Stephanie Williams has made comic book history, but it's harder to see because how she did it hasn't gotten the attention it should. 

Williams is currently in the running for 'Best Writer' in North American comics' top awards grouping, the Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards. It's Williams' first time being nominated, and the first time any Black woman has been nominated for the award in its 38-year history. Williams currently shares writing duties on DC's Wonder Woman ongoing series with Tom King, and her 2026 Eisner Awards 'Best Writer' nomination is for her licensed comics work on a Street Sharks comic, and two creator-owned series: Roots of Madness and Temporal.

Williams' 'Best Writer' nomination is only the second time a Black creator has been nominated for it, but for that, you'll have to go all the way back to the '90s with the late Dwayne McDuffie. It's a historic feat, saying volumes about Williams' growing skill in comics as well as the state of the comics industry that such a first is happening all the way here in 2026. But when it was announced, this historic feat wasn't as recognized for the feat it was.  

What happens when you host a sci-fi convention on the site of a basketball championship?

I’m not a sports person. There’s a reason I write about costumed crimefighters on a pop culture website. I can tell you useless trivia about obscure Marvel characters like Millie the Model for hours, but I have no clue how many people are on a typical basketball team or what the scoring system is. Occasionally I’ll go to a sports game with a group of friends, but for me it’s mostly a social thing. I generally have no idea what’s going on, and I feel like I’m disguising myself as one of the normies.  

As a result, I don’t keep up with sports, and I had no idea what I was in for when I flew to San Antonio, Texas to cover Spacecon for Popverse. The convention took place June 12-14 at the Freeman Coliseum Expo Halls. If you follow sports, then you might know that Spacecon wasn’t the only event being held there that weekend. On June 13 the New York Knicks faced the San Antonio Spurs at Frost Bank Center. The game was part of the NBA Finals, which I’m told are a big deal.

Here's something I probably don't need to tell you, die-hard Critters out there. From the earliest days of Critical Role fan art, there's always been a purple motif for the characters of Delilah and Sylas Briarwood, the necromantic romantics that served as the villains of the first arc. A decade later, the color has become synonymous with the pair, even though we've never exactly gotten a reason. So, when I got the chance to speak with someone actually responsible for bringing the pair to life, I had to ask for their expert opinion.

The expert in question is Aviv Or, the artist on such Critical Role graphic novels as Critical Role: Tales of Exandria Volume 2--Artagan and the upcoming The Legend of Vox Machina: The Whitestone Chronicles Volume 3--The Briarwoods. The OGN, which saw Or working with colorist Diana Sousa to bring Exandria to life, dives into the history of Delilah Briarwood in particular. And since it's our responsibility for the visuals of this uncharted chapter of Delilah's life, we asked her to parse our purple perplexities.

"Purple is mystical, magical," Or said, "It's kind of the in-between light and dark. It's dusky, When you think about purple, you think about mysterious."

With Taryon Darrington having made his animated debut in Critical Role's The Legend of Vox Machina season 4, we expect a lot more of the casual Critter crowd to start following the adventures of Exandria's most... er, most human artificer. And we expect some of their first questions to be something along the lines of  - where can I get more adventures of the Wayne Brady breakout character?

And in our opinion, there are few better people to ask than Aviv Or.

In case you aren't aware, Or is the artist for Dark Horse's upcoming Critical Role prequel OGN, The Legend of Vox Machina: The Whitestone Chronicles Volume 3--The Briarwoods. Before working on that project alongside author Marieke Nijkamp, though, Or was the first artist to bring the Darrington Brigade - that is, Taryon's own attempt at assembling a team of Vox Machina-comparable heroes - to life. So when we got the chance to sit down with her, we had to ask; what's next for Exandria's weirdest team of adventurers?

These days, James Tynion IV is known as an indie comics champion. And with one of his creator-owned books, Exquisite Corpses, having been one of the best-selling indie comics of 2025 and still growing, that's unlikely to change anytime soon. But as I'm sure you know if you're a comics reader, Tynion spent a healthy chunk of his career at DC Comics writing the superheroes that the medium has become known for. So what changed?

That's exactly what we set out to learn.

Popverse's Editor-in-Chief Chris Arrant had the chance to sit down with Tynion at C2E2 2026, and during their discussion, asked about the Something is Killing the Children author's transition between traditional superhero storytelling and horror-leaning indie works. And it turns out, there was a single moment when that transition clicked for the author.

Whether you've been with the character since Critical Role Campaign 1 or caught up with her in The Legend of Vox Machina season 1, chances are you know all about the fall of Delilah Briarwood. But now, the author responsible for digging into some of Exandria's most complex NPCs is bringing you back to the villain's frightful origin in The Legend of Vox Machina: The Whitestone Chronicles Volume 3--The Briarwoods.

And before their tale is through, you'll see Delilah in a way you never have before: as a novice.

We got the chance to sit down with Nijkamp ahead of the release of The Briarwoods OGN, the third and final entry into Dark Horse's original graphic novel series that serves as a prequel to Prime Video's The Legend of Vox Machina. With so many fans already familiar with Deliliah's skullduggery from the first chapter of the animated series, we wondered, what new light (or darkness) was Nijkamp shining on the necromancer?

I don't have to tell you now that there's an astonishing market for stories in the queer hockey romance field. While the example that might come to mind at first is HBO's Heated Rivalry, the niche subgenre is exploding across multiple franchises in the literary world, with sagas like Pucking Around; Collide; Behind the Net; and Wake Up, Nat and Darcy all putting steam on the ice. So when I got the chance to ask an expert in that genre about what was going on, I had to jump on the chance.

The expert in question was Ngozi Ukazu, author of the hit webcomic (and future OGN) Check, Please!, which was telling queer stories in a hockey space since 2013. I was lucky enough to chat with Ukazu at BookCon 2026, and so I asked the Barda and Orion author her feelings on why hockey romance in general was such a hot-ticket genre these days. And to start off, Ukazu answered by explaining something that came up from her widley-attended BookCon panel, You Had me at Hockey, which also featured authors Rachel Reid, Emily Rath, Bal Khabra, Stephanie Archer, & Kate Cochrane.

"[Jacksonville Rays author] Emily Rath did something amazing," Ukazu said, "When asked about why hockey romance is so popular, she just straight up said, 'whiteness is a reason why.' That was an incredible lift to explain that, so that me or the moderator - who are people of color - didn't have to say that. It was a dynamic, exciting, funny, and memorable panel."

Three years ago, IDW Publishing (and its parent company IDW Media Holdings) went through a massive self-induced "reset" that included laying off over 35% of its staff, the installation of a new senior management, and more to avert an impending destiny of having to declare bankruptcy. A year in, both its new editor-in-chief and one of its new publishers departed, but at the same time, efforts were ongoing to create new hits such as Beneath the Trees Where No One Sees and the revitalization of its licensed franchises, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Trek. Now, three years later, there are positive signs.

In IDW's quarterly report to investors released June 11, the company appears materially healthier than it has in years by growing revenue, decreasing some of its expenses, and seemingly stabilizing what had been in flux. While a full turnaround has yet to be achieved, the idea of it is becoming more credible.

If these numbers are true, IDW is only $3,000 shy of breaking even, down from losing $1.738 million in the same six-month time period last year. That is a dramatic improvement, resulting from a 15.6% increase in overall revenue, almost exclusively from comic sales. And not just general comic sales, but primarily from comic book store sales "driven by IDW Dark titles and recovery of the industry after Diamond Comic Distributors' bankruptcy in the prior year." Patrick Horvath's Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees has become one of the largest sellers at IDW as a whole, and has become the defact flagship of the IDW Dark line. 

After her memorable late-game cameo in James Gunn’s Superman movie, Milly Alcock’s Supergirl is getting her very own solo outing in 2026. The next installment in the relaunched cinematic DC Universe, it’s one of the most anticipated movies of the year — which is funny, considering that, not so long ago, a flick starring Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El wouldn’t have been possible. And not because of visual effects limitations, budgetary constraints, or any of the other mundane roadblocks you’re probably thinking of, but because DC banned anyone (inside and outside the comics industry) from using the OG Supergirl for nearly 20 years. 

It’s unthinkable, right? But it’s also true; an editorial edict really did sideline one of the most recognizable superheroes of all time from the mid-'80s to the early '00s. So, read on to find out why DC placed Supergirl off limits, how this impacted Superman comics and related media for close to two decades, and why the publisher ultimately welcomed the Girl of Steel back into the fold.

Technically, she was actually Superman’s fourth female counterpart (and the second to use the ‘Supergirl’ name); in the years leading up to her introduction, DC gauged readers’ interest in the concept via dream scenarios and magic-related shenanigans. But these were more prototypes than fully-fledged additions to Superman lore, and for all intents and purposes, Otto Binder and Al Plastino’s Supergirl was the ‘true’ original incarnation of the character — and, to this day, the best known, as well.

In their 60+ year career on television, The Doctor has survived countless alien invasions, reality crashes and the destruction of his homeworld (more than once). But the BBC’s announcement that it is readjusting its plans for the show’s future might be enough to make fans concerned about what lies in wait for Doctor Who. Here’s what you need to know. 

The statement opens, “as part of securing the next phase of the show for future generations, and in line with the BBC’s Charter and Agreement requirements, the BBC will put Doctor Who out to competitive tender this year,”  This last element has been overshadowed, somewhat, by the revelation that the previously announced 2026 Christmas Special had been cancelled — and, in fact, might not have even been a real project to begin with — but it’s something that is crucially important to the future of Doctor Who as a whole.

What does it mean that the BBC is “put[ting] Doctor Who out to competitive tender”? In layman’s terms, it basically means that the BBC will not be making Doctor Who anymore, but will instead be outsourcing production of all future episodes to third parties who’ll bid for the opportunity.

A story like 'The Infernal Saga' in the pages of The Incredible Hulk and Infernal Hulk by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein is rare today in Marvel & DC comics, because it is a sprawling epic that doesn't fit neatly into a single ongoing series. 'The Infernal Saga' initially launched with The Incredible Hulk #1 in 2023 and moved into its second phase with The Infernal Hulk #1 in 2025. But when online speculation that the story was canceled bloomed from Marvel revealing the ongoing series was ending after just 10 issues, Johnson and Klein confirmed to fans that no, the Infernal Saga was not over. The next chapter of it is to begin after Infernal Hulk wraps with issue #10. 

At C2E2 2026, we sat down with Phillip Kennedy Johnson to discuss his and Klein's Infernal Hulk series and what he made of the internet's reaction to Infernal Hulk's end with issue #10. 

"The question of whether it was limited or ongoing was a little bit obscured by the nature of what's coming next. It's not simply 'ten issues of Infernal Hulk, followed by this other book #1,' there's some other stuff in between that- even saying that it's ending at ten is not completely accurate. I can't really spoil what's going to be happening after number ten, but I will say that it is still very much continuing the story of Infernal Hulk that trails off with ten," Johnson began. 

Bigger doesn't always mean better when it comes to comic book villains. At a certain point, when there are already multiple characters who can rewrite reality running around the Marvel Universe, it gets harder and harder to set up legitimately threatening stakes. But where does that leave us as readers when we're inundated with so many apocalyptic comic book events at once? 

Listen, I don't have any doubt that the creators behind Ultimate Endgame, Queen in Black, and Avengers: Armageddon can't pull off an engaging blockbuster storyline. I am enjoying the ever-living hell out of Al Ewing and Carlos Gomez's Venom series right now, and I think exploring superheroes as weapons of mass destruction is a fascinating idea worthy of exploration. But I think part of my problem lies in how these events are being marketed to us. Oh no, another apocalyptic force is coming to the Marvel Universe. Everything is at stake. Lives will be changed. 

I won't pretend to know when the ad copy for these events is written, whether that's before or after the scripts for the issues have even been written. But at a certain point, hammering home the same apocalyptic narrative does a disservice to the specific story that each specific creative team is trying to tell. Surely they can't all be painted with the same broad brush?

Having worked on a couple of iconic superheroes, James Tynion IV's origin story is a little bit harder to nail down than, say, Batman's. Part of that is because Tynion acts in a lot of capacities these days - not just as the scribe behind books like Something is Killing the Children and The Department of Truth, but also as the creative manager of the Tiny Onion brand. However, when it comes to the business end of his job, Tynion is able to point to one moment in his career that could act as a suitable origin.

That is, his time working on an Image Comics book.

Popverse's own editor-in-chief, Chris Arrant, sat down with Tynion at C2E2 2026. During their wide-ranging discussion, Tynion brought up that he enjoyed "doing the business side of my work," which he points to as starting with 2020's The Department of Truth #1.

I'm just saying - the fans were putting Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy together long before the DC writers were. And though I don't have the specifics to back this up, it at least wouldn't surprise me if the people responsible for hooking them up in-canon were fans who shipped them before that. They were probably fans-turned-canon-makers like Ngozi Ukazu, who has been an ardent supporter of an eternally fan-shipped DC couple for a very long time:

That is, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.

