Nearly 40 years after its debut, Berserk remains one of the most celebrated seinen manga in history – even if it has plenty of shoujo trappings as well. Despite its success, creator Kentaro Miura admits that he didn’t go into Berserk with a grand plan. In fact, all he really planned out was that Guts would be consumed with rage and driven by a need for revenge.

During an interview from 2000, Kentaro Miura discussed how far ahead he had planned Berserk when it first started.

“I’d hardly thought any of it out at first,” he admitted. “I had no idea how far I’d be able to run with just that original idea for the manga, and I really hadn’t come up with an idea for the Band of the Hawk at all. Aside from the monster-slaying black swordsman, I had this idea that it’d be easier to give him something to fight if I added an element of revenge to it, and that was about it.”

Our Grand Blue release schedule can tell you exactly when the next chapter of Grand Blue Dreaming is coming out. While new chapters come out most months, there are occasional hiatuses and breaks to contend with. We’ll update our Grand Blue release schedule regularly to make sure you never miss the next chapter.

New Grand Blue chapters typically come out every month, usually around the sixth day of the month. That is the day that Good! Afternoon magazine comes out, which is where Grand Blue Dreaming is serialized. The exact release date for that magazine shifts slightly every month, so it is always an approximate date until the release date is confirmed.

The Grand Blue 112 release date is around September 6, 2026 when the October 2026 edition of Good! Afternoon magazine comes out. The exact release date hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it is fairly consistent that new chapters come out around this time. The most recent chapter, Grand Blue 111, came out on August 6, 2026.

Sam Register may be one of the most influential people in animation that you’ve never heard of. For more than 30 years, he’s been working at Cartoon Network or Warner Bros. Animation in one way or another. Most recently, he was the head of Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios, and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe, but that ends next week when he will be abruptly leaving the company.

It is a massive shift in the organization and comes with very little warning. Typically, we would expect a change like this to be planned for months or even years and, importantly, a successor to be clearly lined up to ensure a smooth transition. It was announced that Warner Bros.TV Group chair Channing Dungey and Sam Register had “mutually agreed not to renew his contract,” meaning that he will be leaving the company next week. 

Dungey said in a memo to employees that a search is currently underway for Register’s replacement. Meanwhile, individual department heads will lead their departments until the recruitment process is finished.

The world may belong to Tom Holland, but Barbie star Ryan Gosling is making a push to take it from him. He’s got Star Wars: Starfighter in 2027 and his MCU debut in 2028’s Ghost Rider coming up, but after that, he’s eyeing something a little different. According to recent reports, Ryan Gosling is in talks to develop a live-action Flintstones movie centered around Bamm-Bamm.

We wouldn’t have initially picked a live-action movie based on a cartoon from the 1960s as a follow-up to Ghost Rider, but Ryan Gosling clearly sees the potential in the character. Reports are circulating that the movie, which would focus on a grown-up Bamm-Bamm Rubble, is in early development with Warner Bros. Gosling’s production company, Open Invite, and his producing partner Jessie Henderson are also involved in the deal.

It isn’t clear if Ryan Gosling would be set to star in the Flintstones movie, though we could certainly see him as a grown-up version of the boy who was raised by mammoths. Bamm-Bamm only spoke his own name – usually when hitting something with a club – in the original Flintstones cartoon, but he got an expanded vocabulary in The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show in 1971. Here he was a high school student who had a job, a spot in a band, and a girlfriend in Pebbles Flintstone.

If you ask a fan of Netflix's Black Mirror what inspired the show, chances are they'd use both hands to indicate, uh, the world. But if you wanted a more specific answer, you could probably go to creator Charlie Brooker, who fist developed the bleak science fiction anthology for Britain's Channel 4 back in 2011. Even before that, though, the show's origins can be traced back to a reality show spoof that would fit right in with the premises on the Netflix hit.

Although to be fair, the idea of 'Big Brother during the zombie apocalypse' was a little funnier than your typical Black Mirror logline.

Let's go back to the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2025, when Brooker was brought on stage to discuss his TV origins. Flipping back through his proverbial career photo album, Brooker recalled the story of Dead Set, a show that would take his love for zombie fiction and combine it with the world of realoty TV he felt was so ripe for parody.

In my years working at a comic and gaming shop, I was asked numerous times if the jumbo Pokémon card posters we had hanging in the shop were for sale. It’s led me to believe that some TCG players really love oversized cards, a feeling I can understand as an Absolute Batman fan. Now, would Magic: The Gathering ever consider making oversized cards like Pokémon, if there was a fan demand for it? 

Recently, Magic’s head of design, Mark Rosewater, answered a fan’s question about this on the official MTG website. The fan asked, “Will we ever get a playable game piece that's bigger than a single card, like oversized cards or the triple-faced cards from Duel Masters?” And as it turns out, the answer to this question is multi-pronged. 

Rosewater started off by explaining that Magic still makes oversized cards “on occasion” in “supplemental products.” For instance, in 2020, Magic printed Otrimi, the Ever-Playful in a Commander 2020 pre-constructed deck, as was customary for years for precons. Likewise, Rosewater noted that “We’ve included oversized cards in booster boxes before,” as something you’d get for buying the entire box. 

Each season of the Netflix anthology biography series Monster, created by Ryan Murphy, focuses on a different real-life murderer, and Season 4 is no exception. While previous seasons focused on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein, the new season will focus on an infamously murderous woman: Lizzie Borden. So when can you plan on the release date for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story to arrive?

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story stars Ella Beatty in the titular role. Also featured in the cast is Vicky Krieps as the Borden family housemaid Bridget Sullivan, as well as alleged serial killer Elizabeth Báthory. Charlie Hunnam plays Lizzie's father, Andrew Borden, while Rebecca Hall plays Lizzie's stepmother, Abby Borden. Rounding out the cast is Jessica Barden as Nance O'Neill, Joey Pollari as John Morse, Billie Lourd as Emma Borden, Sarah Paulson as Aileen Wuornos and Oliver Spenceman as Stephen.

The Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story release date is September 17th, 2026 on Netflix. The episode will consist of eight episodes, all of which will be available for streaming on that date. The third season of the series, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, was released about a year ago, on October 3rd, 2025. Of course, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is just one of the release dates you'll want to keep in mind in the months to come.

Life before streaming was difficult if you were a fan of anything that was made overseas. And no one felt this more acutely than Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings director from Aotearoa New Zealand. The director has a long and documented history as a Doctor Who fan, even making a video ten years ago teasing his turn directing an episode (that never ended up happening). But twenty years ago, before Doctor Who hit streaming, he had to get new episodes of the British sci-fi show from Steven Moffat himself.

In an interview with the podcast Half the Picture, Moffat recalled how he ended up being Peter Jackson's supplier of new Doctor Who episodes. "It was back in the days before things were transmitted through the air with special wifi gnomes or however it works. Once a Doctor Who episode [aired], I would make a disc for Peter Jackson, and send it to him by mail," Moffat began. 

How did this all start? It came from a conversation that the two creators had about Who. "He was saying, 'It takes ages by rowing boat to New Zealand' or whatever we used in the pre-online era. So I said, 'Ah, I'll post them to you,'" Moffat offered. 

To say that contemporary crime thriller MobLand has an impressive cast is something of an understatement. The series features legitimate movie stars Pierce Brosnan, Tom Hardy and Helen Mirren. So, when can you plan on the arrival of the release date for MobLand Season 2 on Paramount+?

MobLand was created by Ronan Bennett. The series stars Hardy as fixer Harry Da Souza, who works for the Harrigan organized crime family. Heading up the family are Conrad Harrigan (Brosnan) and Maeve Harrigan (Helen Mirren). The cast also includes Paddy Considine as Kevin Harrigan, Joanne Froggatt as Jan Da Souza, Lara Pulver as Isabella "Bella" Harrigan, Anson Boon as Eddie Harrigan, Jasmine Jobson as Zosia, Mandeep Dhillon as Seraphina Harrigan, Janet McTeer as Kat McAllister, Jordi Mollà as Jaime Lopez and Toby Jones as Colin Tattersall.

The MobLand Season 2 release date is September 18th, 2026 on Paramount+. The show's sophomore season will consist of ten episodes, which will debut weekly on Mondays through November 20, 2026. It has been a little over a year since the MobLand Season 1 finale debuted on June 1st, 2025. And of course, we know that MobLand Season 2 is just one of the release dates you'll want to mark on your calendar as we head into the autumn season.

How do I watch Peaky Blinders? The answer isn't difficult. The BBC crime drama revolving around the Shelby crime family, set in the aftermath of World War I, is a straightforward narrative that begins with its pilot episode in 2013 and carries on, chronologically, through 6 seasons, one film, and an upcoming sequel series. But we're getting ahead of ourselves: This is how to watch Peaky Blinders in order:

As you can see, the Peaky Blinders watch order is very simple to parse, beginning with series 1, episode 1 and tracking (thus far) to the Netflix film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Originally, series creator Steven Knight toyed with the idea of continuing the story of main character Tommy Shelby with Peaky Blinders season 7, but opted to turn the story into a feature film instead. It debuted on Netflix March 20, 2026.

Yes, there is more Peaky Blinders on the horizon, with a sequel series picking up after Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. As reported by Popverse in October of 2025, the show is coming from OG series creator Steven Knight and will be executive produced by Cillian Murphy. The official logline of the sequel series is as follows:

Two corrections officers are behind bars after they were caught in the midst of a crime spree involving over $3,000 in stolen Magic: The Gathering cards, LEGO sets, a handheld vacuum, a massager, and more.

Kaitlyn Thomas and Shaun Smith were apprehended on August 17, and what Bay County (Florida) sheriffs discovered was evidence that it was part of a string of thefts over the course of at least three weeks targeting various Walmarts in the area.

“In conducting our interview with the two individuals," investigator Chris Coram told local ABC affiliate WMBB's Gabriela Peniston, "they subsequently confessed to the fact that they had been frequently coming to Bay County and committing retail thefts at different Walmarts, stealing these same kind of consistent items, the Magic: The Gathering cards, Lego sets, and then a subsequent search warrant that also provided all that evidence back out of the vehicle." 

It's no secret that Rick Riordan's smash hit fantasy YA series Percy Jackson and the Olympians is being adapted into a smash-hit fantasy streaming series on Disney+. Soon, the third season of the show will adapt The Titan's Curse, the 2007 third entry in Riordan's prose series. So when will the release date for Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 on Disney+ finally arrive?

In Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3, Annabeth Chase (Leah Sava Jeffries) is kidnapped, it's up to Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) and Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri) to rescue her. The show also features Charlie Bushnell as Luke Castellan, Daniel Diemer as Tyson and Dior Goodjohn as Clarisse La Rue, Kate McKinnon as Aphrodite, Hubert Smielecki as Apollo and Ming-Na Wen as Hera.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 release date is November 20th, 2026 on Disney+. The season will consist of eight episodes which will debut on a weekly basis. It will have been a little under a year since the previous season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians debuted on Disney+ on December 10th, 2025. And naturally, there are plenty of other small screen release dates you'll want to keep in mind as the year draws to a close.

