Q UA R T E R LY M AG A Z I N E L AU N C H I S S U E !
ON SET WITH
RYAN REYNOLDS IN FREE GUY JOHN CARPENTER’S CAREER REINVENTION THE NEXT
EVOLUTION OF DC COMICS
E XC LUSI VE !
SUPERMAN & LOIS BEHIND THE SCENES ON THE CW’S UPLIFTING EPIC
“If Superman can struggle and remain hopeful, maybe we can too.”
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE JOHN CARPENTER
The legendary John Carpenter opens up about movies, music, and how he’s reinvented his career. PG. 50
BY EXPERTS. FOR FANS.
RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON
How Disney’s newest animated feature was made from home during lockdown. PG. 26
ON THE COVER
We’re proud to share with you this exclusive cover shot from the CW’s new show Superman & Lois. Stars Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch and showrunner Todd Helbing tell us about coming up with new stories for one of fiction’s most famous couples. This feature heads up our TV preview of new shows coming your way this spring and beyond.
SHOW US YOUR COSPLAY!
Hey Superman fans! Send us a pic of you in your best Superman cosplay holding this magazine or recreate this cover pose with the Lois in your life. Tag us on Instagram @denofgeek or send to our Twitter @denofgeekus and we’ll share the coolest ones with our readers. COVER PHOTO CREDIT: NINO MUÑOZ/THE CW
ISSUE 1 | SPRING 2021
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FREE GUY
Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer star in this video game-themed action comedy from Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy. We visited the Boston set to chat with the stars. PG. 10
25 YEARS OF POKÉMON
THE NEXT GREAT ART FORM
Meet the trailblazers of virtual photography who are using video games to make incredible new art. PG. 20
From video games to trading cards to anime and more, it’s Pokémon’s world now. We investigate how a children’s game became one of the biggest and most influential franchises of all time. PG. 60
FLASH GORDON
It’s Flash’s 40th and he still looks great. Director Mike Hodges tells us all about the movie’s influence and legacy. PG. 54
SPRING READS
The buzziest science fiction, fantasy and genre-bending books coming your way, to expand your mind this spring. PG. 18
DC’S INFINITE FRONTIER
DC Comics has a whole new lineup launching this spring. Our comics experts spoke to seven DC writers and got a first look at the gorgeous new books. PG. 42 DEN OF GEEK
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
MAGAZI N E Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Editorial Director Chris Longo Print Editor Rosie Fletcher Creative Director Lucy Quintanilla Art Director Jessica Koynock Copy Editor Sarah Litt Production Manager Kyle Christine Darnell
DENOFGEEK.COM Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Director of Editorial and Partnerships Chris Longo Managing Editor John Saavedra UK Editor Rosie Fletcher Associate Editors Alec Bojalad, Kayti Burt, David Crow, Don Kaye, Tony Sokol UK TV Editor Louisa Mellor News Editor Kirsten Howard Director of Brand Strategy Brian Berman Art Director Jessica Koynock Audience Development Strategists Elizabeth Donoghue, Ivan Huang
CEO and Group Publisher Jennifer Bartner-Indeck Chief Financial Officer Pete Indeck Publisher Matthew Sullivan-Pond UK Advertising Director Adam McDonnell US Advertising Executive Andres Ball Ad Operations Manager George Porter
A NEW BEGINNING This isn’t the first magazine we’ve done, but it’s still the start of a new era. BY MIKE CECCHINI
WELCOME TO THE FIRST ISSUE
of the new Den of Geek magazine! Wait… why are we calling this a first issue when everyone knows we’ve been putting out print editions since 2015? For starters, we wanted to renew our commitment to our fans. Our print mag has always been a showcase for some of the best work this team can do, whether through exclusive access to the biggest movies and TV shows or in-depth explorations of past favorites. With the prospect of mass gatherings at comic cons in the immediate future still uncertain at best, we hope our quarterly editions give you a little fun while you stay home and kick back until we can all go to the movies, or better yet conventions, together again. We’re also changing how we actually bring it to you. Most of our previous issues were created especially for release at events like San Diego Comic-Con, New York Comic Con, and MCM in London, which were distributed by hand (sometimes by Den of Geek writers and editors, including yours truly) to attendees. This time, we’re going directly to subscribers and select comic shops for distribution. Our first issue gives fans of all stripes a preview of what to look
forward to in 2021. We chose Superman & Lois as our cover story to kick off this new era not just because it’s a historic return to TV for the Man of Steel, but because of the values of truth, justice, and tolerance these characters embody. Superman is pop culture’s ultimate “symbol of hope,” an appeal to our collective better nature, and a reminder that positive change is made not through raw power, but in its responsible and empathetic use. We can’t think of a better note to start the year on. Here’s to a better and safer 2021. Hopefully we’ll see you out in the real world soon enough, too!
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Books & Comics, (34) Bedrock City Comic Company (Houston, Westheimer Rd), (35) Bedrock City Comic Company (Houston, FM 1960), (36) Bedrock City Comic Company (Houston, Washington Ave), (37) Bedrock City Comic Company (Missouri City), (38) Bedrock City Comic Company (Katy), (39) Bedrock City Comic Company (Webster) 8
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MISSOURI (51) The Wizard’s Wagon NEBRASKA (52) Dragon’s Lair Comics
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NEW RELEASES
GAME BOY Ryan Reynolds stars as a non-player character on the lam in Free Guy. We venture on set. BY RICHARD JORDAN “LET’S GET THOSE ENERGY levels up guys… let’s just get this done!” Shawn Levy is in motivational mode. The Night At The Museum director is cajoling his crew via megaphone for another action-packed take on the set of his new movie, Free Guy—it’s nearly the end of the working day, and the finish line is in sight. The scene is reset, and a wornout Ryan Reynolds—looking decidedly un-badass in a pastel blue Henley t-shirt ON and beige chinos— psyches himself up for another highly choreographed fight sequence. His opponent? A very badass-looking stuntwoman in combat pants, leather jacket, and sunglasses, pistol at the ready. As soon as Levy yells “Action!,” though, Reynolds flips the switch into action hero mode, throwing himself into some impressively complex—and lightning fast—gun-fu, before the weapons are tossed aside and the fists start flying. Appearances, it seems, can be deceptive. It’s May 2019, and the action is unfolding on a wobbly monitor underneath Boston’s huge Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (simply “the Lenny” to the locals), just beside the famous Charles River. Sure, it’s a picturesque spot, but—Reynolds’s presence aside—this feels more like the guerilla shoot of a modestly-budgeted actioner than a huge Hollywood production. But again, things are not as they seem. This set-up is actually a tiny fragment of a much more ambitious canvas. Boston is doubling for Free City—a bustling open-world video game setting that’s home to Reyn-
olds’s Guy, an increasingly self-aware non-player character (or NPC for the gamers among us). “What you’re seeing today,” Levy enthusiastically explains, shouting to make himself heard over the almost gale-force spring breeze, “is Guy taking control of his life and fighting back against some of the people who are wreaking havoc and violence in his city.” Guy’s burgeoning sentience is spurred on by the SET appearance of “Molotov Girl” (played by Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer), the captivating, tough-as-nails avatar of human programmer Milly. Before long, the two are fighting side-by-side to save Free City from being shut down for good by the real-life “bad guy”— obnoxious game publisher Antoine (Taika Waititi). “Guy realizes that he doesn’t necessarily need to just accept
E XCLUSIVE
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Ryan Reynolds with Lil Rel Howery as Guy’s best buddy, Buddy. Left: Real-world game programmers Keys (Stranger Things’ Joe Keery) and Mouser (Utkarsh Ambudkar) challenge publisher Antoine (Taika Waititi). DEN OF GEEK 11
NEW RELEASES
I LIKE PLAYING AN OPTIMISTIC CHARACTER RIGHT NOW” — RYA N REY NOLDS
“It’s a video game, so anything is possible,” the actor says. “That’s just one of the greatest tools or gifts you can have as people who love creating stuff—it allows you to think outside the box.” When it comes to the stunts, Levy describes that “absence of rules” as “liberating;” for Reynolds, we imagine it’s pretty exhausting, too. “I mean, days like today I definitely feel 42 years old,” he laughs. “But no, it’s a ton of fun. I mean, I’m running around, doing choreography… I’m having the time of my life.” Free Guy hits theaters on May 21 12
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Q&A
Jodie Comer gets ready for action as Free City avatar Molotov Girl.
Jodie Comer
FREE GUY’S MOLOTOV GIRL ON WALKING LIKE BEYONCÉ AND THE STRESS OF GTA.
You’re playing two versions of the same character in the film. How different are they? They both have their strengths, but in very different departments. In the real word, Milly is a games programmer, and then Molotov Girl is this avatar she’s created within the world of Free City—she’s this badass chick who rides a motorcycle and is ridiculously cool.
What’s been the most challenging aspect of the role?
The physicality of Molotov Girl. I’m having to learn so much, because she’s very agile, super athletic, does everything very smoothly… and I’m not! It’s requiring a lot of physical training and an awareness of my own physicality. I did a scene the other day where she was even just walking away, and everything about her has to be otherworldly and fierce. Shawn was on the other end of the street and he was just like, “More Beyoncé!” And I was like, “OK! I know what that means.” [Laughs]
This is your first big Hollywood blockbuster. What was it about this project that really stood out for you?
There’s something very new about this script. This is a video game, but it’s live-action—and seeing how [the filmmakers] are getting those nuances in, whether it’s the speed or angle of the camera or the sets or what the costume and make-up departments are coming up with, is just brilliant. With games and film, I feel like a lot of it is becoming intertwined now, and this is a very fresh outlook on the gaming world and how it’s shown on film.
Are you much of a gamer yourself?
I don’t actually play a lot of video games, but I have been recently—I was like, if my character is a gamer, I should probably get into it… SpiderMan is my favorite at the minute. I tried Grand Theft Auto but it just gave me mild anxiety. I was coming away from that quite stressed. So I am sticking to Spider-Man—he’s my go-to guy!
IMAGE CREDITS: © 2020 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION
the world as it is presented to him,” Levy says. “He can actually have input on it. And that’s something I think we can all understand—the possibility of affecting the world around you is a powerful thing.” “It feels like a five-year-old getting an accelerated education on life,” adds Reynolds, joining Levy quickly before another take. “There’s something sweet and child-like about this guy. I love that there’s this kind of wish fulfilment element to it, which I don’t see too often in modern films. It felt important and timely—I like playing an optimistic character right now.” (Little did he know at the time, that sentiment was to become even more relevant to Free Guy’s delayed release in a post-Covid world.) A high concept often requires a high bar when it comes to onscreen action, especially in today’s post-Marvel blockbuster landscape (Free Guy, incidentally, was one of the last Fox films to be in production as the Disney takeover was completed). Judging by today’s on-set antics, Levy and Reynolds have that box ticked—and then some.
A wild Pokémon appears! Catch 25 years of trading cards at www.ebay.com/pokemontcg
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FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT…
REGÉ-JEAN PAGE
Bridgerton’s breakout, the debonair Duke, is a former punk with a romantic soul. BY ROSIE FLETCHER
1
Page is Zimbabwean-English. He was born in London to a Zimbabwean mother and an English father but grew up in Zimbabwe, returning to London when he was 14. Later he attended Drama Centre London, and began his career on stage appearing in The History Boys and The Merchant of Venice.
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To play the role of Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings, Page had to perfect several physical skills including learning to box, honing his horsemanship, as well as Regency-style dancing and deportment. Page is a self-confessed romantic and tore through The Duke and I, the book by Julia Quinn, on which season one of Bridgerton is based.
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Page was really into punk music and formed a punk band with his brother when he was younger where he’d sing and play the drums, dying his hair various colors. “As a teenager, the idea of running around, screaming at people was very appealing to me,” he told The Fall magazine. He’s still making music and he and his brother Tose (Page is one of four siblings) perform as a duo under the name Tunya.
4
Feel like you’ve seen him before Bridgerton? It might be from his breakout role in 2016’s Roots remake for History, it could be for Shondaland-produced legal drama For The People or for his role opposite Tessa Thompson in 2020’s Sylvie’s Love. It’s probably not for his uncredited appearance as a wedding guest in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1.
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B R I D G E R TO N IS A V A IL ABLE TO STREAM O N E T F L IX N NOW
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He’s the latest in the long line of actors to be linked to the role of James Bond, as a possible successor to Daniel Craig, but he doesn’t put much stock in it. He told Jimmy Fallon, “If you’re a Brit and you do something of any kind of renown that people regard well, then people start saying the B word.”
Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.
NEW FROM
Prince Kiem must marry Count Jainan, the recent widower of another royal prince. Their successful marriage will align conflicting worlds. Their failure will be the end of the empire.
BOOKS
“For those familiar with Gailey’s work, expect this one to offer familiar pleasures and some new surprises. And for those who aren’t, well, get ready.”
—E N T E RTA I N M E N T W EEK LY
— V. E . S C H WA B, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
T R AD E PA P ER B A C K , EB O OK , A N D M A C M I L LA N A U D I O
“I loved it. It is like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket. Simply perfect.”
Linus is a case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. His task: investigate six magical children and their mysterious, charismatic caretaker. Lambda Literary Award–winning author TJ Klune’s breakout bestseller is now available in paperback!
GET ORIGINAL CONTENT when you sign up for the free Tor monthly newsletter 15 DEN OF GEEK
HARDCOVER, EBOOK, AND MACMILLAN AU D I O
“Delightful! Winter’s Orbit is a chilling account of a dark past wrapped in the warm blanket of a promising future.”
—ANN L ECKIE, New York Times bestselling author of Ancillary Justice
T R A D E PA P E RB A C K , E B OO K , A N D M A CM I L L AN A UD I O
H ARDCOVER, EBOOK, AND M ACMI L L AN AUDI O
LOVE, SCANDALS, & DEATH GODS
“I cannot recommend it enough.”
—TAMSY N MUIR, author of Gideon the Ninth
A debut fantasy about a young priestess sentenced to die, who at the last minute escapes her fate; only to become an assassin for the wizard who saved her. Now available in paperback!
FOLLOW TOR BOOKS!
TorBooks.com
COMMENTARY
CINEMA IS MORE THAN JUST A BIG SCREEN Reports of moviegoing’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. BY DAVID CROW
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halfway through. This is admittedly an imperfect comparison. The distance between watching a film as a child and as an adult, or a new movie versus one you enjoyed (or endured) throughout a lifetime, is as wide as the Hudson. And yet, the nagging truth of their juxtaposition is no easier to escape than a Culkin kid with a box of matches. Some things just play better in a theater. All things, in fact.