Popverse got to sit down with the Barda and Orion author at BookCon 2026, where Ukazu shared her deep love for (and understanding of) some of DC's most interesting characters. At one point in the discussion, we turned to what a hypothetical Blue & Gold pitch from the Check, Please! author would look like, and if you've read Check, Please!, you probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that Ukazu thought, "they would have to be gay."

Is it cheesy to suggest that the real adventure is the friends we made along the way? Not in most tabletop games. The key component of games like D&D has always been the group of players who come together regularly to fight monsters and save the world. Even if you aren’t best friends with the people you game with, Chris Perkins hopes Daggerheart players walk away with a sense of friendship and community.

We sat down with Chris Perkins, Creative Director of Darrington Press, at PAX East 2026 to discuss Daggerheart as the system was approaching its first anniversary. We asked him to describe how he hopes the game and its community will evolve over the next few years. “In the next five years, I see Daggerheart being a strong, robust game that, when a new person comes into it, they feel invited. It’s friendly,” he told us. “There’s enough options that they can create the character they want to play, but there’s not so many options that there’s analysis paralysis or difficulty in trying to figure out what’s right or what’s the best option for them.”

However, Critical Role’s Darrington Press isn’t just focused on making a welcoming game; they want to make a welcoming community as well. “And that we’ve just created a game that has a strong community of fans around it,” Perkins continues. “Who are just experiencing it at conventions or at home play and like the best other roleplaying games, it’s just a way for people to make new friends and have a great time together. Similar to my thinking on D&D, we’re in the business at Daggerheart of creating friendships and fun experiences and memories that will last a lifetime.”

When he was first introduced in Arrow's debut season, David Ramsey's John Diggle was very much supporting cast. However, over the decade-plus of the universe the show introduced, Diggle became so much more than an Oliver Queen sidekick. And now, the character's co-creator is ready for him to take the next logical step in his evolution: as the headliner of a DC Comic.

And at the same time, Marc Guggenheim kinda knows why that might not work.

I got the chance to sit down with Guggenheim at C2E2 2026, where the TV legend's love of the character that would later be called The Spartan was evident. So evident, in act, in inspired a message directly to the hallowed halls of DC Editorial.

The thing about tabletop gaming is that it can be a very expensive hobby to get into. With D&D, past editions relied on players and DMs buying not just the core rulebook but DM Guides and Monster Manuals and expanded rules that introduced new, more powerful classes. Much of this has been part of a corporate strategy to increase sales, but Chris Perkins tells us that it has actually hurt sales in many cases.

We spoke to Chris Perkins, who was Story Lead and Creative Director for Dungeons & Dragons before he retired and then joined Critical Role’s Darrington Press in 2025 to work on their Daggerheart system, at PAX East 2026. He explained that he wants to make sure that Daggerheart adventures don’t require the player or the GM to own anything but the core rulebook to run. “We want our adventures to basically be runnable just with the Core Rulebook, so that means making sure that anything we introduce that is new is playing nicely with the core rules. We don’t want GMs to feel like they have to own six different products to run an adventure.”

It is a lesson that comes from years of working on D&D. “That’s a hard lesson Jeremy [Crawford] and I learned on D&D, particularly 5th Edition, is that adventures will get played more and used more if they require fewer things to run. And so that’s going to be true of Daggerheart adventures going forward.”

Every good story needs a villain. In tabletop games like D&D and Daggerheart, that villain is usually someone with plans for world domination or at least someone who is trying to cause a little bit of chaos. Classically, it has been up to the GM to come up with the villain for the campaign, but the upcoming Daggerheart expansion, Hope & Fear, is turning things around and giving players a chance to help create their perfect villains.

“I am imagining right now that a Daggerheart villain is just somebody who’s doing something so awful that any right-minded party of adventurers feels the absolute need to stop them,” Chris Perkins, Creative Director at Critical Role’s Darrington Press, told us when we sat down with him at PAX East 2026. As someone who has been writing published campaigns and adventures for many years, Perkins is also thinking about how to make villains the kind of baddies that players just want to stop, so that means letting them flesh them out a bit more. 

“One of the key things about a Daggerheart villain is that it will be built in such a way that the GM and the players can customize it. You’re gonna see a little of that in Hope & Fear. One of the campaign frames that I worked on with Jeremy [Crawford] and Spencer [Starke] and Rowan [Hall] is a campaign frame that is based around a villain. The villain is sort of the motivator for pretty much everything that happens in the campaign frame, and so one of the things that was done in this campaign frame was we have a section up front that says, ‘Okay, here’s the basics of the villain. Here’s what they’re up to. What their plan is. Now here is the system by which you and your players customize the villain in the session zero before the campaign even starts.’”

My girlfriend was never interested in superheroes. She told me that her perception of them has mostly been shaped by the MCU movies (“Marvel movies,” as she calls them). While it’s easy for a snobby comic book reader to dismiss the opinion of someone who can barely tell the difference between Marvel and DC characters, she made a very interesting point: it feels as though MCU heroes are always there to preserve the status quo. According to her, the stories are almost always about some radical person or group who might have good intentions (to humanize them and make them relatable), but then go too far, and the heroes have to stop them. It’s a fairly simplified reading of decades of storytelling, but I do think it’s an interesting point, and it touches on something important.

Across DC and Marvel’s main continuities, there exists a form of equilibrium. Superman might be down on his luck today, and even Lex Luthor might be president, but this is an anomalous state for the world. When everything runs as it should, and villains are stopped without causing too much havoc, that is what I would call equilibrium. It’s not a perfect situation, as even a third-rate villain might be onto something, but they are dealt with quickly. It’s only when things really go south in a major event that this equilibrium is temporarily lost.

I believe the 'dark' universes, such as the Dark Multiverse, are evidence of this. Reading the Tales from the Dark Multiverse anthology books, much like many other 'dark' Elseworlds stories, is really fun because they explore universes that did not recover from temporary catastrophes (events) and instead remained in a state of disequilibrium. That is also why we don’t get ongoing series set in those worlds, for example, set in the universe of Batman the Silenced, a tortured and clinically insane version of Batman who fights his CEO and politician brother in the US government.

A group of content creators is coming together to call for a boycott of all DC Comics after what they feel is a dearth of Black-led comic books in the company's primary continuity. A new organization called the Black Comic Alliance, led by comics content creator James Portis III, is calling for all fans, readers, and creators "to withhold financial support as well as cease content creation for DC Comics publishing initiatives until meaningful structural changes are made regarding Black representation in their mainline continuity."

This is the second stage of a planned #DCSoWhite project campaign that Portis has been pushing for in recent months to publicly force DC Comics to make changes using negative opinions about the company in social media (and media) coverage. The #DCBlackout boycott is called by the Black Comic Alliance to last until DC puts up for pre-order "a Black-led ongoing in mainline continuity" with retailers and that it has marketing efforts "on the levels that would show faith in the title and a desire for it to succeed."

Earlier this month, as part of the #DCSoWhite campaign, Portis individually also called for these new Black-led DC ongoings to run for 18-24 months "so that fresh data can be gathered on their sales from multiple avenues like digital and collected editions, not just single issue preorders."

Tabletop gaming is often a collaborative project, with players helping to weave their story into the world presented to them by the GM. However, most games like D&D expect the DM (or GM if you’re playing a different system) to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. As possibly the most famous GM in modern tabletop, Matt Mercer knew that Critical Role’s Daggerheart system needed to share that load between players and GM.

We spoke to Matt Mercer at PAX West 2026 and discussed what makes a great Daggerheart game. It isn’t just the usual things that make a tabletop game work, like everyone agreeing on what they want to play and how to handle the story.

“A good Daggerheart game is a very present table acknowledgement and understanding that everyone is building the story together,” Mercer explained. “There’s a very historical tendency to have the ‘GM providing story and the players are along for the ride’ sort of vibe, and I think that’s, thankfully, been changing over time.”

There are a lot of people to credit with the smashing success of DC's Absolute Batman. There's original writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta, to start, then there's editor Katie Kubert, and of course, the hundreds of thousands of folks who are buying copies of the comic each month. But was we look back on the Absolute Universe's biggest hit so far, let's not forget to thank one rather influential comic book writer, without whom the story might've been very, very different.

That writer is Tiny Onion's own James Tynion IV, who recently sat down with Popverse's editor-in-chief, Chris Arrant, at C2E2 2026. During the course of their discussion, Chris brought up Tynion's lesser-known contributions to Absolute Batman's existence, asking the Something is Killing the Children writer and comics business pioneer to explain his side of the story.

"The way I always put that whole era was," Tynion began, "It was kind of a year and a half of me being like, 'Scott, why are you doing this?' He was going back into superheroes, and that meant that he kept calling me. I could tell that he didn't realize that he was asking permission to this."

No one could ever accuse Critical Role fans of being shy about showing their appreciation. Critters are, almost as a rule, very passionate about the series, so it shouldn’t have been too surprising when the original Kickstarter for the Legend of Vox Machina animated series set all kinds of records. However, as longtime DM Matt Mercer explained to us, that first night, when they raised over $1 million almost immediately, was still an eye-opening experience.

While he was at PAX East 2026, we managed to catch up with Matt Mercer to discuss everything from Daggerheart to Critical Role’s place in the modern history of tabletop gaming. As he admitted that the company has a history of underestimating both themselves and their fans, we mentioned the first Kickstarter campaign for The Legend of Vox Machina as evidence that maybe they shouldn’t. We then got to see Matt Mercer’s eyes widen as the memory of that night came flooding back to him. 

“Oh yeah,” he said. “It’s forever burned into my soul in the best way.”

Frank Miller is a man who doesn’t seem to stop. He’s written some of the most influential comic books ever, with his The Dark Knight Returns becoming one of the definitive Batman stories of the past 40 years. He’s got a memoir coming out this summer that promises to share his creative process, but he’s still apparently pushing himself to try new things. Even if those things are outside of comic books.

We spoke to Frank Miller earlier this year and asked him about what he feels is the next challenge he’s undertaking. His answer was surprising; it also had nothing to do with comic books. “Floral arrangement – origami – embroidery,” he told us, citing three activities we don’t typically associate with the author of Daredevil: Born Again and The Dark Knight Returns. “It’s like the title of the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

It seems that Frank Miller, for all his success, is still eager to try new things and keep his mind active by learning new activities. Even if all he is doing is clearing his mind between drawing and writing comics, the simple activities of floral arrangement, origami, and embroidery could prove valuable to the comic book legend.

Considering the number of tabletop game systems that are out there, you might think that making one is easy. However, there is so much to consider, between balance issues and how to make your system stand out in an increasingly crowded industry. When Matt Mercer was looking at designing Daggerheart, the longtime Critical Role GM knew there were a few mechanics that he wanted to make sure they explored.

When we spoke to him at PAX East 2026, we asked Matt Mercer what he was hoping that Daggerheart would take from other tabletop systems like D&D and change or adapt for Critical Role’s new system. He explained that part of the challenge when working with D&D is always that it has to both bring in new players and satisfy those who still revere the 50-year legacy of Dungeons & Dragons. 

“With Daggerheart, a lot of us wanted to find the scenarios, the sort of experiences that a lot of other modern tabletop systems weren’t really facilitating,” Mercer told us. “We wanted there to be enough tactical crunch and customization options and the ability where you can really dive in and craft your own place in this world, but then also be a little more narratively inviting, like a lot of new school game design tends to lean towards. Trying to bridge some of those gaps in a way that also empowers the GM to not feel like they have to build and run and learn everything. That, I think, is one of the big things we wanted to improve upon with Daggerheart over a lot of other systems was to give enough GM tools to make them feel like you don’t have to build a campaign setting. You can just build a few pages here, and it’s really not that hard to just take these few pages and run with it.”

Veronica Roth is out to change how you see the world. Literally. 

In her latest novel, adult dystopia Seek the Traitor's Son, Roth presents a vision of future Earth ravaged by a super-powerful (and supernatural) plague called the Fever, which decimates the population and, in some cases, brings part of that population back. But Roth's focus wasn't only one the citizens of that future Earth, it was on the actual geography they inhabit, a geography that many of our current, real-world Earthlings get wrong, thanks to a flawed map dating back to the 1500s.

Or as you may know it, the Mercator projection. 

Zoe Thorogood, the writer-artist behind It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, has announced a new collaboration between her and musician Harley Poe called Vampire on Aisle 6. The project will be a graphic novel and EP, which is pretty exciting! 

At C2E2 2026, we chatted with Zoe Thorogood about her work, both past and present, and she opened up about how she came to collaborate with her partner, Joe Whiteford, on Vampire on Aisle 6. 

"It's a story that my partner, Joe, had in mind years ago. He's been talking about it for years, this idea he's had about this vampire who's trapped in a grocery store, he can't get out because the sun's up, and he's just stuck there til the sun sets," Thorogood said. 

