desperately to enroll in medical school. Felicity sets off across the continent once again, accompanied by a mysterious young woman named Sim, an Algerian Muslim who offers to pay Felicity’s way in exchange for pretending to be her maid. As you might imagine, Sim has her own perilous quest, one Felicity is pulled into as the two make their way across the European countryside.

The Monster Baru Cormorant follows Baru Cormorant’s continuing journey to destroy the Empire of Masks, the colonizing force that destroyed her home and left her an orphan, from within. Now, Baru Cormorant is the cryptarch Agonist, leading her enemies on a quest for the secret of immortality. When given the power to trigger a war that could spell the end of the Masquerade, Baru Cormorant has some serious choices to make. Will Baru Cormorant use her power to change the system or destroy it?

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W.L. Goodwater On Breach Breach hits bookshelves on November 6.

V.E. Schwab On Vengeful Vengeful is out now.

THE COLD WAR ERA SPY GENRE is enjoying a cultural resurgence, and W.L. Goodwater’s alternate history magical spy novel, Breach, is a delightfully supernatural addition.

“Not just in the [Cold War spy] genre, but in reality, we seem to be inching back towards the Cold War,” Goodwater tells Den of Geek. “I don’t know how quickly fiction is following behind that. Certainly, when I started writing this, with my villains being Nazis and Communist Russia, I didn’t realize that it was going to be so modern at the time. But I just think it’s a time period that has always drawn people’s imagination. The conflicts that come out of there have never really gone away.”

Set in an alternate history in which the Berlin Wall was built by Soviet magicians, Breach follows Karen, a young magician with the American Office of Magical Research and Deployment in the 1950s, tasked with investigating a mysterious fracture in the wall. “[In the real world], the Berlin Wall doesn’t appear until the ‘60s in its full form,” says Goodwater of the ‘50s setting. “There were blockades and stuff like that, but the concrete wall doesn’t come until the ‘60s, but in the world of Breach, there are other reasons for the Berlin Wall to exist that are directly tied to the war. So I wanted to set it in a time where the wounds of the war are a little bit more fresh because it directly ties into why the wall is there and what it’s really about.”

WHEN V.E. SCHWAB PUBLISHED VICIOUS five years ago, the story of two friends-turned-archenemies who discover the key to creating superhuman abilities lies in death, the world was in a very different place. Vengeful, Vicious’ sequel, is “a 2018 reaction to a 2013 novel,” says the author.

“Vicious is a highly masculine book about toxic masculinity, about identity and obsession, love and hate, and friendship and rivalry,” Schwab says. “Vengeful is a book about all of that and about the ways that women are stripped of, and re-take power in the world.”

Those themes most obviously manifest in new character Marcella Riggins, an ex-mob wife who becomes an ExtraOrdinary person (EO) when her husband tries to burn down the house with her inside of it.

“Obviously she doesn’t die,” says Schwab, “and she comes back with the ability to ruin anything she touches.”

Marcella is the leader of a new villain troupe that also includes June, an EO who has the power to act as a “living voodoo doll,” says Schwab. June can avoid injury by “wearing other people.”

If she is hurt while “wearing” someone else, it is that other person who endures the pain.

Marcella and June face off against Vicious protagonist Victor Vale, who, five years on, is dealing with the increasinglydamaging repercussions of the second, longer death he endured at the end of Vicious. As Victor looks for a cure for his condition and works to keep his found family together, Marcella plots to use Victor’s greatest weakness against him: Eli Ever.

FURTHER READING A BLADE SO BLACK

by L.L. McKinney (Imprint) OUT NOW BLOOD COMMUNION: A TALE OF PRINCE LESTAT

by Anne Rice (Knopf) OUT NOW POOR RELATIONS

by Jo Walton (Tor Books) OUT NOW AN EASY DEATH

by Charlaine Harris (Saga Press) OUT NOW WILDCARD

by Marie Lu (Penguin) OUT NOW A SPARK OF WHITE FIRE

by Sangu Mandanna (Sky Pony Press) OUT NOW EXIT STRATEGY: THE MURDERBOT DIARIES

by Martha Wells (Tor.com) OUT NOW THE BOOKS OF EARTHSEA: THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED EDITION

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Saga Press) OCTOBER 23 LIES SLEEPING

by Ben Aaronovitch (DAW) NOVEMBER 20 THE KINGDOM OF COPPER

by S.A. Chakraborty (HarperVoyager) JANUARY 22, 2019

THE DEN OF GEEK BOOK CLUB featuring book giveaways and exclusive author interviews. Find us on GoodReads.com.

DEN OF GEEK 11

TELEVISION

DC UNIVERSE’S TITANS PG. 18 • FALL TV PREVIEW PG. 20 • NETFLIX’S BIG MOUTH PG. 28

STREAMING BLOCKS

Miss the TV Guide days? We’re here to help you make a streaming primetime schedule. BY ALEC BOJALAD

12 DEN OF GEEK

8:00 p.m.

Political Intrigue

MONDAY Dramedy

TUESDAY Margaret Atwood

WEDNESDAY New Must-See TV

THURSDAY Superhero

FRIDAY SNL-less

SATURDAY Netflix & No Chill

SUNDAY

8:30 p.m.

9:00 p.m.

9:30 p.m.

House of Cards netflix

The Man in the High Castle amazon

Patriot amazon

Orange is the New Black netflix

Alias Grace netflix

The Handmaid’s Tale hulu

Catastrophe amazon

Fleabag amazon

BoJack Horseman netflix

Runaways hulu

The Defenders netflix

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel amazon

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt netflix

Stranger Things netflix

Mindhunter netflix

Big Mouth netflix

American Vandal netflix

IMAGE CREDIT: AMAZON, NETFLIX, HULU

STREAMING TELEVISION allows you to watch shows whenever you want. But what if you don’t want to?

What if you wanted to watch TV shows in two hour blocks every night of the week, strictly scheduled during the 8-10 p.m. block like the old days? We’ve compiled a sample schedule for those who want to watch only the best the streaming world has to offer, but within a set time frame.

Each night of the week has two to four shows compiled around a similar theme. But don’t let that stop you from creating your own.

Join us for book giveaways, freebies and in-booth signings with V. E. SCHWAB, SHERRILYN KENYON, SEANAN MCGUIRE, CHARLIE JANE ANDERS, DAVID MACK, and more!

BOOTH #2136

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AND CHECK OUT YOUR FAVORITE AUTHORS AT THEIR PANELS

V. E. SCHWAB, CHARLIE JANE ANDERS, K ARSENAULT RIVERA, ANNALEE NEWITZ, & SEANAN MCGUIRE

TOR PRESENTS #FEARLESSWOMEN FRIDAY • 5:15 pm–6:15 pm • Room: 1A18

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS

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ANNALEE NEWITZ

FLOOD, FIRE, FAMINE, FEAR How Science Fiction Tackles the Challenges of Climate Change When Politicians Won’t SATURDAY • 6:30 pm–7:30 pm • Room: 1B03

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WOMEN IN [EVERYTHING] Intersectional Feminism Across Genres THURSDAY • 12:15 pm–1:15 pm • Room: 1A18

MARK OSHIRO

GEEKS OF COLOR VI: Fight the Power FRIDAY • 2:45 pm–3:45 pm • Room: 1B03

Free advance reading copy as a gift with purchase!*

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*While supplies last.

TELEVISION

Let’s throw away the idea of the “niche” superhero. BY KAYTI BURT WHEN JODIE WHITTAKER WAS FIRST cast as the Thirteenth Doctor, some unhappy Doctor Who fans lamented the loss of a role model for boys.

Brushing past the fact that, even without the Doctor, male role models are still vastly overrepresented in almost all industries, including pop culture, this statement rests on the sexist belief that women cannot or should not be role models for boys or men: that they can’t look up to their mothers or grandmothers, to their sisters or aunts, to Nakia or Wonder Woman, to Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Beyoncé. It’s an unsettling reaction that only proves the need for more diversity. Thankfully, the Doctor is already on the job. At San Diego Comic-Con, Whittaker was asked what message she hopes boys will get from watching her tenure as the Doctor. “That it’s okay to look up to women and that that is exciting and not to be feared,” Whittaker said, without hesitation.

“It’ll be really exciting when women aren’t treated as a genre,” Whittaker added, highlighting a vital problem: When straight, white cisgender men star in a major film or TV show, that film or TV show is expected to be seen by everyone. When anyone outside of those narrow parameters stars in a film or TV show, it is considered niche.

Not only does this pattern have a devastating effect on the kids and adults who rarely or never get to see people like themselves on screen in a central role, but it also discourages the kids and adults who often do get 14 DEN OF GEEK

to see people like themselves on screen from ever looking for connections to characters who look or exist differently than they do. It’s robbing them of a chance to work on a vital skill (empathy), and distancing them from the rest of humanity in the process.

At a press conference last March for A Wrinkle in Time, a science fiction adventure story with a female protagonist, director Ava DuVernay encouraged boys to see the film. “[Zach Galifianakis] was the first person to say, ‘This is something for boys, too. Boys need to be able to see themselves as vulnerable and themselves being able to follow a girl and not always having to be macho,’” DuVernay said.

This discussion isn’t just about gender, but about all “other”-ed identities. Films and TV shows that center around black characters and actors, such as Black Panther or Black Lightning, are another common “niche” in our big budget genre fare.

However, as the box

“IT’LL BE REALLY EXCITING WHEN WOMEN AREN’T TREATED AS A GENRE.” If you’re lucky, in addition to being entertained, you will also learn something about what it is like to experience the world in a way different from the way you yourself do... And I’m not just talking about having the ability to produce, control, and manipulate electricity. Seeing an “other” cast in a role or story you care about isn’t a loss; it’s a wonderful opportunity. “[Doctor Who] is a show for everyone,” Whittaker said. “I think us three sitting here [Whittaker, as well as co-stars Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole] didn’t always have, when we were growing up, people on television that looked like us or sounded like us. Heroes don’t have to tick the same box. When you’ve been thrust into a genderless role, it’s incredible, but ... let’s not have this conversation in 2020.”

It’s not enough anymore for women and other underrepresented identities to be treated as niche entertainment.

It never was. We all deserve better representation in our most powerful, far-reaching pop culture roles.

ILLUSTRATION CFEDIT: JESSICA KOYNOCK

ROLE MODELS

office results for Black Panther and the second season renewal of Black Lightning suggest, these movies and shows are not being enjoyed just by black audiences, nor should they be.

Mainstream characters that exist outside of the parameters of straight, white male-dom are not just for the “other” demographic parameters they tick off; they are for everyone. So, if you like trippy stories about kids traveling through time and space to find their fathers, watch A Wrinkle in Time.

If you like stories about superheroes trying to save their community, watch Black Lightning. If you like science fiction about aliens who travel through space and time, watch Doctor Who. It’s as simple as that.

MEET THE AUTHORS Ne w Yor k Co m i c Co n

PENGUIN BOOTH 2204 - G

MYKE COLE

MARLON JAMES

Saturday, October 6 12 pm–1 pm 4 pm–5 pm

DEBORAH HARKNESS

Friday, October 5 1 pm–2 pm

Friday, October 5 4:30 pm–5:30 pm

Photo © Beckett Gladney

SEANAN MCGUIRE

Saturday, October 6 2 pm–3 pm

Photo © Vania Stoyanova

Photo © Connie Tsang

RYAN NORTH

Friday, October 5 12 pm–1 pm

Photo © Riverhead

Thursday, October 4 4 pm–5 pm

CHRISTINA HENRY Saturday, October 6 5 pm–6 pm

Photo © Ben Dezner

PETER TIERYAS

Photo © Kathryn McCallum Osgood

Photo © Angela Xu

Photo © Karsten Moran

SIGNINGS

H. JON BENJAMIN Sunday, October 7 12 pm–1 pm

GIVEAWAYS

Stop by the booth for a complete schedule of events. Giveaways while supplies last.

Signing tickets will be handed out in the Penguin booth starting at 10 am the day of the signing.

DAW

TELEVISION

ZIM INVADES AGAIN Cult classic Invader Zim makes an unlikely return to Nickelodeon.

BY JOE MATAR IT’S BEEN OVER A DECADE, BUT THE groundbreaking animated sci-fi comedy series, Invader Zim, is finally returning to television with an hour-long movie.

The brainchild of comic book artist and writer Jhonen Vasquez, the series premiered on Nickelodeon in 2001, but was canceled during production of the second season. Though an ongoing comic materialized in 2015, fans of the cult hit have long hoped for Zim’s return to the small screen.

The original series follows Zim, an incompetent alien with delusions of grandeur who screams a lot, as he repeatedly fails to conquer planet Earth. He’s been sent there along with GIR, his excitable robot assistant who also screams a lot, by their alien overlords, The Almighty Tallest, who just want Zim as far away as possible from “Operation Impending Doom II,” their second try at taking over the universe (Zim ruined the first attempt).

In an effort to gather information about Earthlings, Zim disguises himself as a human child and attends school, where he finds an archnemesis in Dib Membrane, the only kid in class who questions Zim’s green skin.

At San Diego Comic-Con, Den of Geek got the chance to sit down with Jhonen and some of the cast: Richard Horvitz (Zim), Rikki Simons (GIR), Kevin McDonald (Almighty Tallest Purple), 16 DEN OF GEEK

Invader Zim ran for 27 episodes over two seasons on Nickelodeon.

and Wally Wingert (Almighty Tallest Red). We asked them a bunch of stupid questions and a couple of sincere ones about Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus! and they kindly put up with it.

We didn’t expect to get too many story details out of them, but we figured we’d ask if they’d spoil the entire plot for us anyway.

“Luke dies,” says Jhonen.

“They all die,” Richard adds.

“Tell him about the dinosaurs!”

Wally shouts.

So maybe we didn’t get much revealed about the plot or learn what a “florpus” is, but the teaser Nickelodeon released offers some clues. In some shots, Dib looks as though he’s really let himself go. The Zim comic series begins with an unhealthy Dib getting back in shape and into the business

of exposing Zim’s alien identity, so it looks like Enter the Florpus! may share some plot elements with the comic.

