Den of Geek Magazine Issue 5 - The Batman Preview by Den of Geek

CAPTAIN CARTER!

THE BATMAN

15 YEARS OF ICONIC GEEK MOMENTS

EXCLUSIVE DEN OF GEEK COVER DRAWN BY BILL SIENKIEWICZ

THE NORTHMAN

ROBERT EGGERS’ VIKING EPIC

MARVEL’S NEW SUPERSTAR

MATT REEVES AND ROBERT PATTINSON EXPLORE THE DARK KNIGHT’S NEXT INCARNATION

2 DEN OF GEEK DEN OF GEEK

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

BY EXPERTS. FOR FANS.

CUPHEAD!

Animated hijinx based on the game, becomes a Netflix series. We talk to the creators of The Cuphead Show! PG. 22

ON THE COVER

What could be better than putting Robert Pattinson as Batman (and Bruce Wayne), Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle, Paul Dano as the Riddler, Colin Farrell as the Penguin, and Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon on our cover? How about when every single one of ‘em is drawn by legendary comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Known for his eerie and distinctive style, it’s pretty fitting that he’s the one to illustrate a cover about a Batman movie that looks pretty eerie and distinctive in its own right. After years of admiring his work in other people’s books, we never dreamed we’d one day have a Bill Sienkiewicz cover of our very own, but here we are! COVER PHOTO CREDIT: ART BY BILL SIENKIEWICZ ©WARNER BROS./DC

ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2022

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THE LORE HUNTERS OF ELDEN RING Meet the gamers on a quest to uncover the secrets of Elden Ring, even with little or nothing to go on. For these fans the journey is more important than the destination as they pore over clues. PG. 18

THE BATMAN

Director Matt Reeves, producer Dylan Clark, and star Robert Pattinson on their fresh reimagining of the early years of the Caped Crusader. PG. 36

THE NORTHMAN

The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers talks about his new Viking epic. It’s loosely based on Hamlet, it stars Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy and it looks awesome. PG. 46

STEPHEN MERCHANT

SUPERMAN & THE AUTHORITY

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX/BANDAI NAMCO/LIONSGATE/BBC

The co-creator of The Office on his new show The Outlaws, featuring Christopher Walken as part of an ensemble cast. PG. 28

TALKING STRANGE

Paranormal pop culture expert and Den of Geek’s brand new regular columnist Aaron Sagers contemplates the end of the world in 2022. PG. 20

Grant Morrison on their older, wiser Superman and the modern spin they bring to the villains the Man of Steel must face. PG. 50

CAPTAIN CARTER

Peggy Carter’s got a brand new costume, and her own solo Marvel Comics series. Artist Jamie McKelvie takes us behind the scenes. PG. 26

MASSIVE TALENT!

Director Tom Gormican on Nicolas Cage meta movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where the actor plays a fictionalized version of himself. PG. 12 DEN OF GEEK

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Our first cover of the year features one of 2022’s most anticipated films. IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO

remember a time when Batman wasn’t cool. When I was little, Batman was primarily known as the straight-laced crimefighter in endless reruns of the 1960s Batman TV series starring Adam West, Burt Ward and a seemingly continuous, brightly colored array of “special guest villains.” Kids loved Batman, and not grasping the fact that the show itself was a subversive comedy, we often felt we outgrew him after a certain point. Batman certainly wasn’t the inescapable pop culture juggernaut and guaranteed box office draw that we know today. But then along came comics like Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley’s The Dark Knight Returns, which paved the way for the seismic impact of 1989’s Batman movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Jack Nicholson and 6

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Michael Keaton. And for a superhero-obsessed kid living in a time when superhero movies weren’t just rare, they were practically non-existent, Batman was a pop culture event like no other. I haunted my local comic shop, spent every last dime of my meager allowance on Bat-memorabilia, begged my Mom to whip up a homemade Batman costume for Halloween (patient, kind, and talented soul that she is, she nailed it), and painstakingly set my Dad’s VCR for every news show that promised even a hint of new footage from the movie. Is it any wonder that we’ve put Matt Reeves’ cinematic reimagining of the Dark Knight’s early days, The Batman, on the cover of this issue? And not only is this a cover featuring The Batman, it’s illustrated by legendary

Underneath his cowl, the Batman (Robert Pattinson) looks out across Gotham City.

comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz, whose distinctive, often spooky art leapt off the racks whenever I walked into a comic shop as a kid, and it made him one of the first comics artists whose style I was able to recognize. So not only is Batman “cool” now, he’s the subject of one of the most anticipated movies of the year, and one of the coolest comics artists of my lifetime has illustrated him for this cover. And I get to be part of a team that is helping to bring some awesome exclusive details about it to other fans. That’s pretty cool, too, ain’t it? Mike Cecchini, Editor-in-Chief

PHOTO CREDITS: WARNER BROS.

GOTHAM CITY REVERIE

MAG AZ I N E Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Print Editor Rosie Fletcher Editorial Director Chris Longo Creative Director Lucy Quintanilla Art Director Jessica Koynock

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DENOFGEEK.COM Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Director of Editorial and Partnerships Chris Longo Managing Editor John Saavedra UK Editor Rosie Fletcher Associate Editors Alec Bojalad, Kayti Burt, Matthew Byrd, David Crow, Kirsten Howard, Louisa Mellor, Tony Sokol Art Director Jessica Koynock Head of Video Production Andrew Halley Senior Video Producer Nick Morgulis Head of Audience Development Elizabeth Donoghue CEO and Group Publisher Jennifer Bartner-Indeck Chief Financial Officer Peter Indeck Commercial Director Mark Wright Publisher Matthew Sullivan-Pond

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COMIC STORE SPOTLIGHT

Owner Terry Gant in his Chicago-based comic shop, Third Coast Comics.

BOURBON, BACON, AND BATMAN WHEN TERRY GANT WAS first putting his comic shop, Third Coast Comics, together, he noticed something. “I was going around the shops, getting a feel for them, and I would have my wife with me,” he says. “Sometimes you would be in the shop and five minutes later, she was like, ‘Hey, are you done?’ But sometimes it would be 20, 25 minutes before this happened, and I started taking notes.” The places they lingered the longest? The friendliest, most respectful shops, the ones most invested in making their customers feel welcome. That’s what he tried to do when his shop opened. “The way that we got people into the shop was with 10

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things that focused on what you did in your life other than comics that we can attach comics to,” he says. And that’s how Third Coast’s whiskey and comics tasting sessions came together. Crossing the physical sensation of taste with your comics preferences doesn’t really seem like it should work. But when Gant explains the pairings, well… they’re kind of perfect. Bourbon isn’t the only pairing that Gant has done at Third Coast. He’s matched bacon and beer to comics, too—if they’re half as well matched as his whiskey suggestions, those were probably great times. And with spring approaching, he’s hopeful he can get back to bringing

people together to pair more comics with new readers. When we heard about this idea, we asked him to walk us through a tasting, and we were not disappointed. His first comics picks are easy entry points: Assassin Nation by Kyle Starks and Erica Henderson, or Invincible by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley. “Awesome, fun, exciting adventure,” Gant says. With those, he pairs whiskeys like Evan Williams or Jameson. “You just want to throw a couple of ice cubes in and know you’re drinking a whiskey.” These comics and whiskeys are easy and fun and recognizable to folks new to the style. For the next taste, Gant offers up Peter Calloway and Georges Jeanty’s

IMAGE CREDITS: THIRD COAST COMICS

Terry Gant’s Chicago comic shop, Third Coast Comics, tries to expand your palate in all sorts of ways. BY JIM DANDENEAU

The Shadow Doctor or Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi’s The Good Asian—both classic noir comics, one looking at Al Capone’s doctor, and the other at a maybe dirty cop in Depression-era San Francisco. He pairs something a little heavier with those, a Knob Creek or Woodford Reserve— bourbons with a smokier, more complex taste. “You’re stepping it up a little here,” he says. “Your friends are impressed but they don’t want to tell you they’re impressed—they don’t want to give you any credit for it, but they’re going to copy your swag.”

THE WAY WE GOT PEOPLE INTO THE SHOP WAS WITH THINGS THAT FOCUSED ON WHAT YOU DID IN YOUR LIFE OTHER THAN COMICS.” To close, Gant’s comics picks are dense, high-concept sci-fi: Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga (“Lord Of The Rings meets Romeo & Juliet in space”) and Johnnie Christmas and Jack Cole’s epic space opera Tartarus. Gant wants something complex and high-end to pair with these comics, so he goes with Buffalo Trace and Basil Hayden. “You plan to invest effort and time in getting into these comics,” he explains. “This is the bourbon you’re going to reach for to do that.” On its face, these tastings don’t seem like they should work, but when Gant explains them, they make a shocking amount of sense. And as soon as it’s safe for large indoor gatherings, Third Coast Comics will be back at it. Third Coast Comics is located at 6443 N Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL. If your shop does something fun and unexpected to get more people reading comics, tweet us @denofgeekus.

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NEW RELEASES

CARRY THAT WEIGHT

Writer and director Tom Gormican has found the perfect role for the internet’s favorite actor, Nicolas Cage: himself. BY NICK HARLEY

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NICOLAS CAGE IS TRENDING. It’s not uncommon for celebrities to become trending topics on Twitter after a recent interview or talk show appearance, but the 58-year-old actor finds himself the topic of conversation online far more frequently than other actors of his generation. This time, Cage is having a mini-viral moment after discussing his pet crow Hoogan and declaring, “I am a goth,” in an

interview with the Los Angeles Times. Sure enough, Twitter is now full of photoshopped images of Cage wearing dark eye makeup and black lipstick, with users cracking jokes and warmly celebrating his idiosyncrasies in equal measure. It’s just the latest in a long line of Cage memes. For most folks who are “extremely online,” you either grew up with Cage’s movies or you grew up with the Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Relaxing next to him is Pedro Pascal as a Cage superfan.

actor as an internet fascination. Tom Gormican, the writer and director of the upcoming Cage film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, isn’t sure why all the Cage supercuts and meme treatments started. He suggests Cage’s inherently polite and professional demeanor on set, his up-and-down relationship with critics, and his penchant for dipping into “expressionist” acting all as possibilities, but one thing is for certain: “Weirdly, there’s this groundswell of goodwill behind Nicolas Cage.” The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent finds Cage playing a fictionalized version of himself. Enduring a career slump and financial stress, he’s forced to collect a milliondollar check by attending a wealthy superfan’s birthday. What Cage doesn’t know is that the superfan (played by Pedro Pascal) is a dangerous crime boss. Soon the actor is roped into a CIA operation to take the criminal down, forcing him to channel the characteristics of some of his most famous roles. It’s a meta comedy that finds Cage embracing the aspects of his real-life and on-screen personas that have led to him becoming an internet icon. Gormican wrote the script for Cage with no backup plan in place. He admits that the entire project hinged on whether the actor would be willing to poke fun at himself. “You don’t know what someone is going to be game for, and we didn’t pull any punches,” says Gormican. “Part of the pitch to Nic was, in a world where your identity is litigated in the public sphere constantly on a daily basis, and people have access to you, what would be interesting to us is to create things that are a mix of the two, reality and some sort of surreality, create a character that’s one-part real and one-part fiction.” The blending of the real and fictional Cage on set led to interesting clashes where Cage would insist that the “real” Nicolas Cage wouldn’t say a particular line, and Gormican would remind the actor that he was playing a DEN OF GEEK

NEW RELEASES Turns out Cage’s number one fan is a crime boss, forcing Cage to channel some of his former iconic roles in this meta comedy.

Fab Four

Our pick of Nicolas Cage’s finest performances. WILD AT HEART This David Lynch melodrama features a suave and dangerous Cage performance in which the actor plays Sailor Ripley, a snakeskin jacket-wearing Southern outlaw with a love of Elvis and a heart of gold. Romantic and reckless, Sailor is a surreal riff on a 1950s bad boy archetype.

FACE/OFF

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I DON’T KNOW THAT THERE’S ANYBODY WHO PLAYS NEUROTIC OR ANXIOUS BETTER THAN NICOLAS CAGE.” that Cage is capable of greatness, especially when playing a neurotic type, there were a few years in the late 2010s where it looked like the actor’s marquee status was behind him. But Cage’s career is like a pendulum, and when it swings in one direction, fans are ready and willing to embrace a swing back the other way. “He’s never been gone. He’s been around. He’s been doing more films than he’s ever done,” Gormican says. “I always thought that there would be a groundswell beneath him, because he seems to be an actor that has a lot of goodwill, and hopefully this will push that even further.” The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent hits theaters on April 22.

ADAPTATION Cage’s first meta classic finds him portraying real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his fictional identical twin, Donald. Inspired by Kaufman’s real-life attempt to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, Cage flexes all of his most impressive acting muscles playing the anxious, self-loathing Charlie and his dimly confident twin, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.

PIG As widowed former rock star chef Robin Feld, Cage delivers one of his finest performances in years. Soulful, wounded, and world-weary, Cage keeps his wilder impulses in check and reaches deep for this moving, thoughtful role.

IMAGE CREDITS: LIONSGATE

character. Stranger still was when the fiction of the film would blend with the fiction of Cage’s past roles. “There’s a particular shot in the movie that I took from Leaving Las Vegas, where he’s at the bottom of the pool, drinking, and it’s Nic’s lowest point in our movie,” Gormican explains, “and that [earlier role] was the highest point in his career. I was describing the scene on set. And I said, ‘So, you’re going to go to the bottom of the pool and that’s how you’re going to be…’ And he was like, ‘Tom, Tom, Tom. I know. I’ve already done it.’” While Cage has proven in films like Leaving Las Vegas and the recent Pig that he can deliver understated, restrained performances, audiences seem to gravitate toward Cage’s presence when he’s playing characters that are manic or unstable, like his turn in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. “I’m obsessed with the neurotic, anxious Cage,” Gormican says. “I don’t know that there’s anybody who plays neurotic or anxious better than Nicolas Cage. I love it. At one point he very neurotically said to me, ‘I’m not a neurotic guy.’ I was like, ‘Neurotic Cage is the best Cage.’” While critics and audiences know

John Woo’s deliriously silly action thriller features one of the most over-the-top, but enjoyable, performances of Cage’s career. There isn’t enough scenery for Cage to chew early in the film as homicidal sociopath Castor Troy, but things get particularly juicy once Cage starts playing a version of John Travolta’s character playing a version of his character. Yeah, this one is bonkers, but in a fun way.