WE MAY CHANGE, BUT THE EXPERIENCE OF GOING INTO A DARKENED ROOM WITH STRANGERS AND SHARING AN EPHEMERAL DREAM HAS NOT. We may change, but the experience of going into a darkened room with strangers and sharing an ephemeral dream has not. When their presentations are protected, theaters remain a rare space where we can be on the same page at the same time, be it via escapist fantasy or through soulful catharsis. And in an increasingly commodified and isolated world of content curated by invisible algorithms, that democratic ability to participate equally in what Roger Ebert once called “the empathy machine” of a flickering light—one that can put you in someone else’s shoes, uninterrupt-
ed, for a couple of hours—is more valuable than ever. It’s why the current theatrical crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic should be treated as an existential threat to the industry, but not an insurmountable one. To be sure, the chorus of doom and gloom in the media has intensified for nearly a year – particularly in recent months, following Warner Bros.’ announcement that it would put its whole 2021 film slate on HBO Max. And much of that spilled ink has been over the fact that the theatrical window which exists between theaters and home media is shattered. Indeed it is, but there’s little reason
IMAGE CREDITS: NOAM GALAI (EAST VILLAGE), HOU YU/CHINA NEWS SERVICE (INSIDE THEATER); GETTY IMAGES
THE FIRST MOVIE I recall seeing in theaters is Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Not that Christopher Columbus’ sequel about pratfalls and questionable parenting was my maiden voyage to a multiplex. There were Ninja Turtles and Disney animations before that. Apparently. But within the halcyon days of a five-year-old’s memory, the inaugural trip to the cinema at night is an event of singular importance. Just as easily as Kevin McCallister’s Manhattan weekend, I can still see the actual theater, smell the aroma of popcorn, and sense the significance in a ritual common to modern childhood: going to the sequel of a family favorite. There was a cardboard cutout for a new Disney movie called Aladdin right here, towering at more than twice my height, and a poster for something enigmatic and unnerving over there: Dracula spelled out in blood-splattered red lettering. At the time, I didn’t know who Robin Williams was, much less the difference between a Dracula and a Frankenstein, but it all burrowed into the subconscious as deeply as John Williams’ Christmastime hymn, “Somewhere in My Memory.” By contrast, I last watched Home Alone 2 on television a few months ago, with one eye on the smartphone in my hand and the other taking only passing notice of the TV—perplexed at why a cable network still edited out the World Trade Center but left in the malevolent presence of a New York real estate grifter. I turned it off
Movie theaters remain closed in New York City, one of the largest markets for moviegoing in the U.S.
Some audiences have begun returning to theaters at reduced capacity and with new safety measures.
to doubt it can or will be rebuilt in some fashion. WarnerMedia hastened its streaming pivot in large part because of HBO Max’s shaky rollout, which after half a year failed to see even a third of HBO subscribers, who automatically were enrolled to the streamer, bothering to activate their accounts. So in terms of building HBO Max’s base, it was a shrewd decision to now put major WB releases on the service. And according to market research firm Apptopia, WB’s most high profile HBO Max launch, Wonder Woman 1984, generated 544,000 mobile device subscriptions in its opening weekend. But in purely economic terms, WW84 may have netted just $8.1 million on mobile at launch—less than eight percent of the first Wonder Woman’s domestic debut. For this reason, competitors with healthier streaming services like Disney+ (or those with no major streamer at all) currently aren’t following WB’s fire sale approach. Disney intends to launch all its Marvel movies in theaters this year, and Universal is keeping the next Fast and Furious film headed on a one-way street toward cinemas. All of this is encouraging for theaters’ future, but it would nonetheless be unfortunate if they return as exclusively the playground of blockbusters. It’s possible. In a recent Q&A, former Batman star Ben Affleck regretted the rising influence of intellectual property and dreaded that “even after COVID, when theaters reopen, there will definitely be fewer [dramas] released theatrically.” I hope not. The cinematic experience remains distinct from sitting at home with its myriad distractions. The last year taught us that just as much as it did the comfort of on-demand streaming. When the last vestiges of this crisis eventually recede, folks will again have a safe choice to make about how they come to movies—and whether the elusive spell they cast is still more enchanting than the content autoplaying on a smartphone. DEN OF GEEK 17
READING LIST
SPRING READS
Science fiction, fantasy, and genre-bending books for the first half of 2021. BY NATALIE ZUTTER TRUE BELIEVER: THE RISE AND FALL OF STAN LEE
ABRAHAM RIESMAN (CROWN) FEBRUARY 16
New York Magazine journalist Riesman’s exhaustive comics knowledge and nuanced touch guide this origin story of the late Marvel Comics luminary (and frequent MCU cameo-er) Stan Lee, f.k.a. Stanley Lieber. Interviews and archival material allow Riesman to examine Lee’s storied legacy without shying away from tarnishing details like accounts of fraud, grift, and stolen credit.
A DESOLATION CALLED PEACE
ARKADY MARTINE (TOR BOOKS) MARCH 2
The sequel to Martine’s Hugo-winning astropolitical space opera A Memory Called Empire expands its scope to a reckoning between empires, as the conquering Teixcalaanli negotiate with an encroaching inhuman threat. Between the two interstellar powers are independent ambassador Mahit Dzmare and Teixcalaan cultural liaison Three Seagrass—along with plenty of new characters—who will need more than poetry to save Teixcalaan’s legacy. 18
DEN OF GEEK
STAR WARS: THE HIGH REPUBLIC: LIGHT OF THE JEDI CHARLES SOULE (DEL REY) NOW AVAILABLE
Two centuries before The Phantom Menace, The High Republic is Star Wars’ latest canon expansion, exploring a pre-Empire golden age. Comics writer Soule’s inaugural installment follows Jedi Avar Kriss and comrades as a hyperspace disaster illuminates a new threat. Follow-up novels and comics come from Daniel José Older, Justina Ireland, Cavan Scott, and Claudia Gray (Into the Dark is also out now).
KLARA AND THE SUN
KAZUO ISHIGURO (KNOPF) MARCH 2
Ishiguro’s first novel since his Nobel Prize returns to a dystopian near-future reminiscent of Never Let Me Go. But instead of clones, it’s a solar-powered Artificial Friend who longs for the joy of a human owner, only to be transplanted into a grieving family. As Klara realizes her intended purpose, she proves her heart is far stronger than any human’s.
WOMEN AND OTHER MONSTERS: BUILDING A NEW MYTHOLOGY
JESS ZIMMERMAN (BEACON PRESS) MARCH 9
Electric Literature editor-in-chief Zimmerman wryly, intellectually, personably analyzes a dozen mythical she-monsters including Medusa, Harpie, and the Sphinx. Unpacking why female ambition, hunger, and rage often become grotesque, Zimmerman bestows heroic qualities of courage and fortitude onto these women, connecting to modern feminism’s pitfalls and triumphs. A must-read for “mythology stans” but also for those who fear women’s power.
PEACES
HELEN OYEYEMI (RIVERHEAD BOOKS) APRIL 6
All aboard for a fabulistic journey from the author of Gingerbread: When newlyweds Otto and Xavier (and pet mongoose) are gifted a non-honeymoon on former tea-smuggling train The Lucky Day, they embark on an extraordinary journey. From impossible compartments containing art galleries and bazaars, to a many-named stranger who knows every passenger, this is a ride like no other.
FOLKLORN
ANGELA MI YOUNG HUR (EREWHON BOOKS) APRIL 27
Elsa Park is an experimental physicist stationed at the South Pole to study “ghost particles,” yet also to outrun her immigrant family’s generational trauma. But when her childhood imaginary friend appears at the end of the world, Elsa must confront the specter of mental illness, as inevitable and unalterable as the Korean folklore her nowcatatonic mother used to tell her.
SON OF THE STORM
SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA (ORBIT BOOKS) MAY 11
Nigerian author Okungbowa’s epic fantasy series, inspired by pre-colonial West African empires, invites readers to the flourishing city of Bassa. Scholar Danso enjoys privilege and security, so long as he obeys strict familial and political obligations. But upon encountering the skin-changing warrior Lilong—a woman who shouldn’t exist—they journey to the Nameless Islands and beyond the borders of Bassai lore itself. Son of the Storm is the first book in the Nameless Republic trilogy where readers can explore these worlds of myth and magic.
ADAPTATIONS COMING IN 2021 DUNE by Frank Herbert Warner Bros., OCTOBER 1 Before Timothée Chalamet succeeds Kyle Maclachlan as messianic Paul Atreides, refresh your memory of Herbert’s sci-fi saga. While his family fights House Harkonnen for control over inhospitable Arrakis and its invaluable spice, Paul explores his destiny among the planet’s Fremen, including the mysterious Chani (Zendaya).
FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov AppleTV+, 2021 As a far-future Galactic Empire approaches its collapse, mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) establishes a Foundation of scientists and engineers to preserve civilization—inciting the wrath of the Emperor (Lee Pace). Like Asimov’s series, David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman’s adaptation will unfold over 1,000 years of exploration
HALF BAD by Sally Green Netflix, 2021 Andy Serkis is among the executive producers on this adaptation of Green’s YA series about alternate-universe England demarcated by warring witches. Nathan is the son of the nation’s most violent witch, whom he must track down in order to receive three magical heirlooms that will activate his Gift.
CUCKOO SONG by Frances Hardinge Netflix, 2021 This horror/fantasy miniseries will focus on Triss, who after being rescued from a magical pond, called The Grimmer, finds herself more monster than human. Faced with the knowledge of a fairy underworld Triss must convince her suspicious sister to help mend a supernatural pact. DEN OF GEEK
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VIRTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY
THE NEXT GREAT ARTFORM
Talented virtual photographers are capturing the beauty inside video games. BY JOHN SAAVEDRA 2020 SAW THE RELEASE of highly-anticipated games like The Last of Us Part II, Death Stranding on PC, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. What do all of these games have in common? Stellar in-game photo modes that allow a growing online community of virtual photographers to capture the beauty and complexity of these game worlds. Photo modes have grown more sophisticated since their inception in the ’90s, making it easier than ever for virtual photographers to hone their craft and share their unique perspectives to thousands of followers on social media. You can now find dedicated virtual photography groups, hashtags, and aggregators on social media platforms as well as online magazines dedicated to the craft.
“I think the biggest benefit [of a photo mode] comes from having the ability to capture precious in-game moments that one can also share with others. It works as a sort of connection between the game world and the real world,” says Hiroaki Yoshiike, a lead level designer at Kojima Productions who worked on the brilliant photo mode for Death Stranding. Virtual photographers aren’t just taking pictures of “what looks cool” but are considering elements of real-world photography like composition, framing, and the rule of thirds. They’re thinking about depth of field, lighting, and filters. Could virtual photography be the next great artform? We talked to a group of photographers about the movement.
BERDUU
Beautiful scenery in Death Stranding. Right: A portrait in Cyberpunk 2077.
Petri Levälahti, who goes by Berduu on Twitter, is one of the most popular virtual photographers in the community with over 40,000 followers. He has even turned virtual photography into a career as a Screen Capture Artist for EA DICE, the studio behind the Star Wars Battlefront games. At DICE, he takes marketing screenshots as well as the images you see on menus and loading screens. 20
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“I get a request for a specific screenshot, let's say an Action Shot in place X, with focus on Game Feature Y,” Levälahti says of his normal day-to-day at DICE. “I’ll do a handful of iterations before settling on one or two, consult an art director for notes, get approvals, do final captures, and ship it.” Levälahti loves to shoot other games too, including stylish portraits of characters from Control and Cyberpunk 2077
that look like glossy magazine covers. How does he do it? “I always check that my shots work at small size—that there's a clear subject, and that the shot is easy to read and you can tell what's going on. I [also] check that my shots work at large size—are there ugly textures or assets shown too close and thus causing eyesore? Always look for good light! Shadows and light make or break your shot.”
VIRTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY SINDY JB
Sindy JB has photographed many games, but her haunting shots of Death Stranding on PC are among her best, capturing the phases of a long, Odyssean journey through a post-apocalyptic America. Shots of photorealistic mountainscapes and war-torn cities have earned her almost 20,000 followers across Twitter and Instagram, where she posts under the handle @Mesopotamian_meow. “Landscape pictures are probably my favorite subject to capture,” Sindy says. “I almost never plan my shots. I wait for the right place and moment. I don’t use filters a lot because I like my pictures to look as natural as possible.” There are a few things she looks for when picking up a game’s camera component. “The most important thing for me is the camera movements. Without free camera control it’s very hard for us to take the pictures we want to take. Some games restrict the camera with an orbital control only in their photo mode and it's just terrible.” But overall, Sindy thinks game 22
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A long journey in Death Stranding chronicled in pictures.
makers have been super supportive of the community. “I think there are many factors that led to the increased popularity of virtual photography, the first being the
support we are getting from the game developers these days on social media sites. We often get likes, retweets, and comments from them, and it's very encouraging.”
IMAGE CREDITS: PREVIOUS PAGE: KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS/CD PROJEKT (BERDUU), KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (SINDY JB), PLAYSTATION STUDIOS (VOLDSBY)
VOLDSBY
Abby and Ellie covered in shadow.