In the America of the 22nd century, only one thing is certain: Judge Dredd is the law. Since 1977, the future lawman of Mega-City One — a reimagined East Coast of the US — has maintained law and order in the pages of long-running weekly anthology comic 2000 AD and beyond. Created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, Dredd has become a vehicle for stories spanning almost every genre imaginable, becoming one of the high points of the British comic industry in the process.

As the character prepares to celebrate his half-century anniversary, it’s time to look back at the long and varied career of Judge Joseph Dredd, and choose the best Judge Dredd comics of the past five decades. For those who have always wanted a chance to dive into the character’s acclaimed history, this is a guide for how to do so. Just make sure you behave while doing so, or else it’ll be five in the iso-cubes, creep.

One of the many things that Judge Dredd (the comic strip) is, is a comedy strip, and the Kenny Who? stories — which center around a Scottish comic book artist who tried to make it in Mega-City One — are some of the finest examples of Dredd-as-comedy. Simultaneously smart satire about comics and genuinely silly stories, the Kenny Who? trilogy demonstrates the versatility of Dredd as a vehicle for telling all kinds of tales about all kinds of people… all the while showcasing some genuinely beautiful art from Cam Kennedy. (His color work on ‘Beyond our Kenny’ is breathtaking.)

The world may be falling apart, but at least we still have South Park. The long-running, profanity-laden animated satire created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone will be returning for Season 29 on Paramount+ before you know it. So when can you plan of the release date for South Park Season 29 arriving?

South Park originally debuted on Comedy Central on August 13th, 1997 and the crude, deceptively simply animated series became an almost instant cult classic. The show follows a quartet of boys who live in South Park, Colorado, a "quiet mountain town" that is the epicenter for a plethora of chaotic events, including the genesis of the supervillain Professor Chaos. The show follows elementary school students Stan Marsh (Parker), Kyle Broflovski (Stone), Kenny McCormick (Stone) and Eric Cartman (Parker) as they deal with the cavalcade of bizarre and topical events that transpire in South Park. Over the decades, the cast has expanded to include a plethora of recognizable recurring characters, many of them voiced by Parker and Stone.

The South Park Season 29 release date is September 16th, 2026 on Paramount+. The season will be comprised of six episodes which will debut every other Monday, with the season finale debuting on November 25th, 2026. It has been roughly a year since the previous season of South Park debuted on October 15th, 2025. Naturally, South Park is just one of the small screen release dates that you'll want to keep in mind in the months to come.

Chris Claremont's nearly 17-year run on the X-Men ended somewhat unceremoniously in the early '90s after creative disagreements about where the series should go drove a rift between Claremont and then X-Men editor Bob Harras, as well as artist Jim Lee. 

At an X-Men writers panel at Terrificon 2026, Claremont discusses the many times he's come and gone from the mutant team, and fires a barb at the Image Comics founders, Lee included.

"It's like how many times have I been fired from X-Men? At least four. The first one was interesting. You know, [X-Men editor Bob Harras] had to come in and say, 'I probably shouldn't have let you leave the book.' And I said, 'I probably shouldn't have gone, but there we are.' That was after Image was born and, you know, certain artists decided they'd rather have all the money."

Critical Role's Matt Mercer isn't afraid of adaptations. After all, the world of The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein began as a story in his mind before becoming two beloved animated TV shows, a legion of novels and comics, and of course, the world's most successful TTRPG actual play series. However, there is one piece of media that Mercer thinks shouldn't be adapated at all:

Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves

Mercer said as much during his appearance on the YouTube series String and Tell with Tawny Platis, where both he and the series' host gushed about the experimental horror novel, which Mercer calls, "one of my favorite books of all time."

The first Stephen King novel is getting a brand-new adaptation from Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Life of Chuck). Carrie is the story of Carrie White (Summer H. Howell), a teenager who developed telekinetic powers in the wake of a series of traumatic events. So, when will the release date for this new adaptation of Carrie arrive for streaming on Prime Video?

Carrie stars Howell in the titular role. Samantha Sloyan plays Carrie's religious and abusive mother, Margaret. Siena Agudong plays Carrie's classmate Sue Snell, while Alison Thornton plays mean girl Chris Hargensen. Joel Oulette plays Sue's boyfriend Tommy Ross, Josie Totah plays Chris's prank co-conspirator Tina Blake, Arthur Conti plays bad boy Billy Nolan and Thalia Dudek plays Emaline. Rounding out the cast is Amber Midthunder as gym teacher Rita Desjardin and Matthew Lillard as school principal Henry Grayle.

The Carrie Season 1 release date is October 7th, 2026 on Prime Video. The miniseries will consist of eight episodes, all of which will be made available for streaming on that day. Carrie has previously been adapted several times, with movie adaptations in 1976, 2002 and 2013, a movie sequel in 1999 and a musical that debuted in 1988. Of course, Carrie is just one of the TV and streaming release dates that you'll want to keep in mind in the months to come.

The cult classic story Ranma 1/2 is in the midst of getting a new adaptation on Netflix. Based on the 1987 manga series of the same name by the legendary Rumiko Takahashi, this is just the latest onscreen adaptation of the story. So, when can you plan on the arrival of the release date for Ranma 1/2 Season 3 on Netflix?

Ranma 1/2 is the story of Ranma Saotome (Kappei Yamaguchi), whose life is turned upside down when he accidentally falls into the cursed springs of Jusenkyo. Forever after, Ranma is transformed into a girl when they come into contact with cold water, and then back into a boy when they come into contact with hot water. The series also stars Noriko Hidaka as Akane Tendou, Kouichi Ymadera as Ryouga Hibiki, Rei Sakuma as Shampoo, Kaori Nazuka as Ukyou Kounji, Miami Takayama as Nabiki Tendou, Kazuhiko Inoue as Happousai, Cho as Genma Saotome, Tomokazu as Sugita, Kikuko Inoue as Kasumi Tendou, Souun Tendou as Akio Ootsuka, Toshiyuki Morikawa as Toufuu Ono and Kenichi Ogata as the Narrator.

The Ranma 1/2 Season 3 release date is October 3rd, 2026 on Netflix. Currently, the number of episodes in Ranma 1/2 Season 3 has not been officially stated, however, both previous seasons consisted of 12 episodes apiece. The season is expected to debut new episodes one at a time on a weekly basis. It will have been about a year since Ranma 1/2 Season 2 debuted on Netflix on October 5th, 2025. And of course, there are a plethora of small screen release dates you'll want to keep in mind this autumn.

In War Season 1, created by George Kay for HBO Max and Sky Television, two rival London law firms face off against one another over the course of a volatile, high-profile defamation case. So when can you plan of the arrival of the release date for War Season 1 on HBO Max?

War Season 1 features an impressive cast who are more than capable of bringing the legal drama to life. Leading the series is Dominic West as tech mogul Morgan Henderson and Sienna Miller as renowned actress Carla Duval, two high profile public figures. Representing law firm Taylor & Brine are Phoebe Fox as Serena Byrne and James McArdle as Nicholas Taylor. Meanwhile, representing law firm Cathcarts are Pip Torrens as St. John Smallwood and Nina Sosanya as Beatrice "Queen Bea" Ubosi.

The War Season 1 release date is October 1st, 2026 on HBO Max in the United States and October 2nd, 2026 on Sky Television in the United Kingdom. The first season will be comprised of eight episodes, which will be released on a weekly basis, with the season finale expected to debut on November 19th, 2026 in the U.S. Of course, there are plenty of TV and streaming release dates for you to keep in mind in the weeks and months to come.

It's been a long time since we've seen James Spader's Ultron in the MCU. When Avengers: Age of Ultron was released in the spring of 2015, the creator of Ultron in Marvel Comics, Hank Pym, wasn't even in the MCU yet (that would come later that year with Ant-Man). Now, with the robotic big bad returning for the upcoming VisionQuest show on Disney+, it's time to get reacquainted with Ultron.  

In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, James Spader caught us up on what Ultron has been up to since we last saw him in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron. "He's been in prison, where he's had access to the internet, television, history, and he's just been consuming," Spader said about Ultron, which is dangerously close to how I'd describe myself in 2020, "and he's been painting and making trouble." 

Now, the last time Ultron had access to the internet, he immediately turned evil. One now has to wonder: has Ultron watched Skibidi Toilet compilations? Does he have nuanced thoughts about the absurdist YouTube series? What about Clavicular?

Remember 2019? Yeah. I, too, need to sit down. Just like the Titans football team that Denzel Washington led in Remember the Titans, Marvel Studios would like you to remember 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Or rather, the experience of seeing Endgame in theaters at a time when people actually respected the "no phones allowed" policy in movie theaters. 

Now, Avengers: Endgame will be re-released in theaters next month in a move called Avengers Endgame: Encore. A trailer for the re-release includes a not-so-subtle tag: "Be the first to see an exclusive look at Avengers: Doomsday." Take a look at it below (the trailer, not Doomsday). 

The reason why I asked if you remembered 2019 earlier in this article is that there was a re-release of Endgame in June of that year that included a deleted scene of Hulk saving people from a burning building. While I didn't mind seeing Endgame again in theaters, the deleted scene itself was hilariously underwhelming because the CGI wasn't even completed. So essentially, Hulk appeared in the scene looking like he was in a cutscene of a PS2 game. And after watching a three-hour-long film with immaculate CGI, it was comically jarring. 

If you're expecting a character named THAAL SINESTRO to be the big bad in HBO's Lanterns show... well, you'd be wrong! Sure, Monsieur Sinestro may be a villain in DC Comics, but he is not thee villain of Lanterns. And that's by design, according to Lanterns showrunner Damon Lindelof. Because, it turns out, there isn't one central villain of the season.

With the reveal of Sinestro in the second episode of Lanterns, Lindelof spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the process of reshaping an iconic evil guy like Sinestro into a grounded story like Lanterns. Lindelof compared Sinestro's role in Lanterns to Hannibal Lecter's in The Silence of the Lambs, where the serial killer essentially serves as the world's creepiest workplace consultant to the protagonist, Clarice Starling. "As big of a trope as it is to go visit Hannibal Lecter in the prison or Loki, this is tried and true," Lindelof said. 

"We wanted [Sinestro] in the show just because of his place in the mythology. But by nature of the fact that we were telling a mystery more than we were telling a thriller, we don’t really have a big bad in the season," Lindelof began.  

Last year, we were treated to an excellent new Witcher book, Crossroads of Ravens, that was translated from Andrzej Sapkowski's original Polish prose by longtime Witcher translator David French. Crossroads of Ravens' English translation also came with the announcement that new translations by David French of two earlier Witcher books, The Last Wish and Blood of Elves, would arrive sometime in this year. And now, we finally have a release date for the David French translations of The Last Wish and Blood of Elves. 

The David French translations of The Witcher books, The Last Wish and Blood of Elves, will be released on April 27, 2027, according to the listings for each book on the publisher Hachette Book Group's website. Take a look at the cover for Blood of Elves below. 

The Last Wish and Blood of Elves are the first and third books in The Witcher saga by Andrzej Sapkowski. The existing English translations of both books were done by Danusia Stok. Speaking as a reader myself, I prefer the prose of David French's translations over Stok's (even though I haven't yet read French's translations of The Last Wish and Blood of Elves) because they feel more atmospheric and less clunky. That said, I'm not fluent in Polish, so I wouldn't be able to verify whether Sapkowski's Polish prose in The Last Wish and Blood of Elves really is as clunky as Stok's translation makes it out to be. 