New Empires, Old Legends, Outstanding Reads

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On an alternate Earth, massive dinosaur-like creatures called Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. And they’re in trouble.

The people of the Muungano empire charted a course to a better future. But the old oppressive powers have set in motion new plots to destroy all that they’ve built.

This isn’t a fairy tale where the princess marries a prince. It’s one where she kills him.

A dying emperor charges his favorite concubine with solving his own murder and preventing the culprit from taking control of an empire.

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#1 New York Times bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon returns with a brand-new entry in her Dream-Hunter® series.

In his adult novel debut, awardwinning author Tochi Onyebuchi delivers a sweeping science fiction epic in the vein of Samuel R. Delany and Station Eleven.

This spellbinding and subversive queer recasting of Arthurian myth by the legendary author of Hild is a must-read.

From an award-winning team of authors, editors, and translators comes a groundbreaking short story collection that explores the expanse of Chinese science fiction and fantasy.

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FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT…

KACI WALFALL

The story is just beginning for the Naomi star.

BY NICOLE HILL

Kaci Walfall’s parents thought she would be a hoops star. Instead, she chose to take a shot at acting. “My parents wanted me to play sports and to be in the WNBA. There are photos of me as a baby, out of the hospital, with a basketball in my hand. But I’ve always wanted to act.”

Her first professional role, at the age of seven, was an Optimum advert. “I was fascinated with the camera crew and getting my hair and makeup done,” she recalls. “And feeling like I was somebody who wasn’t myself. It was a feeling that I loved losing myself in, at a young age.”

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Ava DuVernay was top of the list of directors that Walfall wanted to work with, which she got to do on Naomi. It includes Lovecraft Country’s Misha Green, and Spike Lee (“Crooklyn is one of my favorite films”). She says she’d love to act with Jurnee Smollett, Viola Davis, and Jonathan Majors.

Walfall was inspired by directors on Naomi to learn the craft. “During the summer, I took a directing class with a mentor, Ciara Renée; she’s great.” Renée played Hawkgirl in Legends of Tomorrow, another DC property on the CW. “She helped me direct a short film that I wrote.”

Naomi McDuffie may be into superheroes and comics, but Walfall geeks out about books. “One of my favorites is Letters to a Young Artist by Anna Deavere Smith. Even if you aren’t an actor, or necessarily someone who pursues art, there’s so much wisdom in it. I read it all the time.”

IMAGE CREDITS: STEPHANIE DIANI

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DEEP DIVE

LORDS OF THE ELDEN RING For some gamers, the journey is more important than the destination in the hunt for Elden Ring’s lore. BY MATTHEW BYRD

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for people to be so obsessed with a teaser trailer for a new video game that they decide to just make up their own stories and characters while they wait for the next one. What would possibly inspire so many fans to spend years creating elaborate mythology for a game that they knew almost nothing about? “I’d say the names ‘Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin’ probably did it!” theorizes Sophie Pilbeam of Sinclair Lore. “They’re authors we’re familiar enough with that we can make educated guesses about what they’d probably do, but they aren’t beholden to one style.” FromSoftware games have always invited this level of speculation and theorizing. Unlike many fantasy works that offer definitive mythologies, the stories in Miyazaki games are usually open to interpretation, puzzles players

THESE ARE THE ULTIMATE WATERCOOLER GAMES BECAUSE EVERYONE BRINGS SOMETHING DIFFERENT TO THE TABLE.” are left to piece together themselves. These Elden Ring lore hunters just got a head start. FromSoftware finally released new footage, screenshots, and even plot details for Elden Ring in 2021. The fan

Above: One of Elden Ring’s mysterious boss battles. Below right: a look at the game’s picturesque open-world combat.

fiction had been shattered, but the community remained strong. They knew the real work had just begun. It was time to abandon the “meme lore” and try to start making sense of what Elden Ring was really about. “My foundation for interpreting pre-release lore comes from trailer dialogue and interviews,” Sean explains. “I’ll zoom in 200 percent on an image or go frame by frame through a trailer and see if any of it relates back to something that has been stated by a primary source. It’s the dorkiest thing in the world, but FromSoftware is so detail-oriented and expresses so much visually that even months after an image comes out, I still find new discoveries.” It’s easy to assume that someone would only spend so much time studying a game world in order to find definitive answers. However, Elden Ring fans are often more interested in the process of “connecting the

IMAGE CREDITS: BANDAI NAMCO

AT E3 2019, GAME DEVELOPER FromSoftware released a teaser trailer for Elden Ring, an action role-playing game from Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin. FromSoftware didn’t post another Elden Ring trailer until June 2021. During the long wait, things got weird. “As the months passed, it became clear that we weren’t getting Elden Ring [anytime soon],” says Sean (they prefer to be identified by their first name) of the YouTube channel The Lore Hunter. “In fall 2019, fans decided that, if FromSoftware wasn’t saying anything, they would make Elden Ring for themselves.” For the next two years, Elden Ring fans turned the open-world RPG’s two-and-a-half-minute teaser trailer into a communal compendium of lore that fleshed out the game’s world, characters, and story—but a lot of it was made up. Since a single teaser trailer isn’t usually enough to get a full grasp on a game’s narrative, most of the “lore” collected by fans was based on nothing more than running jokes and wild guesses. What began as a legitimate attempt to dissect the trailer soon morphed into elaborate backstories for fictional characters like Glaive Master Hodir, as well as deep dives into fabricated plot points like Filoche helping King Dramt swallow the sun. Before long, the trailer line “Oh! Elden Ring” became a rallying cry used to lament the lack of updates and celebrate the madness that was unfolding. It’s not unusual for fans to obsess over fantasy lore, but it is unusual

dots until you’re forced to speculate a little bit to form a conclusion,” according to Sean. While there are many who rely on lore explainers to better understand games such as Elden Ring, some lore hunters suggest the beauty of these games is that they can be enjoyed no matter how well you understand their mythologies.

“The games continue to resonate with a broad audience because there are multiple ways to engage with them,” Pilbeam says. “I have friends in the community who are absolutely in love with the story and characters, but almost didn’t pick up the games to start with because the ‘hardcore’ discourse put them off. I think that the stories presented in the games

recontextualize the difficulty to be about the characters being vulnerable, isolated, and overwhelmed, rather than them proving they’re stronger than other people.” Interpreting Elden Ring’s lore isn’t about gatekeeping, but appreciating how these games encourage people to stop looking for a definitive experience and instead learn to love sharing their own journey. “[These are] the ultimate watercooler games because everyone brings something different to the table,” Sean says. “You get a mixture of shared and unique gameplay experiences and similar and differing interpretations of the story and lore. It’s a chance to experience challenge and mystery again, and the joy of coming together as a community and learning about others’ experiences and interpretations.” Elden Ring is due to be released on Feb. 25. DEN OF GEEK

COMMENTARY

TALKING STRANGE

New regular columnist Aaron Sagers ponders the apocalypse.

DEN OF GEEK

AARON SAGERS PARANORMAL POP CULTURE EXPERT

Look Up about a comet that will wipe out life on this planet. Whether it is paranormal (outside current scientific definition) or supernatural (altogether beyond scientific definition), the thrum of the unknown and unexplained continuously vibrates throughout popular media. This increases during times of crises, but long precedes the Mayan Apocalypse theories. Outlets reporting an uptick in ghost sightings during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 is not so different from the rise of Spiritualism following the American Civil War or World War I. It is not so different from the popularity of unscripted “ghost hunting” shows that emerged in the years following the Sept. 11 attack. Meanwhile, UFO sightings have increasingly become the stuff of respectable media coverage. After U.S. intelligence released a report about “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” in June 2021, the Pew Research Center

reported that about 65 percent of Americans believed intelligent life exists on other planets. The belief in a mysterious universe is strong within society, but the takeaway is we are never far from it, regardless of belief. Even if we don’t share an ideology about its existence, we never tire of being entertained by the unexplained. While streaming platform discovery+ boasts an entire programming vertical dedicated to “Paranormal & Unexplained” (full disclosure: I currently appear on the series Paranormal Caught on Camera), pop culture in 2022 is brimming with magick, monsters, gods, ghosts, extraterrestrials, and apocalypses. From the moon hurtling towards the Earth in Moonfall, to Moon Knight, featuring a superhero powered by the Egyptian deity Khonshu, this year is once again populated with the weird. The strange and unusual is not so strange or unusual. Rather, the strange and unusual is mainstream. And the end of our culture’s attraction towards it seems as unlikely as the Mayan Apocalypse in 2012. Find more of Aaron’s paranormal adventures at DenofGeek.com/paranormal

Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio contemplate the end of the world in Netflix movie Don’t Look Up.

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX, ILLUSTRATION BY ASIA REYNOLDS

A DECADE AGO, at the beginning of the year, I was already thinking of the end—the end of the world, that is. The news coverage had already been ramping up, and by January 2012, National Geographic, The Washington Post, and other outlets had prominently referenced the phenomenon—or if you prefer the sexier sounding “Mayan Apocalypse”—a theory that the world would end on December 21, 2012. The cause for the Armageddon excitement revolved around the end of the so-called Maya Long Count calendar once observed by the ancient Mesoamerican civilization which would occur on December 21, 2012. Most scholars viewed the end as a rollover on the Mayan’s cosmic odometer, though New Age philosophers interpreted it as a series finale for creation itself. Adding a little seasoning to the supernatural brew were pseudoscience notions of a rogue planet colliding with us. Spoiler alert: existence writ large was not canceled. Earth was renewed for additional seasons. The Mayan Apocalypse, as a yearlong “moment,” highlighted our ongoing fascination with the unknown. There were believers, of course. In an international poll of more than 16,000 respondents, Reuters reported in May 2012 “10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify [the end of the world] in 2012.” But even if a vast majority of people did not believe it, the “prediction” became part of the mainstream cultural conversation. As a journalist who has developed a specialty writing about paranormal pop culture, I likewise became part of the conversation. The coverage wasn’t so much validating 12/21/12 beliefs, but discussing the origins of them, and what they reflected about us. Now, a decade later one of the most talked about movies on Netflix is Don’t

NEW RELEASES Thrill-seeker Cuphead (front) and his brother Mugman (behind) get involved in hijinx.

FINELY TOONED ADVENTURES YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A gamer to appreciate the traditional animated stylings of Cuphead. That’s the first thing Dave Wasson– showrunner behind the upcoming Netflix TV adaptation–makes clear to us. Limited video game experience aside, with credits on Space Jam, Cool World, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, it’s hard to think of a hand better equipped to bring this madcap world of anthropomorphic crockery, vegetables, and slot machines to life. “There was buzz about the Cuphead video game,” Wasson recalls about the early days, before he was even involved in The Cuphead Show! “Even within the animation community… because it was all based on a 1930s, 22

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rubber hose style of animation.” Originally developed by the Moldenhauer brothers, collectively known as Studio MDHR, Cuphead first launched on PC and Xbox in 2017, before achieving success on consoles. Classic run-and-gunners had existed for decades before, but as Wasson notes, what made Cuphead stand out was its impressive mimicking of 1930s animated cartoons. “MDHR really went bananas with it, doing full-on traditional 2D animation, and really captured that style beautifully,” he says. “It was a real love letter to the cartoons of that era.” Netflix quickly showed interest in bringing the adventures of Cuphead (alongside his trusty brother Mugman)

to a much broader audience–one that perhaps wouldn’t get to witness the wonders of this Fleischer Studiosstyle throwback otherwise. The idea with The Cuphead Show! was to make something just as authentic-looking as the game, all while expanding on the world and characters. To do this, Wasson tapped into his love of 1930s animation, as well as his experience working on a Mickey Mouse TV series for Disney years prior. “The thing that was really fun and special about working on those Mickey Mouse shorts was, Disney really did give us permission to make them funny,” Wasson reveals. Said approach was highly influential for The Cuphead Show! “I just wanted to take that same

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

Showrunner Dave Wasson on the trials of translating a video game to TV for Netflix’s The Cuphead Show! BY AARON POTTER

Cuphead (voiced by Tru Valentino) and Mugman (voiced by Frank Todaro), with Chalice (voiced by Grey Griffin).

The devil himself is a character carried over from the original Cuphead video game.

spirit and bring that to Cuphead. A lot of that stuff is kind of rubber hosing as well. That early Mickey stuff was all invented in the ’20s, and ’30s, too. I felt like that all just translated right over.” Like the bite-sized chunks of play the game provides, Cuphead’s first 12-episode season is primed to offer viewers similarly short bursts of fun, with episodes running at around 14 minutes each. The difference is that fan-favorite characters like Cuphead, his adoptive parent Elder Kettle, and even the Devil himself now have a voice. This change was seen as a must if The Cuphead Show! was to appeal to Netflix’s desired age group of 7- to 12-year-olds, as well as older-skewing existing fans. “There’s really fast paced, slapstick comedy in there for kids. And the colors and backgrounds are great. But we’re hoping that it works on an adult level as well,” Wasson says. “These characters have all different sorts of heightened emotions. There’s jealousy, greed, pride, and all that kind of stuff that I think is really relatable to adults, because they can see qualities in these characters that they recognize in themselves. And that’s always really fun to laugh at.”