Taking a further page from the comic series, Vasquez explains how the bulk of the character development in the movie will come from Dib and his family.

“Character-wise, Zim, you can’t change him, he’s incredibly shallow,” Vasquez says. “There’s no introspection whatsoever. GIR, you can’t change him.

He’s just an idiot and he’s insane. The only place there was a focus on developing stuff was with the Membrane family. I started with the comics, focusing on having Gaz and Dib feel more like a brother and sister as opposed to just people that hate each other. And their dad is more of a dad as opposed to this incredibly neglectful guy who just seems to have kids in his house.”

The pacing and comedy had to evolve for Florpus as well. Most episodes of the original series were divided into two stories at a little over 10 minutes each, but a feature-length Zim plot requires a different approach.

“There’s more time to develop a joke in 66 minutes,” Jhonen explains. “One of the first things that I thought was at that length we can’t just make a normal episode where they’re screaming all the time. You’ve got to have some changes in tone, and there has to be a little more of a story.”

Zim himself might be incapable of change, but there’s been a lot of technological advancements since series production ceased in 2002.

Has any of that made it into the new movie? Does Zim have a smartphone now? Is he on Instagram? Snapchat?

“Technologically, some of the stuff is a little closer to what we use now,” Vasquez admits, “but Zim always existed in this sort of alternate reality, so it didn’t really need to be updated.

IMAGE CREDIT: NICKELODEON

DOOM DOOM DOOM It was already semi-futuristic. So everybody’s got Fitbits.”

“It was originally going to be called Enter the Fitbit!, but we couldn’t get the rights,” adds Richard Horvitz. Switching to Zim’s voice, he screams, “GIR! What is my heartrate?”

Zim’s world may now be plentiful with Fitbits, but, happily, the animation and art in Florpus looks stunningly identical to the original series, probably because it’s being produced in much the same way.

Of the animation process, Vasquez remarks, “I think things have gotten a little slicker, but we’re kind of using the same stuff. The studio that we’re working with overseas is working on paper, so they’re pretty old school. But we’re still Photoshop. I think there’s just less paper in the studio.”

Though a comedy, Invader Zim is

notorious for being a surprisingly dark and cynical kids’ show. There are no real heroes as nearly every character is some variety of self-absorbed jerk and there are quite a lot of disturbing concepts and imagery.

“Like we pulled a kid’s eyes out,” says Jhonen, recalling an episode.

Nickelodeon would give them notes on “weird stuff” they never expected.

“My favorite one was we couldn’t say ‘the underworld,’” Horvitz remembers.

“So this was actually one of my favorite lines because it forced us to come up with, I think, a funnier one.” Slipping into Zim’s voice, he continues, “We had to say, ‘You’re from the place beneath the overworld!’”

As for the new movie, Vasquez hasn’t run into any issues with Nickelodeon’s standards department.

Says the creator, “This one story that we’re doing wasn’t designed to be more grotesque or shocking than what the series was. It’d be interesting to try to do some of the stories that we did back then now. I’ve seen way crazier stuff on other shows. You know, there’s some pretty intense stuff on Adventure Time.”

“You should note though,” interjects Wally Wingert, “that the reason other shows like Adventure Time are doing those things is because the trail was blazed by this man right here. When Invader Zim came out, that was the new barometer by which you could get away with something. Up until then, all the other cartoons were relatively tame, but now you’re seeing way darker stuff than we ever did on Zim.” We don’t want to aim our hopes too high, but, hopefully, in these turbulent modern times, Zim will swoop in and make everything better. Or, alternatively, could he make America worse?

“There is no worsening,” says Jhonen.

Everyone laughs. “Zim just doesn’t make sense anymore,” Vasquez continues. “I don’t know why we’re making this. It’d be like George Orwell writing Nineteen Eighty-Four after 1984 happened. You can’t laugh at people being horrible now. It’s sort of like, ‘Oh, everyone’s horrible now.’”

MEET THE CHARACTERS ZIM Irken invader trying to take over the Earth.

Huge idiot.

GIR Zim’s crazy robot sidekick. Even bigger idiot.

Loves tacos.

ALMIGHTY TALLEST RED One half of the ruling class of the Irken Empire. Not very bright.

ALMIGHTY TALLEST PURPLE The other half.

Arguably slightly dimmer.

DIB Earth’s only defense against Zim. Unfortunately quite dumb.

GAZ Dib’s sister.

Extremely smart.

Only interested in video games.

PROFESSOR MEMBRANE

Father of Dib and Gaz. Genius.

Concerned with far more important global concerns than Zim.

DEN OF GEEK 17

TELEVISION

TITANS TOGETHER!

The DC Universe Titans TV show offers a new look at familiar characters. BY MIKE CECCHINI THE TEEN TITANS HAVE ALREADY been the subject of one of DC’s most-acclaimed comics series: Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans. They headlined two wildly successful animated shows (three, if you count the Titans-adjacent Young Justice). They’re led by the most famous Robin of all, Dick Grayson, a character whose DC history is matched only by Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman himself. All that’s been missing from their legacy is a live action interpretation.

Titans, a 10-episode series coming to the DC Universe streaming service in October, will fix that. The series will unite Robin (Brenton Thwaites), Raven (Teagan Croft), Starfire (Anna Diop), Beast Boy (Ryan Potter), and other DC characters with an eye on telling more mature, harder-hitting superhero stories than you might find elsewhere. And while there have been

previous attempts to bring Titans to the screen, it was worth waiting to tell the story right, with all of its necessary characters.

“There was a time when no one was allowed to put Dick Grayson on TV screens,” Titans executive producer Geoff Johns says. “I remember [writer and executive producer] Akiva [Goldsman] and I were talking and I said ‘we really can’t do Titans without Dick Grayson. We need Robin.’”

Fortunately, Titans found its Dick Grayson in 29-year-old Brenton Thwaites. With Titans, Thwaites becomes the first actor to play a live action Robin since Chris O’Donnell hung his cape up after 1997’s Batman and Robin. “He comes with this wisdom and almost haunted nature behind his eyes,” Johns says of Thwaites’ performance. “It just felt like he had lived a long life already… it’s a very hard character to cast

Starfire (Anna Diop) searches for answers.

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because he has to be youthful, yet old for his age.”

Thwaites, who admits he wasn’t a big superhero fan growing up, was drawn to the role of Dick Grayson once he was briefed on the plans for Robin in Titans. “For once in my life, it was me auditioning them,” Thwaites says. “When I read up on the character and heard about their vision for the show, I thought, ‘If I would ever do one of these, this is the one to do.’”

Perhaps even more than Batman, Dick Grayson is a character defined by his fighting prowess and athleticism.

The already fit Thwaites had to make sure his Robin could walk the vigilante walk, brushing up on his boxing and Muay Thai skills and learning how to wield kali sticks. “I wanted to be physically and mentally fit because I knew it would probably

IMAGE CREDIT: WARNER BROS./DC UNIVERSE

Robin (Brenton Thwaites) steps out of Batman’s shadow.

be a pretty tough gig in terms of the longevity of the show,” Thwaites admits, although he is quick to give credit to his stunt double, Mustafa Bulut. “He was amazing and did everything, physically, that my character needed.”

Titans is not only the team’s first live-action adaptation, it’s the first TV exploration of what Dick Grayson’s life was like after stepping out from Batman’s shadow. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve probably noted the grim tone and brutal fight scenes, not to mention Robin’s less-thancharitable view of his former partner.

Robin’s intensity is a product of his background. “Dick sees himself as Batman’s weapon, his sidearm,” Johns says. “That’s what he’s struggling with.

When he clicks over into Robin mode, he goes into what he was trained to do

and he’s definitely lost himself to it.”

As a result, there is a noticeable divide between Dick Grayson, police detective, and Robin, street fighting vigilante. Robin fights with a viciousness that would make Batman proud, even as he is trying to distance himself from his mentor.

Thwaites says that “Dick thinks a little less about consequences and more about what’s happening” during the fights. On the other hand, his civilian identity is “a little more measured… his moral compass is more centered.

That’s the guy who really thinks about what he’s doing and wants to change, and wants to figure out what to do next, but doesn’t quite know how.”

Dick’s inner conflicts find a parallel in Rachel “Raven” Roth (Teagan Croft), a young woman struggling with a dark lineage and supernatural

powers she fears she can’t control.

“One of the big stories you see is a struggle of internal darkness,” Johns says. “In Rachel’s case, it’s a literal darkness, and in Dick’s case, it’s an emotional and psychological one.”

Their meeting is an important step, but they have a long road ahead before they can start a superhero team. “The first season really leans more into the horror [and] the supernatural, because that’s what the story is about,” Johns says. “The story is all about darkness and what it can do to you, and when you’re surrounded by violence, what that does to you, and how you evolve past it.”

Those horror elements center on one character in particular. “Rachel doesn’t want to be anything that’s close to evil, but she’s got something inside her, or she is something, that she’s struggling with,” Johns says.

The darkness is amplified by the freedom afforded by a streaming service. “We’re not doing this just to do it,” Johns says of the show’s use of strong language and violence. “It’s tied intrinsically to the theme of the first season. The limits are just going to be what we think is right for the show.”

Of course, Titans takes place in a world where Batman and Robin are already well established, which raises the question of how many other DC

“WE’RE GOING TO EVOLVE THIS TEAM, JUST AS IT EVOLVED IN THE DC UNIVERSE.” heroes are out there. The answer, it would seem, is all of them. “When Marv Wolfman and George Perez evolved New Teen Titans, it was in a really cool apex for the DC Universe in the ‘80s,” Johns says. “We’ll see Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire, and we’re going to meet other characters.

We’re going to evolve this team, just as it evolved in the DC Universe. But to me, the whole DC Universe exists within Titans.”

DEN OF GEEK 19

TV Witches, superheroes, and outright maniacs lead the way for the fall 2018 TV season.

20 DEN OF GEEK

THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA

NETFLI X | OC T OB ER 26

Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men) stars as Sabrina Spellman.

ith the arrival of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series, the television Archieverse journeys into the supernatural.

Gone are the laughs of the 1990s TGIF staple, replaced with a program that Veronica Lodge would describe as “full dark, no stars.”

The show draws inspiration from the comic by Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack. But as Aguirre-Sacasa told us, the TV Sabrina is its own animal entirely.

“The comic book is very, very dark, very violent, very transgressive, and almost, I won't say it's nihilistic, but it's pretty hard-core,” says AguirreSacasa. “And when you translate something like that to a movie or a TV show, stuff that you wouldn't mind having drawings do or say is very different than what you might want living, breathing people to say or do or experience.”

Will the show deliver the creepy thrills of its comic counterpart? “It is not quite as dark as the comic book,” he says. “Though I will say the deeper into the series we go, the more into horror we go.”

The series could flapjack like a house of tarot cards if the right actors aren’t involved. Fortunately, the cast is led by Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka in the title role, a character trying to get the balance between her human and witch sides right. Following a quick casting period (“I think the whole process probably happened within 20 days, start to finish,” Shipka tells us), the 18-year-old actress adjusted to the world of Greendale with ease.

“Going into the story I felt really comfortable knowing who she was,” says Shipka, “And then obviously you discover more as you go.”

So how does one create a character that is steeped in the occult? “My main source material was probably the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic,” Shipka says. “Obviously the show is closest to the most recent comic, but it doesn't follow it exactly, so there's a lot of room to play.”

Miranda Otto, best known for her work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, co-stars as Zelda, one of Sabrina’s strict aunts. She describes the conflict her character and Sabrina face as being about the disconnect between institutional expectations and personal aspirations.

“Zelda wants Sabrina to be a devout witch,” Otto says. “She has certain doubts about things within the church. On the one hand, when she chastises Sabrina for her behavior when she steps out of line, I think at the same time there's a part of her that is invigorated by Sabrina's strength and her ability to kind of dissect these things.”

Ultimately though, Shipka thinks that fans will connect to the characters on a fundamental level.

“The reason why I love it so much is because this show is so relatable, despite the fact that it's about witches. Sabrina’s struggle is so real, so analogous to a teenage experience.” — CHRIS CUMMINS

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fall preview TV

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE A M AZON | OC TOBER 5

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STAR WARS RESISTANCE D I S NEY X D | OCTOBER 7

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Although Star Wars Rebels came to a shocking end earlier this year, another animated series has arrived on Disney XD to take its place. Star Wars Resistance ditches the Prequel era in favor of a new generation of rebel heroes fighting against the evil First Order. The series takes place six months before the start of The Force Awakens, offering us a rare look at the days before Rey went on her epic adventure across the galaxy. Resistance stars pilot Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean), who is recruited for a top secret spy mission by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) into the heart of the First Order.

Poe’s not the only character you’ll recognized on the show. Gwendoline Christie will also reprise her role as Captain Phasma and Rachel Butera will voice General Leia. Oh, and cute little BB-8 is along for the adventure as well. Along with a new cast and setting, Resistance also sports a new, anime-inspired art style that sets it apart from anything that’s come before. — JOHN SAAVEDRA

22 DEN OF GEEK

The Man in the High Castle became quite chaotic toward the end of its second season with the German conspiracy at its core, but with a global war narrowly avoided, the stage is set for a shift in the power structure among the American Reich, the Pacific States, and the resistance fighters. A surprising link between Juliana Crane (Alexa Davalos) and Trade Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) will lead the pair to work out once and for all the mystery of the films while John Smith (Rufus Sewell) and his family struggle with the restrictions of the Nazi high society in New York.

Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) is sent on a diplomatic mission to San Francisco, and he and Juliana will finally have a chance to reach a turning point in their relationship.

The Neutral Zone will enter the limelight in the coming season, with Jason O’Mara (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) joining the cast to play Wyatt Price, who fled the war in Europe and whose family immigrated to New York from Ireland as refugees, then fled west again ahead of the Nazi invasion. Wyatt has learned to survive as a hustler, trading in various black market goods and services, and he should be an interesting addition this season. — MICHAEL AHR

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX (SABRINA, MANIAC, DAREDEVIL, CASTLEVANIA, HILL HOUSE). HULU (INTO THE DARK), AMAZON (HIGH CASTLE)

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INTO THE DARK HULU | OC T OBE R 5



Blumhouse Productions has become a horror powerhouse by spinning lowbudget scares into box office gold. Now Blumhouse is bulking up its TV arm, aiming to replicate their spooky cinematic success on the small screen with highprofile projects like HBO’s Sharp Objects and the TV adaptation of The Purge.

