Panels 

The Future of the Star Trek Universe

Star Trek was in full force at NYCC with panels for three of Paramount+’s most popular offerings: Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and the upcoming film Section 31. The much-anticipated Michelle Yeoh movie received a release date of Jan. 24, 2025 exclusively on Paramount+, and the vibrant teaser art featured Emperor Philippa Georgiou in her full royal splendor.

The Star Trek: Lower Decks panel revealed an exclusive clip and a parody poster for the fifth and final season imitating the art of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, replacing “frontier” with “season,” and Strange New Worlds accompanied their exclusive clip with the announcement that beloved actor Rhys Darby would be guest starring in the upcoming season.

Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim

Warner Bros. Pictures gave fans a deeper look at the first new Lord of the Rings theatrical release since 2003’s The Return of the King. The anime film, which takes place almost 200 years before the Peter Jackson trilogy, focuses on the land of Rohan during the time of legendary King Helm Hammerhand. An exclusive clip shown to panel attendees pit the King of Rohan against orcs and an army of Dunlendings that left us wanting to see much more of this epic fantasy war movie.

The Electric State Is a New Sci-Fi Movie From the Directors of Avengers: Doomsday and Endgame

On the heels of the San Diego Comic-Con announcement that they are returning to Marvel to helm Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, directors Joe and Anthony Russo stopped by New York Comic Con to tease their next sci-fi adventure story: The Electric State. Joined by stars Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, the Russo Brothers explained the complicated mythos of the film, which is based on a 2018 graphic novel. Basically: Walt Disney decided to grant robots sentience and now it’s everyone’s problem. Attendees of the panel were treated to a trailer and some behind the scenes footage that featured various ‘90s artifacts. 

Outlander Season 7 Part 2 Trailer Is Here!

Before beloved Starz drama Outlander can get rolling on its eighth and final season, it has some additional business to attend to. The eight episodes that make up the second half of the historical fantasy epic’s penultimate season premiere on November 22 and the Empire Stage at New York Comic Con 2024 was the best place to hear all about it. Stars Caitríona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Sophie Skelton, Richard Rankin, John Bell, producer Maril Davis, and author Diana Gabaldon prepped fans on what to expect from season 7’s back half. And of course, it wouldn’t be a NYCC panel without an exclusive reveal of a trailer, which led off the proceedings and featured Jamie and Claire’s long-awaited return to Scotland. 

The stars of Marvel Television’s #DaredevilBornAgain, Charlie Cox & Vincent D’Onofrio, surprised fans with a special sneak peek during the #NYCC “Marvel Fanfare” panel today.

Marvel Television’s Daredevil: Born Again starts streaming March 4, only on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/hiXGTezZOw

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) October 19, 2024

Daredevil Release Date Confirmed!

Daredevil stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio surprised fans during the Marvel Fanfare panel, sitting down to talk about the show’s revival and to finally announce the release date: March 4, 2025. Marvel also screened exclusive footage for panel attendees that promises plenty of close-quarters combat, gravity-defying stunts, and lots of Kingpin chewing up the scenery. 

DC Vertigo Returns, Batman: Hush 2, a Peacemaker Spinoff

DC Comics brought a few huge announcements to this year’s con. The big headline: DC is finally bringing back Vertigo Comics, the mature comic book label behind some of the greatest books of all time, such as The Sandman, Y: The Last Man, Fables, Hellblazer, and Transmetropolitan. Reimagined is a label for creator-owned projects, the new Vertigo’s first book will be a reprint of James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez’s The Nice House by the Sea.

Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb are also returning to Gotham City for a sequel to their seminal Bat-comic Hush. What the bandaged villain might have planned for the Dark Knight this time around is anyone’s guess but we do know that the story will begin in Batman #158 out March 2025.

Wondering what Peacemaker’s best pals have been up to between seasons 1 and 2? Peacemaker Presents: The Vigilante/Eagly Double Feature, a new five-issue spinoff comic, has you covered. James Gunn serves as story consultant for this miniseries with Tim Seeley and Mitch Gerads telling a Vigilante story, while Rex Ogle and Matteo Lolli cover Eagly.

Creature Commandos Trailer

Speaking of James Gunn, the co-head of DC Studios is bringing a very different band of weirdos to the new DCU. When the U.S. government bans Amanda Waller from using human villains for her secret task forces, she turns to a team of monsters to get the job done in Creature Commandos. Assembling characters as strange as GI Robot, Weasel, Eric Frankenstein, Doctor Phosphorus, and the Bride, this animated series looks like a wild time, as evidenced by the very zany trailer released during NYCC. 

Star Wars: Jedi Knights Goes Back to the Prequel Era

Marvel Comics is going back to the beginning with the new series Star Wars: Jedi Knights, which chronicles the further Prequel era adventures of Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Count Dooku, Mace Windu, and more characters from the films. From creators Marc Guggenheim and Madibek Musabekov, Jedi Knights will also introduce all-new Jedi characters to the Star Wars universe when it hits stands next March.

Interview Studio Highlights

Dune: Prophecy Offers Sympathy for the Harkonnens

The first television series set in Frank Herbert’s foreboding Dune universe is here and it is an absolute epic. Adapted loosely from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s Sisterhood of Dune, Dune: Prophecy is actually set decades after that book while tracking the ascendant power of Valya Harkonnen, the second Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit. She is played in the series by Emily Watson (as well as Jessica Barden in flashbacks).