Problem is, outside of a basic narrative opening establishing Cuphead and Mugman’s longing to escape from their serene cabin life with Elder Kettle, the game’s story is extremely light. “That little bit the Moldenhauer brothers provided was our springboard,” Wasson says. “And then from that, we were kind of like

THESE DAYS, IT FEELS LIKE THERE ARE MORE ANIMATED SITCOMS OR FEATURES. BUT THERE AREN’T A LOT OF PURE CARTOONS GETTING MADE.” ‘Okay, so that means Cuphead is kind of this thrill seeker, and Mugman is the more cautious one.’ So we fleshed it out from there.” Much like those early cartoons, for the most part, each episode of The Cuphead Show! is its own self-contained adventure. One episode sees the duo compete in a

questionably seedy gameshow, while the next has them trying to calm down an ever-crying baby using various irreverent techniques. It’s basic “bottle” storytelling with a 21st century sheen, blending the new and old by aping the Cuphead game’s watercolor backgrounds, film grain filter, and hand-drawn characters using modern techniques. Wasson recognizes that, much like the game that inspired it, The Cuphead Show!’s traditional visuals and storytelling style will be the primary allure for viewers. Still, he’s hopeful that such distinguishing elements can go on to further shake up the animation landscape. “These days, it feels like there are more, almost like animated sitcoms, or features,” he says. “But there aren’t a lot of pure cartoons getting made. So whether it’s 1930s cartoons or more cartoons inspired by the ’40s or the ’50s, I just think comedy cartoons is the format that I love. I hope that [The Cuphead Show!] definitely inspires a new generation of that.” All 12 episodes of The Cuphead Show! will be available to stream on Netflix from Feb. 18. DEN OF GEEK

READING LIST

BADASS WOMEN

Villainous queens, vampires, androids, knights, necromancers, and witches (re)tell their own stories. BY NATALIE ZUTTER WOMAN, EATING

CLAIRE KOHDA (HARPERVIA) APRIL 12

This debut novel examines the modern vampire story through binaries: a biracial bloodsucker squats in a London studio wishing she could meet other artists, but binges Buffy instead. Too tempted to bite any human friends, what she really craves is the sushi that would connect her to her Japanese father. Women’s relationship with food and hunger is explored via a young immortal who seemingly has everything but companionship and control.

MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING

MARLON JAMES (RIVERHEAD BOOKS) OUT NOW

The second book in James’ epic fantasy Dark Star trilogy takes a Rashomon-style approach by retelling the events of Black Leopard, Red Wolf through the eyes of one of its minor characters. Sogolon is a 177-year-old moon witch who crossed paths with Tracker while searching for a missing boy. Initially depicted as an untrustworthy adversary due in part to being a woman, Sogolon’s story presents a different take on the truth. 24

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THE BONE ORCHARD SARA A. MUELLER (TOR BOOKS) MARCH 22

When the Emperor dies, he instructs his favorite concubine to solve his murder. But Charm is more than a ruler’s plaything: she’s a necromantic witch, her once-great powers reduced to tending the empire’s bone trees. As she deduces which of the Emperor’s sons should be named his successor and which should be jailed for regicide, she must grapple with obeying this final command versus taking back control of her life.

THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER JANELLE MONÁE (HARPER VOYAGER) APRIL 19

Monáe’s 2018 album Dirty Computer showcased her penchant for Afrofuturist narratives via songs and music videos, featuring the artist as dystopian android Jane 57821, struggling to escape a homophobic society. Here, she expands those tracks into stories about queerness, gender, race, and love, collaborating with SFF authors such as Sheree Renée Thomas and Alaya Dawn Johnson to further explore the concept of the “dirty computer”: finding beauty and hope in what society considers flaws.

THE VIOLENCE

FEVERED STAR

DELILAH S. DAWSON (DEL REY) OUT NOW

REBECCA ROANHORSE (SAGA PRESS) APRIL 19

Black Sun, the first book of Roanhorse’s Native American fantasy series Between Earth and Sky, unbalanced the world. Now an eclipse threatens the great city of Tova as its survivors navigate the Meridian, a land where legends are made flesh-and-blood. From a sea captain taking hold of her destiny to Clan Matriarchs staving off war to a resurrected Sun Priest struggling to hold on to her personhood, there’s no shortage of badass women here.

The prolific Dawson (who writes across YA, horror, Star Wars, and more) offers up a pandemic thriller that transforms victims into victors. Three generations of women (wife Chelsea, her daughter Ella, and mother Patricia) are held captive by controlling husbands or fathers. But when they become infected by a strange condition called the Violence, the symptoms of which are surges of animalistic rage, they find a brutally fitting way to break their respective cycles of abuse.

SPEAR

NICOLA GRIFFITH (TORDOTCOM PUBLISHING) APRIL 19

Hild author Griffith genderbends Arthuriana by reimagining tales of Percival and the Holy Grail with a young woman who basically knights herself. Not a chosen one by destiny, Spear’s armored heroine chooses to place herself within an epic quest, armed with a stolen spear and aimed for Camelot. Despite its short length, Griffith weaves an epic, queer adventure that will live on as part of the new Arthurian canon.

KAIKEYI

VAISHNAVI PATEL (REDHOOK) APRIL 26

In the Indian epic the Ramayana, queen Kaikeyi occupies the familiar Western role of evil stepmother, exiling protagonist prince Rama in favor of her own son. However, Patel’s debut reexamines Kaikeyi as a princess who accesses an ancient magic that transforms her into a warrior-diplomat, the price of which threatens the destiny of her beloved Rama.

SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER

C.S.E. COONEY (SOLARIS BOOKS) APRIL 12

A necromancer with an allergy to violence, Lanie Stones is nonetheless well acquainted with death. The murder of her mother and father forces her and vicious sister Nita to settle their parents’ unfinished business or else lose their childhood home. Lanie must embrace her birthright as a daughter of the goddess of death in this new trilogy from award-winning fantasy writer Cooney.

BOOK OF NIGHT

HOLLY BLACK (TOR BOOKS) MAY 3

Black’s adult debut will thrill fans of her YA faerie stories and new readers. This urban fantasy follows bartender Charlie Hall, the thief that magicians contract to steal from one another. After spending years working for gloamists (sorcerers possessing people’s shadows), Charlie is finally trying to get out of the shadow business, but her desperate sister, soulless boyfriend, and a past opponent threaten to pull her back into the darkness. DEN OF GEEK

NEW RELEASES

GET CARTER! MI5 AGENT PEGGY CARTER (played by Hayley Atwell) became a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan favorite upon her introduction in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger—so much so that she ended up getting her own spin-off show on ABC in 2015. Sadly canceled too soon, Agent Carter wouldn’t be the last we saw of Peggy: she later popped up in Avengers: Endgame. But Marvel wasn’t done with Peggy just yet, and she returned triumphantly last year in Marvel’s What If…? animated series as a multiverse Variant who took the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers, transforming into the superheroic Captain Carter. Marvel fans who enjoyed seeing this badass version of Peggy in the Disney+ series are definitely going to want to keep an eye on stands come March 9, because Captain Carter is getting her very own five-issue comic book run courtesy of Jamie McKelvie (Young Avengers) and Marika Cresta (Star Wars: Doctor Aphra). In Marvel Comics’ Captain Carter, Peggy’s journey has played out a little differently, with a “cascade of consequences” opening up all kinds of narrative avenues. This is not the Captain Carter of What If…?, but yet another alternate version of the character ripe for exploration—and if you look closely at the newspapers on the cover of the first issue, you’ll see that this Peggy also went through a unique version of WWII. 26

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“Peggy wakes after nearly 80 years in suspended animation to a very different world than the one she left behind,” McKelvie tells us. “She returns to the UK to try to adapt to the 21st century, but is almost immediately thrown into action by the appearance of a new enemy with links to her past.” It’s a story that the writer describes as a “superhero spy-thriller,” with a threat that will force Peggy to work alongside a security agency called STRIKE as she struggles to find her place in a new world. “I was already a fan of the character in both MCU incarnations,” McKelvie says. “Once we established that the book should take place in the modern day, I saw all sorts of possibilities spill out of it. In the original comic books, Steve Rogers returned after 20 years. For Peggy, it’s almost 80. That’s a huge difference. Everyone that she knows

FOR PEGGY, THE WAR WAS LAST MONTH, AND SHE REMEMBERS IT VERY CLEARLY.” and loves is long dead. London’s architecture is almost unrecognizable. There have been entire cultural movements that she has missed. Even compared to the Captain America of the MCU, a lot has changed in the last decade!”

Though the experiment that gave Peggy her super-soldier abilities was conducted in the United States and she spent the war working largely with the U.S. Army, she’s still undeniably regarded as a British superhero. This has informed McKelvie and Cresta’s spin on Captain Carter, even down to her new costume. “Obviously the costume has to have elements of an army captain’s dress, while also clearly belonging to a superhero,” McKelvie says. “Peggy is very direct and practical, so it has to reflect that, too. But it’s also a costume put together by the British government in the book, who are very

IMAGE CREDITS: MARVEL

Jamie McKelvie takes us behind the scenes of Captain Carter, Peggy’s first solo Marvel Comics series after the character’s huge success in What If…? BY KIRSTEN HOWARD

Left: The cover of Marvel’s Captain Carter #1 and the “design variant” showcasing Peggy’s new costume. Art by Jamie McKelvie.

keen for her to take up the mantle of Captain Carter once again. So it reflects that too, drawing inspiration from designs such as modern Team GB athletics outfits.” How WWII is thought of in popular British memory vs. the reality of the war are key components of the story. “‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ has become ubiquitous now, but that poster was never actually used at the time,” McKelvie says. “There was one poster that carries a similar sentiment—‘Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory’—so the question is, if everyone was keeping calm,

carrying on being cheerful and resolute, why did they need posters to tell them to do so? For Peggy, the war was last month, and she remembers it very clearly. Bringing that into 21st-century Britain is oddly relevant, as we find the country attempting to reinvent itself.” Marvel teases that everyone with an agenda is keen to get Captain Carter on their side and that Peggy must decide what she stands for as the wielder of the shield. But those who are familiar with the Captain Carter of Marvel’s What If…? will know that compared to Steve Rogers, she certainly likes to do things her own

way, and this series will continue to display her often brutal fighting style and the “morally complex, even questionable” choices she makes in the name of good. “There’s a line that I wrote in the pitch: In the elevator scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Peggy wouldn’t ask the Hydra agents if any of them wanted to get out first,” McKelvie reveals. “She has a lot of the same ideals as Steve, but she is much more direct and willing to get straight into what she sees as needing to be done.” Captain Carter #1 hits stands on March 9. DEN OF GEEK

SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW

CRIME TIME The Office and Extras co-creator Stephen Merchant on his new show The Outlaws and eating an omelet with Christopher Walken. BY ROSIE FLETCHER

HE CO-CREATED TWO ICONIC British comedies, The Office and Extras; starred in Hollywood movies including Logan and The Girl in the Spider’s Web; and directed Florence Pugh and The Rock in Fighting with my Family. For his next trick, Stephen Merchant has created The Outlaws, an ensemble comedy about a group of low-level offenders brought together via community service. We sat down with him to chat about British humor, comic-book movies, and Christopher Walken’s cooking.

Where did the idea for The Outlaws come from? STEPHEN MERCHANT: My parents used to work for Bristol Community Service, and they would supervise offenders who were doing some time. I was always intrigued because it was such an unlikely bunch. There was an old guy who was always stealing cabbages from people’s allotments. But you realized over time that he was doing it because he was lonely and he liked the social aspect of community service. I mean, I thought you could just volunteer or take up bingo, but he obviously liked this aspect. I always thought it was an interesting idea, a way of bringing people together who wouldn’t otherwise associate with each other, and also you could lean into a thrillery criminal plot because they’re all convicts in one form or another. And I always like the idea of having a thriller aspect to a show. Were you concerned about how US audiences would react to the Britishness of the show? SM: I think my concern is if you start to iron out the specificity and you don’t make any cultural references to specifically British things, I think it starts to exist in a no man’s land that’s not quite America or England. I mean 28

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even from the original version of The Office, yes, all right, it had a small audience in America, but it had enough of an audience that when they talked about remaking it, there were opinion pieces and actors and producers who wouldn’t go near it in Hollywood, because they’re like, “We’re not going to damage the original, we loved it so much.” I think my worry is if you start to try to make it too general, people can smell it. It’s like somehow it loses authenticity. Even going back to the British version of The Office, people didn’t know where Slough was and they never worked in a paper factory, but it felt familiar enough. How did Christopher Walken come on board? SM: Even in the earliest versions of it, we always liked the idea that there was this American doing community service amongst the Brits and he felt alien, like a “man who fell to earth.” And then you reveal that he’s as small and petty and a nobody like everybody else, but someone that could add a swagger and a kind of charisma. There are only certain people of a certain vintage who felt right for that and who brought the charisma and were exciting as a

proposition, and Christopher Walken was top of that list. Did he sign up straight away? SM: We reached out to him. He’s quite hard to get hold of because he doesn’t have a phone or email or anything. Eventually, I went to visit him in his house in Connecticut. I went there and he made me an omelet. It was very sweet of him. I’d just eaten a giant hotel breakfast so I wasn’t hungry, and he said, [attempts Walken impression] “Would you like some omelet?” I can’t do a Walken impression. And I said, “Oh, I’m good for omelet. Thanks, Chris.” And then I was there for so long, just chewing the idea and the story with him, and the

IMAGE CREDITS: JAMES PARDON / BBC

(Left to right) Darren Boyd, Christopher Walken, Clare Perkins, Rhianne Barreto, Gamba Cole, Eleanor Tomlinson, and Stephen Merchant in The Outlaws.

character, and his ideas, that by three hours in I’m like, “Any of the omelet left?” and luckily there was, and I ate some omelet. I read subsequently in an interview that he did, that he said, “Stephen ate some of my omelet and then asked for seconds so I knew I had to work with this guy.” You’ve already shot season two of the show—will this next season up the ante? SM: We’ve tried to do I think what a lot of those American shows do very effectively—you chase your characters up a tree and then you just start throwing stones at them. And then you pick up rocks for series two and throw rocks at them. And by series

four, you’re machine-gunning at them up the tree. It’s just turning the heat up all the time. We’ve tried to do that with series two, like just turn the screw on all these characters. All of the plates you’ve got spinning in series one, let’s just dial it up now for series two. You have also been in some massive blockbusters, including Logan. What’s your relationship to comic-book movies? SM: Well, when I was a kid, I was actually in the Bristol Evening Post for my comic collection. I was at comic fairs a lot and they interviewed me. The idea of even being part of one of those seemed exciting to me because I loved the fact that it was