If you've been a visitor to Popverse lately, chances are you've noticed how exited we are about DC's Next Level line. The post-DC KO comic series, which puts the spotlight on B-tier DC characters such as Deathstroke, Lobo, and Batwoman, is publishing some wholly unique takes on DC's heroes and villains by recruiting some of the best names in the biz... names like Michael Walsh.

Walsh, who originated the Image Comics horror anthology Silver Coin and is currently working on indie hit Exquisite Corpses with James Tynion IV, was recently a guest at C2E2 2026, where the artist did us the kindness of stopping by our Pop Spot interview space. Naturally, we wanted to know all we could about Walsh's still-unidentified DC Next Level Comic, and though we'll tell you right now that he wasn't able to give us the character on its covers, he was able to share a lot of other details.

"I can say that it is referential of some of the other things that I've done over the last few years," began the artist, "Tonally speaking. I can say that it's a character that's been around in DC for a very long time, but hasn't really had a hit book in in quite a while. I can say that I'm writing and drawing the book in that Toni-Marie Griffin will be coloring the book. Brittany Holzer, the incredible Britney, and James Reid are the editors on the book." 

The Amazing Digital Circus fanbase has done some incredible things. We've viewed the pilot episode a whopping 435 million times as of this writing. We've broken ticket sale records for a Fathom screening event. And now, a select and glorious few of us have done what some fandoms can only dream of doing: causing animator Gooseworx actual regret for making the show.

The story comes on the heels of The Amazing Digital Circus's hotly-anticipated finale, episode 9, leaking online ahead of its June theatrical release. Asked about the leaks on BlueSky, Gooseworx responded in a since-deleted post, "ehhhh, who cares?," as though she was allowed to accept events that she had no part of or control over. Obviously, this was Not A Correct Response, and thus tantamount to a war crime.

Fortunately, though, we the true fans set about correcting Gooseworx, responding with the same authoritative and constructive methods as our forbears in the Star Wars or Minecraft fanbases. And not 24 hours after the discourse began on BlueSky (the non-toxic alternative to Twitter, remember), Gooseworx admitted defeat.

Dan Buckley has seen Marvel Comics change from a comics publisher with dreams of TV and film success into a franchise and a brand where comics is a smaller but integral part inside a massive multimedia empire. Buckley has been Marvel Comics' publisher for the past 23 years, leading it to become the modern comic company it is while also being a key part of its transition into movies, TV, gaming, and being a department of the monolithic Walt Disney Company. 

But now, Buckley is leaving (not retiring) from Marvel after a nearly seamless tenure with the company beginning right after he graduated college in 1991. For context, he joined the company when modern epics such as Infinity Gauntlet and the 'Weapon X' storyline were not even midway through release on comic shelves that month. But things have changed tremendously in the intervening 35 years, and while he's said to be staying a full year to help with the transition, one major thing seems to not be transitioning with him.

For the first time in its 87 years, Marvel Comics has no publisher... and has no signs of getting one.

The 2026 Eisner Award nominations have been announced, and the list of nominees is looking rather Absolute. Across 32 categories, DC Comics racked up 16 nominations (sharing 10 nominations with other publishers in categories like "Best Writer"), the majority of which were for books from their Absolute line. Now, in 2026, DC's Absolute Universe has cemented itself as a hit both commercially and critically, and it keeps growing. Take a look at the entire list of nominations here. 

DC's biggest hit at the Eisners isn't an Absolute book for one of the Trinity. Instead, it's Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez's Absolute Martian Manhunter - a new interpretation of a character who hasn't had an ongoing series in a decade. Originally, Absolute Martian Manhunter was planned as a 6-issue mini-series by Camp and Rodriguez, but in light of the enthusiastic fan response to the book, it was extended to a 12-issue limited series. Of course, Camp and Rodriguez had a dynamite idea for Absolute Martian Manhunter - one that made me shriek at the top of my lungs when I first heard it in 2024 - but if we can extract anything from Absolute Martian Manhunter's success, it's that both fans and critics reward DC for letting creators like Camp and Rodriguez run wild with a familiar character. 

And the same could be said across the entire Absolute line. The continued success of DC's Absolute Universe into 2026 evidences that these books are more than just their provocative loglines. Absolute Batman from Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta and Absolute Wonder Woman by Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman are both nominated for Best Continuing Series this year after they were nominated for Best New Series in 2025. In other words, the Absolute titles are continuing to meet the same level of quality that fans got from the first series arcs in these succeeding months and years. 

One of the brightest stars working in comics today is writer Deniz Camp. And if you need any evidence for why, look no further than the 2026 Eisner Award nominations. Between books like DC Comics' Absolute Martian Manhunter, Image Comics' Assorted Crisis Events, and Marvel Comics' The Ultimates, Camp has established himself as a vibrant new voice in American comics today thanks to his ability to merge high-concept genre storytelling with slippery, inventive prose. Camp's skills have been put to work in stories reflecting the bizarre state of our world today. 

This year, Deniz Camp is up for the Eisner Award for Best Writer (for Absolute Martian Manhunter, Assorted Crisis Events, and The Ultimates), Best New Series for Assorted Crisis Events (with artist Eric Zawadski), Best Limited Series for Absolute Martian Manhunter (with artist Javier Rodriguez), and is nominated twice in the Best One-Shot/Single Issue category for Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 and Assorted Crisis Events #4 - totaling 5 nominations. 

Part of what's remarkable about Camp's work, reflected in his Eisner nominations, is how he's able to play within a superhero sandbox (even if it's in an alternate universe) just as well as in his creator-owned work. Between The Ultimates and Absolute Martian Manhunter, Camp has approached decades-old characters and worlds and reinvented them in a gutsy manner that also honors their existing history. That's no small feat. The Ultimates, for instance, made Emmanuel Da Costa, the conniving businessman father of the X-Man Sunspot, even more of a monster than he is in the mainline Marvel Universe. As far as villains go, Emmanuel Da Costa isn't an obvious pick when you have foes like Doctor Octopus, Norman Osborn, whoever your favorite Marvel villain is, also running around. In other words, Camp "knows ball," as the kids say, while simultaneously working on stories that rewrite the rules of the game entirely. 

There’s something about the odd pairing of a monster and a flack vest that just makes me overwhelmingly happy. 

I first encountered this visual delight while reading the pages of John Arcudi, Mike Mignola and Guy Davis in the pages of the B.P.R.D.. For those uninitiated, the book is a spinoff of Mignola’s long-running Hellboy series. It follows the journeyman-like exploits of a few monsters, trapped in the employ of the United States government. Their task? To investigate all those things that go bump in the night.

That sounds like it could be any number of genre-centric programs, right? The X-Files, Kolchak the Night Stalker, Fringe. They’ve all played in similar waters. But the thing that makes the BPRD so fascinating to me is the seemingly effortless combination of the mundane and the surreal. Additionally, you’re not dealing with humans who are investigating monsters… your primary cast are all monsters. And then they go out and deal with more monsters. What’s not to love? It’s the perfect setup for an enthralling otherworldly procedural. 

In October 2024, DC Comics launched Absolute Batman - the first of several titles featuring dramatically different and dramatically distinct versions of its most popular characters in a new universe, with new continuity, and all that comes with it. Imagine a movie or TV adaptation of your favorite comics, supported by the comics but not bound to them; DC's Absolute titles were that, but doing it in comics.

"Without the mansion…without the money…without the butler…what’s left is the Absolute Dark Knight!" was DC's tagline for the launch of Absolute Batman #1, and it was an overnight success, selling out of a near 300k print run with over 10 subsequent reprintings leading it to be the best-selling comic book of 2024, and now, one of the top 5 best-selling comic boosk of the past 10 years. We previously reported that over 8 million Absolute comics were sold in 2025 despite being a fairly slim and compact number of titles — six, to be exact. 

Related: DC has big questions about Absolute Batman & the Absolute DC Line - and is doing a fan survey

Ahead of the debut of the comic book series Absolute Green Arrow at your local comic shop on May 20, publisher DC Comics has announced plans to go back to press on the first issue for a second printing. While DC isn't saying publicly that the first printing has sold out at the distributor level (yet?), all signs point to that.

According to sources familiar with the situation, the print run of Absolute Green Arrow #1 wasn't paltry — in fact, it is larger than the first print run of Absolute Batman #1, a series which is now the line's highest seller — and has been the best-selling comic book in the superhero space since its launch in October 2024. Absolute Batman #1 has gone back for multiple printings, meaning the number of physical copies out there is ultimately (or would that be absolutely?) bigger than the first printing or Absolute Green Arrow's.

Absolute Green Arrow #1's first printing was over 300,000 copies according to our sources, which at its cover price of $4.99 would mean that there is over $1.4 million in Absolute Green Arrow #1 pre-orders ahead of its May 20 debut... and that's just the first printing, and only printed comics for that matter.

Few superhero movies have left fans dying to know what happens next more than Spider-Man: No Way Home. Indeed, Tom Holland’s third solo outing as Spidey, wrapping up with everyone on Earth magically forgetting about Peter Parker’s existence arguably ranks as the second biggest narrative rug pull in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s history (Avengers: Infinity War’s ‘half your favourite characters are dead’ cliffhanger is still number one). Heck, even now — five whole years later — we still have a bunch of  questions about the webslinger’s status quo in the wake of Doctor Strange’s mystic arts mind-wipe hocus pocus.

If anything, the more we find out, the less we know. In February 2026, an official synopsis for No Way Home sequel Spider-Man: Brand New Day surfaced online, revealing that Peter Parker ditched his secret identity altogether once the world forgot about him. It’s an intriguing twist on the classic ‘Spider-Man No More’ trope, but how does Pete’s life function without a civilian component? The mind boggles — and not even the recent Brand New Day teaser trailer has any real answers.

So maybe it’s time we stopped looking to studio-sanctioned blurbs and teasers to fill in the blanks. Maybe Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Marvel Comics source material holds the key to cracking the blockbuster’s biggest mystery, instead.

After you have a bad break-up, whoever your ex ends up with next might get a little side-eye from you — for one reason or another. Three years ago in comics, Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker broke up, and the model-turned-Venom MJ has since found someone new in her life in the recently introduced Paul Rabin. This dovetailed into Mary Jane getting stories of her own, leveling up when she became the latest host of Venom.

But all the while, a certain segment of fans has had an unreserved scorn for Paul Rabin — at best, he is not a good fit to be the romantic partner of Mary Jane, and, at worst, he is an ill-fitting 'plot device' to keep MJ out of the magnetism that is her on-again, off-again romance with one-time husband, Peter Parker. But in April 1's Venom #256, the Paul Rabin haters got their wish as he was written out of Mary Jane's Venom series with a surprise (and surprisingly clear) death at the hands of the serial killer supervillain Torment as part of the recent 'Death Spiral' crossover event with the Amazing Spider-Man title.

After a few weeks for fans to unpack it and to avoid spoilers, we spoke with Paul Rabin co-creator Joe Kelly (writer of Amazing Spider-Man), and Spider-Man group editor Nick Lowe to talk about it. Apparently, the idea to kill Paul Rabin originally came up as a way to add to the death total of 'Death Spiral,' but in it, they found a deeper story — and finale — for the Paul Rabin era.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Amazing Spider-Man/Venom crossover 'Death Spiral.'

The spring Spider-Man x Venom crossover event 'Death Spiral' ended recently in Amazing Spider-Man #27, with Peter Parker reluctantly taking on the Carnage symbiote to save his relatives and loved ones as they were being hunted down and killed by the new villain Torment. In the final blow, it was one of his loved ones - Mary Jane Watson, as the new Venom - stepping up to save everyone by stopping Torment (and apparently killing him). And along the way, a heretofore unknown Peter Parker relative - cousin named Mr. Crane - was revealed, portending a big Spider-Mystery leading into the big Amazing Spider-Man #1000 later this year.

Ahead of that and the upcoming 'Death Spiral' coda revealing the actual origin of Torment, Popverse talked with Amazing Spider-Man writer Joe Kelly and resident Spider-boss Nick Lowe (AKA, Marvel Comics' Spider-Man group editor, VP of Content & Digital publishing, and an executive editor) about the event, including how it came together, and how they feel they stuck the landing.

Both the internet and J. Jonah Jameson are united in their demand for pictures of Spider-Man. But for one Instagram account called No Context Spider-Man (@nocontextspidey), they specialize in gathering a very specific type of Spider-Man comic book panel: the ones that look funniest when seen out of context from the story they originally appeared in. And in doing so, No Context Spider-Man has created a positive online nerd space that's a rarity these days, one whose community is based around positivity and appreciation for good ol' silliness. 