"I've been a hobby photographer for a few years, so when I discovered that there was this feature where you can literally just stop the whole game to take pictures, that was when I became addicted to it.” Danish photographer Voldsby has made a name for herself in the community with her portraits of The Last of Us Part II’s main characters. On her Twitter page, you’ll find pictures of Ellie and Abby, their faces half shrouded in thick shadow, as if to hide something in their expressions, while one eye looks straight at the camera. The gaze is so piercing it might make you cower. “I like to really get close to my subjects and make them feel like they're looking into the camera, [that] they're aware that I'm taking the picture,” Voldsby says. “I know it sounds silly because it's a video game, but it makes the photo come alive.” Why has she spent so much time photographing TLOU2 specifically? Well, first off, she loves the series, but it also has a lot to do with the game’s incredible lighting. So much of the game takes place in creepy, enclosed areas like hallways and underground tunnels, and Voldsby finds it particularly exciting when she discovers “beautiful little light beams just sitting there in a window” to light her shots. After Voldsby takes a picture, it goes through a “rigorous procedure” before she shares it online. She transfers the picture over as a PNG to a USB drive (pro tip: never use PlayStation’s Share function to upload your high quality photographs) and then she touches it up a little on Adobe Lightroom, mostly to add a bit more lighting or shadow to make sure things are popping. But when it comes to capturing the picture itself, Voldsby prefers a simple photo mode. “It's all about simplicity. Less is more, you know? I don't really need any of those fancy features that a lot of photo modes have,” Voldsby says. “It's just like real photography. Buying an expensive camera with loads of features doesn't automatically make you a good photographer.” DEN OF GEEK
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VIRTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Kayne, whose Instagram handle @firstpersonshutter boasts almost 20,000 followers, dreamed of traveling the world as a freelance photographer for outlets like National Geographic, but soon found that he couldn’t afford it due to the cost of lenses and other equipment necessary for the job. But that hasn’t stopped him from practicing his craft in the video game world. His favorite games to photograph are Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, and it’s easy to see why. Kayne can get a lot out of the high-flying webswinging mechanics in the game as
well as Spidey’s superheroic poses and myriad suits. “In Spider-Man's case, arranging Spider-Man to where he's looking at something that's well-lit puts those reflections in the eye lenses so that you can actually get all those details on the face masks,” Kayne explains. With photo mode, Kayne has found a new way to think about photography, and hopes that other artists will start to think of virtual photography as an artform, too. Will we one day see one of the pictures in this article hanging in a museum? “I am very hopeful that it takes off into something bigger. And I feel like we're on the ground floor.”
Ghost of Tsushima's Jin Sakai (left) and Spider-Man prepare for battle.
The vast deserts of Mad Max (pictured) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (right). 24
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IMAGE CREDITS: PLAYSTATION STUDIOS (KAYNE), WB GAMES/ELECTRONIC ARTS (SOULSURRENDER)
KAYNE
SOULSURRENDER
Soulsurrender, who also works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer in Sweden, got into virtual photography thanks to the seminal fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game often celebrated for its beautiful vistas, lively settings, and cavernous depths. “Mods made the game pretty and I just wanted to capture that. I didn’t really call it virtual photography or share any of my shots back then. That came much later, after realizing there was a whole amazing community out there.” Soulsurrender has captured many subjects, including those within the worlds of Fallout 4, Mad Max, and Cyberpunk 2077, and she has a real eye for finding the majesty in dystopian settings. Her awe-inspiring shots of Mad Max’s endless deserts don’t even look like they’re from a video game despite the fact that she took up virtual
photography after growing bored with shooting her real-world surroundings. “I'm currently on a break after getting kind of burned out, getting frustrated with gear, and living in a small town of which nothing feels left to explore and shoot. Which naturally led me to find other ways to express my creativity: I started shooting virtual worlds instead,
where the possibilities are nearly endless.” Soulsurrender mainly likes to shoot vast landscapes, characters standing far off in the distance, colorful skies as backdrops. She says her approach to virtual photography is the same as in real-life: “Go explore and find something interesting.” DEN OF GEEK 25
BEHIND THE SCENES
WAKING THE DRAGON IT HAPPENED AGAIN. The lights inside Izaac Wang’s closet flipped off mid-scene. Once more, recording is paused until illumination returns and once more, filmmakers stare patiently at a black screen. For directors Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, this has become a common occurrence; the price of doing business during a pandemic. They even count themselves fortunate, since every actor working on Raya and
the Last Dragon, including 10-year-old Wang, was able to set-up their own recording studios with equipment Disney mailed around the world. Star Kelly Marie Tran made a blanket fort, performing the title role in her living room. Awkwafina was sent a tent to build in her Australian office (where she worked when not shooting Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings). And Wang? Like so many other actors, the young thespian was
forced to record his lines in the room with the best acoustics in the house: a closet. And this one had motion sensor lighting. “Every two minutes they would go off, and he would just have to move so they would come back on,” López Estrada says with a smile. To the credit of everyone involved—the actors and directors communicating over Zoom, and the 450 other animators, technologists, and filmmakers working on the
IMAGE CREDIT: WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS
How Raya and the Last Dragon became the first Disney epic made at home. BY DAVID CROW
Concept artwork shows lead character Raya traversing the kingdom of Kumandra atop Tuk Tuk, a fantasy creature voiced by Alan Tudyk.
film—they moved fast. It’s how Raya and the Last Dragon became the first Walt Disney Animation Studios film produced almost entirely at home. When it premieres in March, Raya will be the second movie to launch via Disney+’s “Premier Access” paywall, and the first from the legendary Disney Animation house. As the studio behind many of the company’s most beloved films, from Snow White to The Lion King, and more recently Frozen and Moana, WDAS continues to push the envelope by reimagining what is considered Disney magic. Raya is no different. While the film is technically being added to the Disney Princess canon, with Raya as the first Southeast Asian princess, there are no aspirational musical numbers here.
Instead, the movie opens with a young woman trekking swiftly across a ruined desert; her transportation is a giant fantasy hedgehog-like creature with a spinning hard shell. As voiced by Tran, the eponymous Raya narrates, “I know what you’re thinking: a lone rider, a world gone to waste.” The implication is you’ve been here before. Maybe in Mad Max. But for Disney, it is something new. “I don’t think a standard musical version of this movie would have worked,” co-director Hall muses on Raya’s approach. “So we never really entertained that idea. It was always going to be an action-adventure-fantasy film in our minds, and we love those films so it was an awesome genre to explore.”
Through this exploration, we first meet Raya as an adult in a dystopian fantasy version of ancient Southeast Asian culture—called Kumandra in the film—but soon take a step back to learn how she got there. Born the daughter of a chieftain in a community named “Heart,” Raya grew up at the center of a serpentine river which resembles a dragon. Indeed, dragons are essential to her world, albeit not as the fire-breathing monsters you may know from Western lore. In Kumandra, dragons were protectors, and the last one, the water creature Sisu, sacrificed herself 500 years ago to save this land. Since then, the kingdom’s communities have broken into polarized factions. However, Heart remains the most DEN OF GEEK 27
BEHIND THE SCENES
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Above: Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) is Disney’s first Southeast Asian Princess; Above right: Raya’s sword hints at real-world martial arts like Arnis; Bottom: Disney began designing Sisu around Awkwafina years before Crazy Rich Asians and The Farewell.
character I’d be proud to see my kids emulate.” She can also lean into a specificity unique in an American blockbuster. For instance, it was at Nguyen’s insistence that Raya’s movements be grounded in realistic physics and not “running on treetops,” and her fighting style resemble actual Southeast Asian martial arts like Muay Thai and Arnis.
In this vein, the dragon Sisu, who is voiced by Awkwafina, turns out to be a lot more complex than her ferocious legend—or perhaps Western audience expectations—would suggest. “The directors wanted Sisu to look breathtakingly beautiful,” simulation supervisor Avneet Kauer says, “and her design, inspired by the mythical Nāga, was created to reflect that.”
IMAGE CREDITS: WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS
important. There, Raya is trained by her father to protect the Dragon Gem, the last essence of Sisu that keeps evil forces at bay. But after an unforgivable treachery, Raya is betrayed. Evil returns and Kumandra falls to darkness… until Raya crosses that wasteland. Until Raya awakens Sisu. The look and design of the film is a departure for Disney Animation, which has never so thoroughly explored Southeast Asian culture before. Hence why, like Moana before it, the studio created a story trust determined to strive for authenticity— sending writers and animators on whirlwind tours of various countries, including Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, among others. Yet hearing the filmmakers talk about the project’s long development years later, what seems like the most pressing desire was finding the universal humanity in people, as opposed to simple nods toward architecture or culinary dishes. “As a Southeast Asian woman, Raya’s character has a really special significance for me,” co-writer Adele Lim says. “There’s a history of strong female leaders and warriors in the region, and I personally grew up in a family of really amazing women who inspire me and also scare me, just like a little bit, every day. So it’s important that Raya’s actions and her attitude really embody that same spirit.” Perhaps just as importantly though, Raya was allowed to be a leader and hero who broke from the often narrow pathway defined by Hollywood stereotypes. Citing his own mother as a specific influence, fellow co-writer Qui Nguyen says, “When characters who look like me or Adele or my kids show up in action movies, we’re always depicted in one certain way: stoic, serious, oddly obsessed with ‘bringing honor to our family.’ So I’m super excited that Raya looks like me and Adele and my children, but what I’m even more excited about is she’s an action hero that actually sounds like us too. She’s fun, she’s quippy, she’s clever, she’s a
Whereas Western dragons of myth burn cities and lay waste, Sisu basks in water and tranquility. In one spectacular sequence, she even runs on actual raindrops as she ascends to the heavens. As Kauer notes, “Her hair is meant to make her feel light and ethereal. It’s almost magical weightless motion, which accentuates her being divine.” At the same time, Sisu is also fidgety, nervous, and ultimately as self-doubting as Raya—albeit to much more comedic chatterbox effect. With that gift for gab, plus a generally blue complexion, at a glance she somewhat resembles the juicy part Robin Williams made a meal out of in Aladdin. But then, Disney has been tailoring the role to Awkwafina for years, even before she broke out in films like Ocean’s Eight and Crazy Rich Asians. “You’ve seen her be funny in many things, and in The Farewell, you’ve seen her be dramatic,” Nguyen says. “I think what makes this movie special is
she gets to be inspiring. That’s really what she brought to Sisu. She brought all the comedy, brought all the emotion you’ve seen in the other things, but there’s one added element where it’s just completely inspiring.” That all these elements came together in the end, including Awkwafina’s finalized vocal recordings from Down Under, has a similar effect on the folks who made the movie. After all, it was less than a year ago when Disney animators were literally carrying their computers out of the Burbank offices and into their trunks, and technologists were scanning every three-dimensional sculpture and design needed for off-site, contemplating
IT WAS LESS THAN A YEAR AGO WHEN DISNEY ANIMATORS WERE CARRYING THEIR COMPUTERS OUT OF THE BURBANK OFFICES AND TO THEIR TRUNKS how to ship microphones via FedEx. “We were naïve about the whole thing,” Nguyen says. “We were like, ‘Oh we’ll be back in six weeks. Well, we’ll be back in May—[then] June has a really solid day, we’ll be back by
then.’ And it just kept growing to the point where you were like, ‘Oh no, this is going to be it.’” As Hall explains, “We’re this big ship pointed in one direction. It’s really hard to turn around. We don’t turn on a dime, that’s just not who we are. But we did.” And with that turn, Disney Animation culture pivoted too. Rather than meet-ups at conference tables or in their beloved in-house coffee shop, the Burbank staff learned to commiserate over family photos in Zoom backgrounds and pets climbing over keyboards—López Estrada’s own dog demonstrated this when he jumped into the director’s arms during an interview. Meanwhile, actors learned how to overcome the sound of air conditioners during the height of summer: turn them off and sweat. It was all an experience, or as Hall chuckled about his own spotty Wi-Fi during the first few weeks, “a pain in the ass.” And yet, it feels strangely apt for its moment. Raya is a story about strangers in a shared land, be they human or dragon, learning to trust each other again. It has themes timely for 2021, but it was the mutual trust of the whole Disney Animation team that weathered through their own distinct storm. Says López Estrada, “It’s a testament to how hard our technology and our production teams worked, and also just actors being amazing at this.” It even makes a good lesson for Kumandra’s society, not to mention ours. DEN OF GEEK 29
TV PREVIEW
POWER COUPLE EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
ISSUE 1 | SPRING 2021
SUPERMAN & LOIS USHERS IN A NEW ERA OF HOPE FOR POP CULTURE’S FAVORITE PAIR WITH AN OLD HOME AND NEW CHALLENGES. BY MIKE CECCHINI
W
hen you think of Superman, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it the cape? The tights? The ability to “leap tall buildings in a single bound?” Whatever Superman’s most recognizable trait, it’s probably the way the character makes you feel that stays with you. The premise that someone so powerful would choose to use that power solely for good is Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) are taking their family back to Smallville for Superman & Lois. [NINO MUÑOZ/THE CW]
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SMALLVILLE, KANSAS
T H E WO R L D ’ S G R E AT E ST R E P O RT E RS
The first episode of Superman & Lois will give fans a quick look at the history between Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch). [DEAN BUSCHER/THE CW]
“I CAN’T THINK OF A MORE IMPORTANT TIME IN RECENT HISTORY TO BE PLAYING A JOURNALIST.” — ELIZABETH TULLOCH
an optimistic one. Despite being one of the most powerful figures in the DC Universe, it’s Superman’s capacity to inspire hope that is his defining characteristic. “Part of why I find the character of Superman appealing as a fan, let alone as a part of the show, is that he has the power to destroy the world and he doesn’t,” Elizabeth Tulloch, who plays Lois Lane on Superman & Lois, says. “He’s doing the right thing because it’s the right thing. If he wasn’t Superman and he was just Clark Kent without the powers, he would be the same man. In other words, you don’t [need] powers to be good, decent, and kind.” Lois Lane is an equally inspirational figure. What could be more hopeful than someone believing, often in the face of mounting evidence to the
contrary, that all the world needs to make the right decision is to hear the truth? As one of fiction’s most famous journalists, Lois uses a different kind of power from her husband’s to make the world a better, more just place. Let’s face it, these days, we’re all in need of a little hope. So why not spotlight the two heroes who have been fighting the hopeful fight for over 80 years? Superman & Lois, the newest iteration of these legendary characters which premieres on The CW on Feb. 23, aims to do just that, albeit with some refreshing twists. The days of our heroes competing with each other for scoops while Clark awkwardly hides his true identity from Lois are gone, replaced with a happily married pair with no secrets between them. To switch things up a little further, the two are raising twin
teenage boys not in big city Metropolis but in Clark’s hometown of Smallville. It may sound like a radical interpretation (at least by the generally change-averse standard of most Superman tales), but Superman & Lois still has sci-fi and action to spare, even as it shows us a new side of the Man of Steel. It comes as the latest entry in the network’s everexpanding roster of DC superhero TV shows, which began in 2012 with Arrow and has grown to encompass The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, and more. It was this shared universe that brought us TV’s newest Superman, Tyler Hoechlin, who first wore the cape in 2016 as a guest star on Supergirl. Despite the fanfare surrounding his arrival there was no Superman spinoff in the works at the time, and this was intended as a oneoff appearance for the character. “Honestly, I was at a point in my life and my career where I didn’t want to commit to something that was a full-time thing on a show,” Hoechlin recalls via Zoom during a break from filming. “I had just left [Teen Wolf] and was enjoying the opportunity to try different things and move around a little bit. So it felt perfect. [Filming] was going to be a couple of weeks up in Vancouver. I could check the list and say I got to play a superhero—and Superman at that.” But Hoechlin, who had previously auditioned for the role on the big screen for 2013’s Man of Steel, found himself drawn to the way the hero was being presented for TV. “I liked what Supergirl was representing at the time and what it has continued to represent,” Hoechlin says. “I really loved that the show was just shamelessly optimistic and hopeful. I was happy to do something that was just very, very bold about it.” That “optimistic and hopeful” quality is apparent in Hoechlin’s performance from the first moments
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TV PREVIEW LO I S L A N E S P E A KS!
Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) will continue her tireless pursuit of truth and justice on Superman & Lois. [DEAN BUSCHER/THE CW]
“PART OF WHY TYLER AND I TAKE THIS REALLY SERIOUSLY [IS] BECAUSE WE KNOW THESE ROLES ARE ICONIC FOR A REASON.” — ELIZABETH TULLOCH
of that initial Supergirl guest appearance. Incredibly powerful and yet so unfailingly polite that he takes the time to offer a wink and a smile to people he saves on the street, this Superman connected with fans tiring of the conflicted, brooding takes which characterized so many of the character’s recent adventures. When the decision was made to bring Superman back for the following year’s Elseworlds crossover event, it was important to match Clark with the character who has shared nearly all his adventures since 1938. “They were reading a lot of other actresses I recognized,” Tulloch recalls of her 2018 Lois Lane audition. “I kind of had a feeling, after I did it once, that I totally was doing something different from the other actors. The choice I
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made was just to have fun with it. I think, based on some of the feedback I got in the room, a lot of women had been reading that scene more seriously because, on paper, the scene did read as serious.” The audition reading in question was a deleted scene from 1980’s Superman II, in which Lois, determined to prove that she knows Clark’s secret identity, pulls a gun on him and fires. A horrified Clark reprimands her, only for Lois to reveal that the round was blank. But by then it’s too late: he’s already confessed to being Superman. “I just sort of played it joyfully,” Tulloch says. “And at the end, when he doesn’t die, I squealed happily and said, ‘I knew it.’” Tulloch recalls a note from Supergirl co-showrunner Jessica
Queller: “She was like, ‘This is what we were looking for… there needs to be a joie de vivre about Lois.’” Lois Lane is as crucial to DC history as Superman, first appearing in what is generally considered ground zero for the entire superhero genre: 1938’s Action Comics #1. The book introduced both Superman and Lois to the world and, over the ensuing decades, Lois has risen from supporting character to co-headliner, and with good reason. Tougher than a Metropolis winter, sharp-witted, and a better journalist than her superpowered co-worker, Lois showcases the human spirit at its best, no powers required. Tulloch embodies the character as confidently as Hoechlin does Clark/Superman. “I can’t think of a more important time in recent history to be playing a journalist,” Tulloch says. “After the last few years, where I feel like journalists and members of the media have come under a pretty constant onslaught and had their roles diminished, I think it’s really important to be doing what she’s doing, using her words to fight on behalf of other people, and to fight for truth and justice.” Just like Hoechlin’s Superman, Tulloch’s Lois was an immediate hit with fans. It helps that the pair share an effortless onscreen chemistry. Without the Clark/Superman/Lois faux-love triangle that characterized so many previous versions of the legend, TV’s new Lois and Clark were free to focus on fresher elements of the relationship. Amazingly, this rapport came naturally, as the tight shooting schedules of the Elseworlds crossover meant the first time the pair were in character together was right before filming. “Our first readings were on set,” Hoechlin says. “We didn’t get to do any of the readings together beforehand. I immediately thought she was perfect for the part. That feeling has only grown.” “We really just have so much fun,”
Tulloch says. “I think that’s part of why I hope people respond to us. Obviously there’s a level of gravitas to these roles, and what they’re doing in their roles in the world is really important, but they’re also really playful and they really like each other.” By the time the characters were brought back for another DC TV guest appearance in 2019, things had changed. Lois had given birth to their first child, the infant Jonathan Kent. They were there for the multiverseshattering Crisis on Infinite Earths, which changed elements of reality for all the DC superhero shows, including a major status quo shift for Clark and Lois: instead of raising a single infant son, they now have twin teenage boys. The responsibility of shaping Superman & Lois fell to writer and executive producer Todd Helbing, who served as showrunner on the
fifth season of The Flash. Yet, it was a task that gave him pause when the job was first presented to him by DC TV maestro Greg Berlanti. “These shows are ginormous,” Helbing says. “The hours alone, it’s just a daunting task. And nobody wants to mess up Superman.” It was here that the family dynamic of Superman & Lois began to take shape. “Crisis gave us a blank slate in a lot of ways,” Helbing says, and with that came freedom. Only child Jonathan gave way to the idea of a son and a daughter, before finally settling on two very different twin sons: the athletic and confident Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) and the anxious and introverted Jordan (Alexander Garfin). “I have two boys who are wildly different, so that became part of the storytelling,” Helbing says. “What do you do as parents when one child
is completely different from the other and needs different attention and different help? The brothers’ relationship changes the family dynamic. And as working parents, how do you juggle your lives? Just thinking about Lois Lane being the most famous journalist in the world and the demands that her job has coupled with the demands that Superman would have, how do you infuse the storytelling with all of those challenges?” Those challenges include the fact that, as the show opens, the boys don’t know their father is the world’s most powerful superhero, which means Clark occasionally misses out on fatherly activities without an honest excuse, an understandable point of friction. “Superman is a difficult person to dramatize because he’s perfect in a lot
T WO V E RY D I F F E R E N T S O N S
Confident and athletic Jonathan Kent (Jordan Elsass) and anxious and introverted Jordan Kent (Alexander Garfin) adjust to life in Smallville. [DEAN BUSCHER/THE CW]
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TV PREVIEW of ways,” Helbing says. “The analogy we always use is Superman is sort of perfect, but Clark can be clumsy as a dad. I think being clumsy as a parent, that’s something that we all are. We’re all figuring it out. There are a lot of books written about it, but the second it happens to you, you don’t know what you’re doing. So why would that be any different for the Man of Steel? In a lot of ways, that opened up the floodgates about really telling stories where people can relate to him in a way that they haven’t been able to before.” In other words, just because Lois and Clark are icons, pillars of an entire genre of storytelling, and two of the most famous characters in all of fiction, it doesn’t mean parenting comes easily to them. “I think there’s a little element of guilt on both of their parts because they’re such busy people, with Clark moonlighting as Superman, and Lois being this very famous, hardworking journalist,” Tulloch says. The idea of Lois and Clark as parents isn’t new to fans of the comics, where young Jonathan has been a fixture for years, but it isn’t as well known as other facets of the Superman legend. This makes Hoechlin and Tulloch the first actors to bring this element of the characters to a mainstream audience. “For me, it was an exciting opportunity to tell a part of the story that hasn’t been told before,” Hoechlin says. “In a way, it raises the stakes significantly… the only real threat to him is threatening the people that he cares about. Of course, he’s had that relationship with Lois, but now he’s also got two kids, so that threat becomes all the more real.” Fans who grew up with Superman and now have families of their own may see the character in a new light. “I think for parents to be able to come back and reconnect with this
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character who was a hero of theirs as a kid going through the same things that they’re now going through is such a cool opportunity, as well,” says Hoechlin. Creating a realistic family dynamic meant finding actors to play the Kent sons who felt natural with their onscreen parents. Tulloch did readings with a series of young actors to make sure the parental chemistry was there. “You honestly could tell almost immediately that they were the right fits,” Tulloch says. “Alex Garfin, who plays Jordan, has a lot of emotional stuff. He was just really excellent. Jordan Elsass, who plays Jonathan, is
“FOR ME, IT WAS AN EXCITING OPPORTUNITY TO TELL A PART OF THE STORY THAT HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD BEFORE.” — TYLER HOECHLIN
the same. His role is really different since Jonathan’s a bit cockier. If anything, his character’s Achilles’ heel is that he thinks too highly of himself. But both of those boys were just awesome.” Events in the first episode lead the family to leave Metropolis for Clark’s old hometown of Smallville, which isn’t quite the idyllic small town it’s sometimes portrayed as. But the rural setting doesn’t mean that there will be less superheroic action than you’ve come to expect from a big city-based hero. “The way we approached it was, if Flash is the guardian of Central
City and Supergirl is the guardian of National City, Superman is the guardian of the world,” Helbing says. “So it really doesn’t matter where Superman’s based. He can fly anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. Once you understand that, it really doesn’t matter where his home turf is… it could be anywhere.” Bringing the family back to Smallville means that Hoechlin has an opportunity to explore more facets of the character. There’s a long-running debate among Superman fans and creators about which of Superman’s identities is the “real” persona. Is he really Clark Kent, and Superman is a put-on for the world? Or does Superman represent his true nature, and it’s Clark Kent who’s an act? To hear Hoechlin tell it, it’s far more complicated than that. “There is Superman at the most extreme, when no one knows him as anything other than [a hero],” Hoechlin says of his approach to the character. “There’s Superman when he’s around people who are aware that he’s more than just Superman. There’s the Clark that everyone knows is Superman, but he’s still kind of ‘playing Clark.’ There’s also the extreme Clark where you would only ever think that he’s the clumsy guy in the office and that’s all he is.” But the truth of the character lies somewhere else entirely for the actor, and it’s the one that lends itself well to a story of Clark living a familyoriented life when he’s not flying around saving the world. “And then there’s this guy in the center,” Hoechlin says. “I don’t really think that there’s a right answer in saying that ‘he is Superman’ or ‘he is Clark.’” Clark will face some challenges as he readjusts to Smallville life, but it’s the famously outspoken Lois who has her work cut out for her. “Lois has a tendency to put her foot in her mouth and sometimes she doesn’t think before she speaks,”
Tulloch says. “You will see her get into trouble a little bit with the people of Smallville because she thinks she’s doing the right thing on their behalf, but not really thinking through their specific needs.” Despite these weighty and dramatic concepts, there’s no shortage of super-powered action in the first two episodes, in which Superman takes on a mysterious, armored foe. For those wondering whether they need to be up on the various continuity bylaws of a TV universe that encompasses no
fewer than six other shows, the first episode kicks off with a wonderful crash course in the history of this particular Superman and Lois, and there’s no baggage from other series to contend with. “My mom watches everything that my brother [Aaron Helbing of The Flash, Knightfall, and more] and I do, and she didn’t read comic books,” Helbing says. “If she can’t understand what’s going on, then we’ve failed. But in the same light, there’s a huge fanbase, so we want to put Easter eggs
T H E M A N O F ST E E L’ S N E W LO O K
in there and we want to tell stories about characters that everybody knows [from] the comics. We want to satisfy both at the same time, but ultimately, our job is to just tell a good story, and that takes focus.” Getting what these particular characters represent right matters more to fans than superpowered brawls, crossovers, or intricate continuity. (“Part of why Tyler and I take this really seriously [is] because we know these roles are iconic for a reason,” Tulloch says). Embodying those core values is what made Hoechlin and Tulloch’s portrayals connect so strongly with fans in the crossovers, and it’s something everyone involved in the spinoff series intends to continue. “It’s such a polarized world that we’re living in,” Hoechlin says. “Superman’s ability to stand for what’s right without having to, for lack of a better word, demonize, is something I really appreciate about him. For me, that’s really that idea of compassion and empathy towards everyone. I think his hope is that everyone finds the right path.” But as it so often does when discussing the world of Superman, it always comes back to that one word: hope. “Superman has always been hopeful,” Helbing says. “Considering everything that we’ve gone through this year, hope is infused in there and it should be. But it has to feel real, and it has to come out of hopefulness for real struggles that anybody watching this can relate to. If Superman can struggle and he still remains hopeful, and if Lois can struggle and she remains hopeful, then I think maybe we can, too.” Superman & Lois premieres on Feb. 23 on The CW. Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) gets a new costume this season that blends elements from throughout the character’s history. [NINO MUÑOZ/THE CW]
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TV PREVIEW WHEN WE PARTED WAYS WITH Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) at the end of Avengers: Endgame, their lives were at a crossroads. They’d both just said an emotional farewell to close friend Steve Rogers as he travelled back in time to return the Infinity Stones from whence they came. But after suiting up as Captain America and disappearing, Rogers unexpectedly reemerged seconds later as an old man, keen to pass on his iconic shield to Wilson and call it a day. Meanwhile, a broken-but-healing Barnes, who had previously been transformed into a deadly assassin by HYDRA, looked ahead to an uncertain future without Steve by his side. Would Barnes leave his Winter Soldier days behind him? Would Wilson ditch his Falcon alter ego and become the new Captain America? And would the two of them ever have a nice word to say about each other?! All these questions and more were set to be answered last year in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Marvel’s highly anticipated Bucky and Sam spinoff series, but the project ran into trouble on the road to streaming. Initially planned as the first big show on Marvel’s roster, as delay after delay slammed the show’s production efforts, it became clear that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would have to take a backseat to the already-wrapped Scarlet Witch and Vision spinoff,
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier CAP’S LEGACY LIVES ON
MORE MARVEL: SPIN-OFF LO K I
Everyone’s favorite Asgardian/Frost Giant Loki (Tom Hiddleston) will make his long-awaited MCU return in this Disney+ series bearing his name. By grabbing the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame, Loki really could have been sent anywhere. How lucky for us, then, that he ended up with the Time Variance Authority so Owen Wilson could send him on more bizarre adventures.
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M A RV E L’S W H AT I F … ?