We don’t often think of playing an android as a physically demanding role for an actor, but Philomena Cunk star Diane Morgan found out that there are hidden dangers to playing an AI companion. While filming her new BBC sitcom, Ann Droid, Morgan found herself needing physiotherapy to undo the damage playing an android did to her.

Diane Morgan’s impressively dry wit makes her an ideal comedian to play a comedic robot, but she certainly put the work in to really nail the portrayal. Ann Droid follows widowed pensioner Sue who is given a “pre-loved” robot carer by her son after he finally moves out of the house. That robot is Linda, played by Diane Morgan.

In a recent interview, she talked about the difficulties of playing a robot on screen. “I had to see a physio at the end of it. And I got an ulcer on my eye from the contact lens. And from not blinking! That was such a stupid decision! No one cares! No one is going to go, ‘Oh wow. She’s not blinking. That must have been really difficult.’ No one will even notice.”

Last year, the world got a bit of a shock when, for the second time in recent years, the Doctor regenerated into a familiar face. Rather than David Tennant returning as the Fourteenth Doctor, this time it was Billie Piper making her return to Doctor Who. Following Ncuti Gatwa’s departure from the show, it seemed that Billie Piper was playing the Doctor. However, the actress says that isn’t the case.

Speaking at For the Love of Fantasy & Sci-Fi in London, Billie Piper explicitly denied that she would be playing the Sixteenth Doctor in future episodes of Doctor Who. “I am not the next Doctor,” she said during a panel. “I am Rose Tyler in hiatus.”

For the record, we don’t know what she could mean by that, and she seems to be aware of that. “Sorry, that’s a really cryptic answer,” Piper admitted. “But because I’m not currently filming Doctor Who as the Doctor, I can’t lie and say otherwise.” 

Berserk has always been about more than just a guy with an impossibly large sword; it is also about horrific trauma and the road to recovery from it. That road is never an easy one because Kentaro Miura wanted his characters to feel real, and that meant making recovery as important to the story as the initial trauma.

During a 2019 interview, Kentaro Miura discussed the moment in Volume 40 when Casca, after being in a semi-vegetative state for much of the series’ run, had her memories and mental state restored. It is a great victory for Guts, but it also symbolizes the start – not the end – of Casca’s journey toward recovery. “I was deeply moved [by this moment],” Miura explained. “However, Casca’s real struggle starts now. For Casca to truly recover, she has to analyze and understand her own experiences and resolve them herself. She has to confront what Griffith and the demons did.”

The fact that Casca didn’t immediately return to her previous state and embrace Guts, who had worked hard to protect her across the journey to Elfhelm, was shocking to many fans but was very in keeping with how Miura approaches writing trauma and conflict. “Since I’m depicting human beings, that’s how it ends up. If I don’t properly portray how humans would react in situations like this, it won’t become a compelling story.”

Not every episode of Netflix's Black Mirror is an absolute bummer. Take, for example, San Junipero, the fourth episode of Black Mirror season 3, the first season to have premiered on Netflix instead of the show's original home - the UK's Channel 4. Here's the thing, though - as it turns out, San Junipero didn't just come about because creator Charlie Brooker wanted to tell a more upbeat scifi story.

It apparently came about after he challenged himself to do so.

That's what we learned from Brooker's appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2025. Asked about whether Brooker ever considers his audience as he's writing episodes of Black Mirror, Brooker responded with a not-quite-yes, not-quite-no.

There are a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the BBC show starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Andrew Scott only scratched the surface of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Baker Street oeuvre. Now, the stars of Sherlock have gone on to build successful careers in Hollywood and beyond. And it begs the question: are we overdue for a Sherlock revival? And would Steven Moffat be onboard for a reunion?

These are the questions that were posed to Sherlock co-creator and co-writer Steven Moffat by the Half the Picture podcast. "Yeah, if I can persuade everybody else. Of course I'd revisit it," Moffat said in response. "What can you ever say, that you've ran out of Sherlock Holmes stories? There are sixty originals, and we've done thirteen or fourteen, I can never remember. But there's loads more you can do with the show."

The writer even expressed enthusiasm for revisiting Sherlock and Watson as middle-aged men: "I'd quite like to revisit it simply because our two leads would be the normal age for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. We did younger ones, and normally they're presented as about fifty [years old]," he reasoned. It wouldn't be the first time that a TV series would revisit its characters in another stage of life. The Paramount+ show Picard showed the Star Trek: The Next Generation captain as an elderly man living on a farm in France, while Twin Peaks: The Return was... certainly something. 

Before even the first Iron Man movie was released by Marvel Studios, there was talk of a spinoff. We're not talking about the MCU; we're talking about a comic. Writer/director Jon Favreau and one of the Iron Man movie designers (and comic artist), Adi Granov, launched a tie-in series the same summer that the Iron Man movie came out, titled Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas. But like some of the hands I've played at the casino, it didn't pan out and only two issues of a planned four were ever released.

But now, there's talk of a return.

Granov, who eventually segued out of being a comics artist into a career as a full-time movie designer and comics cover artist, recently shared in passing that interest in the now 18-year-old unfinished Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas is picking up.

For more than 60 years, the BBC's Doctor Who has kept the universe safe from monstrous threats in space and time. With almost 900 episodes to date, it's no surprise there have been certain alien races and creatures that pop up again and again across the decades, proving their own deadliness over and over. Here’s our ranking of Doctor Who’s adversaries by just how adversaries they truly are.

Four years before David Bowie sang about Life on Mars, there was proof of it on television screens across the United Kingdom, thanks to the Ice Warriors — refugees from the red planet hibernating in secret on Earth in advance of a planned invasion to flee their dying homeworld. Unlike many Doctor Who monsters, though, there’s a happy ending for the Ice Warriors if you can navigate the confused timeline of a time travel series: they eventually become members of the Galactic Federation, and even assisted the Third Doctor at some point in the future. Their future, I should clarify, not the Doctor’s future.

What’s more terrifying than an alien race that’s a creepy organic monster? An alien consciousness that can only possess plastic, and therefore turns anything made out of plastic — including mannequins and dolls! — into creepy non-organic monsters! If that sounds a little bit silly, then… okay, the Autons (technically the name given to plastic animated by something called the Nestene Consciousness) were slightly silly, as their trick of opening their hands to reveal hidden guns made clear. But just because they were ridiculous, that didn’t make them also somewhat unsettling. There’s a reason this was the monster that relaunched the series with 2005’s ‘Rose,’ after all.

We all know someone who loves Batman and for whom we shop Batman gifts, collectibles, and more for each holiday season. But with a plethora of Batman and DC Comics merch on the internet to buy, where should you look first? Well, whether you're a DC Comics veteran or a complete noob (complimentary) with a nerdy loved one, look no further. I'll guide you through the best Batman comics, toys, box sets, statues, and musical instruments that money can buy. 

Quick Picks for Batman gifts

Why it's a great gift: For anyone who has never read a Batman comic, Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Scott Williams, and Alex Sinclair is a great place to start because it delivers a "greatest hits" of Batman's famous rogues gallery. In featuring a range of recognizable villains, Hush is an accessible entry point for newcomers. Even better, there's a DC Compact Comics Edition of the story that delivers the entire arc for just $10. 

Nightwing may be the center of the DC Universe in the comics, but is there anyone who has a similar role in DC Studios' television and film projects? Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner, perhaps? As the redheaded Green Lantern, Fillion has appeared in Peacemaker season 2, the 2025 Superman film, and HBO's Lanterns show. In short, while Guy Gardner hasn't headlined his own DC Universe project yet, he's been a recurring player in the larger narrative fabric being woven from project to project. 

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Nathan Fillion was asked if he viewed his Guy Gardner character as an "anchor being" in the emergent DCU onscreen. 

"I don’t know if I’m an anchor being. I do think I am a thread being. The quilt of the DC universe is being assembled before us. We’re witnessing the pieces coming forth, and now we’re starting to see threads between those pieces tying them together. Guy Gardner is enjoying being one of those characters that is the backdrop to this universe. It affords some consistency," Fillion said. 

It's British Week here at Popverse, during which we're celebrating all the best that's come out of the UK's comics, literature, and of course, TV. So you can imagine how pleased we were to hear, on August 24, that one of the most renowned British TV shows is currently shooting its next chapter. Then again, I guess ww weren't exactly surprised: Black Mirror has a way of predicting the future.

That's right - Black Mirror's next season of harrowing, not-so-futuristic science-fiction tales is being filmed right now, according to the good folks at Variety. For anyone who's counting (and who isn't?) this will be Black Mirror's season 8, the fifth season to be a product of Netflix since the streamer starting producing episodes in 2016. 

Little to nothing is known about the upcoming season of the anthology series, however, one thing we can count on is that Black Mirror creator and frequent writer Charlie Brooker will once again be running the show, writing episodes alongside Ms. Marvel scribe Bisha K.Ali. Although Variety does confirm that the episodes are in production right now, this confirmation does not include a Black Mirror season 8 release date, currently unknown as of this writing.

The whole of the Marvel-loving internet (and indeed, your pals at Popverse) have been abuzz lately in news of the MCU's official X-Men casting, chatting here and there about the excitement of folks like Inde Navarrette joining the team and wondering who else, if anyone, will join the roster. However, for every lucky actor that got cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's take on the Children of the Atom, there are legions of folks who missed out. Still, for at least one actor, that isn't such a bad thing.

The actor in question is Ozark and Task star Tom Pelphrey, who up until recently, was speculated to be in the running for the X-Men's team lead, Charles Xavier. Of course, we now know that the role will be going to Christopher Abbott, but Pelphrey doesn't seem to have any hard feelings. In fact, according to an interview Pelphrey did with The Hollywood Reporter, there's a pretty big silver lining to not nabbing the role.

"When it comes to opportunities like [Professor X]," said the actor. "I am always of two minds. I am always a little torn in half. That’s a very long, serious commitment, and that makes me genuinely nervous because a lot of things can change in that time. So half of me thinks an experience like that could be cool and exciting, while the other half of me is a little worried about what could happen."

So, you’re probably here because you’re a little confused about who Psylocke is. Sometimes she’s called “Betsy,” and sometimes she’s called “Kwannon,” so who is she? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many people before you have been confused about what’s going on with her, and many more after you will be confused. 

Let’s start from the beginning. There was a white British girl with telepathic powers named Betsy Braddock who dyed her hair purple, created back in 1976's Captain Britain #8 by artist Herb Trimpe and the British-born writer Chris Claremont. Betsy became one of the X-Men in 1986 when she joined under the code name Psylocke in the New Mutants Annual #2 by Claremont and Alan Davis. So, initially, Psylocke is a white British lady named Betsy in her original body.

Then, beginning with 1989’s Uncanny X-Men #256 by Claremont, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams, Betsy became amnesiac and was kidnapped by the ninja organization known as the Hand. And for lack of a better word, Betsy was given a 'makeover' that transformed her physical appearance into that of a Japanese woman’s (with purple hair and eyes), because “we can’t have a Westerner running the Hong Kong underworld" according to her then-boss, the Mandarin. With her new look, Betsy was trained by the Hand and became a ninja assassin. 