In their bio on Instagram, the No Context Spider-Man page is comprised of "Random moments from Spider-Man comics. Made by humans, credits in captions. A meme resource for nerds." At this time of writing, the page has 32,400 followers. The account has a mix of panels that exemplify the relatable aspects of Spider-Man, such as a panel from Ultimate Spider-Man #19 (2002) where he says "I'm going home to watch Letterman," to zanier moments like Superior Spider-Man saying, "I will find Daredevil... and I will crush him" and Ben Reilly existentially asking himself, "Why?" You and me both, brother Ben. The page features bits and pieces from comics throughout Spider-Man's six decades at Marvel Comics, and I get the sense that whoever runs the page is well-versed in their Spidey lore. 

In building out their collection of funny panels, No Context Spider-Man has achieved something else entirely: a monument to the inherent silliness of Spider-Man. And as time has gone on, I've come to realize that an online fandom space built around laughter and appreciation is a rare and precious thing. These days, I actively try to avoid online fandom discourse, because for whatever reason - call it algorithm-driven discord, call it young folks with little to no life experience, call it people genuinely hurting in their offline lives - I've seen these places get nastier and angrier. No Context Spider-Man serves as a way to remind us that we're all here because we're fans of the little bugger. Imagine that! 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is only as strong as its villains... but, ever since 2019's Avengers: Endgame, the franchise has struggled to set up a recurrent big bad who can clear the high bar that Josh Brolin set with his swaggering, paternalistic, and imperialist vision of Thanos. There have been some bright spots, of course - the legendary Tony Leung's Xu Wenwu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Void in Thunderbolts*, Chukwudi Iwuji's High Evolutionary in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness in WandaVision, for example - but unfortunately, none of these characters will ever get the same studio-platformed hype as Robert Downey Jr.'s incoming Doctor Doom, set to debut in December's Avengers: Doomsday. 

With teasers for the upcoming tentpole film dropping every few months after a flashy reveal of Downey as the man behind the Doctor Doom mask at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, we're all expected to board the multiverse-bound Doom Train. I say, to hell with that. I mean no disrespect to Robert Downey Jr. - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a national treasure that deserves to be added to the Library of Congress - but the multiverse-tinged dramatics of Doctor Doom bear little interest to me after Daredevil: Born Again season 2 dialed up its street-level baddie, Bullseye.

Played by Wilson Bethel since 2018's third season of the Netflix Daredevil show, Bullseye is now the only MCU villain I have eyes for. Born Again season 2 has hammered home something that may be at odds with the MCU as a whole, which is that a villain may not need to pose that much of a threat on a macro, planetwide scale to earn 110% of my attention and emotional investment. Is the MCU’s Bullseye an Avengers-level threat? Probably not; Luke Cage could handle him. But that doesn’t matter to me. 

Spider-Man is, undoubtedly, one of the great comic book characters of the 20th century. Across the first couple of decades of his publishing history, countless writers and artists refined and clarified what makes a great Spider-Man story, while other publishers tried their best to crack the Spider-Man code for themselves. In that sense, it’s simultaneously a surprise and no surprise whatsoever to report that, honestly, the best Spider-Man comics of the 1990s weren’t published by Marvel Comics — and didn’t even feature Spider-Man as a character.

To be fair, the 1990s were a weird time for Peter Parker as a whole. Marvel’s flagship character was following the trends of the market at the time, which meant that he was straying from what had been the tried-and-tested Spider-formula up to that point: a grounded approach that balanced Peter Parker’s friends and family and his swinging alter-ego dealing with low-level threats was replaced by alien costumes that wanted to eat people and a years-long storyline that seemed very unclear over who was, or wasn’t, a clone. While this kept Spidey’s many comics selling well in the short term, it meant that a space opened up for fans looking for the kind of low-level thrills that Spider-Man comics used to offer — and that was a space two separate DC superheroes were all-too-glad to move into.

One of the core ingredients of Spider-Man’s early comic book success was that superhero stories were only half of what made the stories work — the other half (and, arguably, the more important part) was the focus on the soap opera of it all: the highs and lows of Peter Parker’s love life, as well as the other everyday worries of our hero and his non-costumed pals and gals. Would Pete be able to stomach his boss’s ranting and raving enough to make rent? What about his grades? Was Betty Brant unhappy in her marriage, and if so, why? Was Aunt May going to have another life-threatening health crisis, and if so, would she pull through? Fully informed by Stan Lee and collaborators’ time on romance comics, this was the stuff that brought fans back issue after issue, and made them feel as if they could empathize more with him, compared with the morally upright, less complicated superheroes from other publishers.

As you’re swinging around New York City in Marvel’s Spider-Man, part of the fun is exploring all the different real-world locations that Insomniac meticulously put into the game to make it feel like the real NYC. However, there are a few notable locations that you can’t visit as Spider-Man, such as Trump Tower. However, Fisk Tower makes a reasonable stand-in for the infamous president’s building.

Marvel’s Spider-Man came out in 2018, two years into the first Trump presidency. As a massive AAA game that was meant to highlight the power of the PS4, Insomniac probably wasn’t too keen on putting a landmark like Trump Tower in their game. Donald Trump was, even then, a very controversial figure. Simply acknowledging the President of the United States would draw unwanted and unnecessary attention to the game. So they simply took the Trump International Hotel & Tower out of the game and replaced it with a generic building.

However, fans will probably notice that Columbus Circle is, in fact, still home to a notorious felon with delusions of grandeur and a rather gaudy taste in architecture. Just across the street, less than a five-minute walk away from where Trump Tower is meant to be, stands Fisk Tower, where the game’s opening fight against the Kingpin takes place. And everything about this place feels like it was inspired by Trump’s notorious sense of “style”. The gilded features and grandiose architecture, culminating in a battle against Kingpin himself in a penthouse office that is obnoxiously big and offers intimidating views of the skyline, is a little on-the-nose.

Why did Gwen Stacy die? It depends on who you ask and when you ask them.

In 1973 Marvel readers were shocked when Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy was killed by the Green Goblin in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #121. Gwen had been knocked off the Brooklyn Bridge, and although Spider-Man caught her, the Goblin explained that Gwen had died from “shock of sudden fall.” Other explanations have surfaced over the years, like a broken neck from Spider-Man’s webbing catching her. At one point it was revealed that Norman Osborn chose to kill Gwen to hide the existence of their secret children (this story was thankfully retconned).

However, the late Gerry Conway, writer of Amazing Spider-Man #121, said in the past that Gwen’s death happened because he shipped Spider-Man with another girl.

When Ben 10 co-creator Joe Kelly took over Marvel Comics' Amazing Spider-Man title in the summer of 2025, he wanted to to hit upon a forgotten part of the Spider-Man mythos: what can happen when a lab accident goes wrong. And in June 3's Amazing Spider-Man #30, a long-simmering storyline will come to the surface with the debut of a new Marvel villain, Spore.

Spore begin in comics as Brian Nehring, a childhood friend of Peter Parker's introduced way back in Kelly's first issue as the series' lead writer, in April 2025's Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 7) #1. And while it's taken a year and 29 issues to get here, it was in the plans all along.

"When I came on the book, Nick [Lowe, Marvel's lead Spider-Man editor] and I started talking about certain pillars that we wanted to hit, or that are just part of Spidey DNA," Kelly tells Popverse. "The idea of a character who becomes who they are due to a lab accident just felt like OG Spidey. Spore is that character, but we've seen him get built from the beginning, which is cool. We introduced Brian in the first issue of my run. And you know this idea of, like, who's this old friend of Peter's, and what's his deal? He's kind of a jerk, but he's kind of endearing."

The relationship between comic books and comic book media is always one of give-and-take. Harley Quinn, for example, came from Batman: The Animated Series, but is now one of the best-selling comic book leads on shelves. The same pattern of comics-influencing-movies-influencing-comics can be said of the Sony Spider-Verse films, and since it's Popverse Spotlight: Spider-Man week, we thought we'd highlight the ways they've shifted the wall-crawler's adventures in the comics that gave him life.

As a longtime fan of Spider-Man 2099, I was excited (if a little unsurprised) to see him show up in the post-credits scene of Into the Spider-Verse. However, the Miguel O'Hara of Sony's animated Spider-verse films is distinct from his comic book inspiration in a lot of ways - particularly, the films shift his role from hero of the future to an "ends-justify-the-means" guardian of a fragile multiverse.

But here's the thing - not long after that post-credits appearance by Miguel, which established him as a multiverse vanguard, a very similar change happened to his comic book counterpart. 2019's The Amazing Spider-Man #32 features a time-traveling Miguel whose future world of 2099 is under a terrible threat, and it's Miguel who must go back to work with Peter Parker and save the day. 

Spider-Man has survived the 'Death Spiral' crossover event, and the historic Amazing Spider-Man #1000 is imminent; all is great for Peter Parker... right?

That Parker luck is about to strike again.

In the final moments of 'Death Spiral,' it's revealed that Peter has a heretofore unknown first cousin (at least according to the story). Not much is known about him, except that he goes by the name 'Mister Crane.' Herein lies the mystery: in the long history of Spider-Man, we've never known Peter to have a male first cousin - that is, a child of an aunt or uncle, like Aunt May or Uncle Ben. As far as has been revealed, none of Peter Parker's aunts or uncles gave birth to a son... in Marvel's main continuity, at least.

In 2022, Gerry Conway recounted meeting someone with "the Blue Lives Punisher logo — you know, the blue stripe variation on it" tattooed on their arm. "And then above it," he said, "They had tattooed 'I don’t read,' and then below it, 'Punisher comics.' And I thought, yep."

Conway's April 2026 passing has left a giant hole in the comic book community, and in looking back at his legacy, it's hard not to see his relationship with Frank Castle - who he co-created with John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru in 1974 - as less than triumphant. For his entire life, Conway held that the Punisher was not created to be emulated, and that the adoption of his logo by members of the military, police, and overarching alt-right movement signaled both a deep misunderstanding of the character and a moral failing of those institutions.

I'm not here to argue that he got any of that wrong. Even if he wasn't the guy who, you know, helped created the goddamn character, I'd take a look at today's headlines and be pretty convinced of his position. But what I am here to tell you is this - that as we remember Gerry, we should not only recall his critiques of the deeply confused wannabes that wear the Punisher's symbol - we should remember the time Gerry fought back.

Just when Frank Quitely thought he was done making comics based on other people's characters, they pulled him back in. Quitely, 58, might be considered by some to be an unlikely superstar superhero comic artist — but that just means you haven't read his superhero work from Flex Mentallo to JLA, All-Star Superman, Jupiter's Legacy, New X-Men, The Ambassadors, and Batman & Robin. But one thing all of those have in common (besides him being great on it) is that they're all owned by giant megalithic corporations like DC, Marvel, and Netflix. And as much as Quitely likes those characters and appreciates being paid handsomely to draw them, he's been trying to get onto his own creations for going on 20 years now.

In fact, it was arguably his most popular work ever that he first turned down in an effort to leave doing work-for-hire comics for others. He's glad he changed his mind, though.

"All-Star Superman, in a way, is the book I'm most glad that I did because it's the book that's connected with most people," Quitely tells The Comics Journal's Jake Zawlacki. "I've had loads of people at cons tell me how much they love me, and how it was the first book they got their wife to read or whatever. But All-Star Superman's connected with people in a way that none of the other pieces of work that I've done have and I really didn't want to draw it."

In the late '90s and into the 2000s, Mark Bagley was one of the hottest artists at Marvel. Ultimate Spider-Man was a best-seller, largely thanks to Bagley’s art. In fact, Bagley’s design for Spider-Man was so iconic that Marvel used it on sneakers, birthday party supplies, bed sheets, and more. Bagley was riding high, but a few years earlier, it had been a different story. Bagley was struggling to get work at Marvel and felt like then-editor-in-chief Bob Harras had it in for him.

“I thank god for Thunderbolts, because my career was going down in flames,” Mark Bagley says during a spotlight panel at Toronto Comicon 2012. “The editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time was Bob Harras. I heard from enough people that he just didn’t like my stuff, and he’s one of those editors-in-chief who is just not smart enough to know, 'Okay, I may not like that particular guy’s work, but he sells a lot of books, so we should keep him working.' And he was so negative about it that I was having trouble getting hired by anybody else at Marvel.”

Bagley joined Marvel in the mid '80s after winning a contest inside the iconic Marvel Try-Out Book, and within a few years had success in launching the New Warriors title, and then being tapped to be the next Amazing Spider-Man artist (following in the footsteps of Erik Larsen and Todd McFarlane). He left Amazing Spider-Man in 1996, and according to him had trouble getting another long-term assignment, leading him to do licensed work like Star Trek, and anthologies.

What if the artist of All-Star Superman did an almost-all-nude Lobo one-shot? That actually happened, but DC has been holding onto it in one of their most private of drawers for the last 30 years. But with Lobo now on the verge of his big-screen debut in the Supergirl movie, DC has been quietly asking artist Frank Quitely if he'd be open to publishing it now with Lobo approaching what could be his most popular moment in his entire history.

"I was talking to Larry Ganem recently, he's DC’s VP in Talent Relations. I’ve known Larry for decades, really like him," Quitely tells the Comics Journal's Jake Zawlacki. "We were chatting over dinner in the summer, he was saying, 'What about that Lobo story you did for us all those years ago, have you still got those pages?'"