Keeping the thrills coming, Blumhouse Television is bringing horror anthology series Into the Dark to Hulu. Into the Dark will release new bone-chilling, feature-length episodes on the first Friday of every month, with each episode inspired by a holiday from the month of its release.

The first episode, “The Body,” is set on Halloween night. We can’t wait for a year’s worth of Blumhouse’s crowd-pleasing terrors. — NICK HARLEY

IMAGE CREDITS: DISNEY XD (STAR WARS), THE CW (BLACK LIGHTNING), AMAZON (THE ROMANOFFS), IFC (STAN AGAINST EVIL).

When we said we wanted these two crazy Superbad kids to get together... we didn't mean like this.

MANIC

NETFLI X | NOW ST R EA M ING

D

irector Cary Fukunaga proved that television could be more than just a writer’s medium after helming all of HBO’s transcendent first season of True Detective. Draping the proceedings in a Southern Gothic coat of doom and gloom and dazzling audiences with show-stopping displays of technical proficiency, Fukunaga’s filmmaking style was one of the show’s biggest appeals.

Featuring the reunion of Superbad co-stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, as well as Justin Theroux and the legendary Sally Field in supporting roles, Maniac has just as much jawdropping talent in front of the camera as behind.

Maniac follows Annie Landsberg (Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Hill), two troubled strangers drawn to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug trial that promises to repair any ailment of the mind with no complications or sideeffects. Needless to say, things don’t go entirely as advertised. Fukunaga is given room to flex his talents as the mind-bending season goes deep into the psyches of our protagonists, spanning decades and different realities altogether. All 10 episodes are currently streaming on Netflix.

— NICK HARLEY

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DAREDEVIL N ET F LIX | O CTOBER 19

A

s far as Hell’s Kitchen is concerned, Daredevil died at the end of The Defenders. But viewers know that Matt Murdock lives on, sheltered in the same church he often turns to for spiritual and emotional support. The question was never if we would get another season of Daredevil, but rather, when.

The wait is almost over. With a new showrunner (The Man in the High Castle’s Erik Oleson), new characters, including Joanne Whaley as the mysterious Sister Maggie, and the return of Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, Daredevil season 3 should take back Hell’s Kitchen in style.

“I wanted to tell a thriller that is tonally between season one of this show and The Sopranos,” Erik Oleson says. “It is much darker and character driven, the action sequences are violent and explosive. It’s very much Daredevil and yet there are real stakes in all of these action sequences. There are emotional decisions

24 DEN OF GEEK

being made, there are characters who die, there are fights that Matt loses.”

Oleson has drawn inspiration from Daredevil comics stories like Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada’s “Guardian Devil” and the classic “Born Again” by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, but don’t expect this season to adapt either of those tales. “It is not a predictable season,” Oleson says. “There are moments that resonated with me tonally that I used for inspiration in an original story. I am not using a direct translation from any of the comics, I think that that would have been a mistake. I wanted to give the audience what they wanted but not in the way that they expected.”

But the themes of the new season have a decidedly more real world basis.

“We have a design to the season that is framed around a central theme for me which is that our fears enslave us,” Oleson says. “Daredevil, being ‘the man without fear,’ was an interesting jumping off point.

Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is back in black for Daredevil Season 3.

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BLACK LIGHTNING T H E C W | OC T OB ER 9

 As I am observing the world around us right now, the country is very divided [and] the world has a lot of problems. I think that it’s everyone’s fears that manifest in ways that put us against one another. Villains who are able to capitalize on our fears and bring us down."

Who might those villains be? Well, other than the aforementioned Wilson Fisk, Marvel is keeping quiet, but Oleson has some hints that will certainly intrigue fans.

“I think that there’s another character on the show who is a very physical threat to Matt...who can match him blow to blow,” Oleson says. “We will hopefully see that character as a person with his own wants, needs, and desires. That way that they clash, it will illuminate aspects of Matt’s character and this other villain. I’m really interested in using action and all of these other elements to more deeply draw the characters.”

Matt Murdock is dead. Long live Matt Murdock.

— MIKE CECCHINI

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Amongst the pantheon of CW superhero shows, Black Lightning sets itself apart as a series willing to address real world problems. Jefferson Pierce aka Black Lightning (Cress Williams) doesn’t just deal with traditional supervillains, he deals with police brutality, institutional racism, and our country’s disturbing history of experimenting on its AfricanAmerican citizens.

The first season of Black Lightning was, refreshingly, not an origin story for Jefferson Pierce, who came out of retirement as Black Lightning rather than building the identity anew.

Instead, it was an origin story for his daughters Anissa (Nafessa Williams) and Jennifer (China Anne McClain), who learned about their superhero legacy as their own powers began to manifest. The second season, which kicks off Oct. 9, will no doubt see more Pierce family team-ups, both on the superhero field and off, on this show that highlights family and community as the greatest strengths of all. — KAYTI BURT

DEN OF GEEK 25

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HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

N E T F LIX | OC TOBER 12

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veryone likes a good ghost story. And few ghost stories have stood the test of time like Shirley Jackson’s 1959 classic novel The Haunting of Hill House. Jackson’s haunted tale about a group of four people from different backgrounds searching for the paranormal in the titular 80-year-old mansion has been adapted into two different films—one in 1963 and one in 1999. Now it’s coming to television as a 10-episode series thanks to Netflix.

The Haunting of Hill House will star Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones), Carla Gugino, and Henry Thomas as part of the crew investigating Hill House. The series will be directed by Netflix’s go-to horror fan, Mike Flanagan (Hush, Oculus, Gerald’s Game). Will it be possible to sustain the proper level of horrific tension for ten full episodes? If any story can do it, it’s this one. — ALEC BOJALAD

THE ROMANOFFS A MAZON | OCT OB ER 1 2

26 DEN OF GEEK

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What a weird, potentially wonderful premise! The Romanoffs isn’t the straight historical drama you might expect from the title, but rather a contemporary anthology series that tells the stories of different people around the world who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family, the House of Romanov. Each episode will have a different cast, location, and story.

Written, directed, and produced by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, The Romanoffs was one of the hottest series properties of the past few years, with Amazon winning a bidding war to acquire it. The eight-episode first season has a massive $70 million budget and a long cast list which includes: Aaron Eckhart, Christina Hendricks, Jack Huston, Diane Lane, Amanda Peet, Paul Reiser, Corey Stoll, Noah Wyle, and Radha Mitchell, among many, many others.— KAYTI BURT

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CASTLEVANIA NETF LIX | OC T OB ER 26

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The first season of Netflix’s Castlevania animated series was nothing short of a miracle. Sure, mega nerd filmmaker Adi Shankar and brilliant writer Warren Ellis were behind the show, but making a faithful (and good) video game adaptation would not be an easy task. Many others before them had failed miserably. But as sure as Dracula will always rise from the grave to haunt Wallachia once again, Castlevania became the first successful game-to-screen adaption of our time. While the first season was just a taste of what Castlevania could do — running only four episodes — the second season promises eight episodes of bloody goodness. — JOHN SAAVEDRA

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The series is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel of the same name.

STAN AGAINST EVIL I FC | OC T OB ER 31

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After ending season two on a cliffhanger, Stan Against Evil has to find a way to restore its universe before it can get into some monster-of-theweek fun. Stan (John C. McGinley), with the help of Evie (Janet Varney), has finally put the passing of his wife behind him, which means the show is ready to explore new, gorey territory.

To do so, series creator Dana Gould enlisted a dynamite group of guest stars for season three, including Maria Bamford, Scott Adsit, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Koechner, and Matt Braunger. Season two was an improvement over the first season, so we’re expecting big things from the third installment of IFC’s horror comedy.— CHRIS LONGO

DEN OF GEEK 27

TELEVISION

r w G Big Mouth

s

Up (A little)

Netflix’s animated ode to puberty is coming back for a second season, this time with more shame.

BY ALEC BOJALAD

28 DEN OF GEEK

B

ig Mouth’s first season ends with 7th grader Andrew Glouberman (voiced

by John Mulaney) lamenting his latest hormone-fueled humiliation: Being wrongfully implicated for murder after tossing socks filled with his, um, DNA into a dumpster.

“Look, I know this all seems embarrassing now, boys, but maybe one day you’ll look back on these times fondly and perhaps even make something beautiful about it?” Andrew’s Hormone Monster (voiced by Nick Kroll) says.

Andrew and his friend Nick (also voiced by Kroll) point out that it might be illegal to do a show about a bunch of kids masturbating.

“Holy shit, I hope not,” the Monster replies. “I mean, maybe if it’s animated we can get away with it…. right?”

Season one of Big Mouth not only “got away with it,” it ended up being one of Netflix’s funniest, most outrageous, and weirdly sweet shows. Big Mouth was created by lifelong friends Kroll (comedian and star of The Kroll Show) and Andrew Goldberg (a writer on Family Guy), alongside cocreators Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett.

The show is loosely based on Kroll and Goldberg’s formative years growing up in Westchester County, New York, but mostly it’s about the universal wonders and terrors of puberty. Characters Andrew (based on Goldberg), Nick (based on Kroll), Jessi (Jessi Klein), Jay (Jason Mantzoukas), and Missy (Jenny Slate) all try to navigate their changing bodies and brains while confronting their own respective hormone monsters—literal and figurative.

While Netflix doesn’t release viewership data, Big Mouth season one was popular enough to earn a second season, which debuts on Oct. 5. But can there possibly be more drama, comedy, and pathos to be mined from what amounts to just a few years in our life cycle?

“We still have a whole whiteboard with different topics about puberty that we want to get to,” Goldberg says. “Puberty is a dramatic point of life where everything is in such flux and everything seems like the most important thing in the world.”

One of the concepts on Big Mouth’s whiteboard that will emerge as a big theme in season two is shame. As with the Hormone Monster, shame will be represented in the young characters’ lives by the appearance of another unwelcome familiar: The Shame Wizard.

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30 DEN OF GEEK

adolescence is a shared experience.

Some specific remnants of Kroll and Goldberg’s own childhoods make their way into season two.

“In the first episode, Andrew gets his lip waxed by his mother and that happened to me. To this day she feels so bad about it. It eventually worked too well. For years I could grow a full beard except for a few patches on my lip. Nick liked to call it a reverse Hitler,” Goldberg says.

Kroll has his own unfortunate childhood experience that became fodder for season two.

“Yes, I’ve talked about it publicly as I emotionally deal with it still. I got pantsed at a party and was exposed to my crush at an age when I had not hit puberty yet and felt really insecure about it,” he says.

The writers combined Kroll’s story with another youthful urban legend. Writer Max Silvestri heard about a kid being pantsed on a zip line, creating an atom bomb of adolescent embarrassment.

Childhood can be traumatic but thankfully it doesn’t last forever. Goldberg says the writers plan to graduate the characters from seventh grade after the show’s third season.

That invites the possibility that Big Mouth can see these precocious kids through their high school years, though Goldberg adds they haven’t thought that far ahead.

Regardless, youth has its joys, even if its under siege from the Hormone Monster and Shame Wizard. “I’m learning to love Nick,” Kroll says. “I’m learning to love that bad little boy inside of me. In a slightly glib, slightly true way. Which is what the show is about in a lot of ways. It’s about trying to love that 13-year-old kid.”

IMAGE CREDIT: NETFLIX

“Puberty is a dramatic point of life where everything is in such flux and everything seems like the most important thing in the world.”

“Right at the end of season one, I wrote up on a whiteboard that the Hormone Monster needed a mortal enemy,” Goldberg says. “I wrote ‘Shame Monster,’ and Nick was like, ‘No, shame is more of a wizard. It’s more insidious and mysterious than a monster.’”

The Shame Wizard is a pale, treacherous beast voiced by accomplished English actor David Thewlis (Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter films and V.M. Varga from the most recent season of Fargo).

“We were watching Fargo season three when we started writing our season two,” Kroll says. “[Thewlis’] performance on Fargo is one of the greatest villainous performances I’ve ever seen. It was great inspiration for writing the Shame Wizard. We said to ourselves, ‘We’ll ask him to do it because we wrote it for him, and then it was a real joy when he said yes.’”

Another less ghastly introduction for season two is a new student for Nick, Andrew, and company to interact with named Gina (voiced by Gina Rodriguez). Gina is a soccer player on Missy and Jessi’s team and potential love interest for Nick.

Gina also opens up a new plot line for the show to tackle yet another aspect of puberty’s many confusing indignities: What’s it like to be the first girl in your class to develop boobs? South Park’s answer to this particular question in “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society” involved the complete dissolution of order. Big Mouth’s is more tweenage girlcentric and believably bittersweet.

“Believably bittersweet” can describe much of Big Mouth. The awkwardness, discomfort, and even occasional excitement of

UNMASK A LEGACY

JAMIE LEE CURTIS CAN’T ESCAPE MICHAEL MYERS. AND SHE DOESN’T WANT TO.

BY DAV I D C R OW

32 DEN OF GEEK

JAMIE LEE CURTIS KNOWS THE I M P O R TA N C E O F HALLOWEEN AND THE BOOGEYMAN IT UNLEASHED.

KED Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode tries to keep Michael Myers from coming home.

She can feel their combined shadow when entering a ballroom at San Diego Comic-Con. Arriving slightly behind the other filmmakers she’s partnered with to bring that boogeyman back, her presence causes the cavernous space filled with journalists to go quiet. All eyes are on the woman in a black blazer and horn-rimmed glasses. Next to me, Halloween producer Jason Blum murmurs, to no one in particular, that there is a queen.

“It is my life,” Curtis says once she sits across the table, reflecting on the significance of her breakout role. “This is the greatest job I will ever have, and I know it. I knew it then, I tried to pretend it wasn’t, and now I understand it is my absolute legacy, and I am thrilled.”