The cast and executive producers of the series stopped by to discuss the freedom and support they had from the Herbert estate to navigate into uncharted star systems, as well as the appeal of centering the story on a Harkonnen point-of-view between Valya and her fellow Bene Gesserit sister, Tula Harkonnen. “It’s a really properly messed up family with a lot of trauma,” Watson tells us, “a lot of terrible relationships, and then they’ve given themselves to this powerful organization that is trying to control pretty much every aspect of the universe: religion, money, oil. It’s the age-old story.”

Williams agrees with her onscreen sister, noting that the series will offer a different context on the Harkonnen/Atreides rivalry viewers of the Denis Villeneuve Dune movies think they know. Says Williams, “They have that belief that they’re justified. But try to find the baddie in a land war. ‘I was here first.’ It’s got tremendous resonance to what’s happening today politically, and who’s right and who’s wrong? Or there’s just pain.”

Cristin Milioti and The Penguin Cast Break Down the Rise of Sofia Falcone

The Penguin stars Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Clancy Brown, and Deirdre O’Connell joined showrunner Lauren LeFranc to chat about what’s next for the hit HBO crime drama. In particular, Milioti explained what was behind Sofia Falcone’s actions in the explosive ending in episode 4, and also teased what’s next for Gotham’s newest crime lord. When we asked Milioti whether she felt her villain on the rise could take on the Batman himself, the actor didn’t hesitate at all, answering with an emphatic, “Yes!” 

Feliz also took some time to chat about Victor’s big decision to stay with Oz instead of escaping Gotham with the love of his life. The actor explained that Victor has never been given an opportunity like the one his new mentor is offering him and that the young criminal in the making feels seen by Oz.

The Wolf Man Enters the Blumhouse

The Wolf Man has always held a special place for Jason Blum. Right after Dracula, the furry guy was his favorite Universal Monster growing up, and the idea of doing a proper modernization of the character was on his mind even before Blum produced Leigh Whannell’s sinister reimagining of The Invisible Man in 2020.

“I always thought if The Invisible Man worked I’d love to try and tackle The Wolf Man, and try to do with The Wolf Man what Leigh did with The Invisible Man,” Blum tells us. “And I would describe that as taking the monster and [not] making it a four-quadrant movie for everybody, but returning it to its roots, which is like a straight horror movie.”

The result is something that is viscerally horrific, bloody, and even tragic in writer-director Whannell’s estimation. When he also stopped by the Den of Geek studio, the filmmaker behind both Blumhouse’s Invisible Man and The Wolf Man likens the film as similar to what David Cronenberg did with The Fly by taking an old school horror movie from a different era and making it a body horror nightmare where you watch a good man turn into something else: “I sort of came up with a way of internalizing it,” Whannell says. “Rather than watching someone transform, you’re actually experiencing the transformation from within the character.”

Secret Level

Later this year, Prime Video is dishing out a video game adaptation unlike any other you’ve ever seen. Secret Level creators Tim Miller and Dave Wilson talked to us about what it was like assembling the titles that make up each world in this jam–packed anthology series and why they chose the specific games that they did. 

Cross

The cast of Cross stopped by to talk about their series that’s coming to Prime Video November 17, 2024. Based on James Patterson’s Alex Cross novels, the show promises to feature the flavor of the Washington, D.C. setting readers will be familiar with, showrunner Ben Watkins assured us. In talking about the title character played by Aldis Hodge and his partnership with Detective John Sampson, Isaiah Mustafa, who plays Sampson, described it as less of a Holmes and Watson relationship and more of a Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen collaboration.

The post NYCC 2024 Recap: The Biggest Panel Announcements and Best Moments From Our Studio appeared first on Den of Geek.

The new NYCC clip shows what Pike does next, and in revealing these opening moments of SNW season 3, the series doubled down on something that happened in the last season premiere. Watch the clip below:

The clip also teases how the show is continuing to slowly elevate one Enterprise crew member in terms of her importance and screen time. This person isn’t considered a regular cast member, but serious fans know who she is. We’re talking about Jenna Mitchell, played by Rong Fu, who plays a pivotal role in saving the day in Strange New Worlds, even though she’s not a “main” character. Curiously, the name “Mitchell” should also sound familiar to Original Series fans.

Mitchell Takes the Initiative—Again

The overall point of the new SNW season 3 clip is to show that the Enterprise crew is frantic for solutions as the Gorn are closing in. This is a classic Captain Pike command-style decision, asking everyone for input before making a dangerous call. The Next Generation fans will find this frantic technobabble spitball session familiar, and there are even aspects of it that are reminiscent of the TNG classic “Cause and Effect.” But, what’s interesting here is that Jenna Mitchell (Fu)—who is at the ops/navigation station, next to Number One (Rebecca Romijn) at the helm—is the one who comes up with the answer. The Enterprise has to tag the Gorn ship, but they need to disguise the tracker as something else. So, Mitchell suggests using a dud photon torpedo, an attack that is really a way of tagging the Gorn ship.