Related: DC brings Supergirl & Lobo together in comics just in time for DC Studios' Supergirl movie

Newsarama was one of the preeminent voices where people could talk (and talk@) comics in North America for almost 30 years - but now, that voice has become silent. After a storied 28-year career breaking news mega events from Marvel and DC, the dissolution of the Comics Code Authority, the fracturing of the comics market during the COVID-19 era, and the pivotal acquisition of Jim Lee's WildStorm (and Jim Lee as an exclusive creator) by DC, Newsarama as we knew it is no more.

Despite its somewhat idiosyncratic name, Newsarama was for many years the crossroads where people would go to find out what was happening in the North American comics medium, and for years fostered one of the largest comic communities through its forums (and later, social media platforms). It primarily focused on comic books popular in North American comic stores — namely, those of Marvel, DC, Image Comics, and creators associated with those companies, whether at those companies or branching out into their own independent efforts. Newsarama was on the ground floor of the superhero movie boom, covering the rise of Marvel Studios (and the profile of its boss, Kevin Feige), as well as the myriad of eras in DC's movie and television efforts. Existing solely as a free journalism website funded by the ever-changing online ad revenue model of the past 25+ years, Newsarama evolved as reading habits changed from desktop computers to laptops and now smartphones. 

Originating as a column on various '90s forums by Mike Doran, what became known as Newsarama came together with him and journalist Matt Brady (Entertainment Weekly, Wizard Magazine). With Brady acting as editor, Newsarama became one of the defining comics journalism websites in a post-print magazine world. In its wake, websites such as ComicBookResources (now CBR) and The Pulse (which begat The Beat) followed, becoming the defining source for news, information, and commentary about North American comics. 

Professional athletes train for years in preparation for the Olympics. But while the Olympics roll around every four years, for comic book shops around the country, their equivalent happens every first Saturday in May: Free Comic Book Day. If you ask a comic book shop owner what their plans are for Free Comic Book Day in February or March, you might catch a look of panic or resigned exhaustion pass over their eyes. To be clear: Free Comic Book Day is a great event, but it requires significant mental, physical, psychological, and financial preparation from even the most Herculean of comic book shop employees. I should know, because I was once one of them. 

In case you're not familiar, Free Comic Book Day, as the name suggests, is a yearly event where publishers from across the comic book industry release free single-issue comics that readers can pick up at their local comic book shop. These free comics typically are sample or teaser stories from new or upcoming series. So in effect, FCBD is a wine tasting for comics, so to speak, just without the alcohol and smooth jazz (or whatever it is they play at wine tasting events). 

As you might imagine, comic book shops don't make money from the free comics they give away on FCBD, so most shops will run promotional sales that day to take advantage of the hordes of readers coming in for free comics. And this is part of what makes FCBD such a bustling event: after picking up their free books, most folks will browse graphic novel and manga shelves, or dive headfirst into the back issue and vintage comic bins in search of the one issue they've been hunting down for years. On top of that, shops in the Los Angeles area (where I live and work) will also host local comic book creators selling their wares or signing fans' comics, much like they would at a comic con. 

Who knew taking away Batman's money would end up making DC more money? 

DC Comics' Absolute Batman is a once-in-a-generation success story, reinventing a character who was old when anyone reading this was young, stripping the character down to the basics (and then some) and building a new version of the character for today's world. While its chart-topping success is a given now nearly two years in, if anyone tells you they knew Absolute Batman was going to be this big a success before it happened, they'd be lying to you. 

Heck, even DC Comics and writer/co-creator Scott Snyder didn't think it would be doing this.

This year, DC Comics is really going all in with its annual DC Pride offerings. Specifically, the DC Pride line is being expanded in 2026 to include a four-issue weekly DC Pride Event, Justice League: Dream Girls. Centered on rising star trans characters Galaxy and Dreamer, and featuring trans creators behind the scenes, Dream Girls might just set the new gold standard for trans storytelling in mainstream cape comics.

So, what makes Dream Girls such an impressive project? One integral element is the characters themselves. As mentioned above, both Galaxy and Dreamer are textually transgender.

When there is a dearth of trans representation, viewers who are thirsty for trans representation may find themselves in characters who aren’t textually trans. Sometimes, creators will even intentionally tell trans-coded stories, but use fantastic genre elements to stand in for the reality of transition.

Lots of people around the world relate to Spider-Man and Peter Parker, but I've come to realize that I share more of a kinship with the people around Spider-Man than the web-slinger himself. The guy frustrates me. He can be a lousy boyfriend, friend, journalist, you name it, and I hate feeling let down by his shortcomings. And this is precisely why, when I heard that it was Mary Jane Watson beneath the Venom symbiote goop, I felt an unbridled sense of joy. Oh my god, MJ can finally be free, I thought. And free she has been. 

Let's be real, none of us will ever catch Mary Jane Watson slipping. Her hair is always perfect, she can rush around the city in heels without getting a single rolled ankle or blister, and she's got a rock-solid moral constitution. But that isn't all she can be. And it's this element that writer Al Ewing has been exploring with the All-New Venom and its subsequent Venom ongoing series with MJ as the symbiote's unexpected host. As Venom, Mary Jane has redefined the significance of Marvel's most popular characters while also injecting a much-needed sense of joy and whimsy where there was once only trauma and sorrow. With MJ at the symbiote reins, her character has gotten the chance to directly address the damage that the symbiote wrought on her life when Eddie Brock and Peter Parker were its hosts, while also publicly being a weird, goopy freak protecting her fellow New Yorkers. Talk about a power fantasy! 

Part of what makes Mary Jane as Venom work is the way that artists like Carlos Gómez and Paco Medina draw her on the page. Her appearance as Venom doesn't look any different, beyond the gold chest emblem, from the symbiote's male hosts. In other words, her Venom isn't engineered to look stereotypically sexy to the male gaze, because why the heck would an amorphous, alien symbiote need to look buxom anyway? Instead, MJ, perhaps for the first time in her publication history, can act without being constrained by her role as the beautiful girl-next-door type trying to make it as an actress. She can go goblin mode! 

Admittedly, it has been a long time since I read an American comic. I dove into manga in a big way and didn’t look back. However, in an effort to expand my horizons (and give in to the peer pressure of some of my more persuasive colleagues here at Popverse), I delved into the world of Absolute Batman to see what all the fuss was about.

Before picking up this comic, it had been sold to me in terms that a manga fan like me could understand; if the mainline DC Comics universe was a shonen adventure, Absolute Batman is the seinen counterpart aimed at older fans who can tolerate more violence and darkness. Several people from DC have said multiple times that he drew inspiration from manga for this version of Batman. As a Berserk and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fan, this spoke to me in a way that got me to pick up the series on digital. Don’t we all want to see what happens when Batman really cuts loose?

This stripped-back version of Batman delivered on that expectation, without trying to become something it's not. Absolute Batman answers the question of 'What if Batman was big and broke?' The early issues establish this version of Bruce Wayne as someone with the same motivation as his mainstream counterpart but without the same resources. At pretty much every turn, this Batman chooses the path most violent, stopping just short of actively killing his opponents.

If you like this, you'll enjoy the new prose novel Escala's Wish by David James, which is the sponsor of this article.

I don’t make it a secret that I love to play video games. They excite me. They give me a chance to reflect on the world. Sometimes they help me bond with my son. They’re a huge part of who I am, but here is a secret: as much as I love playing video games, I’d almost always prefer to play D&D.

There is, of course, a lot of crossover between video games and tabletop games, especially RPGs and the like. There is even a whole portion of video games that are based on tabletop games, such as the incredible (and potentially heartbreaking) Baldur’s Gate 3. I started playing video games in the late 80s when I stumbled across a shiny golden Zelda cartridge in my step-dad’s collection, and they’ve been a huge part of who I am ever since.

It is tough to put Escala’s Wish into a box. The book is a romantasy novel without the smut, written by a career lawyer with a passion for D&D. It adds a dash of humor, epic stakes, and a structure inspired by The Princess Bride. The book is a love-letter to David James’ ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and, ahead of his upcoming presence at PAX East 2026, we talked to the lawyer-turned-author about why Escala’s Wish will feel so familiar to tabletop fans at the convention.

Perhaps that isn’t a fair turn of phrase, however, as David James is adamant that his career in law didn’t just enable his longtime D&D habit, but it wormed its way into his debut novel. 

“I didn’t leave law to become an author,” he tells Popverse. “I brought the law with me. Fantasy worlds need internal logic just like corporations do. Systems matter. Consequences matter. Governance matters. The difference is, in my books, dragons are usually more honest than executives. When you read Escala’s Wish, you’ll hear about the laws of the Court of Dreams. Those laws are brutal. Unforgiving. Binding. They aren’t suggestions – they’re absolute. That’s my lawyer-side showing up on the page.”

Not all heroes wear capes. Some don’t even wear pants, but that doesn’t make them any less heroic. Captain Underpants is one of the most popular children’s novel series out there and has expanded into movies, graphic novels, and, now, manga. While there are some design choices that might confuse manga purists, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Manga still serves as a great introduction to any manga-curious young people out there.

If you don’t have a young person of reading age in your house and need a refresher about the origin of Captain Underpants, it is about two mischievous young boys, George and Harold. The two enjoy two things more than anything: pulling pranks and making comics. In this version, their love of comics is replaced by a love of manga, but it is otherwise a beat-for-beat adaptation of the original The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey, who also wrote and adapted the script for this manga. To avoid getting in trouble for ruining a recent football game with their pranks, the pair hypnotize their principal into believing he is Captain Underpants, the hero of the manga they created, who then goes on to save the world from Dr. Diaper.

The story is largely the same that young readers have been excited about for almost 30 years, but the art certainly looks different. Manga artist Motojiro did the artwork while Wes Dzioba provided the color. It is bright and colorful, with expressive faces and a focus on movement and action. Motojiro does a good job of updating the Captain Underpants world into a new format while still having the same irreverent, carefree sense of humor fans expect. They've even managed to preserve the Flip-O-Rama pages that featured in the original novels.

The Resident Evil franchise has come a long way from the days of Leon S. Kennedy saying, "No thanks, bro" in Resident Evil 4. As we've seen in the remakes for Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4, Capcom has made an effort to retain the creepy atmosphere of the original games while giving the characters' voice actors a chance to give more grounded performances. 

Now, with the newest game in the series, Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom has left the schlocky action hero acting of the past behind for good. The cast of Requiem was made up of primarily London-based British theatre actors, like actress Angela Sant'Albano, who plays protagonist Grace Ashcroft in the game. I spoke to Sant'Albano about the experience of playing Grace in Requiem, and she revealed how the cast's training as theatre actors uniquely prepared them for acting out scenes in The Volume. While the cast wasn't working on a completely bare sound stage, there were some basic set pieces, like hallways, built for the actors to walk down, but Sant'Albano noted, "so much of it is just using your imagination, which makes you feel like a little kid again." 

Of course, there's a huge difference between acting onstage and acting in a onesie with adhesive dots all over your face and a helmet on your head with a camera directly in your face. The move to working in The Volume with digital backgrounds and in a performance capture rig was initially a challenge for Sant'Albano on the first day of filming. But the game's performance capture director, Kate Saxon, offered some wise words of direction. 

One of the beautiful things about storytelling, for me, is that it keeps me sane. Or rather, finding other stories written by people who care passionately about the world they live in makes me feel less insane for feeling that way. As much as I'd love to scream at the top of my lungs at the state of the world, I don't, because my neighbors and their dogs wouldn't like that. So this outrage has to be redirected in other ways. 

This feeling is why I love Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' Hard-Traveling Heroes storyline from Green Lantern/Green Arrow so much. The Emerald Archer himself, Oliver Queen, practically comes alive on the page from the combination of Adams' art and O'Neil's words, as he screams at his best friend, Hal Jordan, for not stepping up in the fight for social justice. Under Adams' pen, every fibre of Green Arrow's body contorts in an expression of rage at how the marginalized are treated in society. It's almost like Adams drew every panel of Hard-Traveling Heroes like it would be his last - a fitting accompaniment to Dennis O'Neil's writing, which never pulled any punches. 

As you can see, there's a special place in my heart for Green Arrow, thanks to O'Neil and Adams. And DC's announcement of the plot and other details for the upcoming Absolute Green Arrow series from writer Pornsak Pichetshote and artist Rafael Albuquerque further crystallized some observations I had percolating about the Absolute Universe these past few months. Executive editor Chris Conroy described Absolute Green Arrow at ComicsPRO 2026 as a "slasher horror" story where a "serial killer called The Longbow Hunter is hunting down billionaires responsible for Oliver Queen's death... This is Scream, Halloween, meets Green Arrow." Considering that we got a story last year in the Absolute Batman Annual from Daniel Warren Johnson where our big, beefy, lovely Dark Knight battles hordes of white supremacists, the Absolute Universe is continuing full steam ahead with timely stories that, in the vein of Denny O'Neil, pull no punches.