Forty years after starring in John Carpenter’s low-budgeted “Babysitter Murders” movie, Curtis now stands comfortably on the edge of 60, wistful about a career that was jumpstarted by a bloody knife. After all, that knife still earns her rapturous applause at venues like SDCC and the Toronto International Film Festival, where men, women, and children (with some fairly liberal-minded parents) walk around wearing T-shirts of Michael Myers, the masked “Shape” who first pursued her in the 1978 horror masterpiece. And despite a long career that includes classics like A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies, it is still her perennially resilient Laurie Strode that she and audiences come back to time and again.

Only 19 years old when she was cast in the original movie, Curtis was an actor of little experience but who came with a high pedigree in horror since her mother Janet Leigh starred in what is arguably the first slasher movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Such lineage was obviously a persuasive element when Carpenter and Halloween’s producers considered her for the part, but what truly made her embody Laurie was her intense humanity and an underplayed vulnerability, all of which suggested a tenacious teen who slowly realizes she’s in a waking nightmare. In Carpenter’s attempt to perfect what became the slasher movie formula with a mythical killer—one who is evil made flesh—he discovered a young woman who could be extraordinarily ordinary. Authentically so.

“Laurie Strode in the original movie was as great a part as a young actor could ever want to have,” Curtis recalls DEN OF GEEK 33

34 DEN OF GEEK

Barely 30 at the time, Carpenter had two features under his belt and a desire to make Westerns when Yablans pitched the film school dropout a “Babysitter Murders” movie.

And, as long as the film came in under $300,000—it would later be raised to $325,000 to pay Donald Pleasence’s fee— Carpenter could do whatever he wanted. This included bringing on Debra Hill as co-screenwriter and producer, and many more old chums from his days at USC. Forty years on, it seems history has repeated itself. Perhaps for the first time since Carpenter’s one-and-done franchise kickoff, another auteur with plenty of film school friends is taking a crack at a Halloween sequel. David Gordon Green, a North Carolina School of the Arts alum, recalls acutely how important Halloween was to pals at his alma mater like Danny McBride, Richard Wright, and Christof Gebert, all of whom are collaborating on 2018’s Halloween. Traditional funnyman McBride even co-wrote the screenplay with Green.

“We just have a great affection for it,” Green says, “because of some of the stillness, the composition, letting a moment linger, incredible performances in a movie that could actually sustain great tension without using a lot of

IMAGE CREDITS: UNIVERSAL

while considering how just weeks prior to being cast, she was fighting for two lines a week on the TV show Operation Petticoat. “Here was an entire character fleshed out with fantasies and dreams, and repressions and vulnerabilities.

I mean, it was gorgeous.” Curtis says she made a conscious choice to step away from Laurie and this bloodstained genre after 1981’s Halloween II to avoid typecasting, but she has never had anything less than affection for the Final Girl.

“I was raised around show business, I had parents who were actors, and I understood that you could get pigeonholed,” Curtis considers. “But I have never disparaged Laurie and am very proud of being Laurie Strode. [She] was a woman of substance and intelligence.” Intriguingly, the star additionally muses that the slasher heroine was less exploited than many roles she pursued in ostensibly “legitimate” fare. “All of a sudden they were like, ‘Oh, she looks really cute in a leotard,’ but my first role as an actor was probably my best role as an actor, because it really gave me a chance to be an actor.”

It was also the result of producers Irwin Yablans and later Moustapha Akkad taking a chance on young and hungry filmmakers like Carpenter and his friends.

Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode always has an exit strategy in place these days.

the devices.” It, and slashers in general, were one of their most discussed subjects at a time when he and his friends formed a conclave that eagerly dissected all cinema, from classy to trashy, comedy to horror. “We were not as critical as audiences seem to be today. We just loved movies.”

This passion, along with work in the school’s film archive that led to him and McBride debating cinematic “excellence” and “atrocities” in their dorm, began a process that Green credits for his own eclectic career as a filmmaker.

Understood today as a kind of storytelling renaissance man, he’s transitioned from stoner comedies like The Pineapple Express to rural American tragedies like Snow Angels. His narrative dexterity can befuddle some critics but impresses moviemakers. For instance, it was Oscar-nominated Jake Gyllenhaal, who worked with Green on the Boston Marathon bombing film Stronger, who first rang up Curtis to say she should hear this guy’s pitch for another Halloween.

Picking up the echo between Carpenter and Green, Curtis notes that it was the latter’s enthusiasm (and the screenplay) that convinced her it was worth returning to the role of Laurie Strode—a part she seemed to say goodbye to after appearing

in a pair of Halloween sequels between 1998 and 2002.

“David’s from the South and went to film school with all these guys, and John Carpenter is from the South-ish and he went to film school with Tommy Wallace and Nick Castle,” Curtis says, mentioning the original Halloween’s respective production designer/editor and the actor who played Michael Myers.

“To me, the parallels of these two movies are wild, because at the helm were these two Southern boys who were film geeks and love it, so everyone who wants to work with them loves it.” That includes Curtis, who insists the whole appeal of Halloween circa 2018 is that it is not a “payday movie,” which the actress unapologetically admits she’s done. Rather, this is going back to recapture why Michael Myers' mask Michael Myers was so scary has been weathered to begin with, and why Laurie to look like 40 years is still iconic. have passed.

In a certain sense, the latest Halloween is the homecoming that Curtis imagined Halloween: H20 would be back in ‘98.

With that film, she unsuccessfully lobbied to bring back Carpenter and the late, great Hill, who passed away in 2005.

Now via the 2018 revival, Carpenter is finally again involved after Green and McBride pitched a version of this movie to the legendary filmmaker. He is even executive producing and reprising the role of composer for the iconic theme.

“Every filmmaker would have a different approach,” Green says. “There’s so much to take from the body of the mythology, of the franchise that’s existed… What made our design so specific is that we were looking for his fingerprint and his involvement.” If he couldn’t get both Carpenter and Curtis to come back, Green insists this movie would not exist. “It’s easy to get excited about putting the Michael Myers mask on someone and putting a familiar, iconic theme song on top of those images, but if we couldn’t get the two godfathers of this universe reunited for another experience, to me it wasn’t going to be worth the risk.”

That risk paid off, from the set where Curtis greeted the original and now restored Michael Myers actor, Nick Castle, with the words “can you fucking believe this?” to the film’s euphoric premiere at Toronto last month. Earning a standing ovation upon their entrance, Curtis, Green, and Blum were among those who introduced the highlight of that festival’s midnight madness lineup. The mission statement of the film was also evident in the opening title cards where instead of seeing a smiling Jack-o-lantern, the credits are accompanied by a smashed and rotted pumpkin coming back to life. As it inflates like a malevolent balloon, the message is clear: Halloween, in all of its gruesome glory, lives again.

DEN OF GEEK 35

L AU R I E S T R O D E WA S A 1 7 -Y E A R - O L D H I G H S C H O O L S T U D E N T W H O N O B O D Y PA I D A N Y AT T E N T I O N T O . N O W S H E I S D E M A N D I N G A M O M E N T.”

Hence why this is the first Halloween film to completely jettison every sequel, remake, and previous amendment to the Myers mythology. Ignoring all the movies but the first one, 2018’s Halloween is the lone follow-up to remember that Laurie was not initially Michael Myers’ sister. That was an element Carpenter and Hill wrote in a hurry for a “payday” Halloween II script that Carpenter has publicly regretted ever since. Curtis would seem to agree.

“The idea that there is nothing more terrifying in the world than a random act of violence, that is the root of terrorism,” Curtis says. “Not that you see it coming, that something occurs in a horrible way, without you ever thinking it could happen to you.” She concedes some fans, including Kevin Smith, love the idea of the murderous brother, but, for the star, what’s really terrifying is not knowing why. “That’s what David has so beautifully woven back, you left this woman with nothing and she’s become the boy who cried wolf.”

Indeed, we now find Laurie four decades older; she’s become a mother and a grandmother. Still, picking up the baton of paranoia from the late Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis, the ghost of Michael’s Shape haunts her dreams every night.

She knew he’d escape one day, and it has destroyed her life.

Suggesting she was ahead of the curve, Curtis speculates what Laurie’s parenting might have been like during her daughter’s first day of school, demanding of the teacher “What is your exit strategy!?” Today, that sense of dread in parents and children is tragically commonplace, but for a woman like Laurie Strode who was ignored and overlooked in the ‘80s and ‘90s, whiteknuckling her trauma alone, it was the impetus for two failed marriages and a loss of child custody. We find Laurie amongst this domestic wreckage when the 2018 movie begins.

“It’s interesting that this movie coincides, beautifully, with this well-spring of empowerment and understanding,” Curtis says while noting the movie went into production the same year that the #MeToo movement began. “Laurie Strode was a 17-year-old high school student who nobody paid any attention to. Now she is demanding a moment.”

For his part, Green did not intend to write anything intentionally evoking the zeitgeist, but he thinks it’s a sign the movie works if it taps into it anyway.

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Nick Castle reprises the role of Michael Myers for the first time since the original 1978 movie.

“If we can take a step back, strip it down to the intimacy and simplicity of the man in the mask with a knife, I feel like we have something that will last forever on our hands.”

It’s a feat echoed in the entire creative cycle of this project, which arguably began when Green sneaked a viewing of Halloween behind his parents’ back at a childhood slumber party. Some 30 years later, he’s standing on a set trying to bequeath that fear of the boogeyman to a new generation.

And with Curtis still in the lead role.

While shooting one particularly crucial moment early in the film, where a beleaguered Laurie watches Michael Myers’ prison bus seemingly drive him out of Haddonfield forever—making her lifetime of preparation for his return seem meaningless, and the gun in her hand attractive— Curtis found a rare solidarity among a crew who grew up on Halloween. While this sequence only exists for a few moments in the film, it was Curtis’ last night on set, and a moment she’d been preparing for all day. As it turned out, so had everyone else, because when she appeared on-set, each crew member was wearing a “My Name is…” sticker with the words “We are Laurie Strode” scribbled in. Those

stickers are a staple during Judy Greer's Karen is comforted by her the first days of any Jamie mother after finally Lee Curtis movie, ensuring realizing that the that everyone can connect boogeyman is real. with their co-workers, but now suddenly they were all connected with her at her most vulnerable. Green credits the idea to assistant director Atilla Yücer, but its effect was felt most by Laurie Strode herself.

“What they were giving me was an emotional gift, that they were with me,” Curtis says, “that trauma, you know what I mean? We are Laurie Strode… that moment was one I will never forget.”

This month’s Halloween will be the fifth time Curtis plays the woman who survived, but it might also be the experience she most reshaped in her own image. A little after our first interview, Curtis took a ruminative tone at the film’s Hall H panel by saying, “I am 40 years older. I have raised two children; I have survived my husband and I for 34 years; and I have lost all of my adult family, parents, friends; and the reality of life is what makes stepping into a role 40 years later so easy.

Because it’s just emotions and human feelings.”

Her truism was proven correct during the Q&A portion of the panel where the first fan to come up simply identified himself as Joseph and revealed, in his own words, that Jamie Lee Curtis saved his life. Recalling how he once endured a home invasion, the fan vividly remembers in a moment of panic asking himself, “What would Jamie Lee do?” before running out into the night and screaming at the neighbors’ houses, a la Laurie Strode. Rather than vocalizing her response, Curtis strode off the stage and into the crowd, embracing the man with tears and kindness.

Curtis would later tell us she came to San Diego to talk about fiction, but it’s impossible to separate it from the nonfiction it influences. And in that private moment, she only had words for him. The queen comforted her court, and Laurie’s legacy grew.

Additional reporting by Don Kaye.

DEN OF GEEK 37

FILM

FROM HOLLYWOOD TO BROADWAY Film studios are embracing a lucrative revenue stream. BY KAYTI BURT THE LION KING MUSICAL HAS MADE more than $8 billion dollars for the House of Mouse in its 21-year run on Broadway. While most film-tostage productions will never see this kind of success, over the past two decades, movie studios have become increasingly invested in developing stage productions based on their already-existing catalogues of cinematic content.

“People often incorrectly assume that movies have more potential to make money than live stage productions,” says Marisa Sechrest, who works as Paramount Pictures’ live stage representative. “While the revenue from a movie is generally 38 DEN OF GEEK

more of a bell curve, a successful live show can run for decades with multiple productions running simultaneously in different markets worldwide.”

This is where someone like Sechrest comes in, identifying and evaluating content that might make a successful stage show from Paramount’s catalogue of over 7,000 titles.

“Studios realize that there is huge opportunity and upside to giving some of their best-loved franchises and even lesser-known titles a new life on the stage,” Sechrest says. For context, Disney founded its live stage production arm in 1999, with Universal and Warner Bros. both following suit in 2003. The kinds of

stories that have become hits since the formation of divisions like these have varied in genre, tone, and execution— from 2001’s hit The Producers to the more recent stage version of Disney’s Newsies. What they do have in common is the emotional connection they have made with audiences.

“Generally, it’s important that the story has a certain level of emotional and dramatic depth that gives the characters a reason to sing,” Sechrest says of the movies that make the best stage musicals. “For instance, in a film, a director can use a close-up to really depict a highly emotional moment. On the live stage, a song is essentially that ‘close-up’ that gives the audience a deeper look into what the character is feeling.”

“Broadway is a risky business,” Sechrest continues, noting that only about 20 percent of productions turn a profit. Because of this, it’s also important to think about whether a film-to-stage adaptation will appeal to the business’ core demographic, which is approximately two-thirds female with an average age in the early 40s. “Femaledriven stories that have universal themes of acceptance, anti-bullying, and empowerment—like Waitress and Mean Girls—tend to perform well on Broadway,” she says; she also helped develop both movies for the stage.

While 40-something women may be Broadway’s biggest ticket buyers, the industry seems poised to bring in new audiences—or at least attempt to—with movie-to-stage adaptations like this fall’s King Kong musical, which features a book from Harry Potter and The Cursed Child writer Jack Thorne.

“I think audiences are hungry for different styles of shows that expand beyond traditional drama,” Sechrest says.

PHOTO CREDIT: JOAN MARCUS

RICHARD DONNER Q&A PG. 40 • FALL MOVIE PREVIEW PG. 42

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Bring on the Popcorn

Watching a movie at home can’t compete with seeing it in a theater with other fans.