This gambit works, and the Enterprise lives to fight another day, plus, it now has a way to track their missing comrades. We don’t know what happens next, but interestingly, this scene wouldn’t have worked without Mitchell’s quick thinking. And this isn’t the first time this character has been pivotal in Strange New Worlds.

In the season 2 premiere, “The Broken Circle,” Mitchell is part of a very small inner circle of officers—including Uhura, Chapel, and M’Benga—who all conspire with Spock to steal the Enterprise. It was Mitchell who faked the coolant leak that allowed the Enterprise to have a legitimate reason to leave spacedock. In another episode later that season, she’s the one helping Spock try to make Klingon coffee, raktajino. Mitchell was also transformed into a Crimson Guard character during the storybook effect in season 1’s  “The Elysian Kingdom.”

The point is, in many of the big episodes of SNW, Mitchell has been right there, even though she’s not a main character. But maybe she lowkey is a main character?

The SNW Mitchell Continues a Star Trek Tradition 

Although we think of Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, and Scotty as main cast members of The Original Series, the truth is, from a cast point-of-view, they were guest stars. In her memoir Beyond Uhura, Nichelle Nichols referred to their status as “day players.” Eventually, these characters came to be thought of as the most important regular characters on the series, but that certainly isn’t the case throughout every single TOS episode. Obviously, this is a lot like Mitchell in SNW now. She’s not billed at the top of the cast in our universe, but in-universe, she’s clearly an essential part of Pike’s crew. In a way, Mitchell is a bit like Chief O’Brien on The Next Generation, not part of the main cast, but had been on the ship since the very first episode, in “Encounter at Farpoint.”

To put it another way, Mitchell is the latest example of an interesting Star Trek tradition: Continuing to feature a secondary “background character” and continuing to give that person important jobs to do on the ship, which creates a veneer of realism. Not every single crew member can be on duty 24/7, which means the relief officers, like Mitchell, would be on the bridge all the time. TNG was pretty good about this too, often rotating out helm and ops officers for a degree of realism. But, with her latest quick-thinking, you have to wonder if Mitchell isn’t suddenly going to be promoted to a full-time cast member by season 4.

Where No Mitchell Has Gone Before

Finally, although this is almost certainly a coincidence, the fact that Mitchell shares the same last name with Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood), from the second TOS pilot episode is… fascinating. In “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Gary Mitchell sits at the exact same bridge position that Jenna Mitchell is occupying now. This is a little like the fact that Pike had a crew member named Tyler (Peter Duryea) in “The Cage,” and then worked with a different Tyler (Shazad Latif) in Discovery season 2. 

If this were Star Wars, we could say the duplicate Mitchells and duplicate Tylers are like poetry, they rhyme. But, perhaps with Strange New Worlds, Jenna Mitchell is a better version of Gary Mitchell. In “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Gary Mitchell is mutated into a space god and tries to murder everyone. We’re fairly certain this isn’t going to happen to Jenna Mitchell. Because if there’s one Mitchell who will go down in Starfleet history as an unsung hero, it’s our current resident Mitchell in Strange New Worlds. Here’s hoping somebody gives her a promotion before the end of season 3.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 will hit Paramount+ sometime in 2025.

The post Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 Just Quietly Upgraded a Character with a TOS Twist appeared first on Den of Geek.

Oz Cobb is lighting a fire (quite literally) in Gotham City as The Penguin heads into its final furlong, and the mob wars come to a head. After episode 4 focused on the tragic backstory of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), the murderous mobster got her chance to shine again in episode 5 “Homecoming.” While The Penguin’s Sofia is more sympathetic than her comic book counterpart, the latest episode gave fans a twist pulled straight from the pages of DC Comics. 

Throughout The Penguin’s run, we’ve come to know Sofia as the unhinged daughter of Carmine Falcone. While John Turturro’s Carmine (recast with Mark Strong for The Penguin) was a big part of 2022’s The Batman, Sofia was MIA due to her wrongful incarceration in Arkham State Hospital. Although Sofia takes on the villainous persona of the Hangman in the comics, The Penguin theorists were correct that it was Carmine who was responsible for the murders and let his daughter take the fall.

Despite Milioti’s Sofia being a more petite version compared to the towering Falcone from the comics, The Penguin honored her history in the latest episode. Having gassed the majority of the Falcone family in episode 4, “Homecoming” saw Sofia try to cement herself as the new capomandamento. After realizing she was little more than a pawn in her father’s game, Sofia outlawed anyone saying Carmine’s name again and promptly changed the family’s name to Gigante. The Penguin reveals that Isabelle Gigante was Sofia’s mother, and after learning that her father killed his wife, Sofia took her mother’s maiden name: “My father’s legacy is dead. And we will never speak his name again. From this point on I am a Gigante, and this is a new family now.”

In addition to being inspired by the real-life story of Rosemary Kennedy and her institutionalization, Sofia’s new backstory is a play on her introduction in 1997’s Batman: The Long Halloween. Here, Sofia helped Carmine figure out the identity of the Holiday Killer, who turned out to be her own brother, Alberto. Michael Zegen briefly played Alberto in The Penguin, but considering he was killed by Oz (Colin Farrell), it doesn’t look like The Long Halloween will be directly adapted into the series. Elsewhere, The Long Halloween ends with Sofia being knocked out of a window by Catwoman, only to return for its Dark Victory sequel as a wheelchair-bound victim. Dark Victory then reveals that Sofia has faked her paralysis and is actually the Hangman.