“What If?” is a time-honored concept in Marvel comics, and now Marvel Cinematic Universe fans will get to see it in animated action. Multiverse crosser The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) will present viewers with fascinating hypotheticals like “What if T’Challa was whisked away to outer space by Yondu?”, “What if Sharon Carter got the supersoldier serum?”, and “What if Captain America became an ice zombie?”
starring :
ANTHONY MACKIE, SEBASTIAN STAN, DANIEL BRÜHL, EMILY VANCAMP eta : M A R C H 19, 2021
WandaVision. March will finally bring Marvel geeks the action-packed series they’ve been waiting for when the focused-but-upbeat Wilson and the sullen-but-healing Barnes are forced to work together in a classic buddy cop-esque scenario with shades of The Winter Soldier’s spy thriller mixed in. Left to handle Steve’s legacy in an age where many of the Avengers are no longer around, the pair will be dragged into confrontations with enemies old and new as Daniel Brühl’s Captain America: Civil War villain Helmut Zemo reestablishes his role as a thorn in their sides and John Walker, a disturbing, militaristic successor to Captain America, is presented by the government. Starring as Walker is Wyatt Russell in arguably his highest profile role to date. The son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Wyatt has been slowly rising up the Hollywood ranks in the likes of Netflix’s Black Mirror and the J.J. Abrams-produced horror gem, Overlord. Russell’s character could end up being a key addition to the MCU. He was once a notable Marvel Comics supervillain, after all. More importantly, the series also promises more of Sam and Bucky trading barbs as part of their ongoing hate-hate relationship, and if the videos Mackie and Stan have posted to social media during the making of this show are any indication, those should be delivered in spades. —KIRSTEN HOWARD
SHOWS COMING YOUR WAY H AW K E Y E
Strange as it may seem, Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye will be the first original MCU Avenger to get his own series. But Hawkeye won’t belong solely to Clint. Hailee Steinfeld will star as Kate Bishop, the young woman training under Clint to take on the mantle of Hawkeye, which should have major ramifications for the Marvel universe. Plus, we even get Lucky the Pizza Dog.
M S . M A RV E L
Every long-running superhero multiverse needs fresh blood, and that’s where Ms. Marvel will come in. Kamala Khan a.k.a Ms. Marvel is a relatively new figure in the comics canon and the actress portraying her, Iman Vellani, is a complete newcomer. After the character’s late 2021 debut, Khan will be joining her namesake in the Captain Marvel sequel. —KH
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TV PREVIEW
Shadow and Bone Set in a Russian-influenced fantasy world where some people are born with a magical ability to manipulate the elements, Shadow and Bone stars relative newcomer Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov, a teen orphan and soldier who unlocks a power that could save the world from the Shadow Fold, an evergrowing sea of perpetual darkness and hungry monsters that separates her war-torn kingdom. With Arrival and Bird Box screenwriter Eric Heisserer as showrunner and riveting source material from Leigh Bardugo, this Netflix fantasy adaptation’s April premiere is one to anticipate. —KAYTI BURT
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SUPERHERO GROWING PAINS
starring :
STEVEN YEUN, J.K. SIMMONS, SANDRA OH, SETH ROGEN eta : M A R C H 26, 2021 ONE YEAR BEFORE Robert Kirkman embarked on the zombie journey that was The Walking Dead comic, he started a similarly ambitious endeavor in the superhero genre. On its face, Invincible is a simple story. Mark Grayson is your typical suburban American kid. He goes to high school, has a day job, and gets crushes. Unlike other kids, however, Mark’s dad is a superhero: the strong, mustachioed Omni-Man.
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Mark lives with the knowledge that, one day, he’ll get powers just like his extraterrestrial old man. Once he does, in the first issue of the comic’s 144-issue run, the story is truly off to the races. Amazon Prime is adapting the story of the Grayson family into a TV series premiering this year. The show will be animated, closely hewing to the style of the comic’s illustrators, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. The decision
to go animated was surely one of logistics as much as style, as the world in Invincible is truly enormous, constantly playing on popular comics tropes as the story grows larger and larger, into an intergalactic bildungsroman. The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun will voice Mark Grayson, leading a large, impressive voice cast that also includes Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons, Seth Rogen, Mark Hamill, and more. —ALEC BOJALAD
IMAGE CREDITS: CHUCK ZLOTNICK. ©MARVEL STUDIOS 2020 (PEVIOUS SPREAD), AMAZON STUDIOS (INVINCIBLE), DAVID APPLEBY/NETFLIX (SHADOW AND BONE)
Invincible
eta :
The Irregulars STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN ON BAKER STREET
starring :
IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX (THE IRREGULARS), MACALL POLAY/FX (THE LAST MAN), SKY UK LIMITED (INTERGALACTIC)
HENRY LLOYD-HUGHES, ROYCE PIERRESON, THADDEA GRAHAM, DARCI SHAW, MCKELL DAVID, JOJO MACARI eta : A P R I L 23 WHAT IF THE MIGHTY SHERLOCK HOLMES was a drug-addled criminal and John Watson was a master manipulator who convinced a gang of outsider kids to solve their crimes for them? And what if Victorian London was being attacked by otherworldly forces and the last line of defense was this bunch of youngsters? This is the starting point for Netflix’s new supernatural crime drama which brings a young, fresh twist to the world of Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective. Created by Tom Bidwell, who wrote Netflix’s 2018 adaptation of Watership Down and My Mad Fat Diary, the show promises to be a mashup of mystery,
eta :
2021
action, and Stranger Things as the gang battle dark powers from beyond. Holmes is played by The Inbetweeners star Henry Lloyd-Hughes, with Royce Pierreson as Watson while the Irregulars themselves are played by Thaddea Graham, Darci Shaw, McKell David, and Jojo Macari. The series runs at eight episodes and will be with us for the spring. Bidwell has said this is his dream project and his oldest idea, and we reckon it’s a great time for a reinvention of Holmes as a glory-seeking scoundrel who thinks nothing of endangering the lives of local urchins. Now that’s highly irregular. —ROSIE FLETCHER
Y: The Last Man Y: The Last Man adapts Vertigo’s graphic novel series from the early 2000s in which a mysterious plague kills all mammals with a Y chromosome. Yorick Brown (and his male pet monkey Ampersand) becomes the last man on Earth amid the women trying to maintain civilization after losing half the population. The series will stream on FX
on Hulu in 2021 after several production delays due to changing showrunners and recasting several roles. Ben Schnetzer (Warcraft) takes over the role of Yorick, who wanders the country looking for answers about the plague and encountering pockets of survivors struggling to restore what was lost and build something better. —MICHAEL AHR
TV PREVIEW
Intergalactic starring :
PARMINDER NAGRA, CRAIG PARKINSON, ELEANOR TOMLINSON, THOMAS TURGOOSE eta : 2021
INNER DEPTHS IN OUTER SPACE IMAGINE BEING TRAPPED in isolation: no visitors, no fun, and an empty calendar. Actually, forget that one. All a little bit too relatable, these days. Let’s start again, shall we? Think of lockdown in outer space. No, really – things could be even worse. Sky’s new original drama takes us into a future version of the galaxy we know, in which Earth’s culture has altered beyond recognition. Bye bye, national governments: our planet’s now controlled by a global regime, the Commonworld. We soon get to see a far more sinister side to this brave new order. The transport ship we’re boarding carries a dangerous human cargo: high-security female prisoners. They’re a diverse, intriguing bunch. Tula (Rogue One’s Sharon Duncan-Brewster) is not a lady you’d want
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to cross in a hurry. She’s a psychopath whose control of her gentle daughter, Genevieve (Diany Samba-Bandza) comes at a terrible cost. Also doing time is Candy (Eleanor Tomlinson, Poldark), a fun-loving drug addict who finds herself clashing with the other inmates. They’re all in the dark when it comes to the identity of Prisoner 99450 (Natasha O’Keeffe, Peaky Blinders). Hapless guard Drew (Thomas Turgoose, This is England) is way out of his depth on this voyage. When the tables turn and the inmates start running the show, these disparate personalities must unite to figure out their escape. There’s another snag: one of their number is Ash Harper (The Tunnel’s Savannah Steyn). She’s a former cop and ace pilot whose bright future turns to ashes when she’s falsely accused and jailed. Her mum, Arch Marshall Rebecca
Harper (Bend it Like Beckham and ER star Parminder Nagra) is—ironically enough—in charge of Commonworld galactic security… Back in the days before we all got put in solitary, a trip to Manchester’s appropriately named Space Studios took us into the bowels of the prison ship. A set styled with nods to Alien—think camaraderie and claustrophobia —sat alongside production art and stills which promised something of the freedom our band of convicts crave. With award-winning showrunner Julie Gearey (one of the writers behind Prisoners’ Wives and Secret Diary of a Call Girl) at the helm, this hijacked ship is bound to make some fascinating emotional detours, too. Like all the best sci-fi, Intergalactic will remind us that, no matter how far we flee, the connections we build are what keeps us human. It’s a resonant message for 2021. —GEM WHEELER
Presented by
MOST WATCHED COMIC BOOK MOVIE AND TV ADAPTATIONS IN 2021 SO FAR TV SHOWS LUCIFER
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TITANS
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DEADPOOL 2
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SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
7
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY
6
JOKER
CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA
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SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
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THE WALKING DEAD
THE BOYS
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1
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Reelgood is a streaming TV guide that lets you browse, search, and track what’s available on all of your streaming services in one place. Spend less time searching, and more time watching with Reelgood.com *Data is based on streaming engagement for comic book titles among 2 million U.S. Reelgood users from January 1-31, 2021. DEN OF GEEK
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DC’S INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
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THE DC UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING IN NEW AND EXCITING WAYS. WE TAKE YOU THROUGH SOME OF DC’S EXCITING LAUNCHES AND RELAUNCHES COMING THIS SPRING... BY JIM DANDENEAU IN RETROSPECT, it was really on the nose: Joshua Williamson sitting in front of his positively Alexandrian library of DC comics while talking about Infinite Frontier, the 64-page one shot arriving on March 2 that explores a future of infinite possibilities where “all of DC history counts.” “I’m definitely going to pull things from the past. Especially things that I think we’re still missing that I want to bring back in,” Williamson says. “We’re just taking everything that we love with the DCU, [and] moving it forward with the Infinite Frontier special.” Infinite Frontier is the first day of the rest of the DC Universe’s life. Since 2016’s Rebirth, DC has been slowly expanding its cosmology—addressing gaps in its own continuity with Doomsday Clock, introducing the Dark Multiverse in Dark Nights: Metal, and finally, in the recently
Infinite Frontier #0 written by: Scott Snyder, Geoff Johns, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, Geoffrey Thorne, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Brian Michael Bendis, Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad, Joelle Jones, and Tim Sheridan art by: John Timms, Howard Porter, Joelle Jones, Jorge Jiménez, Alitha Martinez, David Marquez, Stephen Byrne, Jamal Igle, Dexter Soy, Rafa Sandoval, Alex Maleev, John Romita Jr., and others ON SALE: MARCH 2
wrapped Dark Nights: Death Metal, gleefully throwing 80 years of DC continuity back on the table for creators to play with. Infinite Frontier works as a pivot point for the DCU as a whole, a reveille for an era where anything goes because everything happened. The artists on Infinite Frontier are a mix of old and new: Howard Porter, the Flash and JLA legend who drew several of Williamson’s Flash issues; John Timms, the up-and-coming Harley Quinn/Young Justice artist getting a big push in Future State; Alex Maleev, the painterly legend behind some of the greatest Daredevil issues of all time; and John Romita, Jr., one of the greatest artists in comics history, with a résumé of hits so deep it would take a decade to read. “[Romita]’s definitely been on the bucket list of creators I wanted to work with,” Williamson says. “What was crazy, I found out as we were getting it ready and I was writing the script for him, one of the big characters that’s in the epilogue, he had never drawn before.” Williamson has had a hand in every big event going back to Rebirth, and he’s fresh off one of the longest runs of Flash comics of all time. And as his very comprehensive library of DC lore suggests, he’s kind of into this stuff. Williamson is handling the framing sequences of the book, and a couple of stories in between. Infinite Frontier is meant to lay out both the “infinite wonder” and “infinite terror” of post-Death Metal DC continuity, and it sets the table for everything coming next in the DCU. “There are so many different great eras of DC for me. I look at it as these big blocks,” Williamson says. “I think part of the motivation behind Infinite Frontier is that we saw an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and say this is the new era.” Here’s a look at some of the hottest new DC books launching in March and April... DEN OF GEEK 43
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE NEXT BATMAN? FUTURE STATE HAS SHAKEN UP the DC Universe. The new sci-fi tinged status quo has changed everything, including the man behind the cowl. Under the pen of Oscar winner John Ridley, Tim Fox has taken on the mantle of The Dark Knight and is facing down the militarized police force known as the Magistrate. Fans met Fox’s backto-basics Batman in the timely Future State: The Next Batman. But in a new miniseries, The Next Batman: Second Son, fans will get to know how Lucius’ youngest son became Gotham’s newest protector. So what does the new series have in store? “I guess in its strictest form it’s the [Tim Fox] origin story, but it’s more than that,” Ridley says. “It’s really about bridging that space between where Tim has been and where he is in The Next Batman. It’s about the Fox family. It’s about what he’s been through, what the Fox family is going through. So it’s a little more immediate than going completely back into the past, but it is going to get us to the now of Jace [Tim] Fox, the whole Fox family, and even Gotham City.” Ridley is keen for fans to know this isn’t just an origin story, though. “[Second Son] will certainly go back and explain and excavate Jace’s world view, where he’s been, and why he went away,” he says. “Why he feels certain things about his family and particularly his father, and what drives him to want to do more and do better. And, frankly, some very serious mistakes he’s made in his life.” When it was announced that a new Batman was on the 44
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The Next Batman: Second Son written by: John Ridley art by: Tony Akins, Travel Foreman, Mark Morales ON SALE: FEB. 23 (DIGITAL), APRIL 6 (STORES)
horizon, many fans assumed it would be Jace’s brother, Luke, who would put on the cowl. So with Tim now firmly wearing the cape, how does Ridley expect the inevitable showdown between Batwing and the newly-minted Batman to play out? “I know that moment. I know why it’s going to happen. I know when it’s going to happen,” Ridley says. “My hope is that it would go down differently than any fan would expect because then I feel like I’ve really done my job. They’re expecting a moment where they’re going to meet. How could that not happen? I hope that I deliver it in a way that’s unexpected for the fans but also highly satisfying.”