Wolverine’s last stand. I was very thrilled to be involved with it. There was an audition process and they don’t tell you what character you’re playing or what the name of the film is or anything, so you’re just slightly going in blind. I think they might have said, “Are you willing to shave your head?” I think that was the only clue I had. I love the fact that I exist in that universe. I would quite like to be brought back at some point. I could be in a prequel. They can bring people back, right? They can always bring a character back? The Outlaws will be available in the US on Prime Video on April 1. In the UK, series one is available on BBC iPlayer. DEN OF GEEK

NEW RELEASES

DOES WHATEVER A PUNK DOES WHEN MARVEL BROUGHT US the Spider-Verse comic event several years ago, it was a great reunion for all the different variations of Spider-Man we’ve seen through the years: assorted Spider-Men from the What If…? comic series, Spider-Man from the Japanese television show, Spider-Man from the year 2099, Spider-Man from the goofy newspaper comic strips, and so on. And among all the webslingers, there was one spikey-headed rebel who stood out as a fresh-faced hero of the multiverse. Hobart Brown of Earth-138 is Spider-Punk, and coming this April, he’s finally going to star in his own book. Writer Cody Ziglar and artist Justin Mason will present a five-issue Spider-Punk miniseries for Marvel. So far since his introduction, the anarchist arachnid has taken on authoritative overlord incarnations of classic villains such as the Green Goblin, the Vulture, and Kang the Conqueror. He has teamed up with his spider-brethren several times over, but now we’ll get a more focused look at Hobart and his dystopian world. We spoke with Cody Ziglar about the project. Funnily enough, the whole miniseries seemed tailor-made for him from the beginning. “I wrote five issues of Amazing Spider-Man and had written two backups for Miles Morales: Spider-Man and I’m also writing the What If…? Miles Morales they’re doing,” Ziglar explains. He jokes about regularly telling the editors at Marvel: “I want to write Spider-Man, but if it’s a black Spider-Man? I’m the guy that you want to come to.” 30

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As Ziglar puts it, the higher-ups would tell him: “‘Calm down. If it ever pops up again, we’ll let you know.’ One day, they reached out to me and said: ‘Hey, not only is it a black Spider-Man, but it’s a black Spider-Man who’s into punk stuff.’ Great! Literally, all my bases are covered! They saw how enthusiastic I was about the prospect and came to me for it.” If you haven’t seen Spider-Punk’s first non-team-up adventure, then

THERE’S A BIG BAD REVEALED AT THE END OF THE FIRST ISSUE THAT’S BEEN REALLY, REALLY FUN TO REIMAGINE.” you missed out on him taking down President Osborn and his army of symbiotes via the power of music, rebellion, and a very graphic guitar to the skull. So, where does our hero go from there? Ziglar compares taking down Osborn to “blowing up the Death Star,” meaning that the aftermath is about dealing with the institution of the Empire. “This is very much Hobie saying, ‘I’ve taken out the figurehead, but now I have to deal with the actual institution. How do I topple the actual institution?’ And for that, he has to put together a fun little team.” A team? Ziglar is mostly tightlipped on who we can expect. Other

than spending more time with Spider-Punk’s brother-in-arms Captain Anarchy, Ziglar did mention a variant of Riri Williams as part of Hobart’s heroic band—a band that should feature four to five members. “There’s also a big bad that’s revealed at the end of the first issue that’s been really, really fun to reimagine,” Ziglar teases. The Spider-Punk miniseries makes for an interesting companion piece to what Ziglar’s been writing in Amazing Spider-Man these days. In recent issues, the Beyond Corporation has the rights to everything Spider-Man and is using Ben Reilly as the “official” Spidey. Ben is gradually realizing that he’s on the wrong side, though, and he’s gearing up for his own anti-authority adventure. “There are definitely some parallels [between Hobie and Ben Reilly],” Ziglar says. “There’s definitely stuff I’ve touched on more so in the Kraven issues and a little bit in the Doc Ock one, where it’s Ben up against, literally, a faceless corporation. The heightened version of that would be Hobie fighting against the corrupt American institution. There’s definitely a big through-line between one going after a corporation and the other the government. There are definitely things I was writing in my Amazing Spider-Man issues that I need to explore bigger, more refined, and I think better in this Spider-Punk run. So there is definitely this parallel between Hobie and Ben, these small people against giant institutions.” Spider-Punk #1 is due for release in April.

IMAGE CREDITS: MARVEL COMICS

Marvel Comics takes fans back into the Spider-Verse with a focus on Hobart Brown, Spider-Punk. BY GAVIN JASPER

The main cover of Spider-Punk #1, drawn by the character’s co-creator Olivier Coipel.

70TH ANNIVERSARY

MAD’S MOST SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL MOMENTS

2022 marks the 70th anniversary of MAD magazine. We celebrate a publication that has been dumbing down America for decades. BY TONY SOKOL ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT HUMOR wasn’t mainstream in the 1950s, and grown-ups saw comic books as brain-rotting garbage. But in 1952, a comic came along that would come to proudly declare: “In Trash We Trust.” Born in the era of McCarthyism, kids who read MAD learned to distrust authority and give snappy answers to stupid questions. The writers spoofed politics, advertising, teachers, parents, and themselves, becoming a cultural institution. It was stupid, subversive, and unapologetically “cheap” at whatever the price.

ISSUE #17, NOVEMBER 1954

Before becoming the premiere parody magazine teaching young readers to distrust all authority, MAD was a comic book spoofing other comics. Archie became the juvenile delinquent “Starchie,” who ran a hall-pass racket. “Superduperman” beat up old folks and showed inappropriate interest in “Lois Pain.” Political cracks formed when cartoonist Jack Davis subpoenaed Senator Joseph McCarthy to testify on a spoof of the game show What’s My Line?, where the notorious, red-baiting witch-hunter is helped by Machiavellian ventriloquist Roy Cohn.

SPY VS. SPY

ISSUE #18, APRIL 2021

When Antonio Prohías was president of the Cuban Cartoonists Association, he published anti-Batista cartoons. When Fidel Castro took power, Prohías criticized the new regime and was accused of working for the CIA. Worried he was putting his co-workers in danger, the suspected spy escaped to America to imperil the writers at MAD instead. Conceived at the height of the Cold War, “Spy vs. Spy” reduced nuclear anxiety to cynical slapstick. The strip starred two secret agents concocting elaborate schemes of Mutually Assured Destruction. The spies debuted in January 1961 but didn’t infiltrate the cover until 2021.

WHAT’S MY SHINE?

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IMAGE CREDITS: E. C. PUBLICATIONS

FIRST ISSUE: THE NEW MAD

ISSUE #24, JULY 1955

MAD changed from a comic book to a magazine format in July 1955. Suddenly free from the strict Comics Code Authority standards, it rebranded its editorial staff as “The Usual Gang of Idiots,” and took on a new mission statement: “Humor in a jugular vein.” To underscore the significance, the cover promised that “inside you will find a very important message.” But all the message said was “Please buy this magazine!” It also marked the first time that Alfred E. Neuman asked “What? Me worry?”

MAD CONGRATULATES JOHN KENNEDY ISSUE #60, JANUARY 1961

The 1960 Presidential election was close, but no surprise to MAD, which hit stands proclaiming “MAD congratulates John Kennedy upon his election as president. We were with you all the way Jack!” The issue was shipped before votes were even counted, so how could they have been so sure? They weren’t. If flipped and read upside down, the issue congratulated Richard Nixon on his amazing win, which they had always known was coming. Stores just had to display the correct side.

WHO NEEDS YOU, VIETNAM ISSUE ISSUE #126, APRIL 1969

When America needed soldiers during the World Wars, recruiters appealed to patriotism with iconic posters of Uncle Sam saying “I want you.” When the army needed fresh bodies to toss into the minefields of Vietnam, Alfred E. Neuman dismissed the crass commercialism, asking “Who needs you?” MAD aligned with the counterculture. They warned about the realities of draft induction doctors’ smiles, and showed Archie and Jughead enlisting in the army because cops were beating so many protesters, they figured Vietnam was safer.

WE’RE NUMBER ONE

ISSUE #166, APRIL 1974

MAD was at a peak period, with nearly 2 million subscribers, in April 1974. There were no bigger gross-out periodicals, and none came close to its disgusting depths. MAD was pumping out so much waste, they sold rolls of their own brand of toilet paper. With a realistically painted middle finger standing at attention, they declared themselves “The Number One Ecch Magazine.” The cover was barred from store shelves. It was the only time publisher William Gaines publicly apologized. DEN OF GEEK

70TH ANNIVERSARY

“YES WE CAN’T”, THE ALFRED E. OBAMA COVER

ISSUE #493, SEPTEMBER 2008

MAD’S FIRST BARCODE ISSUE #198, APRIL 1978

Feeling hypocritical about taking money from advertisers they would rather skewer, MAD didn’t run any (real) ads for 44 years. So, when Universal Product Codes started invading supermarkets in 1974, the mag held out. They felt the barcodes marred the craftsmanship of their covers. When they were required to include a UPC for scanning purposes in 1978, MAD protested by featuring a checkout-confusing monstrosity.

Barack Obama’s campaign phrase, “Yes we can,” was sunny, optimistic, and bright. In celebrating his historic win, MAD was not quite so cheerful, hedging as always, with a cover banner reading “Yes we can’t.” It initially embraced the newly elected president as one of its own, merging its mascot with the chief commander to form Alfred E. Obama. The honeymoon was over by February 2009, when MAD came out with “Obama—The First 100 Minutes.” In an era of hope, it was a hopeless issue.

ALFRED E. NEUMAN FOR PRESIDENT

ISSUE #217, SEPTEMBER 1980

The 1980 Presidential election was a squeaker. Ronald Reagan took 50.75 percent of the vote to unseat the incumbent. Split the difference and you might find MAD readers tipped the balance by voting for a gaptoothed dark horse. “We could do a lot worse,” the magazine suggested. “For example, we could have Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, George Bush, Ronald Reagan...” The list continued with such improbable-but-preferable picks as King Kong and Alice Cooper. 34

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“WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC AS GUEST EDITOR ISSUE #533, APRIL 2015

In many respects, “Weird Al” Yankovic was the audio version of MAD. His music was one of the few things the magazine respected. MAD’s first guest editor couldn’t have become “Weird Al” without the pages that shaped a generation’s humor, or the legal precedent it set for song parody. Irving Berlin sued when a 1961 MAD songbook turned “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” into the hypochondriac ode “Louella Schwartz Describes Her Malady.” The Appeals Court ruled in favor of the magazine.

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STA R RO B E RT PAT TI N SO N , D I R E C TO R M AT T R E E V E S , A N D PRO DUC E R DY L A N C L A R K R E V E A L THE S E C R ET O R I G I N O F THE BATMAN A N D H OW TO M AKE THE DAR K KN I G HT F R E SH O N THE B I G SC R E E N A F TE R A LL TH I S TI M E . BY JOHN SAAVEDRA

Robert Pattinson’s Batman faces off against Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman in The Batman.

THE

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on) Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattins lic struggles to balance his pub man. persona with being the Bat

ou know the scene: The Batman stands before a gang of skull-faced goons who think this weirdo in a costume is a joke. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?” asks their leader, who’s about to find out, one punch at a time, that Robert Pattinson’s unhinged, hyper-violent Dark Knight is no laughing matter.

“How it was initially staged was the guy says, ‘Who are you?’ And Batman says, ‘I’m vengeance,’ and then beats everybody up,” reveals a much friendlier Pattinson, who cracks up while explaining how he helped tweak the scene to make it even more horrifying. “I said to Rob [Alonzo, second unit director and supervising stunt coordinator], ‘I really want to say it into the guy’s face when he’s basically dead.’” Savage beatings are one way this Batman wants to “spread around [his] mythology,” Pattinson tells Den of Geek by phone on a cold, gloomy day in January. “It’s not theatrical,” he says of the Dark Knight’s approach in the “vengeance” scene. “You just want someone to be terrified after it.” Before Pattinson signed on to play the World’s Greatest Detective, Ben Affleck was set to direct and star in a very different Batman solo movie. But those plans didn’t pan out. Cloverfield and Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves was tapped to helm a new version of the project, but he faced the same conundrum as his predecessor: after so many iterations of the character on the big screen, what could

he do to make his take fresh? Reeves, a lifelong Batman fan, found the answer in comics chronicling the character’s early days, including Year One, as well as in classic noir films such as Chinatown, Taxi Driver, and The French Connection. The director envisioned The Batman as a noir detective story set outside of DCEU continuity, and it wouldn’t star Affleck’s seasoned, graying Dark Knight but a vigilante entering the second year of his crime-fighting career, someone who was past his origin story but still in the process of figuring things out. “I didn’t want the arc to be ‘he becomes Batman and faces off with this particular rogues’ gallery character,’” says Reeves. “I wanted you to see an imperfect Batman who would be driven to do what he’s doing in a way that was almost like a drug. He’s addicted to being Batman because it’s really an attempt to cope with those things in the past that we don’t see. I thought that was really fun to see a version of him that definitely hadn’t mastered himself, that was definitely in the process of becoming.” To prepare for the role, Pattinson read nothing but Batman comics for months, even while shooting Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. A fan of Christian Bale and

Michael Keaton’s portrayals of the character, Pattinson nevertheless planned to explore something new with his version. He found his way in through stories that took deep dives into the psychology of Bruce Wayne and the toll that being Batman had on his mental state. “In the movies, Batman has always been portrayed as quite practical, matter-of-fact, in the reasons why he becomes Batman, but in the comics, a lot of them are about quite esoteric subjects,” Pattinson says. “A lot of them he is hallucinating and completely dissociating. That has not really been done so much in the movies.”