I don't know what your feeds are like, reader, but if you're into fantasy like I am, I bet you've been seeing the word "grimdark" popping up in your spaces lately. I'm far from the expert on what the subgenre means exactly, but I do know some of the steps - it's sword & sorcery storytelling with much bleaker themes and connotations. There is one expert I know of, however, and while we don't have an exact definition of grimdark from Critical Role's Matt Mercer, we do at least have his thoughts on why it's showing up so much.

The Legend of Vox Machina voice actor and usual Critical Role GM recently appeared on the YouTube series String and Tell with Tawny Platis, where he spoke about everything from his personal experience in the sound booth to the current state of AI and its threat to artists. And speaking of dismal worlds, Mercer also happened to touch on what he called the "dark nerd" trend, a trend for which Mercer is "unabashed in [his] geekery."

"From a societal standpoint," The Mighty Nein voice actor began, "There's a lot of frustration. There's a lot of need to express stories that empower those who feel disenfranchised, those that want to try and exhibit necessary, large-scale change in a world that feels oppressive. There's now a generation of - specifically, game designers - but overall, writers and creators that have been feeling that for so long. We have an entire Gen Z generation that has come into a space where the world that they were promised, even more so than the Millennials, is very much gone." 

Marvel Phase 7 currently consists of three confirmed movies in 2028: X-Men, Ghost Rider, and Black Panther III. These are the first Marvel Studios releases scheduled after 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, giving us our first look at the MCU's next era. What that era looks like after Doctor Doom has had a chance to remake everything in his own image is another question entirely.

(Last update: August 24, 2026.)

These are the only confirmed Marvel Phase 7 movies as of writing.

I've got a question for you: when you're reading the mana cost for a Magic: The Gathering card aloud, how do you phrase it? According to Magic's head of Design, Mark Rosewater, you're probably saying it differently than the design team behind the cards. 

Rosewater wrote about this discrepancy between how Magic players refer to mana costs on cards versus the game's Research & Development (R&D) team on the MTG website. In case you're not familiar, during playtesting leading up to the release of Limited Edition Alpha (the game's first-ever printing of its first core set), mana costs were written with the total number of mana required followed by a colored mana symbol indicating how many of that specific colored mana were required to cast a spell. So a card that would today be written as 2 generic mana 1 black mana would be written as the number 3 followed by 1 black mana. As you might imagine, that was confusing to players. 

According to Rosewater, "Richard [Garfield] found time and time again that playtesters would read "3 mana 1 black mana" as being a four-mana spell requiring one black mana. That happened enough that he changed the system of writing mana cost to match the players' intuition." 

Ever since the first issue dropped, Sean Murphy's take on Gotham City has been a favorite among fans. Known for its fascinating character redesigns, social commentary, and slightly controversial ships, Murphy's Batman: White Knight saga has been a book to watch for unique twists on the Bat-family. But now, Murphy is expanding his vision to include even more of the DC Comics Universe, confirming that his next focus in the White Knight storyline will be the full Justice League.

Well, his version of the Justice League, anyway.

That's what we gleaned from a recent AMA Murphy did over at The League of Comic Geeks website, where Murphy was asked questions by readers regarding everything from his take on Zorro to his upcoming Image Comics title The Last Driver. But there were, of course, plenty of curious DC fans in the thread, such as the person who asked about the appearance of Superman in the last chapter of White Knight. What other Justice League characters, asked @Tristmal23, would Murphy like to work into his alt-universe?

DC Comics has unveiled the next stage in its celebratory plans for the 40th anniversary of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. DC has commissioned 10 artists to create new Watchmen illustrations, to be used as variant covers to its flagship DCU titles such as Batman and Action Comics over the course of November 2026.

Artists such as Frank Quitely, Nicola Scott, Mikel Janín, Chris Bachalo and more will be illustrating their renditions of the Gibbons-designed heroes and villains. Here is a list of each variant cover, and when they're currently scheduled to be available in your comic shop: 

Related: "Nostalgia is an illness": Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore on the state of comics and well, all of mainstream entertainment

At this point, readers of DC's megahit Absolute Batman know to expect the unexpected. Just take the character of Martha Wayne, for example, who was not only revealed to be alive at the end of issue #1, but later an actual member of the Court of Owls. Even still, it may be that the biggest surprise is still coming. According to Scott Snyder, at least.

Snyder said as much while speaking to YouTuber Jack Boz during an appearance at FAN EXPO Chicago. Asked to give a tease for what's coming down the line in terms of Absolute Batman's story, Snyder was cagey about details but did drop a specific issue number that fans should look out for.

"I don't want to give too many spoilers," said The Wytches writer, "I'll just say that I promise like something happens in 25 that will spin the book in a direction that I don't think anyone will guess."

Right now, we’re in a bit of a lull for the Tower of God release schedule. Production on the hit manhwa’s fourth season is currently underway, but new chapters are not currently being released, either in the main story or the Urek Mazino spin-off. Therefore, we’re all just waiting for the Tower of God release schedule to kick back in.

Right now, there is no schedule for when new Tower of God chapters will come out. The manhwa has been on hiatus since February 2025, when the Season 3 storyline wrapped up. Similarly, the Urek Mazino spin-off manhwa finished earlier in 2026, leaving no new chapters to be published.

We don’t currently have a release date for the next Tower of God chapter. The most recent chapter of Tower of God was Tower of God: Urek Mazino 58, which was released on August 18, 2026. The next release will be Tower of God Season 4, but we don’t know when this will come out yet.

The United Kingdom is a small country with an oversized cultural footprint, especially when it comes to pop culture. After all, what would pop music be without the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, punk, rave, or any number of musical acts and genres that have their origins in the U.K.? Where would visual art be without British figures from John Constable and J.M.W. Turner through David Hockney and Banksy? And what would modern contemporary cinema be without Star Wars?

Yes, that’s right: Star Wars is British. I’m just declaring it right now.

Obviously, I know that the Star Wars series is funded and released by American companies: 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, and now the Walt Disney Company. Similarly, I also appreciate that the directors and writers of each of the big screen Star Wars movies to this point have been American — and, also, that the roots of the original trilogy come from specifically American sources as well, whether it’s the movie serials of the 1940s or the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. And yet, despite all of that, Star Wars simply feels like a British film series on some basic, important, level.

DC Comics has quietly relinquished the rights to its 50-issue Viking crime series Northlanders back to its creator/writer Brian Wood. DC and Wood stopped doing new work together over a decade ago following the first of several sexual misconduct allegations, however DC continued to reprint Wood's creator-owned work such as Northlanders, as well as DMZ - which it later developed into a short-lived HBO Max series.

"DC Comics/Vertigo published it until recently, when I was able to reclaim the publishing rights and the copyright, which is why I’m experimenting with some new Northlanders stories, seeing how the 2026 version of me does compared to the 2007 version," Wood wrote on his Substack back in 2025.

Since regaining full rights to Northlanders, Wood has been writing serialized prose Northlanders stories on his Substack and has been working on reprints with international publishers.

First, he stole the Declaration of Independence. Then, he kidnapped the President of the United States. What other Robin Hood-esque crimes could Nicolas Cage commit for (and in relation to the history of) his country? Well good news, gang - it won't be long until we get an actual answer to that question. As of this writing, National Treasure 3 is officially in the works.

The news comes from no less a reliable source than Jon Turteltaub himself, the director of both installments of the franchise that sees Nic Cage as historian/asskicker Benjamin Franklin Gates. Speaking at a live taping of the National Treasure Hunt Podcast in Philadelphia (where else?), Turtletaub confirmed that, after he spent years trying to get the project off the ground, Disney has finally given the director the OK to complete the historical mystery trilogy.

"It’s finally real," Turtletaub said, before clarifing, "Now, it’s 'Hollywood real,' meaning things can happen. Nic gets hit by a bus, there’s no National Treasure. If I get hit by a bus, there’s probably a National Treasure. Welcome to Hollywood, that’s Hollywood."

The website for the renowned comics publisher Fantagraphics has allegedly been duplicated by an unauthorized third party, and the third party undertook a scheme to fraudulently take customers' credit card information under the guise of selling comics. The scheme, which appears to have been in operation for months, has been shut down for the time being.

"SCAM ALERT: Do not order from https://fantagraphics-us.com, it is not a legitimate website!" reads a statement from the actual Fantagraphics company. "They have cloned our real website and are stealing people’s credit card information. If you want to order directly from us, please do so at https://fantagraphics.com."

According to a database maintained by the global nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the fraudulent domain appears to have been opened on February 14, 2026. The ownership of the domain is obscured from ICANN, with identity shielding provided by the Japanese domain registration service Onamae. 

The weekend was filled with news about the One Piece franchise. In addition to a couple of new names added to the One Piece Netflix cast, we also got word of two new One Piece movies coming in the next three years. What’s more, the upcoming One Piece Film God Valley movie will do something the series has never done before: adapt canon material from the manga.

The God Valley Incident in One Piece was one of the most important events in the manga, even though it took place nearly 40 years before Luffy set sail to find his own crew. It was first mentioned during the Wano Arc, but the true nature of it – and how it tied so many of the characters together – wasn’t fully explained until the Elbaph Arc. We’re being intentionally vague to avoid spoilers for anyone catching up, but the God Valley Incident details the mixture of tragedy and heroism that One Piece has been known for.

At the end of One Piece Day 2026, Toei Animation confirmed that a new One Piece movie is coming in 2027; the first one since 2022’s One Piece Film: Red, in fact. One Piece Film God Valley will release in 2027 to mark the 30th anniversary of the manga’s release. This is the first time a One Piece movie has directly adapted events from the manga; the chapters detailing the God Valley Incident haven’t been shown in the anime thanks to its new seasonal release schedule, so this will be the first time they have been animated anywhere.

Berserk creator Kentaro Miura has always been a perfectionist; it is why the series had so many long delays before his death in 2021. However, that drive for perfection also pushed him to create some truly breathtaking scenes in Berserk. It also presented some interesting problems for the artist when Guts travelled to Elfhelm in Volume 39, and the scale of the elf population suddenly struck Miura.

During a 2019 interview, Kentaro Miura talked about the level of detail in his drawings. His immediate response was rather self-deprecating. “The level of detail I put into my drawings is an illness. There’s no other way to describe it,” he said. Volume 39, which sees Guts travel to Elfhelm, presented a unique problem for this “illness.”

“The scale of the elves was something I hadn’t considered,” Miura explained. Having so many characters the same size as Puck on one page at the same time was incredibly difficult when we actually tried it. And then you want to give each and every one of them a reaction. They have souls, after all.”

Even as the One Piece anime embarks on the long-awaited Elbaph arc, fans of the live-action Netflix series have some exciting news to start their week. As The Battle for Alabasta looms closer, the One Piece Season 3 cast has added several members to help bring one of the best One Piece arcs to life.

The announcement was clearly focused on adding multiple characters who come from Alabasta itself. Emilio Sakraya is playing Koza, the leader of the rebellion threatening to tear Alabasta apart, while Omid Abtahi is playing Koza’s older brother, Toto. On the other side of the conflict are Jamie Ward and Nabeel Khan, who are playing Pell and Chaka, the two highest-ranking members of the Alabasta military.