I

n an era where you can binge watch movies and TV shows on numerous streaming services while having groceries delivered to your door, leaving the house to enjoy something with a group is more meaningful than ever. The simple act of going to the movies is now a communal experience akin to attending a concert, a sporting event, or even a comic con, all of which are enhanced by the presence of likeminded individuals.

Movie theaters have long filled slots in their programming with classic films, but the rise of Fathom Events has added a new wrinkle to the proceedings.

Fathom’s assortment of specialty screenings, including classic movie re-releases, anime, genre TV events, and even stage productions, provides a new type of unifying moment for movie lovers. Now like a favorite song, beloved stories bring movie fans together for often extremely limited engagements of one or two nights.

To give you an idea of the variety of programming offered by Fathom Events, over the next month they’re offering audiences an opportunity to see Twilight (Oct. 21 and 23) in

On Nov. 3 and 5, Fathom has a Dragon Ball Z “Saiyan Double Feature.”

They’ll present back-to-back DBZ films, Bardock: The Father of Goku and Fusion Reborn. Dragon Ball Z was, of course, a generation’s introduction to anime, thanks in no small part to near constant airings on TV throughout the ‘90s.

Neither movie ever enjoyed widespread theatrical release in America, and these screenings will be many DBZ enthusiasts’ first opportunity to

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: JESSICA KOYNOCK

“GOING TO THE MOVIES IS NOW A COMMUNAL EXPERIENCE.” honor of the Halloween-appropriate supernatural romance’s 10th anniversary. Twilight’s appeal was always a communal one, and it’s likely there’s a significant audience looking to get deep into the nostalgia of Team Edward versus Team Jacob. Or maybe you just want the swoon to “Bella’s Lullaby” on the silver screen again.

experience these films with other fans on a screen bigger than even the one on the Toonami spaceship’s control deck.

While action movie classic Die Hard technically celebrated its 30th anniversary in July, its newfound status as a Christmas staple means that it feels more at home in the chillier months of the year. Fans can start

their holiday season a little early with two opportunities to catch Die Hard on the big screen, Nov. 11 and Nov. 14. Die Hard’s lasting appeal is in no small part because of how it tempers its relentless action with humor, and Bruce Willis’ John McClane remains one of the most quotable action heroes of all time, only outdone by Alan Rickman’s defining heel turn as the Beethoven-loving Hans Gruber.

See it on a big screen for maximum spectacle, and see it with a crowd that knows the movie by heart and erupts at the right “Yippee Ki-yay” moment.

Just as we’ve seen the return of the vinyl record even in the age of unlimited streaming music, there’s a genuine romance and charm associated with the act of going to the movies. Whether it’s the darkness of the theater or the smell of the popcorn, seeing a beloved movie with an audience of like-minded fans for the first time (or once again) is the greatest bonus feature of all.

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FILM

Richard Donner directing Christopher Reeve on the set of Superman (1978).

YOU’LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY Richard Donner reflects on Superman: The Movie at 40. BY MIKE CECCHINI SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, one of the most important and influential superhero movies of all-time, will celebrate its 40th anniversary on Dec. 21. We spoke to director Richard Donner to discuss why the film still resonates today, the challenge of preserving the reality of the Man of Steel, and the magic of Christopher Reeve’s performance.

Q&A

People see you as the godfather of superhero movies because of Superman. richard donner: That’s nice to hear. I took a challenge that was very exciting for me. I did it because, essentially, when I read what they were doing, I just felt I had to step in and try and save what I felt was a respectful area for Superman.

You’re referring to the shape the script was in when you got it, before Tom Mankiewicz came on as writer?

Exactly. Here’s the thing, it was well 40 DEN OF GEEK

written, but every script that gets made, there’s somebody involved pointing the writers in the direction that these people want to see. I don’t hold any disrespect for what was written. It was quite good but it wasn’t what I felt Superman could or should be. When Tom agreed to come on, that’s when I made up my mind I would make the movie.

arguing back and forth, but we agreed this is the way we’d do it, and it had its own reality. Our first challenge was the unrequited love story… two guys, Superman and a character named Clark Kent, basically in love with the same woman and [it’s] impossible to tell her what the reality was in their lives. The second challenge was to make a man fly and make the audience totally believe it. If they didn’t believe the love story or the flying, we didn’t have a movie. Tom solved the love story problem and the flying was brought to life by one of the greatest crews ever put together.

I’ve read some of those earlier drafts, and Tom’s is much tighter and more reverent.

You talk a lot about being reverent to the myth of Superman, which is something that modern superhero movies have used as their starting point.

“Reverent” is a good word. That’s what we were striving for. It took a lot of

We decided that we wanted to make this close to reality. If this set some sort

of a precedent, it wasn’t our intention, which was strictly to make a good movie about this beloved character and treat him with our greatest respect. That’s where we ended up, and, when you say it set a precedent, I wish it was retained.

I don’t see Superman as the way he’s being treated today, which is in a very dark fashion. He was a fantasy that really believed in “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” He believed it, and it gave him an aura. If that line came out as a joke, we were fucked and we knew it. Until we had the first screening, it was, in my mind, very scary. We treated him as a reality. His reality had to be the good in life by our comparison, but at the same time, totally real to him, and it worked, surprisingly.

Would that approach work today?

I definitely think that in today’s world, the conditions we’re in and the president we have, we all need a Superman in our lives today. He would make a wonderful hero, but I’m afraid that will not come true.

PHOTO CREDIT: WARNER BROS/ PHOTOFEST

Do you think that’s why the character has struggled on the big screen in recent years? Is it America’s changing attitude, or do you think it’s the stories being told?

Well it’s a matter of how the stories are being told. I think we’re in strange, dark days of moviemaking, but Superman was a hero.

He was a fantasy, but we believed him. He’s not treated like that anymore.

I’m not happy with it but I have nothing to say except to you. I think as filmmakers, we all kind of reflect who we are, what we stand for, how we treat the whole relationship of motion pictures. My wife is a really great producer, and she always says to

me when you’re making a movie, and you’re hiring the director, invariably, the director’s personality comes across on the screen. It’s so true. Most of the time, when you see a film and you know the person, you almost can tell who made it without credits. It’s a very dark society, I’m sorry to say. Where’s all the laughter and fun and the possibilities of everything being wonderful in life? They seem to be pushed aside and somewhat suppressed.

“CHRIS WAS SUPERMAN, THERE’S NO TWO WAYS ABOUT IT.”

What about the other actors that were considered to play Superman?

I’ll tell you the truth, the only person that I took seriously was Christopher Reeve.

We met with and screen-tested quite a few people. Reeve was a big problem [because] the producers really wanted another name, but I couldn’t believe them in tights flying around Metropolis.

Chris was Superman, there’s no two ways about it. He was such a dedicated young actor taking on what some considered a ridiculous role. But he dedicated that period of his life to that character. I’ll always respect him for it.

Did you have to fight for him?

We had gone a long time trying to find the actor that fit the character. We were getting close to a point of no return, as far as time went. Once Ilya Salkind and I saw him in an off-Broadway play, we came away totally believing that this skinny, light-haired kid could play the role. He was brave to take the shot.

Things didn’t work out the way you expected with Superman II. Was there ever talk of you coming back to rescue the franchise?

No. I wouldn’t have. I did one and put everything I had into it.

We brought to life a beloved character and that was it.

Do you have any advice for the next person who will bring Superman to the screen?

I’m an old-fashioned guy, and I would never expect anybody to change their approach. It’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s thoughts of how things should be done. The only advice I have is find the reality and make what you believe. It’s tough. The only way you can do it is you’ve gotta make the movie you believe in.

DEN OF GEEK 41

TRANSFORMERS AND WEB-HEADS, MAGIC WANDS AND MOTIVATED WIDOWS, THIS MOVIE SEASON HAS AWARDS CONTENDERS AND BLOCKBUSTERS GALORE.

FALL

MOVIE

Hailee Steinfeld and Bumblebee explore the shape of autobots.

PREVI

IEW

BUMBLEBEE

Exclusive Interview

with Screenwriter Christina Hodson

D E CEMB ER 21

hen Bumblebee comes out this December, it will mark many firsts for the Transformers franchise: It will be the first Transformers film to not be directed by Michael Bay. (Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight will be behind the camera.) It will be the franchise’s first prequel. And it will be the first film in the series to be written by a woman.

“I think it’s a bit of a myth that action is for boys,” Bumblebee screenwriter Christina Hodson tells Den of Geek. As a half-Asian Brit growing up watching action movies, Hodson rarely saw main characters who looked like her in the genre’s sea of white, male protagonists in their 30s and 40s.

“I always wanted to see me be the hero,” Hodson says. “I wanted to see me kick ass. I mean, not literally. I had no desire to be an actor, but I wanted to have those role models and those heroes. I think what’s really fun is that [Bumblebee] is a big, cool, fun, action movie the boys are going to love, but girls love action, too, and this is a chance for girls to see themselves in the movie. Which I think is a really special and important thing.”

Bumblebee is set in 1987, 20 years before the events of the first Transformers film. It stars True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie Watson, a teen girl living in a small California beach town who finds Bumblebee in the local junkyard.

“Charlie is really our entry point into the movie. She doesn’t know anything about Transformers,” says Hodson, calling Bumblebee “custommade for people who are new to the franchise.” “But, of course, if you’re a fan, you’ll get wonderful little Easter eggs that you’ll get to enjoy that other people won’t.”

The prequel film offers a chance to get to see the Bumblebee character, who Hodson admits has always been her favorite, in a new light.

“This is really an origin story for Bumblebee,” she says, “but the character traits are all the same. They’re all there. His loyalty; his kindness; he’s fun-loving; really he’s been the one who has always had that special bond with humans, whether it’s Sam or someone else; that was something that I wanted to lean into a bit and see where and how that began.”

Like the first Transformers film, which featured a friendship between Bumblebee and Sam as its emotional core, Bumblebee is all about the friendship between an Autobot and a human.

“I had a really clear sense in my mind of who [Charlie] was as a person and what they would mean to each other,” she says. “That was always the North Star that guided everything.”

Bumblebee hits theaters on Dec. 21, just in time for the holidays.

“I think it will absolutely make a good Christmas movie,” she says. “It’s a movie that everyone in the family can enjoy because it’s got that wonder and that joy. It’s a little bit sweet, it’s a little bit sad, but it’s also just fun and big and there’s lots of great action…It’s a good Christmas outing.”

— KAYTI BURT

DEN OF GEEK 43

FALL  MOVIE PREVIEW BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE O C TOB ER 1 2

Give Fox a little credit here: This is an original film written and directed

by Drew Goddard, who’s penned scripts for movies like The Martian, and directed and co-wrote the cult horror gem The Cabin in the Woods.

This time out he’s in noir territory as seven strangers with dark secrets collide one night at the titular hotel.

The cast includes Chris Hemsworth, Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson, and Nick Offerman. We’re intrigued to check into this Goddard vision.— DK

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB N OVEMB ER 9

semi-sequel to David Fincher’s 2011 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and a “soft” reboot of the nascent film series based on the Lisbeth Salander books, The Girl in the Spider’s Web is itself based on a later novel that’s not part of late author Stieg Larsson’s original “Millennium Trilogy.” Rising star Claire Foy takes over the role of Lisbeth from Rooney Mara as the tattooed hacker who seeks vengeance for battered women and gets caught up in—of course—a vast conspiracy. The character of Lisbeth remains compelling, but it’s hard to say whether audiences will want to revisit her dark world. — DON KAYE

44 DEN OF GEEK

SUSPIRIA NO VE M B ER 2

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Normally we’d classify Dario Argento’s blood-drenched 1977 classic as one of those horror milestones that cannot be remade, but damn if we’re not excited to see what director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) has done with it.

Guadagnino’s films possess a luscious sensory texture and vibrancy; it will be interesting to see how he handles this tale of a dance academy that fronts for a coven. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, however, may have a hard time topping Goblin’s unforgettable score, even with a cast that includes Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Grace Moretz, and the original’s Jessica Harper.— DK

Claire Foy takes on Lisbeth Salander’s iconic dragon tattoo and work-in-progress social skills for an all-new cinematic adventure.

OVERLORD

NOV EM B ER 9

We haven’t had a good “Nazi occult experiments” film in what seems like ages, and producer J.J. Abrams clearly concurs since he’s been developing this World War II-set thriller under his Bad Robot banner for nearly a decade. With the usual shroud of mystery surrounding the project, which is directed by Julius Avery and stars a mostly little-known cast, speculation arose that it would actually be revealed as the fourth film in the ongoing Cloverfield series. Abrams shot that down, but in the meantime the trailer looks creepy enough on its own terms. Bring it on, Nazi dogs! — DK

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DEN OF GEEK 45

FALL MOVIE PREVIEW WIDOWS

N O VEMB ER 16 A knockout all-star cast led by Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Kaluuya, Colin Farrell, and Liam Neeson populates director Steve McQueen’s follow-up to his 2013 triumph 12 Years a Slave. Based on a 1983 British miniseries, Widows follows three women as they strive to finish a heist that their dead criminal husbands left undone.

Look for something less heavy than 12 Years but almost equally empowering and socially conscious. — DK

FANTASTIC BEASTS THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD N O VEMB ER 16

46 DEN OF GEEK

J.K. Rowling, director David Yates, and the returning cast of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them—including Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Ezra Miller, and Zoë Kravitz—pick up right where they left off, battling evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) in this second Harry Potter prequel. Controversy has dogged the film over Depp’s casting and the question of whether Albus Dumbledore (whose younger self is introduced here in the form of Jude Law) will be explicitly depicted as gay. But if you loved the first Fantastic Beasts, this is probably your cup of magical English tea. — DK

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IMAGE CREDITS: 20TH CENTURY FOX (BAD TIMES, WIDOWS), AMAZON STUDIOS (SUSPIRIA), SONY (THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB, SPIDER-MAN), PARAMOUNT (BUMBLEBEE, OVERLORD).