ID ENTI TY CR I S I S

Gus Van Sant’s Last Days was one major inspiration for this take on Bruce Wayne, with Reeves comparing that movie’s fictionalized version of tragic ’90s rockstar Kurt Cobain to his Dark Knight. But there was an even bigger comic-book influence: the late Darwyn Cooke’s trippy, supernatural Ego, which examines the deep divide within Bruce and the crisis of identity he constantly faces because of his Batman persona. In The Batman, Bruce has yet to learn how to balance his true self with the mask he’s supposed to wear as a billionaire playboy. “The Bruce part of it in this movie is probably the most different because he’s a weirdo as Bruce and as Batman,” says Pattinson, who plays Wayne as a cold, slightly unkempt,

recluse. “He is fully committed to being Batman and he’s just not seen by the city at all… He has no desire to be Bruce in this and he wants to just throw it away. He thinks that this is the way he can save himself, by living in this kind of Zen state as Batman, where it’s just pure instinct and no emotional baggage.” This Bruce isn’t interested in keeping up appearances at all by day, as long as he can exact vengeance at night. “Every single person he is fighting is the person who killed his parents,” Pattinson says of the motivation behind Bruce’s nightly activities. But he also thinks there’s a part of Bruce that just enjoys the violence. “You’re going out every night fighting. You have to like it to some degree.” Pattinson’s Batman is indeed a brawler, and that meant the actor not only had to get into incredible shape, but also learn how to actually pull off the brutal moves the Dark Knight employs in the film. He spent a lot of time working with Alonzo to master the long series of combinations needed for the movie’s many combat sequences. “We based everything around [an] Indonesian style of fighting where you have these two sticks, and it all was based around movements with weapons, and then you take away the weapons afterward,” Pattinson says. But to actually perform these stunts, Pattinson needed a costume that offered more maneuverability and flexibility than past iterations of the Batsuit, such as the nightmarish,

Colin Farrell as Gotham gangster Oswald Cobblepot, who’s on his journey to becoming the Penguin.

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THE BOOKS BEHIND THE BATMAN 40

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YE AR ONE

Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman origin story is widely regarded as one of the greatest comic books of all time. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that writerdirector Matt Reeves has gone back to this tale for his movie about the early days of Bruce’s career as the Dark Knight.

THE LONG HALLOWEEN

Like The Batman, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s epic is a detective yarn about a serial killer terrorizing Gotham. But it also looks at the formative years of villains Catwoman, Penguin, and Riddler during year two of Batman’s story. Carmine Falcone is also a major player.

IMAGE CREDITS: JONATHAN OLLEY / WARNER BROS / DC COMICS

Matt Reeves directs Robert Pattinson in the iconic cape and cowl on set of The Batman.

“boiling hot” Batman Forever costume he had to wear for his screen test. The Batman’s suit is a big improvement by comparison, according to the actor. “I think I immediately started doing somersaults in it just because you could,” Pattinson says of the first time he put on a prototype of his costume. The actor was especially happy that he could move his neck in the suit, an issue that has plagued past actors in the role. But the suit also had to fit the film’s “grounded” aesthetic. Since Pattinson’s Bruce doesn’t have a team helping him build all of his tech, his Batsuit had to look like something Bruce could make himself in the Batcave. “[The costume designers] really looked at stuff from the Vietnam War, military tactical stuff that one guy could put together and allow him to fight better,” says producer Dylan Clark, who previously collaborated with Reeves on the Planet of the Apes films. This movie’s pared-down Batmobile, which Clark describes as a “muscle kit car,” needed to evoke the same DIY, grease monkey spirit as the rest of Pattinson’s Batcave. With the Dark Knight’s look and story arc now in place, it was time to turn to the other pivotal part of any Batman story: the villains.

RID D L ES I N THE DAR K

“It’s funny because I thought of Rob as I was writing,” says Reeves, who penned the script with Peter Craig (The Town). He was also thinking of Paul Dano while creating his version of the Riddler. “[Paul] is such an inventive actor—he brought so much to the role,” Reeves says of Dano, who’s best known for playing outsiders or characters whose realities are slightly askew. “He and I are similar in a certain way in that our process is to go on a search.” For Reeves, that search began with Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween, in which a serial killer terrorizes Gotham and incites a mob war that even Batman’s deadliest

EGO

In Darwyn Cooke’s comic masterpiece, Bruce Wayne faces an identity crisis when he attempts to renounce the cape and cowl once and for all. He quickly learns that leaving his life as Batman behind won’t be so easy. The Batman will explore how being Batman affects Bruce’s mental state.

ZERO YEAR

rogues can’t escape. But there was an even more grotesque, real-world inspiration for this Riddler. “When you look at the Zodiac Killer, who was leaving all of these ciphers and puzzles and taunting the police and the newspapers, I thought, ‘That sounds like the Riddler!’” Reeves says. “[Zodiac] made a costume that, frankly, isn’t so different from Batman. You have a guy who basically went around in a black hood, dressed in black, with an insignia on his chest. And it was utterly terrifying to think that somebody did that. And I thought, well, maybe there’s an iteration of the Riddler that does that.” Like the Zodiac, Dano’s Riddler not only leaves puzzles at his crime scenes but also a pile of bodies, including that of now-former mayor, Don Mitchell (Rupert PenryJones). But the villain, whose real name in the movie is Edward Nashton, isn’t just playing games with the Bat; he’s on a gruesome quest to reveal a dark secret about Gotham City itself. “The crimes that the Riddler is committing, they’re all meant to describe a history of [Gotham],” Reeves explains, hinting that other members of the city’s elite are also on the Riddler’s list. “In the wake of each of these murders, he leaves information about these supposedly legitimate characters and shows you how they are illegitimate, and how they’re corrupt. And this story of corruption goes way back and actually becomes something that touches on Bruce’s past and becomes very personal.” According to Reeves, the Riddler digs up things about the history of the Wayne family that “brings an awakening” to Bruce and “shocks him to his core.”

T H E CAT A N D T H E P E N G U I N

Batman and the Riddler aren’t the only masked figures stalking the streets of Gotham. There’s also Selina Kyle, who is played by Zoë Kravitz. Like in the comics, Kravitz’s Catwoman is a master thief who blurs the line between villain and antihero.

In 2013, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo created a new Batman origin story for the next era of the Caped Crusader. Not only does it show how Bruce became the Dark Knight, but also how the Riddler turned into a supervillain. The Riddler’s dastardly plan? Flood Gotham City. Sound familiar?

PATTINSON’S FAVORITES

The Batman’s star’s picks include: Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum; Shaman, Birth of the Demon, and The Man Who Falls by Dennis O’Neil, Ed Hannigan, Norm Breyfogle, and Dick Giordano; and Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s Damned, which the actor really liked. (“In Damned, [Batman]’s questioning whether he’s even a human,” Pattinson says.) DEN OF GEEK

HE’S ADDICTED TO BEING BATMAN BECAUSE IT’S REALLY AN ATTEMPT TO COPE WITH THOSE THINGS IN THE PAST THAT WE DON’T SEE.

“[Bruce] is committed so hard to Batman and this really binary worldview,” Pattinson says of the inner conflict Wayne feels when faced with this new, morally gray ally. “There are only bad people and there’s only total innocence. There’s no one in between at all. And then Selina comes along and it throws this massive wrench in his worldview. He’s constantly trying to put her into the box of being a criminal. He’s just got this quite simplistic worldview and meeting Selina is the first crack in it all falling apart.” Alan J. Pakula’s neo-noir Klute heavily informed Bruce’s relationship with Selina, according to Pattinson and Reeves. That 1971 picture follows a straight-laced private detective —played by Donald Sutherland—who becomes infatuated with a call girl (Jane Fonda) tied up in the murder he’s investigating. The film earned Fonda her first Academy Award for Best Actress. Reeves saw clear similarities between Sutherland and Fonda’s gritty, dangerous love affair and Bruce and Selina’s own dynamic: “Klute’s such a straight arrow and he seems so naive. I think he judges her and he assumes because of the world she’s in that she is a certain kind of person. And yet he can’t help but be drawn to her and he can’t help but be affected by her. He’s putting himself above her only to discover that he’s deeply connected to her.” In the most recent comics, Bruce and Selina are now married after decades of romantic tug-of-war and even have a child together. Pattinson and Kravitz aren’t quite there yet, but there could be a future for them. “There’s that raw

tension between them because they’re not aligned, but they are interested in each other,” says Clark. “There’s just this great undeniable heat between them.” But even three major villains aren’t enough for The Batman. After all, what’s a noir without some mobsters? John Turturro plays Carmine Falcone, who runs the biggest criminal empire in Gotham. It’s through him that we meet infamous gangster Oswald Cobblepot. In The Batman, Oz hasn’t quite yet become the Penguin we know and love. “You have these great gangsters that would be in The Godfather or they’d be in Goodfellas,” Clark says of the film’s more traditional criminal element. “And we just loved the idea that Oz was this mid-level gangster working for Falcone and doing his side hustle.” Oswald is played by an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, who dove right into the role.“His behavior and personality changed once the prosthetics were applied,” says Clark, who absolutely loves what Farrell’s Oz brought to the movie. “He’s so delicious. He’s the most entertaining. He’s scary. He’s got menace, he’s got charm, he’s slightly unappealing, but he’s also weirdly handsome because he’s Colin Farrell deep down underneath there. So you’re like, Jesus Christ, this is a whole meal of a character.”

Y E A R T H RE E ?

A disaster of almost Biblical proportions awaits Gotham in the form of a great flood. In one scene, we watch as Batman wades through the chest-deep water that covers the city

Robert Pattinson as a bedraggled Bruce Wayne, who’s fighting crime in a flood-ravaged Gotham City.

streets, bright red flare in hand to cut through the darkness of his apocalyptic surroundings. It’s a moment inspired by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Zero Year, Reeves confirms. There are hints of other excellent Batman stories too, including ones that go all the way back to the Dark Knight’s debut in the 1930s. “I looked at the Bob Kane/Bill Finger comics because I really wanted the movie to be very noir,” Reeves says. “I looked at the Neal Adams stuff and then I read a ton of the Scott Snyder run.” Coincidentally, Pattinson mentions another Snyder and Capullo tale when asked which villains he wants to fight next. “I’d love to do something like Court of Owls,” he says, referring to the recent DC Comics horror story about a hidden society that has secretly ruled Gotham from an underground lair for centuries. All of a sudden, Batman doesn’t know his city as well as he thinks he does. That story goes in line with something Pattinson says about his own Bruce, words that could predict where this Batman story might go next: “He thinks [Gotham is] his city in a weird sort of way. He thinks he has kind of built it.” But Pattinson knows this is an illusion. “You’ve got the money and the castle, but you have absolutely no control or power over anything in the city.” In The Batman, Bruce has to learn that the hard way. The Batman opens in theaters on March 4.

ON THE COVER

TO CALL THE ARTIST behind this issue’s amazing The Batman cover a comicbook legend is no exaggeration. When Bill Sienkiewicz entered the comic-book scene in the 1980s, drawing issues of Marvel’s Moon Knight and New Mutants, he brought with him a revolution, raising the bar of what readers thought comic book art could be. His style was unlike anything else you could get on comic-book racks at the time, introducing elements of abstract and expressionist art that perfectly complemented the weird mutants and masked vigilantes of his early stories. He quickly became a rising star at Marvel, winning several Eagle Awards for Best Artist and an Inkpot Award. Sienkiewicz covers and panels often incorporate photorealism, paintings, collages, and other unconventional methods to convey action and emotion in a scene. For Daredevil: Love and War and Elektra: Assassin, which he created with Frank Miller, Sienkiewicz also introduced watercolors to his work, bestowing the adventures of the Man Without Fear with a unique look and feel. Movie fans will also recognize his work in Marvel’s comic adaptations of David Lynch’s Dune and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, for which he drew the covers. Sienkiewicz is also the artist behind one of the best Batman covers of all-time. The cover for 1986’s Batman #400 anniversary issue is a horror-tinged abstract piece featuring the Caped Crusader bathed in blue and shadow as several of his most famous rogues haunt him from above. In 2019, Sienkiewicz won his first Eisner for his career-spanning art collection Bill Sienkiewicz’s Mutants and Moon Knights… And Assassins... Artifact Edition. DEN OF GEEK

VISIT US AT HEMPER.COM AND FOLLOW US @HEMPERCO

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THE LIGHTHOUSE DIRECTOR ROBERT EGGERS TRAVELS BACK TO THE AGE OF VIKINGS, WITCHES, AND THE NORTHMAN.

ROBERT EGGERS DID NOT KNOW he was making a Viking movie when he sat down with Alexander Skarsgård. The pair were supposed to be having one of those typical industry meetings where talent trades notes, and each party gets a feel for the other person. “Meetings about nothing,” Eggers confides a few years later. And yet, when the writer-director of The Witch and The Lighthouse met the star of Big Little Lies and The Legend of Tarzan, one word came up time and again: Vikings. “Maybe it was a meeting about nothing or maybe Alex had specific designs for me, I’m not entirely sure,” Eggers tells Den of Geek now. “But we sat and started talking, and quickly he said that he had been trying to make a Viking movie for some time with Lars Knudsen, who was one of the producers of The Witch and a friend of mine, and I didn’t know this. So I said, ‘Well, I have a Viking movie for you,’ even though I didn’t really.” Nordic sagas have started from less. As Eggers says, he didn’t plan to make a Viking movie as his third feature after completing the horror films The Witch and The Lighthouse, but as with those highly specific period pieces, he’s long had a fascination with the history 46

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and mythology of the Viking Age. It began with his wife reading old Norse literature and Icelandic sagas, most of which were written in the 13th century. Initially, Eggers resisted also diving into them because the “stereotype of the big macho, hairy, pillaging lug was not appealing.” But after going to Iceland himself, the director became mesmerized with the mountains and glaciers, the caverns and falls. He was enchanted by the land—and the history therein. “The landscapes, and I’m not alone in this, were just incredibly inspiring,” Eggers recalls. “So then I went home and on my wife’s recommendation started to read this fantastic literature and it got me into Vikings.” Thus when Skarsgård suggested making a Viking movie, Eggers might not have had a specific story in mind, but he

IMAGE CREDITS: AIDAN MONAGHAN / FOCUS FEATURES

BY DAVID CROW

A frequently shirtless Alexander Skarsgård stars as the vengeful Amleth in Robert Eggers’ Viking epic, The Northman.

already had a fervent vision for what would eventually become The Northman. When we catch up with Eggers, he has finally returned home to New Hampshire, exhausted and maybe a little relieved that The Northman is almost finished. Filmed in Europe during the height of the pandemic, in brutally cold conditions, then edited in London, the picture’s final cut is now locked and just going through its last color corrections. The film is Eggers’ biggest to date, and his first step outside of the horror genre after his earlier, highly contained chillers. “It still takes place in the past and there’s still dark mythology and all the kinds of things that I’m interested in,” says Eggers. “But it’s nice not to do a horror movie and it’s nice to do something that doesn’t take place in one location.”