It isn’t a secret that One Piece Season 3 will focus heavily on Alabasta. The finale of Season 2 paved the road to conflict with Sir Crocodile and the Baroque Works organization that is fomenting rebellion in Alabasta. Recent casting announcements have arguably looked beyond this season to an unconfirmed Season 4; Xolo Maridueña is joining the One Piece cast as Protgas D. Ace, Luffy’s brother who really makes his impact much later in the series.

Ram V may be one of DC's most popular writers of the last several years, but as of right now, he's got no plans to join the publisher's ultra-successful Absolute line, which reinvents classic characters with new origins and adventures, though he has been in touch with the line's de facto leader, Absolute Batman writer Scott Snyder.

"I'm not doing anything on the Absolute side of things," V states in a League of Comic Geeks AMA when asked if he's considered an Absolute Aquaman title. "While Scott's been welcoming, I usually don't have books suggested to me. I've almost always picked the projects I'd like to work on. And I'd been doing so much superheroing, I felt the need to step away. My attention is largely focused on Deicidium for now. I'm glad everyone's enjoying staggering work on the Absolute stuff though!"

Ram V recently finished up a two-year 'exclusive contract with DC. 

A rite of passage for any Doctor Who fan is watching the episode 'Blink' for the first time, and getting scared out of your mind. Written by Steven Moffat and featuring David Tennant's Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha, Blink is also known as a "Doctor-lite" episode because of how the Doctor and Martha have minor roles in the episode. Still, despite the scant screentime for the Doctor and Martha, Doctor Who fans still love Blink. 

In an intrview with the Half the Picture podcast, Moffat revealed the trepidation he felt about writing the "Doctor-lite" episode, because he was worried that the episode was not going to be received well by fans. Moffat was put on the "Doctor-lite" episode that would end up becoming Blink because he was taken off writing a two-part episode with the Daleks because he wasn't able to make the deadlines. 

"I was very, very excited about the Dalek two-parter. But, I looked at my schedule. And I was doing [the mini-series] Jekyll at the time, I said, 'I'm never going to make it. I'm never, ever gonna be able to do that.' So I very shamefacedly said, 'Look, I'm really sorry, but I can't. As compensation for jerking you around, I'll do the Doctor-lite this year, the one that nobody likes," Moffat began.  

It is impossible to deny the popularity of Magic: The Gathering’s Commander format. Commander has a reputation of being a more casual format that is friendly to beginners because of the widespread availability of pre-constructed Commander decks, and because Commander does not have a tournament culture around it like Standard does with the Magic Pro Tour. Speaking for myself, I enjoy playing Commander the most because the slower pace of the games gives me the chance to chitchat with my friends. 

But at the same time, getting a pod together can be tricky sometimes. Maybe folks don’t have a local gaming shop that does a Commander night, or they’re not able to attend the event for whatever reason. What if they only have one other person that they want to play Magic with, but not necessarily in the cutthroat Standard format? Or, what if someone has collected a billion copies of Pestilence Rats for their Rat Commander deck, but just found out that Commander’s rules only allow for decks to have a single copy of a non-basic card per deck, as long as that card doesn’t specify that the player can have an infinite number of it in their deck (looking at you, Rat Colony and Relentless Rats)? 

I’m paraphrasing (and maybe throwing in a bit of personal experience), but this was the gist of a question that a fan sent in for Magic’s Head Designer, Mark Rosewater on Magic’s website. In answering it, Rosewater addressed the need for card variance in Commander (which is why there’s the single card rule I mentioned earlier), as well as how that impacts the skill floor of the format, in relation to a 1v1 format like Standard. 

Hercule Poirot endures as one of the greatest detectives in all fiction. Created by the world's bestselling author, Agatha Christie, in 1920, Poirot featured in 54 short stories and 35 novels, a literary career spanning 55 years. However, Poirot's gentlemanly demeanor and brillaint mind have also left an indelible mark on the cinematic world, with a list of TV or movie adaptations nearly as long as Christie's original stories. To help you make sense of it all, Popverse presents this complete watch order of all Hercule Poirot adaptations.

Above you can see all of the movies and television programs that were based on an Agatha Christie-written story starring Hercule Poirot. Some notes to make here: Firstly, there are three early adaptations of the Poirot stories made in the 1930s starring Austin Trevor as the Belgian detective:

These were not included in the list because, as of this writing, they are believed to have been lost. The second note is that Poirot's animated adaptation, Japanese anime Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, is incredibly difficult to find DVD copies of, and thus is hard to put on a watch order.

Before Jean Grey returned from the dead, legendary X-Men writer Chris Claremont intended to introduce her older sister as part of X-Factor, with a set of mutant powers all her own that would have guided the course of the story.

Speaking at an X-Men writers panel at Terrificon 2026, Claremont says he would have given Jean's older sister the power to find and track mutants like a "living Cerebro," though she would have had to fully hone her powers over the course of X-Factor's run. However, plans changed when Marvel decided to bring Jean Grey back to life.

"My idea was, if you need a fifth person and you need a woman and you need a Grey, Jean had a big sister, and she's a mutant. I've established that. What's her power? She's a living version of Cerebro. She's the one who takes them out and leads them to the mutant they've got to fix or find or whatever," Claremont explains of his reluctance to bring Jean back from the dead. "But she's human. I mean, as a mutant is, and she doesn't know the slightest thing about how to work her power. So, things go wrong. Things go wrong all the time. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they do, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. But it brings tension into every encounter with their target, and leaves Jean out of it until, let's say, a year later or two years later, as we did with killing her."

After 47 years, one of DC's first Black superheroines, Vixen, is getting her first ongoing series from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Khary Randolph, and Williams is setting her sights on a 47-issue run, one for each year it took for Vixen to finally get her own ongoing.

"I really feel like it has a very good chance of actually making it to 25 issues. I would love an omnibus. My goal is to get to 47 issues if possible. 47 is the amount of years that Vixen has gone without an ongoing since her inception," Williams tells The Comic Pals.

"The other idea here is that I would love for the Vixen annuals to be a showcase for newer writers to come in and tell stories with this character," she adds. "So if this book is successful in the way that I really believe that it can, then that means that that annual will be another chance for newer voices and creators to jump on for people to discover them and then also for them to have something on their resume so they can hopefully branch off and do their thing."

The ShortBox Comics Fair has become one of the most exciting showcases for independent comics. Founded by critic/publisher Zainab Akhtar, the month-long digital event is essentially a pop-up shop of new comics from around the world, available to anyone around the world. In many ways, it's where the next comics talent gets their first spotlight, but also where the rising stars show off their next project. Names such as Victoria Ying (Diana & Nubia: Princesses of the Amazons), Hamish Steele (DeadEndia), Sas Milledge (The Ravel Cycle graphic novels), Theo Stultz (Maleficent), Laura Knetzger (Bug Boys), Ben Sears (Young Shadow), and David Lafuente (Ultimate Spider-Man).

The remarkable part is that the ShortBox Comics Fair is essentially a one-person operation. Founder Zainab Akhtar personally selects all the comics on exhibit, builds the site, manages the marketing, and connects readers to work they might never encounter at a traditional convention or fair. The fair has grown from roughly 40 comics exhibited in 2020 to 145 in its most recent outing, and despite taking a one-year hiatus for 2026, the 2027 ShortBox Comics Fair is already picking up steam to be bigger than ever before.

Critical Role's Matt Mercer knows his way around a horror story. As you might recall if you've watched any of the Critical Role Age of Umbra storylines, the frequent GM and Daggerheart co-creator is well-versed in tales of dread and doom. Still, there are areas of the horror sphere that Mercer gravitates toward more than others, and in a recent discussion around his favorite fandoms, the The Legend of Vox Machina voice actor expounded on which.

The interview in question went down on the YouTube series String and Tell with Tawny Platis, where Exandria's creator and The Mighty Nein's own Essek Thelyss began his discussion about horror with the kind that he doesn't quite like. 

"I love horror," Mercer said, "But I love horror that's done well. I'm not a big fan of like the Hostels, you know, the horror that's just torture porn."

The list of voices Matt Mercer has done for Critical Role is, um, long. From hero to villain to everything in between, across Campaigns 1, 2, and 3, Mercer had played cosmic entities and weird lil guys since the dawn of the D&D actual play series in 2015. Some stay with him more than others, of course, with a few of the voices even making appearances in Mercer's everyday life. Which one in particular comes out the most?

Well, the answer might surprise you.

The Legend of Vox Machina voice actor recently appeared on YouTube series String and Tell with Tawny Platis, where the usual CR GM dove into a host of topics relating to his work as a character-maker. Obviously, characters like The Mighty Nein's Essek Thelyss have made a great impact on the Critter fanbase, but in this chat, Mercer got candid about which Mighty Nein character continues to make an impact (maybe unexpectedly) in his day-to-day

Boston Blue season 2 won't just continue the story begun with 2025's Boston Blue season 1 - it's the next chapter in a cop drama that's been a staple of CBS TV ever since 201. But when will Boston Blue season 2 episodes come out, and where will fans be able to stream them? That's exactly what Popverse's guide to Boston Blue season 2 is here to answer. 

Before you continue, a quick spoiler warning: some of the internet's questions about Boston Blue season deal directly with plot points from the previous season. So while we won't try to reveal those plot points without cause, consider this a spoiler warning for Boston Blue season 1.

Boston Blue's season 2's release date is October 9, 2026. If you'll recall, the end of Boston Blue's debut season wrapped up raised the stakes for the show's leads, Detectives Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) and Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green). Specifically, a special election for the District Attorney promises to weigh heavily on Boston Blue's season 2.

Fire Country season 5 promises to be CBS's hottest chapter of the drama yet (pun intended). Starring Max Thieriot as ex-con-turned-firefighting-hero Bode Donovan, Fire Country season 5 has been confirmed to air this fall. But exactly when will Fire Country season 5 drop? Where can you stream it, and what time do episodes come out? Popverse's guide to Fire Country season 5 is here to answer your questions.

Be aware - we're going to do our best not to give away too much of the story unnecessarily, but there are some FAQs out there that require us to spoil parts of the plot. Allow this to serve as a spoiler warning for Fire Country seasons 1-4. 

Fire Country season 5's release date is October 9, 2026. After Fire Country season 4 ended with the events of the Pineville Dam disaster, we expect the upcoming chapter to pick up from that fallout, as well as the [no spoilers] lovey-dovey events that concluded Fire Country season 4.

It's been months since audiences got a chance to see a happy ending (and Crawford and Violet get married!) in the season 4 finale to Fire Country - but the show is set to return this October for a new season of heated hijinks. So, what do you need to remember before the release date for Fire Country Season 5 on CBS arrives this fall?

Created by Max Thieriot, Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, Fire Country stars Thieriot as Bode Donovan, a young convict who joined the California Conservation Camp Program, in which prisoners assist Cal Fire in firefighting. Now no longer an inmate but simply a full-fledged Cal Fire firefighter, Donovan is assigned to his fictional Northern California hometown, Edgewater.

In addition to Donovan's storyline, Cal Fire also follows the stories of other fire fighters (including some former inmates) as they work together to fight wildfires in the titular and volatile region. In addition to Thieriot as Donovan, the show also features Kevin Alejandro as Manuel "Manny" Perez, Jordan Calloway as Jake Crawford, Jules Latimer as Eve Edwards, Diane Farr as Sharon Leone, and Olivia Thirlby as Cecilia Jade “CJ” Ryan.