IMAGE CREDITS: DAN JURGENS AND MIKEL JANÍN (PREVIOUS SPREAD), DOUG BRAITHWAITE (THE NEXT BATMAN), JORGE JIMÉNEZ (BATMAN), GUILLEM MARCH (JOKER); DC
BY ROSIE KNIGHT
JOKER GOES GLOBAL BY JIM DANDENEAU
JAMES TYNION IV has big plans for Gotham City. Fresh off of the milestone Batman #100, the culmination of Tynion’s huge Joker War story, the scribe takes both the Dark Knight Detective and the Clown Prince of Crime into DC’s Infinite Frontier. His first mission in the new era: a massive Scarecrow story. “[Dr. Crane] thinks he is unlocking some truths of human nature, and he’s willing to use the entire city as a testing ground for that,” Tynion says. “But in a weird way, so is Batman.” The parallels are too enticing to pass up. That’s why the name of the year’s big arc is “The Cowardly Lot.” Tynion is also taking the Joker on the road in an ongoing solo series. Specifically, to what the writer calls a globe-spanning “secret criminal underworld.” “How do people like the Joker stay off of Batman’s radar for years at a time?” Tynion asks. The answer draws inspiration from some obvious but terrible places. Like the rat lines that secreted Nazis to South America at the end of World War II. Or how organized crime
shuttles people around the world today. Joker’s closest structural parallel is to a psychological horror tale, with Joker functioning as the malignant, irredeemable psychopath at the core of the book, and Jim and Barbara Gordon as key supporting players. “The Joker looms large in both of their recent pasts,” Tynion says. With DC imprints like Black Label doing prestige, out of continuity work, and the middle grade books serving as entry points for young readers, Tynion and the rest of the team are free to push the Batman family’s status quo to a different place. “We’re further down [Batman’s] timeline than we’ve ever been before,” he says, pointing out that this Batman and his world are a lot closer to the Dark Knight Returns or the Batman Beyond Batmen than the Year One Bruce. That shift means Gotham is more dangerous and it’s pushing Bruce back to basics, forcing him to focus on detective work and think his way out of problems. “The hope is that this is creating an era of Batman comics that people come back to... long in the future,” Tynion says.
Batman #106 written by: James Tynion IV art by: Jorge Jimenez ON SALE: MARCH 2
The Joker #1 written by: James Tynion IV art by: Guillem March ON SALE: MARCH 9
THE HOPE IS THAT THIS IS CREATING AN ERA OF BATMAN COMICS THAT PEOPLE COME BACK TO. —JAMES TYNION IV
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LIGHTING THE WAY... “I HAVE [TWO RULES] ABOUT DEATHS in comic books,” Geoffrey Thorne says at the start of our chat about his upcoming run on Green Lantern for the Infinite Frontier era. “If Galactus kills you with some kind of weird ray from his forehead, then it’s much easier to bring you back to life. If, however, you get stabbed in the back by a giant metal spear, and you bleed out on some alien planet, odds are high you’re dead for good.” Thorne joins artist Dexter Soy for a cosmic tale told through the eyes of Green Lantern John Stewart. Thorne’s recent Future State: Green Lantern dropped readers into the middle of an alien holy war where a depowered Stewart was trying to organize a retreat of a civilian population under threat of slaughter. The setting, and the idea of the Lanterns’ place in the universe, are crucial facets of Thorne’s new Green Lantern. He wants to examine the Corps’ role in a still developing Green Lantern #1 intergalactic community. written by: “This is going to be an outward Geoffrey Thorne facing Green Lantern book,” he art by: Dexter Soy says. “As a government, [the United ON SALE: APRIL 6 Planets] is a great idea, but [the Corps is] running around, they’re not governing you, they’re policing you... Who says you get to do this?” Thorne’s original pitch was a John Stewart story only, but it grew as part of his collaboration with DC’s team. He tells us that, in addition to Jo Mullein from Far Sector making her way into this series, Simon Baz will also be helping Stewart out. But the new character he seems most excited about is Teen Lantern, Keli Quintela. Her origin makes her a fascinating addition. “I hate to say it like this, but [it’s] sort of a gutter version of Abin Sur handing off the ring to Hal,” Thorne says. Soy’s art is a highlight for Thorne. The artist’s ability to flip back and forth between intimate and grandiose perfectly sets the scene and mood. “By the time you get to page two, you’re going to know where you’re living with this book,” Thorne promises. 46 DEN OF GEEK
IMAGE CREDITS: DEXTER SOY (GREEN LANTERN), RILEY ROSSMO (HARLEY QUINN); DC
BY JIM DANDENEAU
HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO H ARLEY BY ROSIE KNIGHT
HARLEY QUINN HAS BEEN CAUSING chaos in the DC Universe for nearly three decades. But her criminal past is catching up to her in the most unexpected way: her conscience. Writer Stephanie Phillips is crafting an unexpected hero’s journey for everyone’s favorite Maid of Mayhem. But don’t worry—even while making amends she’s still the same old Harley. Future State: Harley Quinn introduced a Harley who’s taking down some of Gotham’s biggest bads with some unexpected help. “I really wanted to see Harley’s intelligence played up, and I think one of the best ways I could approach that was to give her someone really intelligent to play with to show that she’s not just outsmarting a bunch of random henchmen,” Phillips says. That person? Jonathan Crane, in what Phillips calls a “Hannibal and Clarice” setup, with
Crane entertainingly taking the latter role. Besting the boys of Gotham is a great place to leave the newly minted heroine, but how did she get there? That will be answered in March’s Harley Quinn #1. “She’s made herself a list of things she’s done wrong that she thinks she can right or apologize for to basically right the wrongs of enabling the Joker,” Phillips says. “She was close enough to end what Joker had done [but] instead egged him on or dared him to do bigger and worse things. So now she thinks her larger mission is apologizing to Gotham.” Despite her good intentions, Harley isn’t going to start playing by other people’s rules. “Even with her hero’s journey that we might be taking her on, I still like that there’s a very independent side to Harley,” Phillips says. “It might explore what it means for Harley to be close to the Bat family, but she’s not really a part of it. There’s still always this element of Harley standing on her own.”
Harley Quinn #1 written by: Stephanie Phillips art by: Riley Rossmo ON SALE: MARCH 23 DEN OF GEEK 47
BY MIKE CECCHINI
Justice League #59 written by: Brian Michael Bendis (backup story written by Ram V) art by: David Marquez (backup story art by Xermanico) ON SALE: MARCH 16 48
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IF YOU’RE ASSEMBLING a Justice League roster, names like Superman, Batman, Flash, Hawkgirl, and Aquaman spring immediately to mind. But what about Black Adam, Hippolyta, or new hero Naomi? When Brian Michael Bendis reunites with artist David Marquez in Justice League #59, your perception of what a Justice League team can be might change. Bendis says the new lineup started with a philosophical conversation within the team itself. “What does justice mean to everyone? It means different things to different people. How can we be a Justice League for all if our perspective is limited?” Bendis promises the team you meet in the first issue is still going to expand with “constant membership changes.”
IMAGE CREDITS: DAVID MARQUEZ (JUSTICE LEAGUE), RAFA SANDOVAL (TITANS ACADEMY); DC
MEET THE NEW JUSTICE LEAGUE
This will be Bendis’ first ongoing DC series with Marquez. The pair had collaborated on a number of titles over the last decade, and when it was time for Bendis to take over writing duties on Justice League, he talked it over with Marquez. “I know team books are hard on an artist so I wanted to make sure that he wanted in,” he says. “David draws a great Naomi, a great Superman, and a great Batman. It’s just perfectly tailored towards him.” Justice League also features Justice League Dark stories by Ram V and Xermanico, and Bendis promises some interplay between both features in the book. “Once we’re past our first storylines, you’re going to see some innovative interactions between the two, opening up the whole book to being a giant story as some of the magical, mythical components of the DC Universe affect both parts of the story.” Justice League has always been about powerful heroes coming together for tasks they can’t accomplish on their own, but now they’ll be asking what justice itself means, and for whom. “It always has to be towards that goal of justice for all,” he says.
RED X MARKS THE SPOT BY ROSIE KNIGHT
ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS coming out of DC’s Future State and Infinite Frontier is a familiar anti-hero we’ve somehow never seen in the pages of a DC comic before. Red X is headed out of the Teen Titans cartoon and straight into Future State: Teen Titans and the
upcoming Titans Academy. Like many of us, Future State: Teen Titans writer Tim Sheridan was shaped by the iconic Teen Titans animated series, so to be the one heralding Red X into the comics is almost too good to be true: “Teen Titans informed a lot about who I am as a writer and as a fan,” Sheridan says. The enigma of Red X is one that’s stuck with Sheridan. “Red X is a character with so much mystery surrounding him,” he says. “[Teen Titans] gave us Red X and it was a mystery for an episode and then it turned out it’s Dick Grayson. But then I think they realized ‘we’ve got something cool here,’ so they decided to build out the mystery with another Red X.” Just like in the cartoon, the secret of the second Red X’s identity is at the core of his introduction to the DC Universe. “I know who Red X is,” Sheridan laughs. “But I think it’s important for the fans to get a chance to solve the mystery.” So who is Red X? Unsurprisingly Sheridan won’t reveal his story’s biggest secret, but he does give us a little taste of what’s to come. “It is definitely not who you think it is,” the writer says. “Red X is not Dick Grayson. At one time Dick was the first Red X, that mythology and lineage is intact.” While Future State was more concerned with introducing Red X into DC continuity, Infinite Frontier and Teen Titans Academy are all about the mystery of who is behind the mask. “From the very first issue, those breadcrumbs will be there and you’ll get the chance to start following that trail,” he says. “There’s going to be surprises along the way. There’s no way I would tell you right out the gate because this is the backbone of our story, but you will have everything you need to begin putting the pieces together.” Despite his reluctance to tell us who Red X is, Sheridan is quick to gush about what writing him means. “As a fan of the series, as somebody who comes from animation, to get the opportunity to bring a character over into the main continuity whose existence began in animation, it’s incredibly thrilling. It’s a huge honor. I hope that we get to do him justice.”
Titans Academy #1 written by: Tim Sheridan art by: Rafa Sandoval ON SALE: MARCH 23 DEN OF GEEK 49
INTERVIEW
Nightmares AND
Soundscapes
LEGENDARY DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER ON HOW HE FOUND A SECOND CAREER AS A MUSICIAN. “JOHN CARPENTER LAUNCHED his career as a filmmaker in 1974 with the micro-budget sci-fi parody, Dark Star, and completed it, for all intents and purposes, in 2010 with his last full-length directorial effort to date, The Ward. But in between, the New York-born Carpenter created some of the most legendary cult classics of all time, including Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987), and They Live (1988). In addition to directing and writing, Carpenter—the son of a music profes50
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sor—has composed or co-composed the scores for nearly all his films. The filmmaker revealed a natural instinct for music which resulted in classic cues like the theme from Halloween or the lesser-known but still recognizable stingers from Prince of Darkness or The Fog. Although Carpenter has remained involved in filmmaking to some degree—most recently as an executive producer and co-composer on David Gordon Green’s excellent Halloween sequel and next two the installments coming in the series—he has, in recent years, turned his attention full-time to
music. Assembling a musical unit with his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies, Carpenter has released four albums in six years: three volumes of original music called Lost Themes and Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998, featuring new recordings of his classic film scores. The latest album, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death, features titles like “Weeping Ghosts,” “Vampire’s Touch,” and “The Dead Walk”
IMAGE CREDITS: JIM DYSON, GETTY IMAGES
BY D O N K AY E
John Carpenter performs during a Halloween show at the Troxy on Oct. 31, 2016 in London, England.
that combine blazing synthesizer/guitar/electronic dynamics in evocative, memorable, and intensely cinematic instrumental passages. Carpenter called the first Lost Themes album “a soundtrack for the movies in your mind,” and that holds true for this third edition as well. Carpenter, Cody, and Daniel also toured behind Lost Themes II a few years back, bringing Carpenter’s original music and iconic cues—as well
as a new appreciation of the films that spawned them—to delighted Carpenter diehards and a fresh generation of fans. While Carpenter awaits the pandemic-delayed release of Halloween Kills later this year, and hopes to play live again, Den of Geek had the opportunity to get on the phone with the legendary director to discuss his new album, how his music-making process differs from filmmaking,
and more.
How was this recent album [Lost Themes III: Alive After Death] done? Was it a rush of creativity, or did you and the guys work on it piece by piece over the last few years?
John Carpenter: Piece by piece over the last two years. We played some music, then we’d stop, then we’d play some more music, and we’d stop. We did the score to Halloween Kills and DEN OF GEEK 51
Do you think the three of you, you and Cody and Daniel, have coalesced more as a musical unit over that course of time, and did playing live as an actual band help the new music along?
We each bring our strengths to the program. And we all know what we do the best, and we cover each other in that sense. I’m the experienced guy. I’m more experienced in this than they are, but Daniel is a virtuoso on guitar, and Cody is a virtuoso on keyboard. So it’s all different stuff, and we just have a blast, too. It’s all fun.
Was it fun to get out and do that tour?
Ah, man, are you kidding? It’s a dream come true. So there’s always been a touring musician hidden away all these years in John Carpenter?
Oh yeah, and I never knew it either, but he’s there. He’s there. Obviously, with everything that’s going on now, there’s no live music happening, but when we return to normalcy would you like to take this back out on the road again?
You know, we’ve talked about it. We’ll see. I’d like to if the opportunity is there, and things are right again in the world because they’re not right now. It’s crazy so there’s no chance of doing it now. How about doing a performance via livestream?
We’ve talked about that, too, but it’s all a question of timing, and there’s a variety of things to take into consideration, but sure, we might do stuff like that.
When you write music, do you visualize scenes and storylines the way you would when writing a screenplay or is it a different type of muscle entirely?
Well, the purpose of the music is to do exactly what you said it does, which 52
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is to allow you to fantasize a movie of your own. That’s the whole purpose. And for us, for me especially, it’s just doing music. That’s a process of its own. It’s not foolproof. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and start working on something, and it’s crap, and you have to abandon it later. But sometimes it works out. So it’s all good. It’s all good.
ing in the studio, we can perfect something. You can go back over it and over it, but when you’re playing live if you make a mistake that’s it. Nothing you can do about it. Plus the energy, the buzz from the crowd, is incredible. It just gets you going. It makes you want to take over Russia. But they both have their strengths, and it’s also fun just to do it in the studio.
Are there stories behind any of these songs?
Who were your influences, musically, when you started out scoring your own films?
Yeah, but that’s up to you to provide, not me. I’m just there to do the music. I’m the soundtrack to your imagination. Was all this material created from scratch, or was there anything that you had in the archives either from scores, or material that didn’t make the previous albums?
It’s pretty much from scratch. All made up for this particular record.
What’s the difference to you between the energy of working in the studio and playing the music live, and did you try to get more of that live feel to this record?
Oh, they’re just very different. Compil-
Left: Carpenter on set of his feature debut Dark Star (1974). Below: Cover art for Lost Themes III
When I was doing movie music, it was usually guys like Bernard Hermann, or Dimitri Tiomkin. Their scores for movies, that was my youth. That was what I went to see in the movies, their sounds. But the more modern stuff would be Tangerine Dream, stuff like that. I guess you could say I learned from these classical masters of movie themes. That’s where I got my training. I listened a lot to them. You did the music for most of your movies going all the way back to Dark Star. When did it become apparent that this would be the case?