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RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET NO VEMB ER 21

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IMAGE CREDITS: WARNER BROS. (FANTASTIC BEASTS, AQUAMAN), MGM (CREED II), DISNEY (RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET, MARY POPPINS), UNIVERSAL (MORTAL ENGINES).

The 57th animated Disney film, this sequel to 2012’s surprise hit Wreck-It Ralph seems to be moving away from the video game nostalgia of the first movie as Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) get sucked out of the arcade and into the wild world of the internet, where no doubt they will go into battle with Last Jedi haters, alt-right trolls, and Donald Trump (c’mon, we jest).

Other Disney characters are expected to show up in droves, but let’s hope all the corporate synergy doesn’t drown out the charm and quirkiness that made the original such a delight. — DK

His name is Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), and your father killed his father.

Prepare to box.

CREED II

DEC EMBE R 14

et’s be honest: It’s hard to imagine a worthy follow-up to 2015’s evocative Creed without recalling the increasingly silly, formulaic path that previous Rocky sequels took. The signs are not good here either. Ryan Coogler has abdicated the director’s chair, handing it to Steven Caple Jr., while the screenplay (co-written by Sylvester Stallone and Luke Cage showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker) finds Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) getting in the ring against the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the man who killed his father way back in Rocky IV. Still, never underestimate the sheer presence of Jordan—he might have to carry this one a few rounds. — DON KAYE

DEN OF GEEK 47

FALL MOVIE PREVIEW

MORTAL ENGINES DECEMBER 14

dapting the enormous world of the beloved 2001 novel Mortal Engines is a big task… even for the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“After The Hobbit, I was exhausted, and didn’t want to face the huge pressure of directing another tentpole film like this,” Peter Jackson tells us.

That’s understandable. Mortal Engines imagines a future where following a catastrophic war, London and other large cities are moving behemoths—people, architecture, and cultures situated atop gargantuan gears and tracks that race these metropolises across a desolate landscape. As these “traction cities” continue on their path, they engage in “Municipal Darwinism,” gobbling up any smaller city before them.

Mortal Engines is such an ambitious concept that, like

48 DEN OF GEEK

the traction cities it depicts, it threatens to gobble up any filmmaker who dares to adapt it. Still, Jackson had the rights and wanted this film made. So, as he’s done before, the filmmaker found someone else. This time around it was Christian Rivers’ turn.

“Because Christian had directed great stuff on our Hobbit splinter unit, he seemed like on obvious choice to offer it to. It’s worked out very well,” Jackson says.

And what was it like being entrusted with a massive story by one of cinema’s strongest tellers of epic tales for first-time director Rivers?

“Terrifying,” he says.

The New Zealand-based Rivers has been in Jackson’s orbit since storyboarding his 1992 zombie comedy Dead Alive. Rivers would go on to work on special and visual effects for Jackson, his partner Fran Walsh, and

Exclusive Interview

with Producer Peter Jackson and Director Christian Rivers

Robert Sheehan, Leifur Sigurdarson, and Hera Hilmar sit down at their movable feast.

Weta Digital for projects including The Hobbit and King Kong.

While Mortal Engines is indeed a big project set in a big world, Rivers sees the universal appeal in its story.

Like the novel, the film follows the intersecting paths of Tom (Robert Sheehan), a low-class historian apprentice from London, and Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), a disfigured would-be assassin set on killing the head of London’s Guild of Historians, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). Hester’s mission takes her and Tom to a place few traction city citizens have ever been: the ground. From there the characters embark on an emotional, revelatory journey that wouldn’t seem out of place in Jackson’s mythopoetic Lord of the Rings.

“What I hope that audiences will enjoy about this film is that it’s something utterly new and unique… but

also familiar,” Rivers says. “It’s not some completely left field fantasy. It’s set in our future and there are real characters. Tom is pushed out of his comfort zone and pushed to become someone he’s always wanted to be. That’s something universal and [beyond] traction cities.”

Jackson finds similar themes to love in Mortal Engines.

“I love these characters, and their non-conformity to the usual Hollywood stereotypes,” he says.

“What appealed to me about the premise is, instead of depicting a future world where all norms of society have broken down, these books take place in a new form of society that’s very different to ours, but is far from the lawless Mad Max type of vision.”

— ALEC BOJALAD

DEN OF GEEK 49

FALL MOVIE PREVIEW

Exclusive Interview

with star Shameik Moore

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

D E CEMB ER 14

MARY POPPINS RETURNS DECEMB ER 19

50 DEN OF GEEK

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P.L. Travers wrote seven more books about magical nanny Mary Poppins after publishing the original classic in 1934, so in theory there is a lot of material to mine for a legitimate sequel.

Whether this film delves into Travers’ canon remains to be seen, but we hope director Rob Marshall recaptures at least some of the magic of the 1964 Disney masterpiece. We can’t think of a better successor to Julie Andrews than Emily Blunt, and the rest of the cast—LinManuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Meryl Streep, Emily Mortimer, and more—sounds supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. — DK

In the multi-verse, being Spider-Man is an aspirational profession for both the young (Shameik Moore’ Miles Morales) and old (Jake Johnson’s Peter Parker).

rom its kinetic, almost psychedelic animation style to the possibilities hinted at in its very title, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse isn’t your average Spider-Man movie. But this would mark an important piece of Spider-Man history even without these other elements, as it’s also bringing Miles Morales to the big screen for the first time, voiced by Shameik Moore (The Get Down).

The Spider-Verse itself contains a multitude of Spider-heroes, including Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), and far stranger ones.

“I didn’t know people were so excited about Spider-Ham,” Moore says, referring to the wild response that character’s reveal got at SDCC in July.

The animated movie serves as Miles’ origin story, charting his journey from smart kid to superhero. Along the way, he meets an older, wiser Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), who helps Miles discover his new powers and the hero within. But Miles is far more than just a younger version of Spider-Man, and the differences go deeper than a different costume or new powers. “There are small things that add up to big things,” Moore says. “Miles is a Brooklyn boy, and Peter is from Queens. Miles likes hip-hop and spray painting and stuff. There’s an artsy side we don’t really get to see from Peter Parker.”

Miles and Peter also have a different initial attitude towards superheroics. “Miles is nothing like Peter on the outside, but they both have something special in them that allows the universe to give them these opportunities,” Moore says. “Miles is young, he’s ambitious, and he doesn’t really want these powers at first. When Peter was bitten he was surprised but he liked it. Miles’ new abilities are a slow burn. He doesn’t immediately want to be Spider-Man.” But don’t worry: In true Spider-Man fashion, the young hero embraces the “great responsibility” that always comes with “great power.”

“Miles Morales is a representation of a new generation,” Moore says. “I think he’s a great role model. Sometimes situations are going to be forced on you, and you have to make the most of your situation. Anyone can accomplish their goals. Anyone can overcome adversity. Miles Morales represents that.”— MIKE CECCHINI

AQUAMAN D ECE M B ER 21

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After a sharply divided 2017 that saw Wonder Woman soar while Justice League crashed and burned, the DC film universe begins yet another reset with director James Wan’s (The Conjuring) underwater sci-fi epic. Jason Momoa gets to carry the whole picture on his massive shoulders and while he’s got charisma to spare, we’ll see if he can float as a leading man. But even with multiple villains and a vast amount of watery CG, Wan is a canny and clever storyteller who could make Aquaman into the kind of buoyant, colorful cruise that DC needs right now. — DK

DEN OF GEEK 51

GAMES

REVENGE OF THE ARCADE PG. 54 • THE ART OF THE SCARE PG. 56

IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR: Video game holiday season!

Between September and December, publishers launch their most highly anticipated titles, and this year, we’re getting some major blockbusters. Here are the games you absolutely can’t miss this holiday season! —JOHN SAAVEDRA

OUT NOW

Destiny 2: Forsaken PS4, XBO, PC Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of the Elusive Age PS4, PC Shadow of the Tomb Raider PS4, XBO, PC Spyro Reignited Trilogy PS4, XBO Marvel’s Spider-Man PS4 Your friendly neighborhood SpiderMan is back to face off against the Sinister Six in a whole new openworld adventure! Will he survive a city full of villains out to squash him?

Life is Strange: Episode 1 PS4, XBO, PC Mega Man 11 PS4, XBO, Switch, PC Several Legacy Collections later, Capcom is finally ready to revisit theBlue Bomber properly, as Mega Man faces off against the most challenging bosses yet!

52 DEN OF GEEK

OCTOBER 5 | Assassin’s Creed Odyssey PS4, XBO, PC 5 | Super Mario Party Switch 9 | WWE 2K19 PS4, XBO, PC 12 | Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 PS4, XBO, PC 16 | Lego DC Super Villains PS4, XBO, PC 19 | SoulCalibur VI PS4, XBO, PC 19 | Battlefield V PS4, XBO, PC 26 | Red Dead Redemption 2 PS4, XBO, PC Rockstar makes its highly anticipated return with a new installment in its Spaghetti Western actionadventure series Red Dead Redemption 2 could be a quick draw for Game of the Year, too!

6 | Overkill’s The Walking Dead PS4, XBO, PC 13 | Hitman 2 PS4, XBO, PC 14 | Fallout 76 PS4, XBO, PC Brave the American wasteland once more as one of a group of survivors tasked with rebuilding society after a devastating nuclear war. This time, you won’t be playing alone, though...

16 | Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee Switch

DECEMBER

4 | Just Cause 4 PS4, XBO, PC 7 | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Switch The biggest brawler in Nintendo history makes its debut with dozens of characters and stages from every installment in the series, as well as new additions such as Castlevania hero Simon Belmont!

IMAGE CREDIT: SONY (SPIDER-MAN), NINTENDO (SUPER SMASH BROS.)

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NOVEMBER

NYCC YOU NEED. THE ONLY GUIDE We ’ve got you covered while you ’re at New York Comic Con. Don ’t miss the latest updates , tips,, and highlights.!

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GAMES

Coin-Op SF is the place to play classic arcade cabinets and sip fancy cocktails.

REVENGE OF THE ARCADE The arcade scene is back, but not in the way you think.

AMUSEMENT ARCADES WERE bustling social centers for kids and teenagers in the ‘80s and ‘90s. They were dingy, cave-like places, but for the kids, the arcade was heaven on earth, a place where they could escape the anxieties of school, forget about their parents, make mischief with their friends, and get lost in the hunt for the ever-elusive high score.

Sadly, over the past couple of decades, arcades have played an ever-diminishing role in the gaming industry. But hope lies in those ‘80s and ‘90s kids who are now all grown up and aim to celebrate and preserve arcade culture and usher them into the future by pairing the experience with trendy food and craft beer.

These former arcade-loving kids have grown-up to become business owners with fond memories, which has led to a string of food and alcoholpurveying arcades finding success in major cities like New York (Barcade), Chicago (Emporium Arcade Bar), and Los Angeles (Button Mash). Arcade bar Coin-Op, which has locations in San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento, 54 DEN OF GEEK

has become a go-to destination for patrons looking to sip on some craft cocktails, and play games with friends.

“The original idea behind Coin-Op was to open a bar-restaurant concept with something of an entertainment aspect to it,” says Coin-Op CEO Mark Bolton. “We wanted to tie [arcades] into our new passion for cocktails and going out to bars and restaurants.”

Cocktails and coin-ops are a match made in heaven. Dave & Buster’s has marketed this concoction to great success for years, boasting 117 locations across the country as of July 2018 and $332 million in revenue in Q1 2018, but there are still a few establishments out there that endeavor to preserve the purity of the family-friendly arcade experience. High Scores Arcade in Alameda, California is a family-owned and operated business opened by husband and wife team Shawn and Meg Livernoche in 2013 (their original New Jersey location closed in 2010) that aims to bring back warm memories of the traditional arcade. Unlike Coin-Op and other bar-cades, however, High Scores is an alcohol-free environment.

BY BERNARD BOO

“We really do want to promote the idea that anybody of any age can come in at any time, and also give adults the opportunity to have a place to come and have fun where alcohol is not the centerpiece,” Shawn says.

“People who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s and now have families come in with their kids and want to show them the games that they grew up with, and it starts this cool generational thing, which is fun to watch,” Meg adds.

While home consoles currently dominate the gaming sphere, the Livernoches don’t see the console and arcade markets as mutually exclusive.

“Usually, the kids who play consoles at home also come in and appreciate our arcade,” Meg explains. “People who play Fortnite and League of Legends don’t necessarily translate that well to the arcade, but for the most part, kids pick our games up pretty quickly.”

The overlap in demographics between arcade and home console gamers has been one of the key factors in High Scores’ winning formula.

While some modern arcades, like YESTERcades (New Jersey) and

IMAGE CREDIT: POLINA KHARNAS FOR COIN-OP (LEFT), HIGH SCORES ARCADE (RIGHT)

Emporium Arcade Bar, do dedicate floor space to home consoles and even hold console game nights, to the Livernoches, the appeal of classic arcades is the fact that they provide visceral experiences that you simply can’t replicate at home.

“You can’t have the experience at home where each piece of furniture in front of you with a screen in it represents a different world,” Shawn explains. “And you’re supposed to play these games with specific kinds of controls designed in a specific way, and with a little presentation designed to keep you [engaged] in that world. You can’t do that at home on a console.”

Stepping into High Scores feels like being transported back to the ‘80s.

Legendary machines like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Defender line the walls of the retro-inspired space. The Livernoches even built a custom Oregon Trail cabinet decked out in pioneer-themed decor.

When asked if they think ‘80s-style arcades could ever make a comeback, the Livernoches are doubtful.

“I don’t think arcades will ever be as widespread as they once were,” Meg says. “Arcades were this big, bright light in the ‘80s that spread across and hit everybody’s community in some way. And now, arcades are competing with home consoles.”

The authentic arcade experience is fortunately still alive and well thanks to business owners like the Livernoches,

High Scores in Alameda, CA is a more family-friendly arcade that even has a customized Oregon Trail cabinet!

but is there a way to take the spirit of ‘80s arcades into the future?

Launched in 2013, Killer Queen is a five-on-five combat game inspired by classic ‘80s and ‘90s gameplay and developed by BumbleBear Games.

Machines can be found in over 40 arcades and bars across the country, and Windows and Switch ports are scheduled for Q1 2019. The game could be a glimpse into a potentially bright future for new arcade development.