The Shonda Rhimes-created medical procedural drama Grey's Anatomy has been captivating audiences for more than two decades, and that's set to continue with the imminent launch of Season 23 on ABC. So, what do you need to remember from Grey's Anatomy Season 22 in advance of the upcoming season's impending arrival?

Grey's Anatomy follows the personal and professional lives of the doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The cast of characters includes Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey, Chandra Wilson as Miranda Bailey, James Pickens Jr. as Richard Webber, Camilla Luddington as Jo Wilson, Caterina Scorsone as Amelia Shepherd, Jason George as Ben Warren, Chris Carmack as Atticus Lincoln, Anthony Hill as Winston Ndugu, Alexis Floyd as Simone Griffith, Harry Shum Jr. as Benson Kwan, Adelaide Kane as Jules Millin, Niko Terho as Lucas Adams and Trevor Jackson as Wes Bryant.

The show has, as we said above, run for more than two decades and launched three separate spinoffs during that time. If you're looking to catch up, we have a guide on how to watch it all right here.

It's time to break out your finest suits, because Guy Ritchie's Netflix show, The Gentlemen, will return for its second season in just a matter of weeks. The show, starring Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, and Ray Winstone, is back and looking more glamorous than ever. Whether you're into fine Italian tailoring or homey fair isle sweaters and tweeds, the costumes for The Gentlemen season 2 are not playing around. 

The Gentlemen season 2 release date September 3, 2026 on Netflix. The story will bounce between Italy and England, and according to Netflix's Tudum, has the following premise: "...a year will have passed since Eddie Horniman (Theo James) became the reluctant heir to his aristocratic family’s rambling estate. Now, after joining forces with Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) and her luxuriously incarcerated father, Bobby (Ray Winstone), Eddie is discovering that being a power player in the criminal underworld fits him like an immaculately tailored suit."

"The new season takes Eddie and Susie’s operation out from a buried cannabis farm underneath Halstead to the lakeside villas of Italy, where the power duo is establishing a foothold."

The world is onto Chad Powers. While folks aren't sure exactly what is up about the "college" quarterback, there is something iffy about him that begs further investigation. Will the college football world discover his secret? It all comes to a head in season 2 of Chad Powers on Hulu. 

Chad Powers season 2 release date September 3, 2026 on Hulu. Glen Powell returns as the titular Chad. Here's the trailer below, in case you never thought you would ever see Glen Powell say the word "circumcision." 

Now, given Chad Powers' tendency to say weird phrases in an even weirder voice, is Hollywood undervaluing Glen Powell's acting skills when it comes to playing A Weird Little Guy onscreen (not unlike Robert Pattinson)? Hollywood, please take notes. Let Glen Powell do a silly voice. 

Writer Stephanie Williams and artist Khary Randolph are poised to launch DC's first-ever ongoing for Vixen, one of the publisher's first Black superheroines, and Williams is already planning some big crossovers with other DC heroes, and even a special 'Ladies Night' issue that will bring together a whole host of Black heroines and villains for what promises to be a big blowout.

"This is like the third arc for Vixen, maybe I might be able to squeeze it into the second, but there is an issue that I will name 'Ladies Night' for very obvious reasons," Williams says in an interview with The Comics Pals. "I'm going to try to pack in as many Black superheroines and villains as I possibly can in that. So let's see. Let's hope I can get there."

The guest stars won't be limited to 'Ladies Night,' as Williams promises she's bringing in other characters tied to the Red, DC's mystical web of life that connects all living beings and provides some heroes with animal-based powers their abilities, and even a presence from the Green, the equivalent web of life tied to plants and non-animal life.

So, is Dana Scully immortal? 

That's a question that has plagued X-Files fans ever since the show wrapped up in 2002. Dana Scully has escaped death more than a few times before, and not just because of "plot armor" or anything. Given that the show danced between science and the supernatural, who's to say that Scully can't be immortal when there are 149-year-old people and aliens running around on The X-Files?

Recently, X-Files creator Chris Carter was asked this question in an interview with Polygon. And in reply, he said, "It's a good question. If Mulder and Scully ever reunite for season 12, I have something to say about that."

Writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson says his upcoming Midnight Spider-Man, which reboots Spidey's origin as a David Crobenberg-esque body horror story, will deal directly with the modern perception of the ultra-wealthy and the social realities of a world where economic equality is the norm, calling it an "anti-Epstein class" comic.

In Midnight Spider-Man, drawn by artist ScieTronc, Peter Parker is subjected to experiments by billion dollar corporation Oscorp, who mutate him into a man/spider hybrid similar to Jeff Goldblum in aforementioned director David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. Oscorp's exploitation of Peter is intentionally meant to reflect the idea that some of society's richest people victimize others with seemingly no consequences thanks to their limitless financial resources.

"This is like, without even really trying to. I do think this book has kind of turned into my anti-Epstein class kind of thing where the monster is the creepy billionaire," Johnson says in an interview with Cryptid Creator Corner. "It's just a scary concept right now. The degree of power that the wealthiest among us has is a scary thing. And to not use that in some kind of way when you're telling a story about power and responsibility,  I just don't see how you can tell that story now and not touch on that in some way."

What's next for DC's New Gods? A new series .... that may just be a revival of a recent series we just love.

Writer Ram V, who wrote last year's 12-part New Gods series with artist Evan Cagle, has revealed he's not only writng another New Gods story, but he already wrote it. He describes it as "a second season/arc" from the aforementioned 2025 series, but isn't sure it they'll just pick up with a surprise New Gods #13 (well, no surprise if you're reading this!) or start it with a shining new #1. 

"I'm excited for everyone to see the recent New Gods thing I wrote. It's a nice check-in with all of the characters after the events of the previous arc!" V says in a League of Comic Geeks AMA. "I don't have a specific date for you all. I took a break from superheroes to do a few other things, so those are coming along nicely. That said, I worked on a New Gods thing recently and I *think* we know who the artist will be for a second season/arc!"

If I were the director of an absolute cash machine like Spider-Man: Brand New Day, you'd probably never hear from me again - I'd be too busy counting my money and collecting space-themed LEGO sets. But much to the benefit of the entertainment world, Brand New Day's actual director, Destin Daniel Cretton, is a more ambitious person than I, and is already heading into what promises to be another giant project.

That is, the Lionsgate live-action adaptation of Naruto.

The Hollywood Reporter recently wrote about Cretton's upcoming production, which just announced a major casting decision. According to the outlet, Riverdale and Beef star Charles Melton is circling the role of Kakashi Hatake. If you're familiar with Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto manga or the world-famous anime that it inspired, you know that Kakashi is a sort-of Obi Wan to Naruto's Luke Skywalker, a mentor and trainer recognizable for his shock white hair, mostly masked face, and distinctive eye-scar.

Alan Ritchson has plenty of reasons to smile.

The actor is currently starring in the Amazon Prime Video crime drama Reacher, and the show has been a hit with audiences and critics alike. Each season has scored over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the ratings have been healthy. That’s why Ritchson sees a bright future for the show.

“Who knows what demands will be placed on my career, what Amazon will want to do, what audiences will continue to show up,” Alan Ritchson told Josh Horowitz during an appearance on Happy Sad Confused. “Really, at the end of the day, the audience will decide. I think, I suspect, and I could be wrong about this, but because season three was so effective, it was such a great season, and so many people tuned in for it – to know that three seasons in they’re still sending it.”

If you squint, Critical Role's Percival de Rolo is kinda Skywalkery. Taliesin Jaffe's The Legend of Vox Machina has a weird relationship with his sister, has a thing for dark robes, and is deeply desired by dark forces. So how would Exandria's most iconic gunslinger deal with the most common misfortune to befall that family - namely, a limb getting lopped off?

Jaffe himself has an answer.

The idea comes out of a ScreenRant Studio chat that Jeff did alongside fellow OG Rolers Travis Willingham, Marisha Ray, Liam O'Brien, Sam Riegel, Ashley Johnson, and Matt Mercer. The purpose of the discussion was to pose challenging questions to the CR cast regarding their characters, and at one point, Ray asked Jeff if Percy were to lose a limb:  "which one are you now missing, and how do you compensate for it?"

Created by Dick Wolf, David Hudgins, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen, and Warren Leight, CIA is a scripted series that follows the team up between a CIA agent and a FBI agent who investigate cases related to national security in New York City. So, what do you need to remember before CIA Season 2 debuts on CBS?

CIA is a spinoff of FBI, another ongoing scripted police procedural series on CBS. The show features Tom Ellis as CIA case officer Colin Glass, Nick Gehlfuss as FBI special agent William "Bill" Randall Goodman, Natalee Linez as CIA analyst Gina Gosian, and Necar Zadegan as Nikki Reynard, Deputy Chief of the CIA's New York station.

The show has also featured multiple crossover characters from FBI, including Missy Peregrym as FBI Special Agent Maggie Bell, Alana de la Garza as FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Isobel Castille, James Chen as FBI Technical Analyst Ian Lim and Jeremy Sisto as FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) Jubal Valentine.

Created by Dick Wolf and Craig Turk, FBI is the ongoing police procedural scripted drama series following the agents and cases of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York City Field Office. The ensemble series will be returning to CBS in the fall of 2026. So, what should you remember from the Season 8 finale before FBI Season 9 debuts on CBS?

Originally planned as a Law & Order: SVU spinoff for NBC, the FBI series eventually landed with CBS, becoming producer Dick Wolf's first non-NBC show in 15 years. (That said, the series has featured an appearance from a character from Wolf's NBC series Chicago P.D., suggesting they share a fictional universe, if not a network.) As the name suggests, the series centers around agents and cases in the New York City FBI field office. 

FBI features a cast full of interesting characters, including Missy Peregrym as Special Agent (SA) Maggie Bell, Zeeko Zaki as SA Omar Adom "OA" Zidan, Jeremy Sisto as Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Jubal Valentine, Alana de la Garza as Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Isobel Castille, John Boyd as SA Stuart Scola and Juliana Aidén Martinez as SA Eva Ramos.

Remember how Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion at Disney parks became movies? Disney is trying to recreate the magic with a show in development about... the Spaceship Earth attraction at Epcot in Florida's Disney World.  

According to a new report from Lesley Goldberg at The Ankler, the Disney Kids & Family department is developing a "potential series" built around Spaceship Earth from Avengers: Doomsday co-writer and Disney+'s Loki series creator, Michael Waldron. Here's what Goldberg wrote:

"[Disney Kids & Family president Ayo] Davis’ division more recently handed out a pilot order for Spaceship Earth, a potential series based on the domed attraction at Disney World’s Epcot Center. That project hails from Michael Waldron — the creative behind Hulu’s Chad Powers and the Disney+ Marvel series Loki (he’s also co-writer on December’s highly anticipated Avengers: Doomsday) — after he approached executives at 20th Television and Walt Disney Imagineering with the idea for a show exploring his love of Epcot. 20th TV, where Waldron is based with an overall deal, brought the project to Davis’ division."

Even though his former superhero allies have forgotten who he is, Peter Parker still carries a piece of them around in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. For Daredevil, that's in the form of a business card for Matt Murdock's law firm, Nelson, Murdock, and Page. 