It was pretty natural. I don’t know when exactly it was that this was the
IMAGE CREDITS: BRYANSTON PICTURES (DARK STAR), VCO EMBASSY PICTURES (THE FOG), GETTY IMAGES
then we finished Lost Themes III, but it was a constant finishing business. So here we are.
John Carpenter with stars of his 1980 film The Fog Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh.
way it was going to be. I was just doing it all of a sudden… in the beginning, mostly it was because I could do it cheap and fast. And I knew I could do it, and it would be there. That wouldn’t work with anybody else. That was the way it was. Some of my stuff wasn’t particularly sophisticated, and it wasn’t particularly advanced. It was just synthesizing music. Some of it was really simple depending on what the movie required. But I was pretty good at judging that, so I guess that’s my strength. The music you’re doing now has truly become a second career for you. Do you think that directing is firmly in the rearview mirror at this point?
I don’t think it’s firmly in the rearview mirror, but come on. Supposedly the rap is that Americans don’t have a
second career, and man, I got to have one, I fell into it, and here it is. It’s the greatest. I’m blessed. I don’t question it. In a strange way, it’s also helping people appreciate what you did as a filmmaker as well.
That’s what happened, and it’s the greatest. And plus I’m doing scores to the new Halloween movies which is really, really fun. We just finished up Halloween Kills and it’s great.
What are your thoughts on the debate over whether the studios should wait until they can theatrically release films or stream them?
Well, the studio’s going to do what’s in their best interest. But for a while the theaters are dead, so you’ve just got to put the movies where they can be seen. So streaming is one way, but
we’ll see. We’ll see how it evolves. They’ll make the decision that’s right for them. Thank God I don’t have to make that decision. I don’t want that responsibility. What else can you tell me about Halloween Kills?
The movie’s done. The score, and everything. Halloween Kills is the ultimate slasher film. It is a slasher film on steroids. It will literally blow you away. It’s incredible, and I love it. I’m loving it. What do you know about the third one, Halloween Ends?
I’ve read the script. I can’t wait to see it. It’s great also. It’s really interesting.
John Carpenter’s new album, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death, is out now. DEN OF GEEK 53
BY KIRSTEN HOWARD
F
IMAGE CREDITS: UNIVERSAL PICTURES/PHOTOFEST
FOR ITS 40TH ANNIVERSARY, WE EXPLORE THE MAKING OF FLASH GORDON AND THE SEQUELS THAT NEVER HAPPENED WITH DIRECTOR MIKE HODGES.
orty years on, Flash Gordon still stands alone in the pantheon of comic book movies. Colorful, vibrant, kinky, and often absurd, Mike Hodges’s gaudy tale of an all-American boy defeating a powerful villain from space and saving the Earth in the process had, until recently, felt far removed from the predominantly safe and CGheavy comic book fare of the last few decades, despite its familiar themes and due in large part to its distinct refusal to take itself seriously. But the film we know and love is a world away from how it began. Back in the 1970s, wealthy businessman and film producer Dino De Laurentiis held on to the Flash Gordon
Arden – would be chased across the galaxy by the god-like Ming the Merciless, the destroyer of worlds who intended to repopulate the Earth, after its annihilation, by procreating with Dale, the last human woman left alive. The pair worked on the film for a year, pushing budgetary constraints and straying increasingly further from the playful franchise-starter that De Laurentiis had imagined. Despite the ongoing creative differences between producer and director, De Laurentiis was sure that Flash Gordon was going to be a massive hit. So much so, he started bringing in directors to look at making a sequel, including Mike Hodges, the man behind 1971 crime classic Get Carter.
SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE
Sam J. Jones as Flash Gordon during the film’s iconic football scene. Offscreen, the Fabergé egg police prepared to make their arrest.
rights after George Lucas’s attempts to extricate them. A much-less-minted Lucas was forced to make his own space adventure movie instead, a little project called Star Wars. Its success indisputable, De Laurentiis was more determined than ever to make his Flash Gordon movie come to fruition, and he figured he knew just the guy to take the reins – Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth director Nicolas Roeg. Roeg was a fan of Alex Raymond’s original Flash Gordon comic strips, and he and Enter the Dragon scribe Michael Allin set about creating their vision for De Laurentiis’s proposed adaptation: a biblical epic where Adam and Eve – New York Jets football star Flash and savvy travel agent Dale
“I’m not sure how that happened with Dino,” Hodges says, speaking to us from his Blandford home on the eve of Flash Gordon’s long-awaited 4K home release. “Why he was letting it go in [Roeg]’s direction, which was a much more serious way than the strip cartoon and the rights that he’d already purchased.” Hodges was mystified by Roeg’s epic plans for the first installment and largely baffled by De Laurentiis’s persistence in hiring him for the follow-up film, turning the project down and telling the larger-than-life producer “Look, I’m completely the wrong director.” But soon, Roeg and De Laurentiis would have a final face-off over what exactly Flash Gordon should manifest as, and Roeg would ultimately walk away from the film altogether. De Laurentiis stopped trying to convince Hodges to make a Flash Gordon sequel and started positioning him as his new quarterback on the first flick. Eventually, Hodges relented. “After [De Laurentiis] and Nic [Roeg] fell out, he pursued me and I could never really work out why,” Hodges recalls. “I think he felt, well, if I resisted so much what Nic and Michael were doing – because I didn’t understand it actually – then maybe I was the right director. So, he convinced me to do it.” Ex-Marine, football player, and Playgirl centerfold Sam J. Jones was brought in to lead the film – buff, overconfident, and bottle blonde, Jones simply was Flash. Melody Anderson, who had started her career on TV shows like Logan’s Run, was given room to play Dale as much more than a two-dimensional action movie love interest. The booty shorts-clad Jones and Italian actress Ornella Muti as Princess Aura were both about to become the source of some new “funny feelings” for unsuspecting kids everywhere, while Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed, and Max von Sydow all chewed through scenery as though it were their last meal. De Laurentiis had decided to bring in his King Kong collaborator and writer Lorenzo Semple, who had developed the kitsch 1960s Batman TV series, to bring Flash back to his comic strip roots. It was everything Roeg and Allin had resisted, and it was escalating quickly.
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KING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Producer Dino De Laurentiis only hired people if he liked their face, so a lot of your childhood Lego figures would have never scored auditions.
the exceptional Queen soundtrack. The director was experienced with matching rock music to storytelling thanks to a kids’ TV series he’d worked on in the ’60s called The Tyrant King. But Hodges was initially leaning towards a very different vibe. “I was contemplating what music to do with Flash, and I was playing a lot of Pink Floyd,” he says. “It was The Dark Side of the Moon, which was an amazing record. When the idea of Queen came up, I immediately went with Queen because I think Queen are better suited for Flash Gordon than [Pink Floyd]. They’re much lighter.” Though Hodges had been an unlikely man for the job, he managed to catch lightning in a bottle and turned Flash Gordon into a truly mad and enduring slice of entertainment. Unfortunately, the movie had been hooked to the tail end of a shooting star in Sam J. Jones; one that was about to come crashing down to Earth.
NOTHING BUT A MAN Jones’s naturally energetic and cocksure performance as Flash was key to the film’s spirit, but it came at a price during production. He was a troubled novice who had won the coveted part over the likes of Harvey Keitel and Jeff Bridges. After touching down in London to shoot the film, Jones’s behavior became an immediate problem, detailed at length in the 2017 documentary Life After Flash. Jones got into fights, arrived late to set, and regularly demanded money from De Laurentiis before performing, effectively holding the film to ransom if he didn’t get his way.
IMAGE CREDITS: GETTY IMAGES/PICTURE ALLIANCE (DE LAURENTIIS)
“By the time that I came on board for the film, Dino had completely restructured the whole thing,” Hodges tells us. De Laurentiis had also snagged the assistance of Danilo Donati, a production designer who’d worked with Federico Fellini. “I think [Donati] wanted to make it an Italian surrealistic sort of film. I was, in a sense, outside of the circle in many ways. Danilo had taken off on his own and – wonderful designer as he was – I was never quite sure whether he’d ever read the script.” Like Flash and Dale, Hodges found himself aboard a rocket that was taking off, and he was just along for the ride, which took some getting used to. “I basically had to survive by seeing what they gave me to work with,” he says. “Normally, through all my previous films, like Get Carter, Pulp, The Terminal Man, and my television films, you have tight control over every aspect of the film. With this one, I realized quite early, and thank heavens I did, that it was not going to be quite like that. So, I basically just relaxed and let them present me with whatever they came to offer me, and I just improvised. Once I got the hang of it, I just had a lovely time. It was really terrific.” Donati’s elaborate set and costume designs built a creative funhouse to play in, with the director and his cast trying to make the experience as irreverent as possible. Hodges confirms that even the memorable football fight sequence was never in the original script. Jones had noted that the elaborate eggs being carried by one of the alien races resembled footballs. He wondered, since his character was supposed to be this great football star, whether he should find a way to play with them. The actor and the crew then spent some time planning it out, and we ended up with that incredibly bonkers tussle between Flash and Ming’s guards. “It was a fight that was, in a sense, meant to be taken seriously, but I found it totally impossible because of the story itself,” Hodges says. “I decided that it had to be comedic and fun, and so that’s what we ended up with.” In our modern era when big-budget comic book movies are often micromanaged by corporate bosses, it’s a little hard to imagine Hodges and co. would have such free reign today. “Dino never stopped me doing whatever I was doing,” Hodges explains, although he admits that De Laurentiis was surprised that the film was turning into more of a comedy than he’d ever anticipated. “When the crew would laugh at rushes, [De Laurentiis] would say ‘Why they laugh?’ I had to ask them not to laugh because he was particularly upset about it. But Dino, because he was so child-like in many ways, kept me on the straight and narrow. I had to run with the ‘children’s action film, Saturday morning cinema’ element to it, and put my own satirical touch on top of it.” Another vital piece of the Flash Gordon puzzle was
ALTERNATE HISTORY The author of Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film on the movie’s original ending
Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow), ruler of the universe, emperor of the galaxy, and fabulously dressed malevolent dictator, strikes a totally nonthreatening pose.
WHEN JOHN WALSH set out to write Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film, the author quickly discovered that much of the documentation he expected to exist, including essential behind the scenes photos, had either been lost or scattered throughout the globe. “I got the shock of my life when there were no photos or any assets worth putting into a book,” Walsh says. “Universal Pictures had some of the publicity photos, but not enough to put into a book like this. I went begging around the world asking fans and different people, ‘please may I have your pictures if I credit you?’ Sometimes it took 20 or 30 hours just to get one image.” Walsh’s intensive excavation was worth the effort. He struck gold during his mission to provide the ultimate Flash Gordon coffee table experience for fans with the acquisition of never-before-seen concept art, and uncovered some big revelations about the film itself. “I discovered that there had been an entirely different Flash Gordon film originally planned, and we got the artwork for that. Then, I found out that the film was supposed to have an entirely different ending.” That “different ending” wasn’t pulled for budgetary reasons, but simply because the filmmakers were running out of time to shoot it. “Where the film ends now, that was the start of a new major sequence that was going to involve Ming turning into fabulous creatures and fighting Flash, the Hawkmen, and the Arboria Tree Men,” Walsh says. “At the back of my book are all of those scenes, and comprehensive storyboards with major characters like Lion Man, who was going to accompany Flash Gordon throughout the film like a Chewbacca character.” — KH Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film is now available from Titan Books.
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After Flash Gordon wrapped, Jones wasn’t invited to take part in reshoots and additional dialogue recording sessions and was replaced by a stand-in and voice actor. De Laurentiis had put his foot down: Jones would be cut off from any further involvement, even if it was going to affect the film’s box office receipts. “If Sam hadn’t left the film, I think the film would be more successful in America than it was,” Hodges says. “It was very successful around the world but didn’t really realize the box office that they’d expected in America. And that was largely because Sam had left the film and wasn’t available to do all the talk shows, which is essential for a film like that.” Hodges was never really comfortable with what went down between De Laurentiis and Jones but didn’t have much choice in the matter, even as the American marketing swung behind von Sydow’s Ming as its promotional focus in the absence of a leading man. “Once it didn’t do the box office expectations, that must’ve put the kibosh on any sequel,” Hodges concludes. There were certainly contracts in place for two further Flash Gordon films – at one point, Jones even tried to sue when they didn’t materialize – and rumors of Flash Gordon 2‘s story details have circulated for years. In a featurette included with the new 4K release of the movie, Flash Gordon uberfan Bob Lindenmayer claims that the sequel would have had shades of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s twist, revealing that Ming’s evil advisor Klytus was one of only many Ming clones, thus allowing both Max von Sydow and Peter Wyngarde to return to their villainous roles. This would have probably delighted Wyngarde, who was said to have objected loudly and strenuously to his
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spiky death scene even in the midst of filming it. Hodges describes the sequel rumors as wonderful and imaginative but admits he was never really thinking about what any further films would be about, despite ending the first one on a tease. “I put the question mark in the hand picking the ring up at the end as a joke. I mean, it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.” He went on to make a handful of notable feature films after Flash Gordon, including the phenomenal crime drama Croupier, but says his involvement in Flash didn’t lead to a huge amount of additional opportunities in Hollywood. “I never learned how to capitalize on my success stories, which I should have done,” he says. “But it’s a power game, which I never really understood.” As filmmakers who grew up watching Flash Gordon find their own path in the industry, we’ve started to see more big screen comic book projects embrace its influence, and never more so than in Taika Waititi’s Marvel blockbuster, Thor: Ragnarok. Hodges hasn’t seen it, he tells us, as he tends to prefer smaller arthouse films, and comic book movies leave him cold. “I wonder whether I would have gone to see Flash Gordon, if I’m honest.” After spending about a decade trying to set up two further projects that he was interested in helming, and finding he couldn’t get them financed, Hodges eventually accepted that the industry had changed. He now stays busy writing novels, novellas, and short stories. “I don’t have to bother with anybody. I don’t have to raise any money to pay for my printer and ink,” he says cheerfully. “I’ve got enough money to pay for the paper.”
GETTY IMAGES/STANLEY BIELECKI MOVIE COLLECTION (DALTON, PREVIOUS SPREAD SYDOW)
Before Bond or Hot Fuzz, Timothy Dalton was the dashing (and irritable) Prince Barin of Arboria.