“Killer Queen is wildly popular,” Meg says. “We saw some people at California Extreme [an annual retro arcade show] developing for the physical space of an arcade, which is great.”

Author and video game historian Brett Weiss (The SNES Omnibus, The Arcade and Other Strange Tales) thinks that, if arcades are to ever truly make a comeback, they will have to continue to adapt to new trends.

“The arcade environment was very competitive in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and then again in the early 1990s with Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat,” Weiss says. “This type of competitiveness carries over to eSports.

The link is the sheer competition.”

Indeed, some arcades have turned to eSports as the next step in the industry’s evolution. Arcade chain GameWorks offers eSports lounges in many of its locations where players can compete in a variety of games. Red Bull has also recently opened Gaming Spheres—a

combination eSports arcade and live stream studio—in London and Tokyo.

The industry is looking beyond conventional hardware, too: Arcades and amusement parks focusing on virtual reality have started sprouting worldwide. In fact, according to a 2017 report by Grand View Research, VR gaming could hit $45 billion in revenue by 2025.

“WE WANTED TO TIE [ARCADES] INTO OUR NEW PASSION FOR COCKTAILS.” For the moment, arcade bars and breweries are compelling gamers to leave their homes to play games on a greater scale now than we’ve seen in a long time. Market research and statistics firm Statista estimates that the U.S. amusement arcade business will rake in $2.2 billion in revenue in 2019, an uptick from the last 10 years.

“I think you’ll see arcade-style bars and arcades in [nightlife] settings proliferate,” says Bolton of the arcade bar model. “That’ll go a long way.”

Bar-cades seem to be picking up steam in major cities across the country, but what of wholesome, alcohol-free arcades like High Scores? In 2016 (the last year the report was available), coin-op trade magazine Play Meter ran a “state of the industry” report, which estimated that there were still 2,500 arcades in operation in 2015, and that number could grow if renewed interest in this niche market continues.

Weiss thinks the future of arcades may lie in businesses willing to cater to clients young and old, citing examples like Free Play Arcade in Texas, which provides a family-friendly atmosphere by day and an adults-only bar-cade experience at night.

“I think a mix [of family fun and nightlife] might be the way,” says Weiss. “[Kids] and parents’ interests these days are more in line with each other than they used to be. Maybe that mixed model is the best way forward.”

DEN OF GEEK 55

GAMES

THE

ART OF THE

SCARE

MASTERS OF GAMING HORROR WEIGH IN ON THE STRUGGLES AND REWARDS OF SCARING THOSE BRAVE ENOUGH TO PLAY.

BY MATTHEW BYRD 56 DEN OF GEEK

H

orror may be a centuries-old genre, but horror game developers have faced challenges that Mary Shelley, Stephen King, and John Carpenter never had to.

They’ve battled the idea that games are meant to be simple fun while learning how to turn code into nightmares. • How did they do it? We asked that question to some of the creators responsible for gaming’s greatest horror experiences.

Here’s what they have to say about making scary games.

WRIGHT BAGWELL

Designer of Dead Space, Director of Dead Space 2 at Visceral Games

“Scaring the shit out of the player was definitely the goal [with Dead Space],” Wright Bagwell recalls. “I remember [Dead Space creator and executive producer] Glen Schofield saying that he wanted to build the scariest game of all time.”

Bagwell says the other goal was “Resident Evil 4 in space.”

It was a bankable pitch, but the team struggled to make shooting scary.

“Some of [the team] were like, ‘You can’t make a scary game if you let the player move and shoot,’” Bagwell says. “What they realized is that you don’t have to have these clunky control schemes in order to scare the player. You can do that through audio and lighting and level design and enemy design.”

The Dead Space team took steps to deprive players of the confidence that comes with shooting games.

“We said, ‘You need to feel like you’re desperate for health and for bullets all of the time,” Bagwell says. “We let you move and shoot and all these things…[but] to counter that, we made very dark, claustrophobic environments.”

In Dead Space, even save rooms harbored jump scares. Yet, the game’s greatness can be traced to restraint.

“As we developed every level, what we found is that less is more,” Bagwell says. “Sometimes the best experience is when nothing happens. It constantly raises the tension where you’re like, ‘Okay, nothing happened, something big is probably coming, oh God, it’s gonna be big.’”

Ironically, the team wasn’t prepared for Dead Space 2’s biggest scare: the infamous NoonTech Diagnostic sequence. Bagwell recalls watching the gruesome death scene triggered when the player failed to properly insert a needle in the hero’s eye: “We turned off the lights and watched it for the final time.

There was this feeling of, ‘Oh, God. This is horrible.’ But like, ‘Yes. This is so awesome. This is going to be great. It was the only thing I’ve ever done where I was not numb to it by the end of the development cycle.”

SAM BARLOW

Writer and Designer of Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories at Climax Studios

“[With] suspense... you’re trying to give the audience enough information that they can put it to gether in their head and be dreading something happening,” Sam Barlow says.

“There’s a special tool set in video games where you’re really doing that.”

With Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Barlow returned to Silent Hill’s roots. That meant creating a world of psychological horror unique to gaming.

“If you want to tell a story that’s all about someone’s inner monologue, then go write a book,” Barlow says. “I think psychological horror gets to have its cake and eat it by allowing that character’s state of mind to bleed into visualness.”

In Shattered Memories, the player’s state of mind manifested itself through choices. Focus on sleazy posters and characters you meet would become more sexualized. Linger on bottles of booze too long and you were regarded as an alcoholic. The game created a psychological profile for each player.

“We made you deeply feel their story, the way in which you had projected [your thoughts] on to your protagonist,” Barlow says. “It’s very hard to untangle the interactivity from the experience of [that story].”

For its gameplay, Shattered Memories eschewed shooting and melee combat in favor of fear itself.

“The action element was running, it was being scared,” Barlow says. “Fight or flight is kicking in, you’re anticipating something bad happening. Your imagination is now doing all the work and it’s terrifying.”

The game’s most ambitious aspect was the ending. The player’s psychological profile contributed to the details of the ending in subtle, significant ways.

“Every scene of the game contained the DNA of that ending,” Barlow says. “That whole game is soaked with a deliberate repetition of imagery and ideas so that when we get to that ending, it lands as hard it can.”

DEN OF GEEK 57

SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF THE

PLAYER WAS DEFINITELY THE

GOAL. Designer on BioShock at Irrational Games, Director of Perception at The Deep End Games

“Listen, I love horror. I grew up with horror,” Bill Gardner says. “My parents owned a video store when I was growing up so you name it, I’ve seen it.”

Gardner found that not all film concepts translate to games. In a key BioShock sequence, Gardner became annoyed by testers’ ability to “run in the corner and put their head down” while the game introduced its most intimidating foe, the Big Daddy.

Frustrated, he asked BioShock director Ken Levine if they could manipulate the camera. Levine told him something that would become the basis of BioShock’s approach to horror. “[He said], ‘The second you do that, the director, the creators, the designers, they’re putting their hand on the player’s shoulder and saying, ‘It’s okay. You’re gonna be safe.’

You can’t be hurt here and that’s what a cutscene really is.”

BioShock used interactive cutscenes to tell a meta story about how gamers are never really in control. Instead, players are subject to the machinations of the storytellers, as the protagonist falls deeper into a routine of command and compliance. It’s a narrative experience that showed Gardner the difference between a horror game and a truly scary game.

“A horror game where there’s waves of [zombies], it’s like, ‘Okay, this is more fun than scary,’” Gardner says.

“In the context of a game, I’m much more interested in sequences where it’s one zombie and I get the backstory.”

With Perception, Gardner tried to translate that intimate brand of fear into a digital experience. The story of a blind girl stuck in a haunted home, Perception forced players to empathize with the protagonist’s disability. Gardner believes that great horror gaming should utilize the connections the player establishes.

“There’s a thing that connects with gamers in the back of their head, and they’re like, ‘This could be me,’” Gardner says. “When you look at BioShock, the way that Ken and the team designed [the games], you look at the things that [the players are] tormented with, and they’re the echoes of [the protagonist’s] personality and their former life.”

58 DEN OF GEEK

THOMAS GRIP

Designer on Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Director of SOMA at Frictional Games

“SOMA, Amnesia, Penumbra, most of the horror there is fairly cozy,” says Thomas Grip, who likes to make players feel comfortable before introducing the horror. “You just add an extra layer [and it goes] from being cozy to being a horror environment.”

Fans of Grip’s horror games probably wouldn’t describe them as cozy, though. His games create thick horror atmosphere through sounds and shadows. However, Grip believes atmosphere is more than audio and visuals.

“Atmosphere is not just some vague essence. It’s not like a perfume,” Grip says. “It’s more about the scenario that you’re building up with a player.”

Grip elaborates on that idea by highlighting his favorite scene from Amnesia, a revolutionary horror experience that helped kick off a new era of pure horror gaming. “[You’re] looking for certain items and suddenly you hear [a monster],” Grip says. “You go into the closet... the monster is going to go inspect the closet... you’re thinking, ‘Should I make a run for it? What’s my best course of action?’ ... We made what was basically a [cutscene] but we managed to do it in gameplay.”

The burden of choice is part of the reason many of his games don’t feature combat.

“Games tell you through the combat system what the default manner of dealing with the dangers are,” Grip says. “[If the] game doesn’t tell you at all how to deal with it... it’s much harder for the player to feel secure.”

In lieu of defensive options, Grip ensures that monsters adhere to a series of rules.

“In Amnesia... the monsters make a sound before you even see them,” Grip says. “Players never see the monsters, they just hear the music and perhaps some footsteps.”

Perhaps constant panic isn’t as “fun” as a jump scare, but Grip isn’t sure whether fun is what keeps people glued to horror or makes horror effective. “‘Fun’ is a sort of tricky word to use. I think ‘engagement’ is better,” Grip says. “As long as you can wrap it up in some sort of engaging structure, the sky’s the limit in how much you want to terrorize your audience.”

IMAGE CREDIT: KONAMI (OPENER), 2K GAMES

BILL GARDNER

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CULTURE

TOY MAN

The “Father of Action Figures” is resurrecting the iconic Mego brand. BY CHRIS LONGO TO COLLECTORS AND TOY historians, Mego and its CEO Marty Abrams were the forefathers of the action figure boom. During the 1970s, Mego and Abrams began snatching up toy licenses for comics, television shows, and celebrities. It changed how toy companies approached action figures.

Though Mego filed for bankruptcy in 1982 and shuttered the following year, Abrams managed to reclaim the Mego trademark. After a 35-year absence, Mego products will return to store shelves this fall. To resurrect Mego, Abrams is embracing the successes and failures of his past.

Decades before companies like Funko would thrive off having an expansive library of licenses to mine product, Abrams struck deals that would propel the company founded by his parents to unprecedented sales.

60 DEN OF GEEK

With flowing jet black hair à la Steve Perry circa 1981, and a self-proclaimed “pompous-ass swagger,” Abrams created dolls based on Hollywood icons like Farrah Fawcett and football star “Broadway” Joe Namath, and ultimately seized the market by licensing brands like Star Trek, DC and Marvel superheroes, and Planet of the Apes.

“They were doing Star Trek conventions, but no one was buying Star Trek toys until we came out with it, and we advertised it,” Abrams says. “Then, wham! It explodes.”

During a time when toy companies would cut corners by swapping parts and repainting existing molds, Mego knew kids were no

dummies. When Mego landed the DC Comics license, and later Marvel, it paid attention to detail and marketed the characters in a way no one had before.

“Listen to kids,” Abrams says of his brand’s success. “If you talk down to them, they turn off and go away. That became the essence of the product line.

If we just reach the collector, we’ll have a catastrophe on our hands.”

If Abrams’ biggest whiff was passing on the Star Wars licence (at the time, toy lines based on films were risky business), his greatest boon was purchasing the Star Trek license for just $5,000. It went on to do $50 million in sales. Mego’s rapid rise during the ‘70s– at one point it was the sixth largest toy company in the world–made its fall from grace tougher to swallow. After struggling to find another breakout hit, years of slumping sales led to Mego filing for bankruptcy. Legal trouble marred Abrams’ record: He was convicted of wire fraud and income tax fraud, defrauding the company’s stockholders. Abrams eventually put his checkered past behind him and continued to innovate. Remember Nintendo’s Power Glove? That was Abrams.

Not many people get a third act.

Abrams’ new Mego line, which will be exclusively sold at Target, is not just his greatest hits. Mego will produce new 8” figures like Harley Quinn and rock legend Jimi Hendrix, whose legacy has only grown since we last saw Mego. It will also stock classics like Star Trek, Charlie’s Angels, and Fonzie from Happy Days.

Going on the Mego reunion tour has Abrams grateful to recapture something he thought he lost: “Not everybody gets that opportunity to see their life’s work and relive their glory days.”

IMAGE CREDIT: MEGO

MISSION: MARS PG. 62 • SPACE TOURISM PG. 66

CULTURE

HOW TO MAKE A ROBOT

IMAGE CREDIT: DED SALSBURY / SPECTRAL MOTION

The builder of Lost in Space’s Robot, Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion, shows us how it’s done. BY ALEC BOJALAD YES, THE CREATOR OF Netflix’s Lost in Space Robot knows you think it’s sexy. “I think it’s great,” says Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion, a creature and effects studio.

“The aesthetic of the Robot is visually very beautiful and elegant. I think the performance combined with the visual really struck a chord with audiences.”

Spectral Motion’s work on two Netflix shows have made waves recently. They brought the Stranger Things demogorgon to life. Then came Lost in Space season one where the team realized the show’s vision of its own Robot.

Gathered here are some behind the scenes photo of how a Robot gets made– just in case you want to create your own killer robot to play catch with.

“We had been tasked with creating the Robot, suggesting a performer, building the suit, and creating a protocol for maintenance and performance. Once that is done, the on-set duties are taken care of by the crew. We definitely had a great performer, Brian Steele, who we’ve collaborated with many times in the past.”

“I grew up watching the [original Lost in Space].