It’s rare to see a group stay together. The Beatles broke up, NSYNC broke up, and Oasis spent over a decade apart. Too much time together can make even the best of friends become bitter enemies, but that hasn’t happened to the cast of Critical Role. What makes them different? For starters, they’re not musicians like our previous examples, but Sam Riegel believes it’s because there is strength in numbers.  

 “[Matthew Mercer] really keeps us together,” Sam Riegel says during a Critical Role spotlight panel at MCM Comic Con 2023. “He insists on doing things together as just friends tonight, we’re not business partners, we’re just hanging out, and we try to do that as much as we can and it really helps a lot. I also think there’s strength in numbers for us. If were just a partnership or a trio, if there were a fight – I think that’s why bands break up a lot. There’s a fight and that’s it, it’s over.”

“But because there’s so many of us, like if two of us are miffed with each other, which does happen from time to time, there’s so many others who can step in and be like, ‘Let me talk to Ashley. I know she’s mad at you Sam [laughs].’ We can be there for each other and support and be in between each other. And I don’t know, we all love each other so much. It’s crazy at this point. I think we want to be together for the rest of our lives. I want a Matt-face t-shirt at his funeral.”

If you've watched The Traitors US season 3 on Peacock, you'd know that Bob the Drag Queen and Boston Rob are two of the fiercest to ever compete on the show. Now, the two stars have joined forces as the hosts of the official podcast of The Traitors as season 4 comes to a close. And as you might imagine, both of them have thoughts and feelings about what makes a successful player on The Traitors. 

In an interview with our video producer, Ashley Victoria Robinson, as part of our Popversations series, Boston Rob and Bob the Drag Queen were asked what piece of advice they would give to future players on the show. Bob said, "So far, in four seasons, someone slipping up and calling themself a Traitor has never, ever caught a Traitor. We have to stop getting people on slip-ups. It happened with Peppermint, it happened with Porsha. Y'all, it has never caught a Traitor! People misspeak all the time." 

Bob elaborated, "But also, you really gotta check your ego at the door. I'm telling you, I don't care who you are, you are not as good at this game as you think you are. A big part of winning this show is just straight-up luck." 

They say you should never mix business with pleasure, but that seems to be Critical Role’s business model. The popular web show features prolific voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons together, but as the show has gotten more popular, more work has been involved. However, the cast has never lost sight of what the show is all about – gaming with friends.

“I feel like after all these years and then running the company together, which has its stressful moments, Thursday night is still a reprieve that we still look forward to every time. Sitting at the table,” Marisha Ray says during a Critical Role spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2023.

“I’m just excited to show up and know that these guys are going to make me laugh and sometimes cry – but usually laugh,” Liam O’Brien adds.

We all love video game adaptations now, but there was a time when they were new and unusual. Many of them were, unfortunately, very bad. However, 1994’s Street Fighter and 1995’s Mortal Kombat movies remain classics, and I am ready to fight anyone who disagrees. Despite both being based on iconic fighting games from the era, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat tackled creating film versions of said video games in entirely different ways – and that is what makes them so uniquely wonderful.

Let’s clear the air a bit. Street Fighter is not a good movie. It is many, many things; hilarious, entertaining, camp, but good? That is a bigger stretch than Jean Claude Van Damn’s signature splits. The acting is uneven, and the plot is simply nonsensical. The issues that plagued production, from Raul Julia’s health issues to disagreements with Capcom over casting decisions to JCVD’s notoriously difficult-to-manage behavior, are catalogued elsewhere, but the result of that chaotic production is a movie that leans into some of the most absurd aspects of the video games.

Street Fighter is a big-budget mess of a movie that somehow is endlessly fun to watch. Raul Julia swings from silly monologues where he is chewing scenery in a wide-eyed frenzy to delivering one of the most devastatingly brutal lines of dialogue any action movie villain has ever given. The fight choreography isn’t particularly noteworthy, but you don’t mind because it is so unashamedly silly that you have fun watching it. It is a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the Street Fighter series that somehow became a box office hit.

Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2014, Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin laid out what he called his “quibbles” with the father of the fantasy genre, J.R.R. Tolkien. “Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy,” says the Fire & Blood author, “That if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple.” 

To be clear, Martin is on the record plenty of times as having great respect for The Hobbit author, but his sentiments do a pretty good job of explaining the difference between Tolkien’s Middle-Earth and his Westeros. In the former, there’s a clear, mythical distinction between good and evil, and in the latter, more historical world, there is not. But as I finished watching Martin’s latest television adaptation, I couldn’t help but feel there was a particularly Tolkieny character at this show’s helm - specifically, Ser Duncan the Tall.

Or as I like to think of him, Westeros’s Samwise Gamgee.

Listen, I may be a man of science today, but I'm not above indulging in a bit of astrology. The first time I was given my astrological birth chart, I felt like I was being personally attacked by how accurate it was. Like, what do you mean my Leo moon signifies that I take karaoke way too seriously? How do you know this about me?! I came out here to have a good time, and I'm feeling attacked all of a sudden. 

But I'm not the area of focus here; rather, it's Absolute Batman. Whew. In order to get a complete picture of someone's astrological birth chart, we need to know the date, location, and ideally time of their birth. We know from Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta's Absolute Batman #1 that Absolute Bruce was born on February 19, 2004 according to this police photo, making him a Gen Z legend. But his location, Jules, his location! We do know from Batman comics that Gotham is located in New Jersey. Being a New Yorker myself, my mental image of Gotham has always been Hoboken, but to my surprise, Gotham is located somewhere in South Jersey - in Phillies territory. For simplicity's sake, I used Newport, New Jersey, as the location of Absolute Batman's birth.  Of course, we don't know what time Zoomer Bruce was born, so I just used 12 AM. 

And before we begin, yes, take all of this with a grain of salt. I understand that part of what makes astrology so enduring is that it is built on broad statements that apply to lots of people. I'm doing all this just to have a bit of a laugh and to celebrate our favorite massive Bat-Guy, okay? So without much further ado, let's take a gander at Absolute Bruce's birth chart:

We’re all a bit surprised that we’re getting a Baldur’s Gate TV show. While the announcement seems to be focused on the fact that it was inspired by the popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3, the title and setup make it feel like it is going to be more of a continuation of Descent into Avernus than the hit video game. And that’s great for me since I still think Descent into Avernus is one of the best D&D adventures I’ve played in.

If you’ve not had the chance to play Descent into Avernus, it is an adventure module for D&D 5th Edition that sees the entire city of Elturel teleported into the first layer of Hell, inhabitants and all. Players journey into Avernus and go on adventures across the plane starting at around Level 5, which is far sooner than most adventurers get involved in planar travel. The adventure takes inspiration from Mad Max: Fury Road as players run around Hell in haphazardly constructed death vehicles and fight off various factions. While it doesn’t always deliver on the mechanical side of things, the actual story of Descent into Avernus is very fun. Travelling across Avernus on a vehicle that is made of devil parts and that could explode at any moment is my ideal evening, in fact. 

Trapped in Hell, they need to try to recover the Sword of Zariel and potentially save an entire city of refugees from being dragged into the Blood War. Some of those words might have been familiar to those who played Baldur’s Gate 3, as it takes place directly after the events of Descent into Avernus, while being exceptionally careful not to say definitively what happened at the end of that adventure. After all, this is D&D and players can make any number of decisions that force the DM to crumple up their notes and throw them out the window. 

I, for one, think we fight dragons a little too much. If you ask me, we really should be befriending them more often, and that's exactly what you get to do in the Flamecraft series from Cardboard Alchemy. Kind of a mix of Pokémon and How to Train Your Dragon (but even cuter), Flamecraft is all about teaching your fiery friends skills to improve the village you call home, and at PAX Unplugged 2025, Popverse got to hear all about their latest chapter.

Flamecraft: Duals is a two-player competitive pattern-matching game and expansion on Flamecraft's debut: Dragons & Dragons. Cradboard Alchemy's Rozie Pocket and Peter Vaughan were kind enough to take us on a playthough of the game (and of course, a showcase of the so-cute-it-hurts artwork), and you can see what they showed us right here:

This year marks the 30th year of the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire getting published, and George R. R. Martin continues to have an admirable grip on the fantasy genre today. Game of Thrones remains a landmark television series that has spawned multiple spin-offs for HBO, including House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. However, the long wait for the upcoming book, The Winds of Winter, has many fans openly wondering if Martin will manage to finish iconic fantasy series.

To those fans, I say this: learn to chill.

George R. R. Martin has given us enough creativity to last a lifetime, even without finishing A Song of Ice and Fire. Between multiple other series, graphic novels, television scripts, and even video games, the prolific author is always extremely busy. While you can complain that fans can complain that they’d like to see The Winds of Winter on shelves sooner rather than later, the simple truth is that George R. R. Martin doesn’t owe you a damn thing at this point. 

I have a serious problem with the Fallout TV show. Not that it is bad; quite the opposite, actually. It is such a good representation of the heart of one of my favorite game series. With the mix of action, dark comedy, and burning satire of the evils of capitalism, every episode has something that reminds me of how much I adore Fallout.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to me, of course. Both times that a new Fallout season has dropped, fans have collectively had an “Oh yeah. Those games are rad,” moment and gone back to them in droves. While the Prime Video series doesn’t always get the gameplay quite right – I’ve never seen a Deathclaw go down to one shot from a sniper rifle, for example – it does manage to capture the spirit of the Fallout world.

A great example is in the final episode of Fallout Season 2. Maximus has chosen to make a stand against the approaching Deathclaws that have taken over the New Vegas Strip, protecting the citizens from a swarming nest of the most dangerous creature in the Wasteland. A group of people has hidden themselves away in a nearby shop and is watching the action unfold. Rather than cower in fear or arm themselves to help Maximus, they take bets on how long until he is horribly killed.

Ever since 2009, Calliope Games has been producing family-friendly, colorful tabletop games that are as fun to play as they are easy to learn. Take, for example, the simple Roll For It!  - the game that presents players with dice patterns printed on cards and rewards them for rolling their own dice to match. At PAX Unplugged 2025, I got the chance to sit down and play a round of Roll For It! myself (the jumbo-sized Going BIG! version, to be precise), and as you can see below, I had a fantastic time.

But that wasn't all that Calliope's art director, Nicki Whers, was willing to share with yours truly. I also got the TL;DR on some of the company's other best sellers - the sci-fi-themed Martian Dice and the simply gorgeous Tsuro. And as I said, these games take about as long to learn as they do to explain in the video below - so if for nothing more than educational purposes, check out our time with Calliope now.

If there's anything I've learned over the years, it's that Resident Evil brings out something in people. I own a sweatshirt that has artwork by Mark Scicluna depicting the iconic village fight in Resident Evil 4, and it's brought a fair bit of insight into the franchise for me. On more than one occasion, when I've worn the sweatshirt to brunch or to pick up takeout, I've gotten into conversations with strangers about how they remember playing the original 1996 game with their dad, or how many times they played through the fourth game. The sweatshirt is far from the only nerd-oriented piece of apparel I own, but I've noticed it brings out an openness in people that other properties don't quite measure up to. Hell, I'm ordinarily a pretty reserved person, but if I saw someone on the streets of LA wearing something Resident Evil-related, I probably wouldn't resist the urge to chat. 

What this all really means is that Resident Evil, in its many forms, strips away our individual façades to reveal something more vulnerable and truthful: an intimate sense of joy amidst fear. And this fear, and the thrill we feel from it, is what connects Resident Evil fans to each other, leading them to strike up a conversation with another dude at the lunch counter. And while fear has played a starring role in dividing humanity over the course of our history, in a Resident Evil game, it unites all of us. Not to turn this into a therapy session, but I've spent my adult life working my way out of the tangled Christmas tree lights of Irish emotional repression. And because my existence is ridiculous, the Resident Evil games have provided a type of emotional boot camp for me, giving me reason not to run away from my fears, but fight and feel them. And, god forbid, scream every once in a while. 

Take this video of a mom playing Resident Evil VII: Biohazard in VR as evidence:

I’ll be honest with you all; when I heard about the new James Bond game from the makers of the Hitman series, I had A Concern. See, I’m a huge fan of the Hitman games and their ability to make murder into a puzzle that I want to solve in the most broken, ridiculous ways. Thankfully, 007 First Light looks to be taking all the goofy action that I love about Hitman and giving us a main character with actual personality, which makes me more excited for it than I am for GTA 6.

The reveal trailer for 007 First Light did the game a disservice, in my opinion. It was heavy on action, with plenty of gunfights and explosions and quips you’d expect from a James Bond game. However, the gameplay didn’t feel like it belonged with Hitman. The second trailer was a bit better – it showed some gameplay and showed some of the infiltration missions that James Bond would typically go on. However, it wasn’t until September when IO Interactive showed off enough of the gameplay that I knew this was a Bond game made for the Hitman sickos like me.