A graphics assistant for Spider-Man: Brand New Day named Will Dixon posted on Twitter an image of a business card for Nelson, Murdock, and Page that was placed in Peter Parker's wallet in the film. The card is for Matthew Murdock in particular, and includes his phone and fax numbers. Matt's phone is listed as 347-555-01631, and looking beyond the extra number on the card, what immediately jumps out to me as a New Yorker is that Matt Murdock would never have a 347 area code. 

The 347 area code is used in the Outer Boroughs of the City - the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the neighborhood of Marble Hill that is legally in Manhattan but isn't located on the island of Manhattan (New York geography is beautiful). Matt Murdock is from Hell's Kitchen, which is in the middle of the West Side of Manhattan, and very far away from Marble Hill. Matt would have a 212, 646, or 332 number instead of a 347 one. Personally, I think a 212 number suits him the best, because they are popular for offices in Manhattan, and it has nice symmetry. 

It feels like there are as many mechanics in Magic: The Gathering as there are mutants in Marvel Comics. And not unlike Marvel's Merry Mutants, every Magic mechanic has at least one devoted super-fan. For the sake of clarity, I'll stop the X-Men invocations there. 

Recently, Magic's head of design, Mark Rosewater, revealed on his Tumblr the reason why we don't typically see cards that have the ability to block an additional creature per turn these days. 

On Tumblr, a fan asked Rosewater, "Do you think we will see more 'Can block an additional creature' cards? I really enjoy them," to which the designer responded, "We’ve stopped doing them (for now, at least) because they cause a lot of problems with digital." 

Next year's Star Wars movie, Starfighter, will depict a period in the Star Wars timeline that we have never seen before: the post-First Order era. Starfighter is set in the aftermath of Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker, which, in case you need a refresher, ended with the defeat of the First Order. A question remains of who, or what, steps into power in this emergent era, which Starfighter may or may not provide the answers to. 

At Disney's D23 Expo, Starfighter director Shawn Levy spoke about the state of the nascent era in an interview with Good Morning America's Ginger Zee. "This is a moment in the galaxy where there is no sort of governing enforcer or order. And so everyone is just trying to survive. Everyone is just trying to do their best to get by," Levy said. 

This sounds not dissimilar to the Wild West period in American history, when lawmen like US Marshal Bass Reeves were instrumental in enforcing order in settler communities on the frontier. And while the High Republic, the period of time when both the Jedi Order and the Republic were at the height of their power, had Jedi stationed in frontier territories on the very edges of Wild Space, this obviously won't be the case in Starfighter, given that almost all Jedi were wiped out by the Empire decades before. 

It's a glorious day for those of us who remember early YouTube. The work of Don Hertzfeldt, the surrealist animator responsible for oddball comedy pieces like Rejected (pictured above), has been gathered together in one place. And the best part is, that place is under guard of one of the most indie-forward entertainment providers in the current media landscape: Dropout TV.

The news comes out of a short video Dropout CEO Sam Reich posted to their social media, which begins with Reich detailing his longstanding love for Hertzfeldt's weird, emotional animation style. After speaking to his love of the animator, Reich goes on to remind viewers of Hertzfeldt's accolades - two Oscar nominations and a Jury Award at SXSW - which were on Reich's mind as he and the Dropout team went about their ongoing efforts to expand the platform. Reich describes writing "a love letter," to the animator, hoping that they would someday find the opportunity to collaborate.

"And lo and behold," said the Game Changer host, "He responded."

When looking for Marvel Contest of Champions codes, it is important to remember that nothing lasts forever. Developer Kabam has a habit of releasing limited-edition codes to get new players excited to try the game and then swiftly having those codes expire before too many players can use them. That is why it is important to redeem any Marvel Contest of Champions codes you can quickly.

There are currently no active Marvel Contest of Champions codes.

It can be a bit complicated to redeem Marvel Contest of Champions codes. First, you need to create a Kabam account and link it to your game account. Once that is done, you need to go to the Marvel Contest of Champions app.

Weeks after the news that Disney had decided not to move forward with a second season of Wonder Man after Marvel Television had announced it would be happening, the series star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has opened up about his feelings about the cancellation — and how it could fit into a larger narrative surrounding Marvel projects.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Abdul-Mateen said that the surprise end of the show was “a lesson in life,” adding, “You have just this guy, Simon, who finally had his dreams come true, but we saw him overcome after all of his attempts of getting close and then not closing the deal. Many people have that experience in real life. The cancellation of the show was just another one of those examples.”

He continued by saying that he had been told that the reasons for the cancellation “had something to do with the viewership numbers. I wasn’t told what those numbers were, but ultimately, for whatever reason it was, I think they decided that it didn’t make sense for business, and that’s the decision that we live with and we keep on marching forward.” (This matches earlier reports about the reasons behind Disney's decision.)

There are plenty of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes codes for you to take advantage of. Despite being out for well over a decade at this point, there are plenty of players out there who are diving into this game for the first time. That’s why we’ve collected all the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes cheat codes that we could find, just in case you’re feeling impatient to unlock your favorite characters.

These are all the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes codes that will help you unlock characters in the game.

These are the codes to allow you to get more studs in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes.

For audiences worried that VisionQuest may be the last live-action Disney+ series produced by Marvel Studios, good news: announcements are en route that will prove otherwise, according to a recent report.

With the surprise news that Wonder Man season 2 had been cancelled by Disney within months of the show being renewed by Marvel, fans had been concerned that no additional live-action project for Disney+ has been publicly announced — even though both San Diego Comic-Con and D23 Expo have come and gone, both with large announcements from Marvel Studios for theatrical projects. Rumor and speculation have suggested that Disney+ was looking to change direction and pivot away from expensive live-action projects for some time — note that, outside of Ahsoka season 2, there are no known additional live-action Star Wars projects in the works for the streamer, either — but, per Matthew Belloni of Puck News, that speculation is about to be proven wrong.

“I’ve learned that there are multiple live-action Marvel series in development for Disney+, with announcements expected soon,” Belloni wrote in the August 19 edition of his What I’m Hearing newsletter. More interestingly, he had a couple of suggestions as to what projects might be in the works: “Integrating a new batch of X-Men characters set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday, and expanding the theatrical universe further with new characters, like Marvel’s Nova, which is currently in development, may bleed into the streamer’s franchise strategy.”

Berserk fans are used to long delays, with long breaks between chapters being the norm even before Kentaro Miura’s tragic death in 2021. However, the reason for the delays was never Miura getting distracted by other projects or struggling to come up with stories to tell. Instead, it was all because he simply didn’t believe anyone else could do as good a job as he could.

“I draw almost all of the characters and backgrounds for Berserk myself,” Kentaro Miura explained in a 2019 interview. “I have assistants do things like apply screen tones, buildings, backgrounds, soldiers, etc. Lately I’ve started having them do the ground as well.”

Around this time, Miura began serializing another manga called Duranki. Fans rightly worried if this new title would cause even more delays for Berserk. Miura, however, knew that the problems with Berserk’s release schedule almost always boiled down to him needing to be involved in everything. “I’m pretty quick at storyboarding, so the delays with Berserk boil down to problems with the artwork. My staff are all very talented, but, because I’m still drawing most of it myself, it’s causing more and more delays.”

I don’t know when or where it happened, but at some point the internet collectively decided Alan Ritchson was the top choice to play Batman in James Gunn’s DC Universe. It’s become one of those internet fan castings that’s hard to escape, to the point where both James Gunn and Alan Ritchson are asked about it in nearly every interview they do.

It’s not a far-fetched idea. Ritchson previously played Aquaman on Smallville and Hawk on Titans, so he’s no stranger to suiting up for the DC Universe. However, on multiple occasions Ritchson has said that while Batman was discussed, he ultimately doesn’t believe the role is in his future. In fact, there’s another role he and James Gunn have been discussing, and Ritchson recently danced around the issue during an appearance on Happy Sad Confused.

“James Gunn and I have spoken a lot,” Alan Ritchson told Josh Horowitz during an appearance on Happy Sad Confused. “I really respect James. I would like to do something with James. James would like to do something with me. But my litmus test for what I will take is strict. I pick the shit out of projects. I know how to develop a project. Anything I do with DC will still meet my standards. It will have to meet my standards. I hope that we work on something that feels like we’re all making the movie that I would be proud of.”

Daniel Warren Johnson was burnt out on science fiction. The comic book writer and artist still enjoyed the genre, but it had been ages since he had last been excited about it. Johnson, who is best known for his work on Extremity and The Jurassic League, was developing a science fiction fantasy comic called Chainkata, but he was having trouble breaking the story.

Then he saw Dune, and everything changed.

“What brought me back to trying to get me to crack it was actually seeing the first Dune movie in 2021,” Daniel Warren Johnson says during a conversation with David Wextler on Direct Edition. “Something about the presentation of the visuals and the unapologetic bigness. I like the second one a lot, but the first one is one of my favorite movies. It’s very bold. It’s unafraid to just kind of throw you into the deep end of the pool. It just got me so excited for science fiction again.”

Since his debut in 1962, Spider-Man’s catchphrase has been his guiding principle. Amazing Fantasy #15, the character’s first appearance, ends with the line, “with great power there must also come responsibility,” and the proverb has stuck to the character stronger than any pieces of webbing. The phrasing may change slightly, with most pieces of media using “with great power comes great responsibility,” but the core message has stuck across decades of comics, television, and film.

However, Christopher Daniel Barnes, who voiced Spider-Man in the 1994 Fox Kids animated series, thinks the proverb is only telling half of the story. “I will say this, I think the catchphrase of Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility, is fundamental because it’s about the coming-of-age hero arc,” Christopher Daniel Barnes declared during a panel at GalaxyCon Nashville 2026.

He added, “One thing I notice is that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve really come to appreciate that it is actually on a spectrum, because what they don’t tell you, and what you don’t know until you’re older, is that with great power comes great responsibility, but with great responsibility comes great sacrifice. With great sacrifice comes great pain. And with great pain comes great rage. And with great rage comes a desire to control everything.”

Alex Ross' upcoming Marvel Dimensions OGN introduces a world of his own creation which is populated by drastic variants of Marvel heroes and villains, something the creator himself feels is "a little too close for comfort" to the upcoming Marvel Midnight line, a publishing initiative Ross wishes he was told about while he was conceiving Marvel Dimensions, which he says could be similiar.

"I'm starting to feel something that almost is creeping up my back here that feels a little too close for comfort. And that is this current thing from Jonathan Hickman's invention, a whole Marvel thing, Midnight. I didn't pay it much mind when I saw it advertised in the same catalog that my book is advertised in, the current Marvel Previews catalog," Ross states in an interview with Word Balloon. "But like once I was watching somebody's explanation video last night talking about what this line of books that is a horror version of the Marvel Universe, I thought, 'Oh well now it would have been nice to get a heads up about that I just spent the last two years making something that's kind of got an angle that has some similarity.'"

Marvel Midnight is an out-and-out horror line, putting nightmarish twists on popular Marvel heroes, starting with three titles, Midnight Spider-Man, Midnight X-Men, and Midnight Fantastic Four. Each title features a new take on its lead characters, with Midnight Spider-Man taking a body horror approach, while Midnight X-Men pits the mutant team against bloodthirsty vampires, and Midnight Fantastic Four delves into cosmic horror.