The Robot was such a pillar of that storyline. I was concerned that if you changed it too much from that look or that design that maybe the audience wouldn’t embrace it. Netflix wisely chose to make the departure because the audience for that show isn’t old people like me who want to see their old friend, The Robot. It’s a whole new audience.”

“The idea behind the Robot is that it’s alien technology that we don’t know that much about. You still want it to be relatable, though.

Especially for Will Robinson, since they have such a close relationship in the show. Then we took that and adapted it to a human body and to practical systems and how we could translate it to the scenes.”

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CULTURE

Mission:

MARS CAN RECENT FICTION HELP REIGNITE A DESIRE TO EXPLORE THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE?

BY CHRIS LONGO ILLUSTRATIONS BY HANNAH KNEISLEY

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IN

his 1959 short story, “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting,” Arthur C. Clarke imagined an astronaut who is present for some of the biggest moments in the history of space flight. It’s 2000, and in the last half century, the astronaut has witnessed the launch of the first satellite, the first man to orbit Earth, the first moon landing, the subsequent construction of a moon colony, and a miracle of life—the first child born outside of Earth.

Momentarily overlooking the triumphs of the lunar colony, Clarke’s protagonist still romanticizes the fourth rock from the sun. The Mars mission, he claims, would be man’s “first great leap” into space, leaving the moon as no more than “a suburb of Earth,” a stepping stone to the “places that really mattered.”

As a longtime member of the British Interplanetary Society, Clarke tried to write the future into existence. His fiction, which he’s best known for, was always infused with fact. In 1945, 12 years before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, he proposed using space satellites for a global communication system. Whether he was writing about

moon colonies or tirelessly crafting nonfiction books and magazine essays on the merits of space flight, Clarke’s work embodied a rich optimism, an inherent subtext that our species yearns to push further, higher, and beyond.

More than three decades after penning the short story, Clarke adjusted his expectations with a futurist’s decree: “I said [in “Endlessly Orbiting”] we would not really have conquered space until the first baby was born on the moon,” Clarke wrote in a 1992 Playboy essay. “Let’s change that locale to Mars and try, despite all the odds, to meet that 2015 target.”

A journey to Mars, and even a return to the moon for that matter, remains a moving target. The technology to put a human on Mars has been readily available for more than three decades, but a lack of funding has prevented any serious attempt. In 1992, Clarke was hopeful we could put a man on Mars by 2015. Expectations have shifted. Dreams of NASA planting a flag on Mars have given way to a space race in the private sector, led by Elon Musk and SpaceX, which is targeting a Mars mission by 2024.

Government officials, scientists, private aerospace corporations, and journalists say Mars is the object in the mirror that is closer than it appears, but it’s worth questioning whether our ambition is trailing behind our imagination.

In many ways, popular culture–from recent blockbusters like The Martian to fantastical works like Total Recall, plus decades of sci-fi novels–has crystallized images of life on Mars for us. But does it render entry into the Martian atmosphere in real life little more than an inevitable formality in the eyes of the public? Have decades of science fiction writing and cinema desensitized us to the immense cost and manpower it will actually take to get to Mars, or is it the visual fuel we need to propel us toward innovation?

Recent works are hoping that marrying modern science with fiction will lend an authenticity to what would be mankind’s greatest adventure yet. Hulu’s new drama The First, from House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon, is

set in a near future where NASA has entered into a contract with a private corporation called Vista to develop and launch the first manned mission to Mars. Unlike most depictions of Mars missions, The First is primarily concerned with getting the rocket off the ground, and the toll that commitment takes on the astronauts and their families.

“There is a quite a sizable amount of work in the science fiction realm speculating and fantasizing about what space travel might look like in the far future,” Willimon says.

“What you don’t see nearly as much of is: What does it look like within arm’s reach? Not a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now, but 10 years from now? It’s great to see images of what a colony would look like, but how do we get that first mission there and back? I think sometimes that’s avoided because that’s the really hard part where the rubber meets the road.”

Sean Penn stars as Tom Hagerty, one of the initial astronauts chosen for the mission. Amid clashes with Natascha McElhone’s Laz Engram, the CEO of Vista, Hagerty has to endure personal and professional strife to fulfill what he believes is his destiny. Willimon says the stories that he finds most compelling are ones where people go through harrowing sacrifice to achieve significant feats, and Mars is the biggest possible canvas for that story.

“It’s the latest iteration in an impulse among humans, that goes back millennia, of our insatiable desire to explore the unknown,” Willimon says.

Willimon’s research for the show led the creative team to what they felt was a realistic conclusion: It will take a public/private partnership to get a Mars mission across the finish line. Despite President Donald Trump signing a 2017 mandate for NASA to put astronauts on Mars by 2033, it’s widely believed that SpaceX will get there first.

To do so, the company’s cooperation and collaboration with NASA will be key to the mission.

“There is no private sector company that has the halfcentury of experience that NASA has in terms of sending

“We as humans create the future we envision”

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“failure and loss cannot derail our hunger for exploration” humans to space,” Willimon says. “There is a huge amount of research that is based upon real life missions of what it means to keep a human alive in space. To not draw upon NASA’s expertise and involve them in that aspect means that the private sector is having to start from scratch.”

In the show, the public/private partnership comes with intense legislative scrutiny and oversight. Hagerty and Engram spend scenes arguing the technological and aspirational reasons for why we should be spending the money and energy to make this interstellar trip a reality.

While much of The First is centered on the human story, there are hard questions about allocating resources to such a risky mission, funds that could go a long way toward helping people on Earth.

“No mission in space happens without money, and that money doesn’t happen without popular will,” Willimon says.

“Whenever you’re talking about popular will and political power, you’re also talking about a vast diversity of opinions on the value of space travel. We felt that was an important thing to touch upon.”

The glimpse into how a public/private partnership would operate in The First feels of our current moment. Willimon says seeing the fight to prove the Mars project’s value is a stage of the journey that hasn’t been fictionalized much in pop culture.

“We’re helping to complete the picture in showing what is near and close,” he says. “I’m not shy about the fact that one of the goals of this show is that, in its own tiny way, it might have the ability to inspire people to get involved in space exploration, engineering, and science, and might push us a little closer to Mars.”

If The First is the micro view, the Why, then National Geographic’s MARS is the macro, the How. Based on the book How We’ll Live on Mars by Stephen Petranek, the show is a hybrid fictional story and documentary. In its first season, the drama begins with a ship entering Martian atmosphere while the documentary portion takes several 64 DEN OF GEEK

steps back to examine the tremendous difficulty in safely landing a flight crew on the surface of Mars. It mirrors the opening of Petranek’s meticulously researched book, which starts with a prediction about the dream of a successful Mars mission before getting into the nuts and bolts: the history of planned Mars missions, the key players poised to make it there, and the challenges of actually living on the planet and transforming it to fit our human needs. It reads like a roadmap, much like how Clarke aspired to chart our celestial path one story at a time.

Peter Diamandis, co-founder of Planetary Resources, a commercial space exploration program with the goal of mining for vital resources in asteroids, says in the MARS season one finale, “There is a direct correlation between the dreams and the works of science fiction and reality. We as humans create the future we envision.” MARS is able to have it both ways by commentating on our present reality and using that information to devise a hyper-realistic depiction of a Martian colony.

“In truth, not much science fiction actually correlates to future science fact, but there is an exception: science fiction that relentlessly pursues a factual basis for its imaginings, science fiction like that proposed in the National Geographic MARS series, is much more likely to foresee the future,” says Petranek, who serves as a co-executive producer and scientific advisor on the series.

MARS season two launches ahead to the next iteration of space travel. Once the initial group of astronauts and the next wave of settlers have established the colony, the private sector sees Mars as the next profitable frontier.

After a time jump, a company called Lukrum touches down with the intention of profiting off the planet’s resources.

Research versus profit becomes a sticking point between the Martian colonists.

Showrunner Dee Johnson questions via the series’ central conflicts whether we’re destined to make the same mistakes on Mars that we did on Earth.

“This was the ultimate new frontier,” Johnson says. “Are gone there by now, that’s what everyone expected,” Musk we doomed to repeat the same mistakes of explorers of the says in the season one finale. “We just kind of lost our way, past where you exploit versus explore? That’s going back to but now we’re going to get back there.” the battle for the soul of the planet, because I would like to In the final moments of MARS’ season one finale, SpaceX think that we wouldn’t make the same mistakes.” completes a successful vertical landing of its Falcon 9 rocket, a major milestone in the company’s goal to create reusable The fictional drama of MARS touches on loss, political rockets for its Mars missions. The moment is all the more controversy, and internal and external conflict. It’s those euphoric inside SpaceX since two previous attempts at a themes that are central to the space epics that have become vertical landing had failed. critical darlings: films such as Apollo 13 (directed by MARS “Failures lead to more successes than a stream of executive producer Ron Howard), The Martian, Interstellar, successes themselves,” Petranek says. “We learn how to and Gravity. predict and fix potential disasters by having things go wrong “[MARS] contributes to the literature of what can go along the way. The secret sauce in pursuing success is not wrong,” Peternak says. “People at NASA and SpaceX cannot to give up, it’s to persevere and maintain a determination to assume they’ll think of everything—they actually need input succeed no matter how many failures there are.” from science fiction, especially when it’s based on fact.”

Patrenek sees value in science fiction–in particular the Says Willimon of grounding The First in cold, hard reality: drama at the crux of The Martian, Interstellar, and “Let’s be brutally honest about how difficult this is and, Gravity–foreseeing “difficulty, trouble, and failure at times, even how unglamorous it is, and that will before success.” really lend an authenticity to it feeling real and What initially triggered his interest in space feeling near.” travel was an illustrated book he received as NASA history is deeply embedded in the a child in the 1950s that portrayed a similar DNA of blockbuster films and shows like The design to what was eventually the Lunar First and MARS. The unshakeable sense of HOW WE’LL VISIT SPACE. Excursion Module (LEM), years before loss from national tragedies like the Challenger SEE PAGE 66 the LEM was actually designed. The fiction and Columbia flights is a sobering reminder helped him to dream of mankind reaching that nothing is guaranteed when it comes distant worlds, but it was factual achievements, the to space travel. The Apollo 13 flight, which was Mercury and Apollo missions, that convinced him we originally destined to be a moon landing, turned into could “accomplish anything in space we put our hearts and a rescue mission, and ultimately spooked an apprehensive resources into.”

Richard Nixon administration on investing in missions “Few people know this, but President [John F.] Kennedy outside of the Earth’s orbit. It likely robbed a generation of apparently asked NASA to go to Mars, not the moon,” the chance to see a human walk on Mars.

Petranek says. “NASA demurred and said it was more likely It’s critical that space programs learn quickly from to get to the moon.” past mistakes. Both The First and MARS are explicit in assuring that failure and loss cannot derail our hunger Science fiction could once again help us regain the for exploration. ambition to leapfrog the moon. For years it has been our escapism, but it can also be a window into the future.

“The technology has been there for a long, long time,” Perhaps shows like The First and MARS, or any to come Petranek says. “It’s a matter of money and commitment.” from now until touch down on the Red Planet, will be seen While private companies draw the ire of scientists in as, to borrow a line from Clarke, “the great landmarks on MARS season two, the first season paints Elon Musk and the road to space.”

SpaceX as the heroes poised to make it to Mars. Petranek was able to secure access to Elon Musk for How We’ll Live on Mars and National Geographic went behind-the-scenes with The First is now streaming on Hulu. National Geographic’s SpaceX for MARS season one. “It seems like we should have MARS season two premieres Nov. 12 at 9 p.m.

MORE MARS

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CULTURE SPACE ADVENTURES Ticket Price: $20 million to $100 million

Space tourism began in April 2001 when millionaire Dennis Tito made a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, brokered by a company called Space Adventures, which from 2001 to 2009 brokered eight trips to the ISS aboard Russian spacecraft for space tourists. Passengers paid between $20 million and $40 million for the ride of a lifetime. Now the company hopes to broker trips with the Russians so space tourists can orbit the moon.

The ticket price will be $100 million. Space Adventures plans on making lunar trips available in the early 2020s.

SPACEX

Ticket Price: Undisclosed SpaceX plans to send their first private space tourists to the moon and back in 2023. The company’s first human-crewed spaceflight, scheduled for April 2019, will ferry two NASA astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX announced in September 2018 it will be taking Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa into lunar orbit in 2023. Maezawa plans to bring six to eight artists from around the world with him on the journey.

VIRGIN GALACTIC

Ticket Price: $250,000 Virgin Galactic is the company that first got the world excited about space tourism. Through the late 2000s, founder Sir Richard Branson promised flights into space in which passengers would enjoy incredible views and

66 DEN OF GEEK

How we’ll

visit space

BY ALEJANDRO ROJAS FOR YEARS WE HAVE BEEN TOLD A NEW SPACE tourism industry is just on the horizon. However, aside from a handful of millionaires, taking a vacation in space has not become a reality. Let’s take a look at how close we are to commercial space flights, which companies will take us there, and what technologies they will be using.

experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Dozens of celebrities signed up and put down hundreds of thousands of dollars to reserve seats. However, setbacks and tragedy delayed Virgin’s plans. Now, Virgin Galactic is back on track and Branson projects the company will visit space by the end of the year.

BLUE ORIGIN

Ticket Price: $250,000 to $300,000 (projected) Co-founded by Jeff Bezos, Amazon co-founder and the world’s richest person, Blue Origin may start selling tickets for a spot on its New Shepard rocket as soon as next year. Blue Origin’s space flight experience will be similar to that of a traditional astronaut.

Passengers will be strapped into seats in a large capsule on top of a massive rocket which will blast them into space. Once in space, the capsule is released and will float in space for a few minutes before dropping back down to earth using parachutes.

WORLD VIEW ENTERPRISES

Ticket Price: $75,000 ($7,500 deposit) The company is offering a balloon ride that will take people high enough for a space-like experience that is not only less expensive than its competitors, but also much longer and more comfortable. The trip will take five hours—but don’t worry, the stylish cabin will be equipped with a bar and restrooms. Their spacecraft will reach 100,000 feet before returning to Earth.

This may be less than the 300,000-feet plus that Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic hope to achieve, but it will still provide spectacular views.