The thing about the Hitman games is that they’re actually not great action titles. The general rule of thumb is that if you get into a shooting match in these games, things have gone wrong and your Agent 47 is probably about to die. That mentality of avoiding combat is not exactly familiar territory for James Bond, who tends to jump from one explosion to the next.

If you overheard me talking about Frank Castle, you might think that I was talking about someone in my own family - perhaps a cousin or brother who was letting me down recently. Because, as shocking as the Punisher is in Marvel Comics, I can't help but feel for the guy and want the best for him. Ultimately, being a fan of the Punisher involves watching a fictional character crash out repeatedly while still clinging to the belief that the guy can turn his life around. The day I lose hope that the Punisher can redeem himself is the day I lose hope that any of us can. 

On paper, I might not seem like a Punisher guy. I don't like guns or loud noises, I get nervous when I'm around butterflies because I'm afraid of accidentally hurting them, I believe in restorative justice over capital punishment, I have a favorite Jane Austen book, and I'm a vegetarian. But I'm deeply invested in the Punisher as a character in both comics and television, amounting to a sense of almost emotional ownership over the character. So what the hell do I see in a guy like Frank Castle?

Well, as it turns out, appearances can be deceiving. Like Frank Castle, my grandfather studied to become a Catholic priest at a seminary before he left and later joined the Marine Corps. When I was a kid, and perhaps even now as an adult, my granddad had a warrior mythology to him. Even as an old man, he was strong and had eyes that pierced as much as they danced with laughter. He embodied the intensity of the Marines even in retirement, and just like Frank Castle, carried a conflicted sense of disillusionment with the American military after his service. With the Punisher, I see a darker version of my granddad's Marine intensity within Frank Castle, which is part of why the character feels almost familial to me. 

There are, obviously, any number of idealized relationships to be found throughout pop culture; just take a look at any romcom or romance fiction and you’ll see stories and characters written specifically to get you to think even for a second, “Oh, I wish that was me.” They’re not solely restricted to explicit romance fiction, however; personally, I’m of the opinion that Superman and Lois Lane are very much couple goals, for example, and will fight anyone who disagrees. (Don’t test me.)

There is, however, one couple in all of pop culture that I have held up for years as the ideal pop culture couple, even if pop culture as a whole has largely forgotten about them in the past few decades, honestly. Nevertheless, take it from me, dear readers: we should all aspire to have our own Nick or Nora Charles in our lives.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Nick and Nora — and I suspect that might be most everyone reading this — here’s a necessary history lesson: The couple are the leads of The Thin Man, a 1934 detective novel by the man behind The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett; that novel was adapted into a movie that same year that proved to be so successful that no less than five sequels were made over the next 13 years. In fact, it was so successful that it also spun out a radio show, The Adventures of the Thin Man, that ran for 10 years that was later adapted again into a 1950s TV show that ran for two seasons. (There have also been additional TV movies and multiple stage adaptations.) All of this nascent franchising isn’t anchored around the mysteries in each story, as fun as they are; instead, the success of The Thin Man (and its many sequels and spin-offs) relies entirely on the relationship between Nick and Nora, and the fact the audience generally wants to spend as much time as possible with both of them.

Today, it's nearly impossible to talk about Daredevil and Thor from Marvel Comics and not also bring up the romances they've had over the years. As the Netflix Daredevil show and the MCU quickly established, Matt Murdock and Thor (whether in his godly form or his more frail, human Donald Blake identity) are popular with the ladies - and for good reason! They are adoring, protective, well-spoken, charming dudes with physiques that fall somewhere on the Dorito Bod matrix. Green flag material. It's even a part of Thor's current life as a human named Sigurd Jarlson in The Mortal Thor by Al Ewing and Pascal Ferry. 

What's more interesting about both of these characters, however, is how Silver Age Marvel Comics established this romantic baseline for Daredevil and Thor while also highlighting the fact that both characters had disabilities. (To address the elephant in the room real quick, yes, Thor was originally a disabled doctor named Donald Blake when he was initially created by Jack Kirby. Donald used a cane to help him walk, and by slamming the cane into the ground, he could transform into the God of Thunder.)

Both Thor and Daredevil were unusual in 1960s comics - and in 1960s pop culture more widely - because they defied stereotypes of disabled people being asexual, unattractive, or incapable of being in romantic relationships with other people, disabled or otherwise. Even though the women around them were very aware of both men's disabilities, they still pined for them, and vice versa. In that sense, Thor and Daredevil weren't shut out of the "yearning via thought bubbles" romantic conventions of Silver Age Marvel Comics, seen in contemporary books like The Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men. For Daredevil in particular, the romantic life ushered in in his early comics set him up to become one of pop culture's most well-rounded disabled characters. I see a lot of myself in Daredevil, in part, because of the heartbreak, grief, and loves he's had over the years.

This may be a bit of a daring opinion, but I think Final Fantasy VII is one of the most important video games ever made.

While the series had been a juggernaut in Japan since its inception in 1987, it was still rather niche in the West by comparison - but this would change with the series’ dramatic shift over to the PlayStation from Nintendo and the addition of a Z-axis. 1997's Final Fantasy VII would introduce gamers outside Japan not only to Final Fantasy as a series and JRPGs as a genre, but also help instill the idea that games can be a medium for profound and thought-provoking narratives. Central to that narrative is the messy and complicated relationship between the aloof ex-SOLDIER Cloud Strife (yes, 'SOLDIER' is meant to be in all-caps) and beloved bartender-turned-eco-terrorist Tifa Lockhart.

Cloud and Tifa: Childhood sweethearts turned soulmates

There are so many dialogue options in megahit game Genshin Impact, it's nigh impossible to choose a single favorite. Still, we can imagine that job is easier if you were one of the folks who actually recorded those lines - say, for example, Kellen Goff & Sarah MIller-Crews. The pair were at MCM Comic Con London May 2023, and during a fan Q&A part of their panel, they did just that.

It was Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach star and voice of Abyss Herald Goff that started the answer off.

"Something that Tommy always said," began Goff, "Like, the chef guy."

Netflix's The Witcher is based on the series of Andrzej Sapkowski's hit books, which began publication in 1993. But according to one person intimately familiar with the series, the characters within can be traced thematically much farther back, and to an admittedly more important source. The way the show's Eamon Farren, AKA Cahir, tells it, The Witcher can be held up as a mirror to the works of William Shakespeare.

The comment came about during MCM Comic Con London May 2023, where Farren was appearing ahead of the then-upcoming Witcher season 3. At one point during the Q&A portion of his panel, Farren was asked who the most interesting character he'd ever played was, and his answer had everything to do with the Bard.

"The most interesting character I've played?" posited the actor, "I've played a lot of great characters. Cahir is definitely one of the most complex and challenging. But also, in drama school I played Hamlet. That's one of the most interesting."

One of the best parts about playing tabletop games is the way your characters surprise you. It’s fun to get to know your character and discover new things about them on your campaign. Liam O’Brien played as a halfling fighter named Orym during Critical Role Campaign 3, and he quickly discovered just how much fun you could have with a short fighter.

“I love my short king, he fits everywhere,” Liam O’Brien says during a Critical Role spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2023. “I’ve been waiting to play this little guy for so long, and I love sort of subverting the stereotypical hero ideas. I liked making a rogue who wore his heart on his sleeve. I like making a wizard who’s a coward instead of a power fantasy. And I loved making a fighter who runs under everyone’s legs constantly and stabs you with a letter opener.”

“He’s got nothing. He doesn’t have magic. Everyone around him has either got a melting face, or purple veins in their arms, or is a thousand-year-old robot, and I just do a lot of squats and crunches.”

Something that Dragon Ball has never done particularly well is romance. Sure, there are some iconic couples in there, but it is never the central focus of the show. Which is why I always find it so remarkable that Akira Toriyama, the man who famously had Goku marry Chi-Chi as a way to spite himself, gave us one of the most wholesome and enduring romantic relationships in anime in the form of Krillin and Android 18.

Krillin probably isn’t most people’s first choice for romantic partner, but that is kind of what makes this pairing so perfect. For all of Dragon Ball, Krillin is after two things: getting stronger and getting a girlfriend. He eventually becomes the most powerful human on Earth… which still puts him outside the Top 5 strongest fighters on the planet. The man is the iconic anime second fiddle, so you’d think the least Toriyama could do is throw the boy a bone and let him get a girlfriend, but we end up well into the Cell Saga before that happens. 

No, I’m not counting him getting a girlfriend in the Garlic Jr. Saga because that was filler and therefore didn’t happen.

Will Daryl Dixon ever cut his gorgeous locks? The Walking Dead breakout character is known for his long scruffy hair, but over the years the showrunners have flirted with the idea of giving the character a new look.

 “We talked about the hair at the beginning,” The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon showrunner David Zabel says during a Walking Dead spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2023. “I wasn’t sure if I had made a fatal mistake because I did say, ‘I was thinking Norm, when they bring you in to clean up at the abbey, maybe they cut your hair and we go back to [The Walking Dead season two] look.”

“We did talk about it,” Daryl Dixon actor Norman Reedus says. “There was a show called Felicity. I don’t know if you remember the show, and this sort of came into the discussions. Supposedly she cut her curly hair off and then the show went downhill. The world freaked out and Keri Russell had to apologize to the world. It just kind of put the fear in me.”

Action RPG Genshin Impact is simply loaded with characters, and with such a huge community of fans behind it, there are bound to be some strong opinions over which one is the best. One person whose opinion might matter just a little bit more than the average player, though, is voice actor Kellen Goff, who provides the guttural voice of antagonist Abyss Herald. Even if you're not familiar with the game, though, you might recognize what Goff is doing with the character, especially if you grew up on 80's cartoon. 

As it turns out, one of Genshin Impact's darkest characters was based on one of the Transformers baddies.

Goff revealed this at MCM Comic Con London May 2023, where he was appearing for a special Genshin Impact panel alongside fellow voice actor Sarah Miller-Crews. At one point during the discussion, a fan asked the actors on stage who their favorite characters to play were, and Goff revealed his inspiration. 

Outlander is many things. The 1991 novel is a historical fiction story, a time travel story, and a fantasy story. But is it a romance novel? Outlander author Diana Gabaldon doesn’t think so, even if her publishers disagree.

“Now that we have Amazon, you can actually be multiple genres and that’s great,” Diana Gabaldon says during New York Comic Con 2022’s Titans of Fantasy panel. “Back in the day the publisher who had bought my book were very enthused but then they started looking at it with an eye to selling it and they say, ‘What are we going to do with this book? We can’t even describe it.’ Don’t ask me, and they didn’t. And consequentially they said, ‘Of all the genres this could be, romance is by far the biggest. We’re going to call it romance.’”

“I said, ‘I like romance. I read romance. And therefore, I know that this is not it. Believe me. If you start selling this to real romance readers, you’re going to have pushback. They may buy it, on the other hand, and if they like the book then so much the better.’ I was talking to my agent, and I said I understand why they want to do that, but I have severe reservations and the main one is that if you do that you will cut off the entire male half of my readership and I said I didn’t write these books [just for women]. They’re women’s fiction. There are things in these books that only men would see and appreciate and I don’t want that to be lost.”

Watch a single episode of Netflix's The Witcher and you know how much work goes into it. And I'm not just talking about stunt stuff, either - there are silos of lore behind so many of the production team's choices, not to mention behind the motivations of each actor. And according to Eamon Farren, who plays the morally complex Cahir, prepping from all that history had to be done quickly.

That's what the actor said at MCM Comic Con London May 2023, where he was appearing to promote the then-upcoming Witcher season three. Speaking of his journey from complete Witcher newbie to slapdah expert, Farren said his relationship with the fantasy saga began with a vague audition title.

"I think it was like, an unnamed Netflix fantasy project," Farren told the room of assembled fans. "Or something. So I didn't find out what it was until deep into the auditions."

Brandon Sanderson spends a lot of time around books. As of this writing, Sanderson has written over 71 books, many of them as part of the Cosmere literary universe. However, Sanderson wasn’t always a lover of books.

“I didn’t like books when I was a kid,” Brandon Sanderson says during New York Comic Con 2022’s Titans of Fantasy panel. “I as a kid just could not get into reading. Lots of teachers tried. They gave me My Side of the Mountain. They gave me Old Yeller. I was in Nebraska. You give kids books about wilderness apparently when you’re in Nebraska. Watch out, there’s lots of dead dogs. I didn’t really like books. I remember one that I loved, which was Jane Yolen’s Dragon’s Blood, but I read that when I was like 10 or 11. But I didn’t get into the fantasy genre. I didn’t know it was a genre.”

Sanderson went on to credit his eighth grade teacher Ms. Reader for turning him on to fantasy. According to Sanderson, it all started when she caught him cheating on his book reports. “I really credit my teacher Ms. Reader, true story, in eighth grade handing me a book. She was a really good teacher and she knew I was faking my way through book reports because I’m a smart enough kid to know they put most of the book on the back. I can usually either guess or read a few chapters at the end, then I could do a book report right?”