The Penguin is doing things differently with Sofia, with people already thinking she’s the Hangman. As for the Gigante part, Sofia is introduced as Sofia Falcone Gigante after marrying a mobster called Rocco Gigante. Given Sofia’s massive stature in the comics, her Gigante surname has a double meaning, but speaking to IndieWire, The Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc explained she never wanted Milioti’s version to have a husband. Instead, LeFranc says having Gigante as Sofia’s mother’s maiden name was a wink to the comics but let her do it on her own terms.

Even if Milioti’s Sofia doesn’t have the same physical dominance as she does in the comics (measuring at only 5′ 2″ in real life), LeFranc reiterates how her “Sofia Gigante” persona translated into The Penguin via the moment she found her mother’s fur coat with Isabelle Gigante stitched into it. “She wants to be able to embody who her mother was, her spirit, so she finds that mink and puts it on and becomes a Gigante,” said LeFranc. “It felt very empowering to me to give Sofia that, to say I’m not a Falcone, I just obliterated the Falcones. That’s not who I am, that’s never really who I was, and now I’m going to become a Gigante and this is how I’m going to run my own crime family.” Inspired by the Vanderbilt family and the Gilded Age, it very much feels like the Sofia Falcone of the past has died to make way for Sofia Gigante.

Having put a bullet in Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) and forged an uneasy alliance with Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) to cut ties with the Falcone family of old, Sofia now has Farrell’s Penguin in her sights. Comic book Sofia is actually Sal’s secret lover and is eventually murdered by Harvey Dent/Two-Face after Sal burned him with acid, but we don’t see things playing out this way in The Penguin. Although it’s possible that Sofia will end up paralyzed following a finale tussle with Oz, eagle-eyed fans have noticed there’s still a space for Sofia next to her father, mother, and brother in the family crypt. With Farrell confirmed to be returning for The Batman Part II, Milioti’s time in the Reevesverse could be unfortunately short-lived.

The Penguin airs on HBO and Max at 9 p.m. ET on Sundays.

The post The Penguin Pulls Off a Sofia Falcone Twist Straight From the Comics appeared first on Den of Geek.

Even though the clue is in the name, it’s easy to forget that death can come for anyone at any time in the world of The Walking Dead. It’s no different for its ever-expanding roster of spinoffs, with the Norman Reedus-led Daryl Dixon also being stalked by the grim reaper’s shadow. Season 2 episode 4 “Le Paradis Pour Toi” is no exception, and while the latest death has killed off sparks of a budding romance, it might’ve opened the door for a much-requested pairing to rise from the ashes. 

There were two major deaths and an even bigger reunion in episode 4, as Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) finally found Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) during an emotional but silent scene. Meanwhile, the villainous Genet (Anne Charrier) suffered a horrible fate by being turned into one of her own Amper zombies, while Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) tragically died in the arms of Daryl. Isabelle at least proved to be something of a useful plot device, managing to tell Carol where she could find Daryl for the show’s long-awaited reunion. Considering Isabelle was Daryl’s love interest, another doomed TWD couple is confined to the history books. 

Angry critics have called out The Walking Dead franchise czar Scott Gimple for killing off another interesting character out of nowhere. Just weeks after it broke new ground of actually giving Daryl an on-screen kiss, it seems that shock value can outweigh storytelling on The Walking Dead. Poésy’s portrayal of Isabelle was a beloved part of the series, and having a gun-toting nun was a cool addition to the mythos. With Isabelle out of the picture, some think they know where this is inevitably going. Even if Daryl’s next relationship could be one that fans have been shipping for years, the fact it comes at the cost of Isabelle is a problem. 

The internet is already abuzz with theories that fans will finally see Daryl hook up with Carol. While we imagine Daryl will continue mourning Isabelle for a while, characters in The Walking Dead tend to get into relationships pretty quickly. Carol has at least shown some interest in Daryl in the past, memorably asking if they wanted to fool around in season 3. Also, you don’t tend to travel halfway around the world and battle your way through hordes of the undead for just anyone. But with part of Daryl’s charm having always been his lone wolf persona, to cave to fan pressure and throw him together with Carol would surely feel forced. Fans liked the potential of Daryl and Isabelle because it seemed to grow naturally through sponge baths and longing gazes. Instead, her death felt dragged out, and she was only ‘allowed’ to die after one final meeting with Daryl. 

Daryl Dixon showrunner David Zabel has suggested Daryl and Carol won’t become the next Rick and Michonne, previously telling SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar+) that it would be an “obvious” way to take the pair: “I always felt like that would be a mistake, because it would feel like you were going into the TV book of tricks. To me, there was never a question that [their connection] was something other than what it is, and what it seems to want to be, and why it works so well.” This is particularly frustrating when it comes to Isabelle because, in the same interview, Zabel said he spoke to Reedus about developing a more mature relationship between Isabelle and Daryl instead of falling back on fans shipping him and Carol. 