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GAME CHANGER HOW A CHILDREN’S MONSTER HUNTING FRANCHISE BECAME THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MEDIA ENTITY OF ALL TIME. BY ALEC BOJALAD
This story is part of an editorial series presented by eBay.
IN 1996, JOSEPH TOBIN WAS
a professor of early education at the University of Hawaii when he decided to walk into a hobby store in Kaimuki for field research. “They had some Pokémon stuff—the Japanese versions of the cartridges,” Tobin recalls. “People could buy them in this store before they were even available elsewhere. We interviewed the owner and decided that Pokémon would be a really interesting thing to study.” Tobin had a pre-existing interest in Japanese culture from time spent in Japan as an exchange student and therefore continued his research in other hobby shops and toy stores throughout Honolulu. As the years progressed, he traded Pokémon cards with children who were adamant that he would not get ripped off in lopsided swaps. He followed as a colleague’s sixyear-old son spent 90-plus hours with his Pokémon Blue cartridge for the Nintendo Game Boy, learning to read, understanding maps, and calculating sums in the process. The years of Poké studies culminated in Tobin hosting an
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COLLECTOR’S DIGEST POWERED BY academic conference in 2000, where educators, anthropologists, and other cultural experts gathered in Honolulu to discuss this massive, yet certainly fleeting, Pokémon phenomenon. The findings and arguments of the conference were collected in the insightful and thoroughly-researched, yet tragically named, Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. “We thought we better hurry and get this out before the craze is over,” Tobin says. 25 years later and the Pokémon craze is nowhere near over. Today, Pokémon is one of the most successful, if not the most successful
Smiling electric rodent Pikachu has gone from Pokémon’s mascot to a worldwide icon.
entertainment entities in human history. Pokémon is the highestgrossing media franchise of all time, having taken in an estimated $88 billion in revenue. According to eBay, there were 160 million searches on the platform for Pokémon cards last year, and they beat out baseball cards in units sold in the process. In December of last year, a Base set 1st edition PSAgraded 10 “shadowless” Charizard card sold on eBay for a staggering $350,100. The Pokémon games are now in their eighth generation and have sold over 340 million units. The long-running anime is in its 24th year and features more than 1,100 episodes.
THE RISE OF PIKACHU
In defense of Tobin and The Rise and Fall of Pokémon’s title, the franchise, created by Game Freak and Nintendo, did seem like it was on the ropes in the early 2000s. “Pokémania” had largely died out and financial markers like the Pokémon card market had cooled. But Pokémon didn’t need a lengthy Pokémania to become one of the most successful entertainment franchises ever. To find success, all Pokémon needed was a consistent track record of innovative creators behind the scenes and a dedicated fan base of children–and eventually adults–willing to catch them all. “This will probably be something you hear from me and the rest of the team at Pokémon a lot. But Pokémon really is for everyone,” says Daniel Benkwitt, Senior Manager, Communications & Public Relations for The Pokémon Company International. “As long time fans will tell you, Pokémon has always been around throughout many iterations. The fans have been dedicated to Pokémon for 25 years, no matter when they came in.” Benkwitt has a unique perspective on the nature of Pokémon’s ebbs and flows. Now working on the franchise’s 25th-anniversary celebrations, Benkwitt joined the Pokémon Company during Pokémon’s 20th anniversary—the same year that the
massively popular augmented reality mobile game Pokémon Go debuted. “I was excited to work on an exciting franchise, but who knew what it was actually going to be once Pokémon Go had launched?” he says. “Truly, Pokémon Go on the 20th anniversary brought Pokémon back into the zeitgeist.”
THIS WILL PROBABLY BE SOMETHING YOU HEAR FROM ME AND THE REST OF THE TEAM AT POKÉMON A LOT. BUT POKÉMON REALLY IS FOR EVERYONE.” In many ways, Pokémon Go served as a reminder of what the Poké die-hards already knew: this is Pikachu’s world and we’re just living in it. Whether it be through the series of beloved games, a highly successful card game, long-running anime, or sheer power of brand alone, Pokémon is one of the last quarter century’s big pop culture winners. The reasons why Pokémon survived its early fad status to blossom into a titan of entertainment are varied and innumerable, but it all starts with accessibility. “There’s a variety of different ways and different touchpoints that fans can enter into Pokémon. My personal story is the anime,” Benkwitt says. “For a lot of folks, it was the video games, because that truly is the core of the franchise. Everything emanates out from there.”
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Pokémon Red and Green first premiered in Japan on Feb. 27, 1996. Its English counterparts, Red and Blue, would arrive in North America in 1998. Just about everything that’s appealing about the Pokémon franchise is apparent in those first two installments: exploration, training, trading, battling. The games capture creator Satoshi Tajiri’s experience of collecting insects as a boy in Japan, scaled up and finetuned for a larger, and eventually more Western audience. The games have evolved over the years, moving from a Matrix-green original Game Boy sprite display to the gorgeous, full-color three dimensions of Nintendo Switch. Along the way, new generations of fans have found their respective access points into the games and the franchise at large. Pokémon content creator Ron Sroor
is part of the next wave of Pokémon fandom, having been born after Red and Blue even debuted. He knows as well as anyone that the appeal of Pokémon has been constant, even if the heights of the franchise have waxed and waned. “To the people who were around at the beginning of Pokémania, it seemed like it was dying down, and it definitely was,” Sroor says. “But it never stopped being big. It was going from the biggest thing ever to just a normal, big thing.” Like Benkwitt, Sroor came to Pokémon through the anime before coming to appreciate the larger tapestry of the franchise through the Pokémon Black and White games, which are set in a world approximating his native New York City. Now Sroor interacts with Pokémon fans via a variety of creative
The Pokémon Trading Card Game is one of the three most popular TCGs in the world, alongside Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!
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YouTube videos in which he discusses elements of the games like tier lists for powerful Pokémon, and shares his own artistic Pokémon renditions. “I think the Pokémon are the draw of the franchise. They’re the perfect formula for creating creatures that aren’t too monstrous, but also not too childish or too cute,” he says. “Every single Pokémon is based on something, whether it be an animal or myth, and every location in the game or in the show or whatever is based on places in the real world.”
CARDBOARD CRAZE
Though the Pokémon series of games were the progenitor of the franchise, Pikachu and friends quickly proved too big to be contained by only one medium. The Pokémon Trading Card Game was first published by Wizards
I THINK THE POKÉMON ARE THE DRAW OF THE FRANCHISE. THEY’RE THE PERFECT FORMULA FOR CREATING CREATURES THAT AREN’T TOO MONSTROUS, BUT ALSO NOT TOO CHILDISH OR TOO CUTE.”
IMAGE CREDITS: PREVIOUS SPREAD: TOMOHIRO OHSUMI/GETTY IMAGES, CURRENT SPREAD: JOHN KEEBLE/GETTY IMAGES, NEXT SPREAD: WARNER BROS. PICTURES
LET THE POKÉ GAMES BEGIN
COLLECTOR’S DIGEST POWERED BY
of the Coast in October 1996, just eight months after Red and Blue’s debut. These days, the Pokémon Trading Card Game (now under the auspices of The Pokémon Company) is considered one of the “Big Three” TCGs, alongside Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Competitive Pokémon TCG player Andrew Mahone recalls experiencing the first wave of Pokémania when he was in fourth grade. “1999—it was everywhere. Kids were playing the cards at recess, at the pool, wherever we went. I got captivated by the initial craze as it was the cultural phenomenon happening at the time. And being 10 years old, you’re the same age as the hero in the Pokémon franchise. So it really hit home with me there.” Like many other kids of his generation, Mahone set Pokémon aside throughout his high school years and picked up a diverse array of other interests like soccer, skateboarding, and competitive running. It was during college, however, that Mahone met back up with the franchise that never truly went away, playing Pokémon Diamond and Pearl on the bus to and from track meets. “I fell in love with the franchise all over again doing that, and I played the DS game for hundreds of hours throughout my college career. When I graduated college, that’s when I was like, ‘Okay. Well, now I want something else that’s competitive to do now that I’m done with sports.’ That’s where I got into competitive Pokémon.” Mahone attended his first competitive TCG event in 2012 and won his first regional championship in 2015. By 2017, he was making YouTube videos about the competitive Pokémon TCG scene. That channel has now evolved into his multimedia enterprise Tricky Gym, supported by Full Grip Games. As part of the Pokémon TCG diaspora, Mahone has had a front-row seat to the game’s latest renaissance,
TOP 5 MOST POPULAR POKÉMON CHARACTERS ON EBAY:
1 CHARIZARD
The stage 2 fire lizard is the most popular Pokémon on eBay, no doubt due to his extremely valuable series of cards.
2 PIKACHU
Pokémon’s de facto mascot comes in at No. 2 in eBay searches.
3 MEWTWO
4 BLASTOISE
5 RAYQUAZA
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this time likely driven by young adults looking to connect with their past while stuck indoors due to COVID lockdowns. “We see a lot of young adults now in their mid-20s and 30s revisiting Pokémon because they have such strong nostalgic feelings for it. It came out in this very impactful time in their early childhood.”
I WANNA BE THE VERY BEST
One of the reasons that so many adults have warm fuzzies for the franchise is the storytelling around it. Premiering in 1997, the animated story of Ash Ketchum and his quest to become a Pokémon master has been a constant companion of the franchise through 24 years and hundreds of episodes. It also had a tremendous impact on the woman who would one day voice the young hero of Pallet Town. “It was hard for me even as a kid to see it as a fad, because of the show,” Sarah Natochenny says. “It had heart, relatable characters, and adorable, unique creatures. This wasn’t just a game or set of toys. Pokémon had a story.” Natochenny is an artist with eclectic talents and interests. After winning a bronze medal at the Junior Olympics in rhythmic gymnastics in 1999, she studied at the Strasberg Theater Institute for four years while also doing improv at UCB, and taking voice and dance classes on the side. In 2006, she auditioned for the role of Ash Ketchum in the Pokémon anime’s English dub, taking over for the role’s progenitor, Veronica Taylor. “Pokémon was the biggest job I booked. It was only my second voiceover job, after a medical industrial,” Natochenny says. “I was the perfect age when Pokémon first came to America, and I loved the show and remember begging my parents for the cards. I had one deck. I have no idea where it is or whether or not there was a milliondollar card in there.” Since 2006, Natochenny has voiced Ash, his mom Delia, along with a
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host of other human and Pokémon characters (Buneary being a particular favorite because it’s very cute). As part of the Pokémon 25th anniversary, Natochenny is most looking forward to wrapping up work on Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle, along with some of the other planned festivities. “I’m looking forward to celebrating with fans and continuing to bring joy to people who grew up with my portrayal of their favorite character. I’ll also probably dance to the music that comes out, so tune in to my social media to see if those dance classes paid off,” she says.
25 YEARS OF POKÉMON
As Natochenny suggests, The Pokémon Company indeed has big plans–musical and otherwise–for the franchise’s 25th anniversary. The team has been working on the celebration for over a year and has partnered with UMG and Katy Perry for a year-long musical
Ash Ketchum, Pikachu, and Misty are all central characters from the long-running Pokémon anime.
campaign called P25 Music. Other corporate partners include Build-ABear Workshop, General Mills, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Jazwares, Scholastic, Mattel, Funko, PowerA, and The Wand Company (which is manufacturing a lifelike Poké Ball). And there are still more announcements to come. “All I can say is, stay tuned because the rest of the year is going to be quite exciting with more surprises. Pokémon likes to surprise its fans,” Benkwitt says. One thing that wouldn’t surprise its fans is if Pokémon one day observed a 50th-anniversary celebration, or even a centennial. It certainly wouldn’t surprise Tobin, who is still an early education professor, now at the University of Georgia. “I’m not surprised that [Pokémon] has lasted this long in the sense that I think it’s really good,” he says. “It was really cleverly designed and it has a really rich narrative. I’m happy to see that it’s made it.”
COLLECTOR’S DIGEST POWERED BY
MOST EXPENSIVE POKÉMON CARDS SOLD ON EBAY: 1
2
1999 POKÉMON BASE 1ST EDITION HOLO THICK STAMP SHADOWLESS CHARIZARD #4 PSA 10
1999 POKÉMON BASE SET 1ST EDITION SHADOWLESS HOLO CHARIZARD #4 PSA 10 GEM MINT
12/13/20
11/26/20
$350,100
$295,300
3
4
5
1998 POKÉMON JAPANESE PROMO FAMILY EVENT TROPHY CARD HOLO KANGASKHAN #115 PSA 10
2000 POKÉMON NEO GENESIS 1ST EDITION HOLO LUGIA #9 PSA 10 GEM MINT
1999 POKÉMON GAME 1ST EDITION HOLO CHARIZARD THICK STAMP #4 BGS 9.5 GEM MINT
$150,100 10/28/20
$129,000 11/26/20
$104,600 12/01/20
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MOUNT GEEKMORE: THE TOP FOUR OF EVERYTHING, LITERALLY SET IN STONE.
STAR TREK CAPTAINS Skippers of Starfleet, assessed.
BY KAYTI BURT ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KOYNOCK
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Captain Benjamin Sisko
Captain Kathryn Janeway
Captain James Tiberius Kirk
The thinking person’s captain, Jean-Luc Picard has a Shakespeare quotation for every situation—and is always ready to back it up with definitive action. While outwardly stoic, Picard’s resolute demeanor covers a deep well of compassion and curiosity that has him constantly questioning the world around him in the pursuit of making it a more just place for all.
The widowed, single dad commander of a politically charged space station, Benjamin Sisko perpetually has a lot on his plate. Deeply principled and put in much more morally complex scenarios than the Trek captains who came before, Sisko, the first Black character to lead a Trek series, gives us an example of what a good leader looks like in a messy world.
Kathryn Janeway, the first woman character to lead a Trek series, is also the first captain to be flung into an unexplored quadrant of the galaxy and asked to figure out long-term leadership without the support of Federation infrastructure. Impressively, Janeway gets the job done, modeling and preserving Federation values for her integrated crew while so very far away from home.
Made famous by two actors across two TV shows and 10 movies, Captain Kirk is the original, the first, the one against whom all other captains would be measured. A man of action, Kirk doesn’t believe in a no-win scenario. He only believes in doing the right thing, no matter the cost… and preferably having some fun while doing it.
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Complete your Pokédex Catch 25 years of Pokémon trading cards at ebay.com/pokemontcg
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