Trevor is the youngest ghost on the CBS comedy show, Ghosts, and while he may have been a stockbroker in life, that doesn't mean that he's as cold-blooded as other Wall Street guys like Patrick Bateman. In fact, it's quite the opposite. For Asher Grodman, who plays Trevor on Ghosts, the character has a "loyal" streak to him that makes him so endearing to play. 

Speaking with our video producer, Ashley Victoria Robinson, as part of the Popversations interview series, Asher Grodman unpacked what's really going on inside Trevor's head. "If the whole thing is that this guy just wants the party to keep going, then underneath all that is a guy who just wants people to be together. And there’s kind of a puppy, playful energy in that. And what sucks for him is that the party is with deadbeats for eternity," Grodman said.

Let's also remember: Trevor wears a tailored suit jacket, dress shirt, fancy tie, and no pants. The dude is in his argyle socks in commando form for all of eternity, so he can't exactly take himself too seriously. I do respect his spirit (sorry), though, because it really is difficult to party with a pair of creased suit trousers on and a tucked-in shirt. 

You can use a lot of words to describe Star Wars, with many of them being positive. However, you cannot say that it has handled its various romances well. In fact, each Star Wars trilogy handles romance in such a uniquely baffling way that I start to wonder if it was always meant to be bad romantasy. The idea of Star Wars as terrible romantasy is one that has been bouncing around in my mind for a while and I think I've figured out why I feel this way. 

Let’s start back in the original Star Wars trilogy, which set up both the fact that this was a fantasy story dressed up as sci-fi and the fact that George Lucas didn’t think about the repercussions of making major changes to his lore halfway through. The bulk of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back sets up a love triangle involving Leia, Han, and Luke, despite the fact that the three of them are barely at the same place at the same time throughout the movie. A New Hope introduced the idea of Luke being into Leia, which is reinforced in an early Empire scene where Leia gives Luke a very unchaste kiss on the lips. 

The thing about love triangles is that it is difficult to set them up where all three characters remain friends at the end. Barring some sort of throuple situation developing, someone is walking away from that plotline with a broken heart. Now, this could have been avoided if Luke had been seen to dedicate himself to his Jedi training and decide he didn’t have time for romantic entanglements, paving the way for Leia and Han’s relationship to blossom, but that’s the way George Lucas’ mind works. No, he went the Estranged Incest route to make sure everyone gets to stand together smiling as the Death Star explodes. Instead of giving Luke a little more character development, he made Skywalker family dinners infinitely more awkward by making sure both Leia's brother and husband know what her tongue tastes like.

If you’re a reader, then you know that a good book can be just as exciting and explosive as the latest Hollywood blockbuster. They’re also cheaper to make. If Michael Bay wants to blow up an entire city street, he either needs a lot of XFX artists, or millions of dollars in pyrotechnics. If you’re a writer, you can do the same thing, and you just need your keyboard.

Leigh Bardugo, the author behind the Grishaverse literary universe, sometimes finds herself getting caught up in spectacles like this when she’s writing her YA books. “I think I always set out with a popcorn movie in my head, and then somewhere we get to a really tragic indie drama. And I meet somewhere in the middle,” Leigh Bardugo says during a spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2022.

“[Ninth House] was a beast because I had never written in our world before. It required a huge amount of research, and it ended up being a very different book than I initially thought it was going to be. And this happens with all of my books.”

Absolutely no shade to 'My Heart Will Go On' or 'I Will Always Love You,' but I prefer my movie soundtrack-specific love songs to be a bit more on the gothic side. And if you're familiar with one of the greatest horror adaptations of all time (scientifically proven), you probably won't be shocked to learn that my personal favorite is 'Love Song for a Vampire,' the single recorded and composed by Annie Lennox as part of the soundtrack for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

But it's not just the synths and sadness of this number that keeps me coming back. The song came about through some pretty unlikely circumstances, and helped usher in a new era of Draculism that we're still dealing with today. Considering it's love week here at Popverse, I figured there was better time to talk about it.

The beginning of 'Love Song for a Vampire' isn't in the pages of Bram Stoker's seminal horror work at all, though it does come out of one of the most important vampire works in pop culture history. According to an Off the Records recounting of the song from 1993, Annie Lennox agreed to record the song not because of Van Helsing's arch-nemesis, but because of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. However, it wasn't just a shared interest in creatures of the night that got the singer into the writer's work.

Are you covered in fake blood and trying to clean up?

Maybe you’re working on a student film, or you’re getting a headstart on the next Halloween party. Perhaps you’re playing a prank on a friend. We’re not here to judge you, we just want to help you clean up.

Jamie Lee Curtis is no stranger to fake blood. The actress has starred in Halloween, Terror Train, The Fog, Prom Night, and numerous other horror films. In other words, she’s been around a lot of fake blood and has some tips for how to clean it off.

A couple that fights tyrants together stays together. 

The DC Universe has no shortage of couples who fit this description (Big Barda and Mister Miracle! Green Arrow and Black Canary! Jon Kent and Jay Nakamura!). Maybe it's because I'm a '90s baby forged in the fires of late 20th century edginess, but my favorite of these DC Comics couples is The Authority's Midnighter and Apollo. Okay, I might be a bit biased because Midnighter happens to also be one of my favorite DC characters, period (I mean, he has a fight computer in his brain that lets him calculate every possible outcome of a fight before it happens), but let's talk about how great they are, shall we? 

Midnighter and Apollo have always been a "real ones know" pair of characters in that they were initially created for DC's separate Wildstorm universe back in 1998 (they debuted in Stormwatch #4), but later made the jump into the mainline DC Universe proper. (That happened in 2011's Stormwatch #1, as part of the New 52 reboot of the entire DCU.) However, because they were conceived as darker versions of Batman and Superman, they've sadly only had sporadic chances to shine in DC's biggest titles. This is all to say that my love for this couple was sustained in part from re-reading Steve Orlando and ACO's Midnighter series ad infinitum, as so many other queer nerds have before me. 

Matthew Mercer thinks it’s time for us to stop calling things cringe. The voice actor, who serves as the dungeon master for the web series Critical Role, believes the word is overused and discourages people from being their authentic selves.

“We live in an odd time of cringe culture where anything that is honest can be called cringe, and I don’t agree with that,” Matthew Mercer says during a Critical Role spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2023. “I hear where people are coming from, but most things that I see being called cringe are just people being their authentic self. And other people can’t deal with that. And that’s fine if they can’t connect with it, but everything you put out there that someone might call cringe, somebody else might resonate with.”

“Unfortunately, sometimes you’ll hear the frustrating responses more than you will the people that are quietly enjoying it. So, stepping back and trying not to focus on those harsh comments and on really believing that people out there are quietly enjoying the art that you’re putting out there.” 

In the opening moments of massively popular open-world action RPG Genshin Impact, the player has to make an awful decision. The twin characters we meet at the top of the game, Aether and Lumine, have been separated by a vindictive god, and you, the player, watch as your other in-game half is taken away. It's an impactful moment for anybody starting out in the game, but for the voice of Lumine herself, it was a downright nightmare.

In case you don't know, that voice is Sarah Miller-Crews, who appeared at MCM Comic Con London May 2023 to discuss her time working on the megahit game. That moment of turmoil came up during the fan Q&A portion of her panel (which was also attended by fellow Genshin Impact VA Kellen Goff), when a fan asked the Pokémon Masters voice actor who her favorite character to voice was.

"First of all," began Miller-Crews, "Every role that I voice, I feel like there's a part of me in it. They're all special to me in different ways. I feel a little bit [like] they're your babies; they're your family. So, it's it's hard to choose a child. They're so they're usually so different."

When we think of the X-Men, we tend to think of romance and drama. Some of the most iconic couples in Marvel Comics are found within mutantdom, and X-Men fans have debated the merits of their favorite ships for decades now. And while we can celebrate couples like Rogue and Gambit, Cyclops and Jean Grey, Rachel Summers and Betsy Braddock, Greycrow and Psylocke, Storm and Forge, Rictor and Shatterstar, Mystique and Destiny, and more, there are also some other pairings that are excellent cautionary tales. 

Life is hard enough as it is, and I don't think anyone needs more drama in their lives in 2026, whether that's from a partner turned evil or good old-fashioned heartbreak. And while it is the season of love and very nearly Valentines Day, I am happily single. I'm a busy dude, and I can't be getting caught up in a plot to accelerate the next stage of mutant evolution! Without further ado, here are the X-Men couples that make me glad that I am flying solo. 

Rick Remender, Jerome Opeña, Greg Tocchini, and others' run on Uncanny X-Force is X-Men comics at their best. It's got everything you look for in an X-Men comic: a legendary crash out, Wolverine hunting down Nazis, Deadpool being funny, a mutant whose powers are so ambiguous that you ask yourself "Wait, what is his deal again?" at least once per issue, and a doomed romance. That doomed romance is between Angel and Betsy Braddock, who at the time was in Psylocke's body. 

 The Marvel Cinematic Universe is so influential that it has even changed the way books are published. Publishers and readers are embracing shared universes, such as Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse and Jeremy Robinson’s Nemesis Saga. While book series are nothing new, a shared literary universe is different because it can focus on different characters and different time periods in a shared continuity, whereas a series will tell a linear story with the same characters.

Brandson Sanderson, who created the Cosmere literary universe, recalls how the shift began after the MCU took off. “I thought I want to do all these magic systems, all these different planets, and I want to connect them all,” Brandon Sanderson says during New York Comic Con 2022’s Titans of Fantasy panel. “People were really scared of continuity back then. When I was doing this, this was a few years before the MCU came out. Publishers were scared. They wanted one series but they didn’t want this big interconnected thing because the conventional wisdom was this would scare off readers.”

After publishing Elantris in 2005, Sanderson was encouraged to write a sequel, but he was more interested in expanding the universe with a new series set in the same continuity. “[Tor Books] came to me and said, ‘Alright, write a sequel to Elantris.’ I said, ‘No. I am not going to write a sequel to Elantris. I’m going to write something new.’ And they’re like, ‘You will take a sales hit if you do that. Write a sequel to Elantris.’ And I said, ‘No. I’ll take the sales hit. It’s going to be worth it.’ And I launched into a new series which was Mistborn.”

For better or for worse, Netflix's The Witcher has been defined lately by its controversial recasting of the titular character. Once played by Henry Cavill, Geralt of Rivia has been played in season 4 and will be played in the upcoming (and final) season 5 by Liam Hemsworth. But remember, folks, there was a time when Geralt's role belonged to no one at all, and actors from across the world were vying for the fantasy lead of Andrzej Sapkowski's hit books. In fact, one of those actors ended up finding different work on the series anyway.

That actor would be Eamon Farren, who plays The Witcher's complex antihero Cahir. At MCM Comic Con London May 2023, though, the future Nilfgaardian Black Knight revealed that his first foray into the live-action Witcher universe was in an audition for the show's monster-slashing lead.

"I didn't know what I was auditioning for when I auditioned," the Twin Peaks: The Return actor began, "I auditioned for Geralt's role to start off with, and I didn't get that, which was shocking to me. Then I made my way down to this other unnamed character that was like a mercenary, fighter-killer guy. I sent it off and didn't expect anything. Then, yeah, I got the job, and we ended up in Budapest."

Leigh Bardugo is one of the most consequential YA fantasy authors of this generation. Bardugo is the creator of the Grishaverse literary universe, and her books have sold millions of copies. When Bardugo isn’t writing YA fantasy books, like Six of Crows or Shadow and Bone, she enjoys kicking back and watching television comedies.

“I don’t know what I’ve been watching. We watch a lot of Bob’s Burgers,” Six of Crows author Leigh Bardugo says during a spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2022. “It’s my comfort show. It’s very much my comfort show.”

Bardugo even included a fun Parks and Recreation Easter egg in the Grishaverse. “This is true, whenever I’m writing something, like the reasons there are waffles in Ketterdam is because I was watching Parks and Rec while I was writings Six of Crows, because I’d be like, sadness, sadness, darkness, death, and then I would be like, ‘Oh, that’s so nice.’ I need a balance. I can’t be watching something super dark.”

He was an amnesiac fishman who swore to protect humanity; she was heir to a fairyland under its thumb. In the words of Avril Lavigne, can I make it any more obvious?

I'm kidding; there's absolutely nothing obvious about the love story at the heart of Hellboy II: the Golden Army - that is, the one between Abe Sapien, agent of the US government's BPRD, and Princess Nuala, royal leader of a mythical race facing extinction. You can clock the classic inspirations that went into it - there's some Romeo & Juliet here, some Beauty & the Beast there - but what the relationship gives us is something you don't typically see in movies, particularly in monster movies, in both good and bad ways.

And since it's love week here at Popverse, I thought we'd take a moment to talk about it.