As for Isabelle, her death falls into a worrying trope that’s plagued far more than The Walking Dead. There are already complaints that Isabelle has been ‘fridged’ to catapult Daryl’s story forward. Being fridged goes all the way back to 1994’s Green Lantern #54, where Alexandra DeWitt was murdered and placed in a refrigerator. Gail Simone coined the term for the 1999 website Women in Refrigerators (WiR), explaining how it refers to female characters who are harmed or killed as a way to motivate a male lead. The Walking Dead has repeatedly done this with Rick Grimes’ (Andrew Lincoln) love interests like Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and Jessie Anderson (Alexandra Breckenridge), but now, it’s Daryl’s turn.

This isn’t the first time a woman in Daryl’s life has been fridged, and even though they weren’t romantically linked, the death of Emily Kinney’s Beth during season 5’s hospital arc was criticized by many. The Walking Dead has an unfortunate habit of discarding its female characters in favor of developing its male leads, but with McBride officially coming back for Daryl Dixon season 3, at least Carol is safe for now. Zabel has reassured us that Daryl and Carol won’t be the apocalypse’s new golden couple, but if dumpster fakeouts and Robert Kirkman ending the comic series after commissioning fake covers have taught us anything, it’s that The Walking Dead likes to bend the truth. 

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC, culminating with the finale on November 3.

The post The Walking Dead Daryl Dixon’s Biggest Death Yet Is a Huge Mistake appeared first on Den of Geek.

Then there’s 2023, arguably the best year for gamers in recent memory. It’s the year that gave us what we’ll likely look back on as some of the best titles of the 2020s: Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, and Diablo 4. And while this year has perhaps been a slightly humbler year than 2023, there have been plenty of great releases to make 2024 another strong year for the medium.

There are still a few heavy hitters to come this holiday season, but gamers have already been treated to plenty of hits in 2024, including The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Tekken 8, Helldivers 2, and more. In POWER-UP‘s biggest episode yet, host Sam Stone sits down with Den of Geek Games Editor Matthew Byrd to chat about their favorite games of the year so far. Expect a few surprise picks along the way! You can watch the full episode below:

This episode is powered by Razer. In a special PC Gaming segment, we break down how Razer Axon can help gamers unlock their creativity to make the perfect custom wallpapers. Whether you want to deck out your PC setup with a wallpaper that reflects a specific fandom or you want to design something wholly original, Axon is fast, full of features, and very easy to use. You can read more about Razer Axon here.

Every episode of POWER-UP is available on the Den of Geek YouTube channel and denofgeek.com as well as in audio form on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Now, sit back, plug in, and POWER-UP!

For business inquiries regarding POWER-UP, contact:

Chris Longo, Director of Editorial and Partnerships, clongo@denofgeek.com
Matthew Sullivan-Pond, Publisher, msullivan@denofgeek.com

For media inquiries, contact:

John Saavedra, Executive Producer, jsaavedra@denofgeek.com

The post The PS5, Xbox, Switch, and PC Games That Made 2024 Another Great Year for Gaming appeared first on Den of Geek.

“There’s a station in L.A., KLCS, that is public television, but back then it was like ‘Actual Public Television’s’ broke uncle,” he says. “They didn’t show modern stuff, only old filmstrips and educational shows from the 1970s. The production was so rudimentary to what we have today. I remember the weird trails that old magnetic video used to leave on moving objects, and puppets with wire loops for mouths, tugged open by strings.”

Straub recalls one filmstrip in particular, Inside Out, that was about 15 minutes long and offered up dramatizations designed to teach children various lessons.

“I now believe that it was intended for classroom use – to kick off discussions with a teacher – because the episodes tended to end in uncertain places,” he says. “A kid about to get beat up, an embarrassment in front of a class, a bicycle accident – and then the credits would roll. No resolution, just a dreamlike, half-remembered look at some uneasy choice or little misery.”

Straub turned that feeling of disorientation with media into a story on his website called “Candle Cove.” The story takes on the formatting of a series of posts on the television forum of a site called “NetNostalgia.” The original poster describes a bizarre program from his childhood named Candle Cove and other commenters chime in, discussing further and increasingly disturbing details.

It’s a fascinating and truly terrifying deconstruction of one of the internet’s favorite pastimes: remembering when. Candle Cove captures the feeling of when, instead of your best friend, the ’90s net was rabid dog ready to snap at you at any moment. The story was convincing and terrifying enough that Candle Cove was eventually adapted into the first season of Syfy’s Channel Zero.

Real life has always been a confusing, often horrifying experience for young people. The generations that grew up in the nascent days of the internet or without it at all spent years consuming media they didn’t always fully understand or confronting real-life mysteries they couldn’t quite contextualize. Now those generations have Wi-Fi, and they’re treating us to a renaissance in scary storytelling.

Technology has changed horror in some sophisticated ways. Those interested in visual horror need only to turn to YouTube channels like Marble Hornets to find a scary found footage series. The early 1900s radio play essentially made a comeback through horror podcasts like The Black Tapes and Limetown (the latter of which was adapted into a TV series).

But the real impact of the internet on horror has come in the form of good old-fashioned scary stories. Cyberspace is home to millions of scary stories that are being read by the glow of a computer screen rather than the crackling flames of a campfire.

The terminology for the phenomenon can be a little hard to nail down. In 2010, The New York Times ran an article on “creepypastas” comparing stories like that of Slender Man and The Russian Sleep Experiment to modern day chain letters. Creepypastas are scary stories or urban legends that get copy and pasted from forum to forum. The term comes from the original term for copy and pasted stories, “copypasta,” courtesy of (where else?) 4chan.  