Indeed, The Northman is massive: an honest swords-andshields action movie in which Skarsgård’s titular (and often shirtless) Viking goes into berserker rages while traveling much of the Viking diaspora in the 10th century, sailing from Scotland to eastern Europe, and then back to Iceland. “It literally is an epic,” says Eggers. “It’s not to the scale of The Lord of the Rings or something like that, but it is a Viking saga, which I think is synonymous with being an epic.” Eggers adds with a faint chuckle that it’s supposed to be his most accessible movie to date. “Unlike my other films, it’s intended for a broad audience. Is it going to work? I hope so!” Perhaps for that reason, the story Eggers settled on for The Northman is a loose adaptation of Amleth, a Danish tale DEN OF GEEK

THIS IS A WORLD THAT EMBRACES PAGAN MAGIC AS A POSITIVE AND EVERYDAY THING. that dates back to at least the 13th century and which eventually inspired William Shakespeare’s Hamlet—and as Eggers points out, in turn, The Lion King. In the new film, Skarsgård plays Amleth, the lost son of a murdered Viking king. In his youth, his father, King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke), was slaughtered by his brother and Amleth’s uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), while Amleth’s mother Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) was taken away (although if you know Hamlet, there may be more to it than that). So the prince travels the world and meets figures such as a mysterious white witch, or “cunning person” as they were commonly called, Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy). All this occurs before Amleth returns home to wreak a terrible vengeance. Eggers says that he discovered Amleth after his fateful meeting with Skarsgård and was immediately taken by how it provided a perfect engine for murder and revenge —hallmarks of any good Viking saga—onto which he could also add brutal set pieces. Additionally, the tale’s own legacy would make it easier to draw the audience into the world that he’s constructing. “Even though Shakespeare’s works play a large part of my mindscape, I actually didn’t know about Amleth,” Eggers explains. “So that backstory being of old Norse origin was really exciting, because I felt I’m doing Hamlet or The Lion King. I have a story that the audience knows already, so therefore I can really indulge in the world-building without confusing people. If it had been a more unknown story, it

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would have been harder to dig into the mythology the way I was able to in this movie.” That said, he does think it might surprise audiences who are familiar with the Bard’s version. “There is no sense of ‘should I or shouldn’t I be violent?’” Eggers cryptically laughs about his Viking prince. In terms of realizing that violence—and the whole world built around it—the director and his frequent collaborators, including production designer Craig Lathrop and costume designer Linda Muir, reprised their fanatical devotion to historical authenticity, hoping to surprise audiences with a world we’ve never seen on-screen. Eggers is of course aware of the current popularity of Norsemen thanks to the Vikings TV series and the recent Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla video game, but he’s also diplomatic in suggesting those projects are less concerned with historical accuracy. “Even the haircut that was created for [the Vikings TV character] Ragnar was done because that Australian actor showed up to set with no hair,” Eggers says of the medieval biker mullet that Travis Fimmel sports on the TV series, and which was then adopted by the Assassin’s Creed game designers. “A lot of people in the world of experimental archeology who dress as Vikings have this haircut—and it’s not from the Viking Age; it’s from the TV show.” Conversely, Eggers and his co-writer, the Icelandic poet Sjón, heavily consulted with Viking historians Neil Price and Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir so the filmmaking team could develop a 10th-century setting that was as close to the historical research as possible. Admittedly, that Director Robert proved to be a much bigger Eggers gets challenge for an epic like into deep water The Northman than it was on the set of his Viking epic, The on the intimate nightmares Northman. that Eggers and company previously conjured. “The world of The Witch was so small that I literally knew every single object that they owned in their homes,” Eggers says. “But now that I have several villages, I can’t, as much as I’d like to, decide what every wooden peg or nailhead looks like. So therefore everyone has more freedom, which is great. We all know what our tastes are.”

Alexander Skarsgård’s Amleth travels alongside Anya Taylor-Joy’s white witch, Olga.

The filmmaker even confesses he and his team felt a bit spoiled, given the amount of budget and scale that The Northman commanded. “My first two films were so small that we could really afford to build everything, and this movie was so large that we were able to afford to build anything,” says Eggers. “So if I do a mid-range budget movie where we have to use locations, it’s going to drive me crazy, because here we basically were just finding the dramatic landscapes that suited the story and then building what we wished.” Eggers’ team constructed entire Viking villages, and parts of Viking cities; they built Viking ships and Slavic homes. It felt luxurious. In fact, they were so confident in their replicas of Viking longships that they took them out into the open ocean—skirting concerns from their marine coordinator about the vessels’ actual seaworthiness. So when you see a wide shot of Skarsgård rowing from the bowels of a medieval boat, that’s really him. As Eggers notes, “Alex just fully immersed himself in this world and this person. His body’s a work of art.” The film also marks a reunion with most of the casts from Eggers’ previous movies. Taylor-Joy, who played the title character in The Witch, has a leading supernatural role again, and the ensemble is filled out by returning players such as Willem Dafoe from The Lighthouse, and Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, also from The Witch. According to their director, he wrote every role specifically for that actor,

including casting Taylor-Joy in a part which allows her to explore witchcraft from a different vantage point than the puritanical vision seen in their first movie. “I think there’s definitely a lot of overlap,” Eggers says of how magic was perceived in the Middle Ages versus the early modern period that The Witch’s Calvinists lived in. “The things that may have been called superstition by the intelligentsia in the early modern period are more canon [here]…. But this is a world that embraces Pagan magic as a positive and everyday thing. So it was enjoyable to create an environment where Anya could enjoy her witchy-ness.” Just how witchy things will get remains to be seen. The filmmaker teases that Olga’s cunning abilities are more rooted in Slavic “everyday spells” that would be considered ordinary for the period—not religious or ceremonial magic. Yet when we ask if Norse gods might also appear in the movie, Eggers just begins to smile. “You’ll see.” As with Eggers’ previous movies, The Northman is intended to place audiences in an alien world that should look strange yet familiar: a half-remembered dream from a collective past in which the Vikings’ longships connected North America to Asia, and magic was perceived as commonplace. The director says “the intention is for this to be the Viking movie.” If he succeeds, that will be worthy of songs and sagas all its own. The Northman opens in theaters on April 22. DEN OF GEEK

MEET THE NEW Grant Morrison tells us about their older, wiser Man of Steel, and updating the Authority for a new generation of readers.

HE MAN OF STEEL IN SUPERMAN & THE Authority looks a little different than you might expect. Graying at the temples, a hint of smile lines around his eyes, and a capeless outfit that looks equally ready for some serious work in a laboratory or a super-powered street fight. It’s an older, wiser, Superman, with a look befitting a man with years of experience under his belt, and he brings all the patience and wisdom you’d expect as he reaches superheroic middle age. This look is a holdover from a plan for DC Comics to place its characters on a fixed timeline, abandoned when DC co-publisher Dan DiDio left the company in 2020.

Superman assembles his new Authority team (art by Mikel Janín and Jordie Bellaire.)

BY MIKE CECCHINI

“We went to a restaurant and Dan proposed this notion,” Superman & The Authority writer Grant Morrison tells us. “He said, ‘We want to do a Superman who’s older, and his son has taken over… but as Superman gets older, he becomes more fascistic and authoritarian.’” For the writer behind arguably the definitive Superman story of our century in All-Star Superman—a tale full of hope and idealism even as it dealt with reflective meditations on mortality—the idea of an authoritarian Man of Steel didn’t sit right. “I knew Dan was just doing this to wind me up because that’s the kind of story I can’t abide,” Morrison says. “My version of Superman has always been this idea of the best humanity can be. He’s got super strength, and he’s got super resolve, but he also has super compassion and super understanding. [He’s] unlikely to ever become an authoritarian monster.” But Superman & The Authority (which features art by Mikel Janín, Jordie Bellaire, Travel Foreman, and more) doesn’t open on that older Superman. It begins with the Man of Steel in his prime… hanging out with President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It’s a seemingly incongruous moment, and in true Morrison style, it’s explained away in a brief line of dialogue later in the book. But in their head, there’s more to the story. It’s similar in concept to a key piece of Morrison’s Batman epic, where the Dark Knight was briefly presumed dead but had simply become displaced in time, traveling through different eras to piece his

“self,” and ultimately the very idea of Batman, back together. “I had this notion that Superman went through something similar,” Morrison says. “Maybe Darkseid zapped him with the Omega Beams, but a Superman who’s tumbling through time.” And if you look closely at the background in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, you’ll spot evidence of this mysterious, untold, time-tossed adventure, from King Arthur’s actual roundtable to a famed ship from Greek mythology to what appears to be H.G. Wells’ time machine to a TARDIS and more. “He was part of the court of King Arthur,” Morrison says. “He’s got the Argo in his Fortress of Solitude, so you think maybe this guy hung out with Hercules and Achilles. Maybe he had all these adventures in time. And part of that was to be in 1963 and work with Kennedy.” Morrison famously made eight decades worth of Batman history fit together, but it’s not something that works as easily with Superman. Despite the fact that Morrison has penned tales of a brash, young Superman learning the ropes (during the New 52 Action Comics era from 2011-12) as well as one at the very end of his career (the aforementioned All-Star Superman), continuity scholars might want to adjust their expectations slightly. “I kind of make a point of not allowing it to fit together perfectly,” Morrison says. “But I do have my own Superman who begins as the t-shirt and jeans kid from Action Comics and DEN OF GEEK

who maybe goes through this moment in Superman & The Authority then winds up years later with All-Star Superman but it doesn’t quite fit. In my own head there is a unified version, [but]… I don’t think you can do that without running into quite a few contradictions. It works with Batman in a way that it just doesn’t since Superman has been really overhauled a few times.”

BUILDING THE NEW AUTHORITY

As the main story of Superman & The Authority unfolds, we see that Superman has aged and his power levels are waning. After finding himself on the outs with the Justice League, Superman needs to put a team together to fight a cosmic threat, which is where the Authority comes in. To put Superman in charge of the Authority, a team that was the product of some very-of-their-time early 21st century comics, Morrison looked much further back for inspiration, to one of the key influences on Superman

himself. First appearing in pulp novels in 1933, Doc Savage was billed as “a superman” in his early appearances. Superhumanly strong and tough, Doc was a scientific genius known as “the Man of Bronze,” with an arctic “fortress of solitude” and a team of adventurers at his disposal. “The concept of Superman in his Arctic fortress [with these power levels and] a team of experts who he can go to,” Morrison says. “I thought there was mileage in taking him back to those pulp roots to do a kind of Doc Savage version of Superman.” Morrison took that one step further, teasing elements of Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse’s Doc Savage tribute, Tom Strong, in how Superman & The Authority uses another legacy hero. “We position Steel as our Tom Strong in relation to Doc Savage… the second generation version of that concept,” Morrison says. “It was very much thinking from the pulp roots onwards and the iterations of that and trying to work them back into DC continuity.” Steel is a key figure in Superman history, and in this book in particular.

John Henry Irons is a genius who created a suit of armor to honor his hero after Superman saved his life. His daughter, Natasha, has taken up the mantle of Steel, as well. The second chapter of Superman & The Authority sees Natasha, a young Black woman, dealing with literal manifestations of the worst elements of the internet, some spouting frighteningly accurate dialogue. It’s an amusing detail considering how averse to social media Morrison remains. “The truth is, I kind of read everything. I check everything, I just don’t participate,” Morrison says. “[It comes back to] the idea of an older Superman trying to deal with that kind of modernity. [When] we have Steel up against literal bots and literal trolls… but at the end, Natasha Irons recognizes that this is just some kind of weird, crunchy, literal attempt to do the internet. I also had to be a bit self-aware about it because… I’m not a native of that world.” The Man of Steel recruits the notoriously unpleasant Manchester Black for membership, a character

OLD VILLAINS, NEW STYLE The first true supervillain Superman ever faced, the Ultra-Humanite was an evil scientist with a penchant for swapping his brain into other bodies. Morrison found a decidedly modern spin for their conflict. “I love the idea of updating the whole thing so that it becomes this collective intelligence,” Morrison says. “In the old stories, he would transplant his brain and sometimes he was a beautiful young actress and other times a monster ape… at what point do you lose your identity? Superman represents the singular. Ultra-Humanite is something much more than that in the sense that he’s a network, a distributed intelligence. To have that against the notion of the individual man seemed interesting.” 52

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IMAGE CREDITS: DC COMICS

ULTRA-HUMANITE

first created in 2001 by Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke as a Superman antagonist meant to represent the kind of cynicism that had been popularized in comics by books like The Authority. “I think people have thought Manchester Black is some kind of millennial caricature because all the Authority members are Gen X, Gen Z, or millennial,” Morrison says. “But he’s a sociopath. People should remember that. He’s really charismatic and funny and smart, but he has potential hidden agendas. He’s a master of using the language of anti-oppression to justify oppression and protect himself from criticism. He’s worse than a millennial caricature; he’s a sociopathic monster.” While many of the notions that rocketed comics like The Authority to success in the early part of the 21st century have fallen out of fashion, Morrison still has a certain fondness for the concept, even as Superman & The Authority deliberately avoids many of them. “I was very excited when The Authority came out by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch,” Morrison says.