Whatever problem you're facing, you can always count on members of your adventuring partner to help you out. In fact, if you're a cast member of Critical Role, you can even count on members of a different adventuring party to come in clutch just when you need them - even if your need is... well, a very personal one. Take, for example, The Mighty Nein's Caleb Widogast, AKA Liam O'Brien, who recently declared his willingness to assist in an issue belonging to The Legend of Vox Machina's Scanlan Shorthalt.

That is, his weird genitalia.

The anatomical discussion happened during a Q&A the Critical Role cast did with ScreenRant Studio, which included not just O'Brien, but Travis Willingham, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Ashley Johnson, and Matt Mercer. At one point in the chat, O'Brien was given the question - if he had one wish to resolve any trauma for his character or another, what would it be?

If you’re someone who has ever wondered about Deadpool’s penis, I have some great news for you. Rob Liefeld, who co-created Deadpool, has broken his silence about the character’s…um…sword size.

“I just know that Deadpool has a giant cock and it doesn’t matter whether the hood is on there or not,” Rob Liefeld says during a conversation with Andrew Parker and Alex Azor on the Escape Pod Podcast. “None of my characters have little cocks. He has a giant cock, okay? He is well-endowed, as he should be. It just doesn’t matter to me.”

Azor and Parker asked if Deadpool’s healing factor would undo a hypothetical circumcision, and Liefeld’s answer didn’t disappoint.

The One Chicago franchise began with Chicago Fire and has since expanded to include several spinoffs, including Chicago PD. The second spinoff of the One Chicago franchise, the release date for Chicago PD Season 14 on NBC will be here before you know it. So what should you remember from Chicago PD Season 13 in advance of the new season's arrival?

Chicago PD, created by Dick Wolf, is a police procedural drama series that details the personal and professional lives of the officers and staff of the Intelligence Unit of the 21st District of the Chicago Police Department. The series was the first spin-off of Chicago Fire, officially launching the 'One Chicago' franchise as something larger than one single series. 

The current cast includes Jason Beghe as Sergeant Henry "Hank" Voight, Patrick John Flueger as Officer Adam Ruzek, Marina Squerciati as Detective Kim Burgess, LaRoyce Hawkins as Officer Kevin Atwater, Arienne Mandi as Officer Eva Imani and Amy Morton as Sergeant Gertrude "Trudy" Platt.

The One Chicago franchise has been a huge hit for NBC, beginning with Chicago Fire and expanding to include two ongoing spinoffs, including the third installment in the franchise, Chicago Med. With the release date for Chicago Med Season 12 on NBC looming, you may ready for a refresher on what to remember about the Chicago Med Season 11 finale. Well, Popverse has you covered!

Co-created by Law & Order's Dick Wolf, Chicago Med follows the personal and professional lives of the medical staff at the fictional Gaffney Chicago Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. The series officially launched in November 2015, but an episode of Chicago Fire Season 3 (Episode 19, 'I Am The Apocalypse,' which aired in April 2015) acted as a backdoor pilot for the show, introducing some of the original characters. 

The cast of characters includes S. Epatha Merkerson as Sharon Goodwin, Oliver Platt as Dr. Daniel Charles, Steven Weber as Dr. Dean Archer, Jessy Schram as Dr. Hannah Asher, Luke Mitchell as Dr. Mitch Ripley, Sarah Ramos as Dr. Caitlin Lenox and Darren Barnet as Dr. John Frost.

Chicago Fire, created by Derek Haas and Michael Brandt, is the procedural drama series that serves as the foundation for the One Chicago franchise. Following the exploits of the firefighters and paramedics of the fictional Firehouse 51 in Chicago, Illinois, the release date for Chicago Fire Season 15 on NBC will be here before you know it. So, what should you remember in advance of Chicago Fire's fifteenth season?

On Chicago Fire, viewers explore the personal and professional lives of the Chicago Fire Department personnel at Firehouse 51. The show, created by Derek Haas and Michael Brandt with executive producer (and Law & Order empresario) Dick Wolf, debuted on NBC in 2012 and quickly became a hit. Multiple shows have spun out of the series, including Chicago PD and Chicago Med. 

The cast includes Taylor Kinney as Lieutenant Kelly Severide, David Eigenberg as Senior Firefighter Christopher Herrmann, Christian Stolte as Senior Firefighter Randall "Mouch" McHolland, Joe Minoso as Firefighter Josef "Joe" Cruz, Miranda Rae Mayo as Firefighter Stella Kidd, Hanako Greensmith as Paramedic Violet Mikami and Jocelyn Hudon as Paramedic Lyla "Lizzie" Novak. Plus, Chicago Fire Season 15 will see the addition of Da'Vinchi as Marcus Burke.

Doctor Doom may be considered a villain or adversary by many, but if you ask Victor, he's the main character - and it's people like Reed Richards, Namor, and others who are his foes.

Leading up to and through this December's Avengers: Doomsday movie, Marvel Comics is telling a Doom-centric story as told through the foes he has faced. And come November in the days before the movie, Al Ewing and guest artist Christian Rosado will be conjuring the magical side in Doom's dealings (and misdealings) with Doctor Strange.

"Two of history’s most skilled practitioners of magic: Doctor Doom faces Doctor Strange in a battle metaphysical, physical, current, future, past…encompassing the enormous realms of their intellect and ability!" reads Marvel's description of Challenges of Doom: Doctor Strange. "These incredible foes will go to the limits of their powers and beyond to determine who is truly the greatest sorcerer — but what else will be revealed in the process?!"

Are comic books boring? No, but according to Image Comics' COO & Skybound boss Robert Kirkman, there's a way to make them boring... by being "intellectual" and too focused on the writers. Kirkman, who is a writer of such things as The Walking Dead, Invincible, and the new series Terminal, sees '90s superhero comics by people such as his Image Comics business partners Todd McFarlane and Marc Silvestri, along with former Image bosses Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, as being much more in tune with what fans wanted... and he wants to get back to that.

"The '90s comics were so focused on staying energetic and exciting and in your face," Kirkman says in an interview with Den of Geek promoting his Terminal series, "And that’s something that we’re trying to bring back to comics [...] I think as things have gotten more writer-driven, things have gotten a little bit more intellectual, and when I hear 'intellectual,' I hear 'boring.' We’re trying to broom the boring out of comics as best we can."

Published by Image, Terminal is a superhero pastiche from a truly staggering team of comic vets, including Kirkman himself, Joe Casey, Andy Kubert, David Finch, and Arthur Adams. Kirkman said the approach with Terminal harkens back to the '90s, when he says comic creators were "firing on all cylinders."

If you're still reeling from the fact that the next season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be the show's final outing, then fear not: Paramount has more plans for Trek. What those plans are remain to be seen, however. But a new interview with Jane Wiseman, Executive Vice President and Head of Originals for Paramount+, offers an encouraging look at the future of Trek on Paramount+. 

In an interview with Deadline, Wiseman was asked a question about how the hiring of creative development executive Chris Parnell has set the stage for Paramount+ to develop more genre fare. In response, Wiseman said, "Well, it’s one of the reasons why Chris [Parnell] is here as the resident number one fan of the Star Trek franchise. And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of Star Trek is. We’re talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it’s just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures, they have a Star Trek movie that’s in development."

Now I am left wondering who Parnell's favorite Starfleet captain is. 

Redeeming Marvel Omega codes can help give you an important edge in this popular PvP Roblox game. Each of these codes can get you free coins, which can then be used to purchase new popular Marvel heroes like Scarlet Witch or Iron Man. You’ll need to be constantly upgrading your roster of fighters to have a chance to survive in some of the fights to come.

These are all the currently active Marvel Omega codes.

These are the expired Marvel Omega codes.

We’ve met (some of) Marvel Studios’ X-Men, with the initial cast of the 2028 movie announced at D23 Expo 2026 last week — but when will the new generation of the Children of the Atom get in front of a camera? According to a website that tracks movie production in the UK, the answer is “sooner than you think.”

Per industry tracker Filmbase, X-Men is “expected to start [production] towards the end of summer” at a location to be confirmed, either Pinewood Studios in London or a location in Ireland. That’s not based on any official notice from Marvel or Disney; as the site notes, “it’s what we’ve pieced together from conversations with crew,” which means that things might change before any official announcement is made.

The mention of Pinewood as a location is a curious one; Disney has been working there for a number of years now, with the majority of Star Wars movies shooting at the studio, as well as Avengers: Doomsday — which is what makes the idea that X-Men might be shooting there so odd. After all, Avengers: Secret Wars is also meant to be shooting at Pinewood, with Filmbase itself reporting that production on that movie will ramp back up in September after a summer hiatus to allow the Russos to work on post-production for Doomsday. Could Pinewood be home to two separate Marvel productions simultaneously?

The Yotsuba release schedule has always been a bit unpredictable and infrequent. Because the mangaka approaches the series as a hobby rather than a full-time job, they can only produce a few new chapters a year. If you’re not sure when the next Yotsuba chapter will be released, our release schedule is here to clarify for you.

There is no set schedule for when new Yotsuba chapters are released. On average, we might get one or two new chapters a year. The pace of release has slowed down to the extent that it is mostly a pleasant surprise when new Yotsuba chapters come out.

There is no official release date for Yotsuba chapter 115. The previous chapter, Yotsuba 114, was released as part of the Yotsuba Volume 16 release. This collection hit Japanese shelves in February 2025 and got an official English translation in January 2026. Because of the erratic release schedule for the Yotsuba manga, it is not clear when we’ll get another chapter in the future.

Before DC Studios, before the DCEU, and before the Arrowverse, there was Smallville. The primetime superhero drama explored Clark Kent’s teenage years during a time when superhero media was still considered a niche thing. Some have argued that Smallville started the superhero television revolution, and if the WB’s original plans had came to fruition, it would’ve become a franchise.

In 2005 the Smallville episode ‘Aqua’ aired, which introduced Arthur Curry aka Aquaman. The character was played by Alan Ritchson, who is currently starring in Reacher. Aquaman’s debut was the highest-rated episode of the season, beating the season premiere, season finale, and the 100th episode milestone.

“I came onto Smallville in season five,” Alan Ritchson told Josh Horowitz during an appearance on Happy Sad Confused. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was coasting on instincts. I got this role as Aquaman, and our episode set a ratings record for the show. And [when] you’re five years in, that doesn’t happen. And it wasn’t because of me. Nobody knew who I was. But people were interested in the character and they enjoyed it.”

At this point, the Critical Role media empire is responsible for what we assume to be thousands of tattoos. We'd also assume that, for the most part, those tattoos are of the much-beloved characters the TTRPG actual-play series has introduced. But let me ask you this - if those characters themselves were to get tattoos, what would they be like?

Well, thanks to The Mighty Nein's own Fjord Stone, AKA Travis Willingham, we now have at least one answer.

The subject came up during a sit-down with ScreenRant Studio, attended by OG Rolers Willingham, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Liam O'Brien, Sam Riegel, Ashley Johnson, and Matt Mercer. The on-camera chat was molded around character-specific questions for each of the voice actors, and when it came time for Willingham to answer, it all came down to his potential ink.