No one is in charge of policing such terms, obviously, but as nearest as it can be explained a creepypasta is something like Slender Man – a story that is destined, whether by design or fate, to become an urban legend. In the modern day, we don’t have to wait around hundreds of years for a relatively simple story to be corrupted into becoming something like a werewolf or vampire myth. We just need a well-told tale of a convincing and terrifying monster and then let it take hold.

Slender Man is an interesting case study in the power of creepypastas. Slender Man, the impossibly tall, faceless, and slender (of course) humanoid monster seen usually in a fine suit took the internet by storm. He’s ubiquitous and kind of an unofficial creepypasta mascot, going so far as to receive his own immensely forgettable feature film in 2018.

The power of such a myth is undeniable and in one instance had tragic consequences. In May 2014, two 12-year-old girls lured another girl into the woods and stabbed her 19 times, allegedly to impress Slender Man. Slender Man is clearly a fictional character with an easy Google-able creator, Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen. Still, the “legend” proved stronger than the original story.

Even scary stories designed purely as fiction can be turned into creepypastas through the sheer shareability of everything on the modern internet.

“For better or worse though, the internet is amazing at not providing attribution to content,” Straub says. “So things can be spread in earnest, without any understanding on the part of the sharer or consumer where it came from. I never wanted Candle Cove to be a hoax – it’s an epistolary story in the format of forums. It had my name on it and all, but when people shared it, that all got stripped away. So as a creator I get bent out of shape about that – but as a consumer, I see the power that that had in letting the legend grow. People didn’t know if it was real or not. They still don’t.”

The vast majority of scary storytelling on the internet, however, doesn’t fall into that “creepypasta” myth-making category, whether it’s deliberate or otherwise. The most common category of scary story on the web has become a first-person, well-told yard designed to chill. If they’re not creeypastas, then what would the appropriate term for them be?

“I don’t think there’s a broadly accepted term but the term I use is campfire story,” says David Cummings, narrator of the The NoSleep Podcast.

The NoSleep Podcast is an audio spinoff of the popular reddit forum r/NoSleep. r/NoSleep has been up and running since the spring of 2010 and features thousands of first-person style scary stories.

Cummings, who began his career as a full-time musician in the ‘90s and has since transitioned into voiceover work, has been involved with the podcast version of the forum as a narrator since its inception. He began the podcast as a volunteer, but when no one else stepped in he assumed full-time narrator duties. He described the style of the internet “campfire story” thusly:

“A lot of the stories are really well-crafted and well-told, but they’re not necessarily literary. You don’t get these grandiose descriptions. They’re breatheless. ‘Oh my God, I just ran out of my friend’s house and I have to tell you what happened.’ There’s an immediacy and a believability.”

The goal of each story on the podcast and the subreddit is to be scary, personal, and above all else: believable.

There is a near fanatical devotion to the suspension of disbelief on r/NoSleep that has seemingly created the prototype for nearly all internet scary storytelling. Among the extensive rules and guidelines for the site is the phrase, “Suspension of disbelief is key here. Everything is true here, even if it’s not. Don’t be the jerk in the movie theater hee-hawing because monkeys don’t fly.”

“With the NoSleep sudreddit, there’s sort of this debate going on about are they real? Is this fiction? Does it matter?” Cummings says. “You still need to bring authenticity to the story even if it is fiction. I think a big part of it is people are…you need to hold their hand and lead them into a story and a setting they can relate to. If you start a story by ‘I was a sailor in a submarine and we were going in the Article Circle’…it’s harder for people to relate. I’m guessing the majority of people don’t really believe in ghosts or demons, but once they suspend disbelief they get there.”

This new NoSleep model of perpetual suspension of disbelief has, in many ways, replaced creepypasta mythmaking. After years and years of fine-tuning the art of the internet horror story, things seemed to have settled on the first-person campfire stories of old. The format has been producing compelling and unsettling content ever since.

For instance: one of the highest upvoted stories on r/NoSleep is the convincingly titled “My dead girlfriend keeps messaging me on Facebook. I’ve got the screenshots. I don’t know what to do.” Unsurprisingly, the story is about exactly that. Reddit user u/natesw chronicles his ongoing conversations with his dead girlfriend via Facebook chat. The story even concludes candid photos of natesw sitting at his computer purported to be taken by his dead girlfriend. 

If easily suspended disbelief is a hallmark of modern internet scary storytelling, then it’s no wonder the story is so successful. There are virtually no cracks in the narrative that reveal it could be false…other than the truly impossible supernatural aspect of its narrative, of course. The account for natesw has remained silent for a decade and no one has stepped forward to claim authorship of the story. The narrative was even convincing enough to necessitate a Snopes page. Snopes, for its part, classifies it as “Legend.” 

That’s the thing about these stories. By the inherent sharing capabilities of the Internet, any well-told first person narrative is capable of being classified a “Legend” by Snopes. And something about that is comforting – like anyone is a good story away from becoming a legend.