“It seemed to take the notion of the JLA and advance it. It was kind of, what if the bastards were on our side? What if the left had these monstrous characters who would actually impose their will on the world? It seemed exciting and interesting, but obviously, as time went by, those types of characters seem to share some DNA with terrorism, authoritarianism, with all the things that became unpleasant.” It’s part of the reason that Superman’s Authority only includes two members of that original team, Midnighter and Apollo (alongside Manchester Black and Steel, the full roster includes the Enchantress and new versions of Jack Kirby’s Lightray and OMAC). “[The Authority] was great at the time, it was punk superheroes,” Morrison says. “But really it kind of trivialized world problems that then became bigger and bigger. So, could we make an analog team that wasn’t the original Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, Frank Quitely Authority but took some of that attitude? It’s trying to capture that feeling but [also]

interrogate it because it didn’t really work. A lot of what we hoped for, what the radical utopian left and the creative community hoped for, didn’t really turn out the way we hoped or turned out in a way that ‘yeah, that’s what we wanted but it was the bad guys who got it right.’” While Morrison doesn’t have plans for more Superman stories at the moment, they opted to leave doors open for other creators. The story continues in the pages of Action Comics by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Daniel Sampere, and others, as the team heads into space. “I wanted everything to be ambiguous,” Morrison says of the ending. “I just came in to do the team lining up and meeting… I really enjoyed the characters but that’s it for me. As this is kind of the final DC book I’m doing for a long time probably, leaving it as open-ended, ‘to be continued,’ and being part of just a big story, I think is appropriate.” Superman & The Authority is now available in hardcover, wherever comics are sold.

GRANT MORRISON ON GIVING CLASSIC SUPERMAN VILLAINS 21ST-CENTURY MAKEOVERS FOR SUPERMAN & THE AUTHORITY.

BRAINIAC

Superman & The Authority villain Brainiac is famed for trying to “preserve” civilizations from across the cosmos by capturing them, but Morrison took a slightly different approach with the character here. “We’ve come to a point where you can almost sympathize with [Brainiac],” Morrison says. “I was watching a thing [about] a scientist creating a genetic library of endangered animals, and it seemed almost tragic. These animals are still here! You can’t save them in the real world, but you’re trying to preserve them as cell cultures in the hope that in the future… In the future? What? We’ve already got them and you can’t deal with it! Where’s the place for the Siberian tiger in the future?” DEN OF GEEK

GEE K MOMENT S THAT

SHOOK POP CULTURE Den of Geek turns 15 in 2022 and what a 15 years it’s been! Here are the moments from the past decade-and-a-half that have helped shape entertainment as we know it.

BY ALEC BOJALAD, MATTHEW BYRD, MIKE CECCHINI, DAVID CROW, JIM DANDENEAU, JOHN SAAVEDRA, ROSIE FLETCHER, LOUISA MELLOR AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY JESSICA KOYNOCK

THE BIRTH OF THE MCU

(2008)

When Iron Man was released on May 2, 2008, few would have imagined that a movie about a (at the time) secondtier Marvel Comics character would become ground zero for the most successful multimedia franchise of all time. Over a decade later, what has come to be known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe now spans 27 feature films (so far), multiple TV shows, and a level of pop culture saturation and box-office dominance beyond most studio executives’ wildest dreams. But the formula for that success was clearly laid out in Iron Man: a likable, charismatic lead; blockbuster action; a self-aware, lightly comedic tone to break the tension; and the constant awareness that there’s an even bigger world to be explored if the audience wants to come along. Iron Man spawned two direct sequels, and star Robert Downey Jr. went on to play Tony Stark in a total of 10 films, with each entry not only upping the stakes on screen, but also at the box office, with other studios now measuring their own blockbuster success against that of Marvel Studios. The story of the MCU that began with Iron Man has now become so sprawling that it can only be understood in “phases,” with each set of movies all building up to payoffs in ever-larger scale. It’s a completely new way of looking at serialized storytelling on the big screen, and a “shared universe” code that Disney and Marvel’s competitors have yet to crack. Iron Man may be gone, but his legacy is still going strong.

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THE DARK KNIGHT DOESN’T GET A BEST PICTURE NOMINATION (2009) Rarely is a thing that did not happen worth recording in the annals of history, geeky or otherwise. And yet, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences omitted Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight from its short list of Best Picture nominees in 2009, the awards season world changed forever. Viewed in retrospect by the industry as the culmination of a decade-long shift away from populist entertainment (read: big earners at the box office), The Dark Knight snub was all the more remarkable since the brooding superhero epic had managed to be recognized by most of the industry guilds, whose members also spill over into the Academy. But come nomination time, The Dark Knight’s presumed spot was taken by The Reader, a relatively poorly reviewed Holocaust drama produced by Harvey Weinstein. The fallout from the snubbing was immense. In the following year, the Academy returned to nominating 10 pictures for the top award for the first time since 1944. The Dark Knight’s cold reception arguably paved the way for movies such as District 9, Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road, Get Out, Black Panther, and Joker finding room on the Oscar stage.

Minecraft arrives (2009)

Minecraft started as a technical exercise/passion project that likely would have been lost to history if it wasn’t for its determined developer and a dedicated group of fans. In 2014, it became the best-selling PC game of all time. In 2019, it became the best-selling game ever. Sales aside, Minecraft changed how games are promoted, talked about, and played. Many people heard about it via YouTube, and many learned how to play it from one of the legion of digital influencers who can trace their careers back to Minecraft. Simply put, it’s the most socially impactful game of the last 15 years, and its current popularity suggests it isn’t going anywhere.

Game of Thrones rocks the world (2011) “Winter is coming.” Just over a decade ago, these innocuous words became charged with dark foreboding—and unadulterated excitement. That’s because Game of Thrones came to HBO and changed television forever. The first long-form series with spectacle that could compete with cinemas, and arguably the last of the “watercooler shows” where everyone seemed to treat it as appointment viewing, Thrones defined the TV landscape for nearly a decade. Despite the toxicity of the “discourse” after its final season, for most of its run, this was an elegantly crafted ensemble that drew on George R.R. Martin’s even richer novels. The performances, the twists, the deaths, the one-liners, and even those damn dragons remain with us still, long after our watch has ended.

 Prestige

TV gives way to franchise TV (2010)

October 31, 2010 is a date that holds special importance: it’s when AMC first premiered The Walking Dead. At first glance, the Frank Darabont-run series seemed like an attempt to bring the sensibility of “prestige TV” such as Mad Men and The Sopranos to the zombie drama format. Eleven seasons and several spin-offs later, however, it’s clear that what AMC wanted with the Robert Kirkman comic adaptation was its own Marvelesque franchise. Though prestigequality TV shows still live on, the prestige era has slowly given way to the franchise era. Whether it’s the Arrowverse, Star Trek, or even Marvel itself on Disney+, franchises are the way forward for TV.

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STREAMING

At the time of release, Dark Souls was best known as that “really hard game” that many assumed would only appeal to a relatively small audience. But over the next decade, it popularized a new genre and changed how games are discussed and designed. Dark Souls’ minimalist storytelling, bold difficulty, and methodical combat inspired gamers to change their expectations and made developers alter their tactics. Those who were impacted by Souls’ innovations sought out anything that reminded them of it; those who despise the game continue to debate its impact on the industry. Love it or hate it, anyone who hopes to understand this era of game design must first understand what made developer FromSoftware’s no-compromises triumph such an unlikely innovator.

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According to FX’s research staff, the year 2012 saw 288 original scripted programs air on television. By 2018, that number grew to 487. That, my friends, is television in the streaming era. No other technological innovation over the past 15 years has affected mass media more than streaming. Starting in 2013 with Netflix’s release of its first original series House of Cards (or 2012 with Lilyhammer if we want to get super technical), the ability to reliably stream original, high-quality TV shows as part of a subscription package completely revolutionized pop culture. Netflix led the charge in streaming originals, first with House of Cards, then with other bingeable titles like Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, The Witcher, and more. The streaming giant’s all-at-once release preference upended the traditional weekly viewing model. And its success in doing so also served as a clarion call for other major media conglomerates to get in on the action. From Amazon to Disney to Warner Bros. to Apple to even something called a “Quibi,” every major Hollywood player needed their own streaming service. This glut of streaming services has led to a truly overwhelming entertainment landscape but it’s also opened up opportunities for titles previously thought unadaptable. Beloved genre classics The Wheel of Time and Foundation each received their own streaming series in 2021. None other than The Lord of The Rings is next on the docket, set to spend half a billion of Amazon’s dollars to premiere in 2022.

IMAGE CREDITS: WALT DISNEY STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES (STAR WARS), AMC (WALKING DEAD), BBC (DOCTOR WHO) / PHOTOFEST

Dark Souls ushers in a new era of game design (2011)

SERVICES DOMINATE THE TV LANDSCAPE (2012)

The Pokémon Go phenomenon (2016)

The Pokémon Go phenomenon of 2016 occasionally feels like a fever dream. Was there really a time when we were all outside hunting AR renditions of Pokémon with friends and strangers? Was there any value to that “Summer of Pokémon Go” beyond whatever memories remain of what now seems like a much simpler time? While there are times when it might feel like Pokémon Go was just a fad, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only is the mobile app still doing well, but it ushered in an era of mobile AR games that all hoped to recapture that magic. Many have failed, but the success of Pokémon Go has been enough to inspire developers to seriously pursue AR and VR concepts that were once considered a sci-fi dream. If nothing else, those memories of Pokémon Go will always serve as a reminder of the power of gaming.

The rise of “elevated horror” (2010s)

Let us be clear: intelligent horror has been around forever. But the last 15 years have seen, at best, an acknowledgment for a kind of credible horror that people who would otherwise balk at the genre can acclaim. “Elevated horror” has become a catch-all term for the kind of chiller that eschews gore for big themes—see The Witch, The Babadook, Raw, Hereditary, and Saint Maud. The term is divisive—at worst it’s a way for people to look down their noses at mainstream horror—but it has opened dialogue about why the genre is so frequently overlooked at awards season. It has started to break through, too: Jordan Peele won an Oscar for his screenplay for Get Out, and last year, Julia Ducournau’s Raw follow-up, Titane, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. It’s a great time to be a horror hound.

 DISNEY BUYS MARVEL, THEN LUCASFILM, THEN FOX (2012)

In 2012, George Lucas sold his movie studio to Disney for $4 billion. Star Wars now belonged to the company that had just months before changed how we thought about superhero movies and cinematic universes with Marvel’s The Avengers. We knew Star Wars would never be the same again, and the franchise’s expansion didn’t stop at a sequel trilogy of movies—the new era of Star Wars embraced standalone films and live-action TV series for the first time. Disney has grown quite a bit since 2012, too. The success of Marvel and Star Wars has led to other landmark deals, like Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its partnership with Sony to bring Spider-Man to the MCU. These big moves will continue to change Hollywood for years to come. DEN OF GEEK

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds makes battle royale games a phenomenon (2017)

It might be hard to remember now but there was a time when Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite weren’t the biggest battle royale games in the world. The roots of the genre stretch further back to survival titles such as DayZ and H1Z1, but it’s really 2017’s PUBG that perfected the winning formula of throwing players onto a massive map and forcing them to eliminate each other until there’s one last survivor standing. PUBG’s winning combination of strategy and adrenaline quickly became popular among online gamers. Four months after its release, PUBG had already logged over 10 million matches played. It may not be the most popular battle royale game anymore, but it’s possible many of gaming’s other big innovations in the 2010s wouldn’t exist without it (or Fortnite, its early big competitor). It’s adoption of cross-platform play, including on mobile devices, was a major turning point for online gaming.

 FIRST FEMALE DOCTOR (2017)

Fifteen years. Three Doctors. (Three and a half if we count John Hurt. Three and two halves if we count Jo Martin. Potentially several more if… let’s stop counting for sanity’s sake.) In January 2009, during a special episode of Doctor Who Confidential, David Tennant’s successor was revealed to be relative unknown Matt Smith. He was too young! His face was too confusing! Doctor Who was ruined! Four years later, in August 2013, during a knucklebitingly awkward anniversary show featuring One Direction broadcasting live from a pocket universe, the next Doctor was revealed to be Peter Capaldi. He was too old! His face scared children! Doctor Who was definitely ruined! Four years after that, just after the July 2017 Wimbledon Men’s Finals on BBC One, Jodie Whittaker was revealed as the Thirteenth Doctor. She was too girl! Her face was all smooth! Doctor Who was one hundred percent, super-duper, no take backs, double triple ruined. That’s not forgetting the three different showrunners in those 15 years, each of whom ruined Doctor Who in their own special way (too populist/not populist enough/Chris Chibnall). Next up? The return of Russell T. Davies, the 60th anniversary, and a brand new Doctor. Bring it on. 58

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Black Panther DOES get a Best Picture nomination (2019)

Black Panther continued breaking down barriers a year after its release, when it cracked the Academy’s Best Picture ceiling for superhero movies in 2019. While others had chipped away at industry cynicism, such as Heath Ledger winning a posthumous Oscar for The Dark Knight and James Mangold and Scott Frank’s nomination for their Logan script, Black Panther was the first superhero film to get a nod for the top prize. Then again, nothing was ever conventional about Black Panther, a movie that even Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter tried to block because his team didn’t think all-Black casts could carry a successful blockbuster. More than $1 billion at the box office and three Oscar wins later, all we can say is “Wakanda Forever.”