As evidenced by their increasing success, creepypastas/campfire stories/whatever-we-want-to-call-them in many ways represent the promise of the internet. The internet, as has been often observed, means the democratization of art and entertainment. As we’ve witnessed from many vapid YouTube videos or self-indulgent Facebook posts, however, not everyone has had something to say. Not everyone can succeed in dramatic or comedic arts.

But scary stories? We all have one. We all have that go-to legend or unexplainable personal experience in our back pocket for the next time there’s a campfire gathering. Now we don’t even need to wait for that.

The Best Creepypastas and Scary Stories

Here are some other stories from the creepypasta/internet campfire story genre to scare you half to death:

Ted the Caver – This is perhaps the oldest creepypastas, dating all the way back to an angelfire blog from 2001. The writer, Ted, details his exploration of a mysterious cave with his friend. 

Squidward’s Suicide – Squidward’s Suicide is very low on the believability index but is appropriately chilling. It’s a first-person narrative from a person who purports to have once been an intern at Nickelodeon and discovers a lost episode of Spongebob Squarepants created by an unknown psychopath.

Jeff the Killer – Jeff the Killer is one of the few internet bogeyman remotely close in stature to Slender Man. The storytelling is somewhat weak and a clear gambit to create a legend. But the photo that always accompanies Jeff the Killer stories is synonymous with the concept of all creepypastas. There is even some Slender Man vs. Jeff the Killer fan art out there.

The Dionaea House – The Dionaea House is another early creepypasta, dating back to 2004, written by Eric Heisserer, who has actually found some success in the film industry since. That knowledge may ruin the verisimilitude of the story to a certain extent but it’s still profoundly creepy. And it’s written in the same epistolary format as many creepypastas are. 

The Story of Her Holding an Orange – A lot of stories on r/NoSleep can have a bit of an ending problem…in that they don’t. The Story of Her Holding an Orange is similarly long-winded but at least it gets scarier as it goes along. It’s pretty terrifying in its simplicity. 

(´･ω･`) – Ok, the full story’s title is actually “[Help!] The Girl I Like Won’t Respond to My Emails (´･ω･`)” but it’s more frequently identified as just the Prince-like symbol “(´･ω･`)” Of all the internet stories ever published, this would have my vote as most likely to be completely 100% real. The story originally appeared on Japanese forum 2channel in 2011 and features the increasingly desperate original poster asking for advice with his girlfriend “Denko.” The terror arises from the unnamed poster, who finishes every post with “(´･ω･`),” and seems to be the only person on the site who doesn’t realize he is a terrifying stalker. 

The Showers – When describing the platonic ideal of what an internet campfire story should be, this is it. It might not be the best, but it exemplifies the format perfectly. The author regales a personal story about an abandoned haunted location that was told to him, then investigates it and provides the reader ample “updates” and photos. All the while, having a strong sense of narrative and what’s truly scary.

The post Beware the Creepypasta: Scary Storytelling in the Internet Age appeared first on Den of Geek.

Forget the mobster machinations of Oz and Sofia. The real excitement of The Penguin has come from the onscreen battle between actors Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti. Where Farrell spent the show’s first three episodes trying to turn his boisterous supporting character from The Batman into a compelling series lead, Milioti seemed to move effortlessly between imperiousness and vulnerability with her up-and-coming gangster Sofia Falcone.

With the jaw-dropping fourth episode “Cent’Anni,” Milioti took control of The Penguin, thanks to fantastic story that traced Sofia’s journey from well-meaning and put-upon younger sister of the Falcones to a vengeance-filled woman who killed almost everyone in a gas leak, save for underboss/toady Johnny Vitti. But no sooner does Sofia take center stage than “Cent’Anni” director Helen Shaver return for an Oz showcase in “Homecoming.” Written by Breannah Gibson and Shaye Ogbonna, “Homecoming” follows Oz’s power play, one that ushers in a new era of crime in Gotham.

“Homecoming” picks up after the end of episodes 3 and 4, with Oz’s attempts to pit the Maronis and Falcones against one another revealed to Sofia, before she went on to gas her family. No longer required to play subservient to gangsters he reviles, Oz embraces his darker nature and gets much, much nastier. He kidnaps Maroni’s son Taj and uses the kid as a bargaining chip to get back the Bliss shipment he gave the family. While Salvatore’s wife meets Oz to get her son back, Cobb arranges for the boss to get shanked by a prison boss. Once mother and son reunite, Oz burns the two alive.

Shaver doesn’t shy away from the cruelty of the family’s death. Instead, she holds the camera on Oz’s face, letting the pyre highlight the intensity of his face. That single shot might justify the entire show so far, finally proving that Oz can carry his own show, that he’s more than just comic relief.

By ratcheting up the stakes around him, The Penguin finally catches up to the Penguin, making Farrell’s big, prosthetic-enhanced performance believable. He finally gets room to become a supervillain, as if the gangsters who once ruled Gotham — whether they be the feuding Falcones and Maronis or Rex Calabrese, the classy mobster whom Oz so admires — burned alongside Nadia and Taj.

Oz going big and bad gives heretofore flagging storylines room to breathe on their own. The subplot about Vic caring for Oz’s mother, suffering the onset of dementia, finally makes sense. There’s a sweetness to the duo’s connection, with Vic seeing the woman as a possible replacement for the family he lost in the Riddler’s attack and Teresa getting a chance to raise a better son.