The rise and rise of comic books (ONGOING)

KOREAN CULTURE

BOOMS (2020)

For some, the global dominance of Netflix’s Squid Game in 2021 was a huge surprise. For fans of K-culture, it was just the latest height of hallyu (a term literally meaning “Korean wave” in Chinese), part of a successful Korean economic strategy to become a global exporter of popular culture that began in the late 1990s following the Asian financial crisis and continues to this day. In 2012, PSY conquered the music world with the gloriously catchy dance track “Gangnam Style,” becoming the first Korean artist to break through into the American market; the music video would go on to become the first to hit one billion views on YouTube. In 2017, BTS won Top Social Artist at the Billboard Music Awards, becoming the first K-pop group to top the U.S. charts a year later. In 2020, Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar. And, in 2021, Squid Game was the most-Googled show of the year. As we head into the next 15 years of Den of Geek, look for K-culture to become an increasingly large part of the global pop culture conversation.

There are two comics stories over the last 15 years that have made the medium what it is today. The first is the superhero story—cape comics, scrambling for relevance in the face of a multimedia juggernaut that first co-opted then eclipsed their cultural relevance. The audience for an Avengers comic is a rounding error next to the audience of a movie, forcing comics into increasingly shorter reboot/relaunch cycles to try to maintain relevance in their media conglomerates. While this was going on, though, the comics medium has actually become healthier than ever. There has been an explosion in webcomics in recent years, thanks in large part to the growth of social media. Webcomics invaded cape comics, and after 15 years of chasing the movies, comics finally might have figured out their identity.

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THE EBAY COLLECTOR’S GUIDE TO

DC COMICS The very best comics and merch for fans of the DC Universe. BY JIM DANDENEAU AND CHRIS CUMMINS This article is part of Collector’s Digest, an editorial series powered by eBay. The DC Universe is thriving. In movie theaters, on TV, and in comic stores where it all began, DC continues to bring the, well, World’s Finest superhero storytelling to fans across the globe. From iconic legends like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to teams like the Justice League, Teen Titans, and Doom Patrol to groundbreaking releases like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, DC has helped change the course of popular culture. To be a fan of DC Comics is to immerse oneself not only in the publisher’s rich history, but to also have a seemingly unquenchable desire to own merchandise based on these modern myths. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of incredible products for DC lovers to bring into their hearts and homes. We’ve collaborated with eBay to bring you this guide to high-end books, must-have comics, toys, trading cards, and other collectibles that illustrate the richness of the DC Universe.

COMICS FOR HIGH -END COLLECTORS Everyone knows Action Comics #1 or Detective Comics #27 is going to pull in some cash. But if you’re a high-end collector, we’ve picked out a few books for you to show your discernment and taste as well as your commitment to spending obscene amounts of money on your comics collection.

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House of Secrets #92 Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson probably didn’t realize they were creating a hit character in this anthology book. Ten years later, Swamp Thing became only the third DC character to get his own movie adaptation. House of Secrets #92 is the first appearance of the now lynchpin character in the DC universe—the avatar of The Green, literal force of nature, and heaviest hitter the Justice League Dark has on their team. This issue, with spectacular art from horror legend Wrightson, is going for around $4,000 now, but with a JLD series in the works on HBO Max, it’s very possible this book is underpriced.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76 If you want to know the precise moment when DC stopped chasing the boundless creativity of Marvel’s dawn and started setting its own agenda, it’s this book right here. Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams were given the task of revitalizing a moribund Green Lantern book; they slapped Green Arrow in and had the pair look the ills of 1970s America right in the eye. This issue kicked off a run that completely changed DC comics forever. At around $500600, this feels just about where this book is going to stay for some time. There’s a Green Lantern TV show coming, but it is extremely unlikely that the series will draw any material beyond vague inspiration from this run. It’s just a really excellent, historically important issue.

Batman Adventures #12 The most popular comic character created between 1987 and 2015 isn’t actually a comic character at all. And yet Harley Quinn’s first comic appearance is still worth a ton of money. Batman Adventures was the comic tie-in to the monumentally important cartoon show, and as Harley was originally created for the show, it makes sense that she’d make the leap to page in this series. That’s why this issue can maybe fetch $1,000—this book will always be important.

COMICS BEST BOOKS TO COLLECT TO GET YOU READY FOR THE BATMAN

Batman: The Long Halloween #1 The Long Halloween is one of the earlier prestige series using the Caped Crusader. It has some truly stunning art by Tim Sale, which masks a cavalcade of fan service only duplicated the next time Jeph Loeb got his hands on Batman, in Hush. Compared to the high-end books, The Long Halloween is a steal under $100. Don’t expect it to hang around that low for long, though—if this new movie is a hit, this book will catch fire.

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Batman: Ego

Detective Comics #575 The Batman is taking place in Bruce’s second year as a vigilante, and while it’s nowhere near as well-liked as Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s seminal “Year One” story arc, Mike Barr, Todd McFarlane, and Alan Davis’ “Year Two” has a certain charm to it. In the face of a serial killer brutalizing Gotham’s underworld, Batman is forced to work with Joe Chill to stop him. This issue kicks off the storyline, and it’s a steal right now at under $20. This price should shoot up.

The late Darwyn Cooke is one of the best people to ever make comics, and one of the finest artists to ever work in the medium. His story about Batman and Bruce Wayne debating the Caped Crusader’s merits inside Bruce’s head after a particularly difficult mission is terrific, beautiful, and a fascinating choice for Matt Reeves and company to include in the upcoming movie’s influences. The pricing on this book is a little all over the place, but even if it weren’t a collector’s item, it would be worth it at $20. With the movie driving prices, this should be going up for a bit.

Checkmate #15 COMICS ON-SCREEN BUYS

HBO’s Peacemaker is bananas, and while John Cena’s live-action interpretation of the character bears little resemblance to the one on the page, the world that the DCEU is placing him in looks a LOT like what John Ostrander, Kim Yale, Paul Kupperberg, and others built in the DCU of the late ’80s. The Janus Directive was a big crossover between all the DC super spy comics of the time, an excellent story and a great jumping on point for that corner of the world. This book probably won’t go up in price a ton, but it’s worth owning a book from this era of comics.

Legion of Super Heroes v4 #60 The Legion of Super-Heroes has been bouncing around the background of this season of Young Justice doing… something. As of writing, it’s not really clear—besides obviously intervening to save one of The Team after his untimely demise. Knowing that, there’s a very real possibility that Young Justice is going to do something with Mordru and the Time Trapper, both of whom played a big role in the story kicked off in this issue, eventually resetting the Legion’s continuity and launching one of the best eras of the book. This comic is moving for cover price, which means you could get a decent return on a small investment.

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HOT DC COLLECTIBLES

LEGO BATCAVE THE RIDDLER FACE-OFF

Matt Reeves’ The Batman is easily the most highly-anticipated DC project of the year. Batfans everywhere are wondering how Robert Pattinson’s performance as the Dark Knight will compare to that of his esteemed predecessors’. Add to that the fact that Reeves’ film promises more detecting from “The World’s Greatest Detective” than we’ve seen from a cinematic Batman before, and there’s a massive buzz of expectation surrounding this one. One thing that is certain about the movie is that it will unleash a new wave of Batman merchandise. Case in point, this stunning LEGO Batcave set that includes mini figures of Batman, The Riddler, Lt. James Gordon, Selina Kyle, Alfred Pennyworth, and Bruce Wayne (in his mysterious sounding “drifter attire”)—all of which will allow kids of all ages to recreate the movie at home.

LEGO TECHNIC THE BATMAN BATMOBILE For those who are obsessed with the Caped Crusader’s ride, we point you in the direction of this LEGO replica of the new look Batmobile from Warner Bros. upcoming film The Batman. Released as part of the company’s car-centric Technic line, this 1,360-piece Lego set is as cool as it is stylish. The only problem with it is you can’t actually tool around the streets of Gotham City… but it will still look amazing on your shelf.

MCFARLANE TOYS THE RIDDLER Light years away from Jim Carrey’s candy-coated take on The Riddler in Batman Forever, The Batman’s depiction of the character is grim and grounded in realism. Earthy greens maintain The Riddler’s signature color, but there’s an unexpectedness to this new look that will reflect what is certain to be a delightfully unhinged performance by Paul Dano. McFarlane Toys’ 7” action figure of The Riddler includes 22 points of articulation, making this a piece that you’ll want to add to your collection, no questions asked.

HOT WHEELS THE BATMAN BATMOBILE The Batman’s Batmobile gets a pocket-sized collectible version thanks to Hot Wheels, which have created the car’s cinematic contours with an impressive amount of care and detail. Simply a must-have for fans of Batman and car toys alike.

HOT TOYS BATMOBILE If your tastes veer towards higher end collectibles, allow us to point you in the direction of Hot Toys’ Batmobile from The Dark Knight. This amazingly detailed 1/6 scale replica of the film’s iconic Tumbler comes from Hot Toys’ Movie Masterpiece line, and is as much of a conversation piece as you imagine it to be. (For those of you who may prefer the 1989 Batman Batmobile or the camouflaged Tumbler from The Dark Knight Rises, Hot Toys has those available as well).

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Flashpoint #1 Flashpoint is easily the most mash-the-action-figurestogether comic on this list. But there’s some terrific Andy Kubert art in here, and some of the concepts fleshed out in the world gone to hell by Barry Allen meddling with his past that are a lot of fun in a way big, mindless crossover events do perfectly. And for a comic that’s the basis of what appears to be a very big deal movie coming up, this book is way underpriced—full runs of the series are going for $75.

Doom Patrol v.2 #19 The horse is probably out of the barn on this one. Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol is probably the foundational text for the slept on HBO Max show of the same name, and this issue is where they started making things really weird. If you love the show, you’ll love the comics even more—start here for $25-30 and keep going all the way through Rachel Pollack and Gerard Way’s runs; you won’t be disappointed.

THE BOOMING DC TRADING CARDS MARKET SUPERMAN IN THE JUNGLE TRADING CARDS The history of Superman trading cards dates back nearly to the birth of the character himself. The first card line based on the Man of Steel was in 1940, and an immensely popular line based on the Superman television series followed in 1966. Two years later came what are easily the coolest, strangest bubblegum cards ever to feature the Last Son of Krypton: Topps’ Superman in the Jungle line. Richly illustrated by the legendary Norman Saunders (who also did the art on Topps’ beloved Mars Attacks and Batman TV series line, as well as being one of the minds behind Wacky Packages). The story finds Perry White sending Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen to Africa to investigate why a local tribe has seemingly gone insane. The reason behind the mayhem is, you guessed it, Lex Luthor, and Supes must do battle with such fearsome creatures as pythons, spiders, and gigantic King Kong-style apes to save the day. The series is difficult to find in its original Topps branding (a slightly revamped UK imprint dominates the collectors market), but those with the patience and cash to track down the original 66 card-set will be treated to one of Superman’s most fascinating adventures. This card set does contain some imagery that is considered outdated, if not offensive, from a 2022 point of view—making Superman in the Jungle a complicated collectible indeed.

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1978 SUPERMAN MOVIE TRADING CARD CHROME STICKER

1970 TOPPS DC COMIC COVER STICKERS COMPLETE SET In 1970, Topps released one of the rarest (and most in demand) comic book-inspired trading card sets ever when they unleashed their DC Comic Cover Stickers upon an unsuspecting public. This set of 44 stickers recreated iconic DC covers of the era from their then-current staple of books—everything from Batman to Binky, Green Lantern to Girls’ Love Stories. Curiously, some of the covers were given their own full sticker, while other releases in the line featured four images on one card to be peeled off, traded, and collected. These are the kind of fun sticker sets that simply aren’t made any more—resulting in this line being a delightfully retro (if somewhat scarce and expensive) thrill.

When the first Superman movie flew into theaters in 1978, it was a cinematic triumph that had the most welcome side effect of helping to legitimize comic books as a significant form of literature. It was also a massive merchandising boon. Since the 1970s were a golden age for trading cards, Topps issued a line inspired by Superman that was hugely successful. Inserted randomly in the packs were chrome foil sticker cards that have come to be known as Superman rookie cards, and these are increasingly difficult to find in great condition. Which means if you have one, you possess not only a fun piece of movie history but a highly desired collectible that is poised to soar up, up, and away on the secondary market.

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MOUNT GEEKMORE: THE TOP FOUR OF EVERYTHING, LITERALLY SET IN STONE.

TV DETECTIVES The best small-screen sleuths.

Jessica Fletcher Murder, She Wrote (1984-2003) Say what you will about Jessica Fletcher, but she certainly put in the reps. Brilliantly embodied by Angela Lansbury, Fletcher isn’t technically a detective but a mystery novelist in the small Maine hamlet of Cabot Cave. Still, over the span of 264 episodes and four TV movies, she solved more murders than any big city detective. Thanks to Fletcher, Cabot Cove wasn’t necessarily a safer place, but it was a more just one. 66

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BY ALEC BOJALAD ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KOYNOCK

Luther Luther (2010-2019) Though Sherlock Holmes himself has made plenty of TV appearances, DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) of the BBC’s Luther is the real modern incarnation of the super investigator. Luther cares about nothing other than solving crimes—to the detriment of everything else in his life. That, along with a ratty wool coat that would make Columbo blush, and a Moriarty-level nemesis in Alice Morgan, catapults him into iconic TV detective status.

Olivia Benson Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present) Dick Wolf’s Law & Order spanned 20 seasons and has inspired six spinoffs, with one more to come. The franchise has depicted quite a few detectives in its time, but one still stands out above the others. Law & Order: SVU’s Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) is not only TV’s longest-running primetime character, but one of the most relentless and effective detectives ever committed to screen.

Columbo Columbo (1968-2003) Peter Falk’s grizzled lieutenant from the 1970s series established the TV detective archetype that remains to this day. Armed with nothing but a rumpled beige raincoat, a cigar, and a superior intellect, this LAPD investigator strikes terror into wrongdoer’s hearts with the simple phrase: “Just one more thing…” Once you hear that, it’s over, Columbo has you beat. He only has one name and that name may as well be “GOAT.”

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