Although “Homecoming” sets Oz on the rise, he’s still the Penguin at heart, an imperfect villain. Sal survives the assassination attempt and most of the Bliss supply gets destroyed. When Eve Karlo (a character who still serves no purpose in The Penguin, at least not played by an actor of Carmen Ejogo’s skill) refuses to go along with his plan, Oz breaks down into a ignoble whine.

Yet, all of these contours make this version of the Penguin so interesting. No matter how much power he accrues, no matter how cruelly he dispatches his rivals, Oz still struggles with an inferiority complex. It takes no more than a thoughtless word or a disappointed sigh to reduce Oz to a quivering mess.

That complexity may not be good for Oz, but it’s great for Farrell, as Milioti clearly has no intention of ceding control of the screen. “Homecoming” continues her ascent, as she takes the name Sofia Gigante and announces herself as the head of a new crime family. Although a fair deal slighter than her comic book counterpart, Milioti does take on the costume of the Sofia from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s classic Batman stories, complete with fur coat and black dress.

So exciting is the stand-off between Oz and Sofia that one can’t help but wonder why The Penguin took so long to become the show it was always meant to be. It’s hard not to think the show would be a crackerjack two hour movie instead of shaggy series with three episodes of table setting.

Whatever the reasoning, it’s clear that the lines have been drawn and a new era has dawned in Gotham. By the time Oz reveals to Vic his secret lair, The Penguin has finally become the superhero show it was always meant to be. Now, let the fight begin.

The Penguin airs on HBO and Max at 9 p.m. ET on Sundays.

Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.

The post The Penguin Episode 5 Review: A New Era in Gotham appeared first on Den of Geek.

And then the balloon… didn’t exactly burst, but did that thing balloons do a couple of weeks after a kid’s birthday by getting smaller, wrinklier, and sitting on the carpet as a melancholic reminder of the fun that was once had.

In the year between HBO’s The Franchise eventually shooting its 2022 pilot and being ordered to series in 2023, comic book movies didn’t have much good news to share. In November 2023, The Marvels had the worst ever box office opening of any MCU picture at that time. Warner Bros. released a trio of low-performing movies in Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash. Disney’s Bob Iger started talking about shrinking the Marvel slate.

By the time the SAG-AFTRA strike had delayed production on The Franchise until early 2024, the comic book movie story was still evolving. Which is exactly what the HBO comedy had to do too.

“A big shift like that, it did feel like we needed to reflect the fact that it wasn’t 2020 where there were six TV shows over six months, and movies,” The Franchise showrunner Jon Brown told Den of Geek over Zoom. “That shift from the content goldrush of a couple of years back to it being announced ‘We’re not doing that anymore, we’re going to take our time’, was something that we were trying to reflect in the show.”

It was hard to keep up with the news cycle, Brown tells us, but that also meant there was no lack of ideas for a satirical comedy:

“The reality of these franchises, Marvel, DC, The Fast and the Furious, Star Wars, Indiana Jones…, whatever they are, they are changing gears a lot at the moment. They’re in a period of uncertainty. People are making moves and trying different things out by bringing an actor back, or there’s a public scandal and a movie has to be renamed or changed so there’s no shortage of inspiration. At a certain point, you have to put your pens down, you can’t get everything into one season.”

Read more

TV

The Franchise Review: Biting HBO Comedy Asks Where It All Went Wrong for Superhero Movies 

TV

The Franchise Is a Hymn to Superhero Movies, Say Creators, ‘It Was Never Intended to Tear Them Down’

Reflecting real-life scandals, in however warped a comedy mirror, must have kept The Franchise’s legal team busy, Den of Geek suggests? Brown laughs. “That’s a good question, I don’t know. They don’t tell me! I’m assuming that there is someone, hopefully there is. Maybe there isn’t and we’re in real trouble? Maybe no-one’s been checking anything?”

Something that did keep the HBO comedy’s legal team busy was its use of fictional superhero characters. Trying to generate fake superhero names is harder than you might think, says Brown. “There are hundreds of thousands! When you go through the archives, Marvel and DC have so many, and anything you can think of has probably been done in one form or another and so there’ll be a copyright claim.

“We had a character called Multi Man and we just felt like that was so basic, a guy that there’s just lots of him and they were like, oh, you can’t call him Multi Man because there is a Multi Man. Well, can we call him Many Man? And they were like, you can call him Many Man. It would be this thing of going through these iterations.

“I think even our main hero, Tecto the earthquake guy, originally he was called Tecton like tectonic plates and then we were told we weren’t allowed to call him that. So, what if we take the ‘n’ off and call him Tecto? Okay, you’re allowed that. There’s obviously so much IP, there’s a big minefield of IP that you’re trying to dance through and find something that feels like a parody of those characters but that a) hasn’t been done before and that b) is as ridiculous as lots of them are. We spent a lot of time in the room talking about fake heroes, who they are, what their powers were, to try to get the details right. That was a challenge.”

The Franchise will be available on Sky and NOW from 21st October. The first three episodes will air on the 21st with new episodes released weekly.

The post The Franchise Creator on Navigating the Superhero Genre’s “IP Minefield” appeared first on Den of Geek.

Get ready for Den of Geek‘s biggest charity auction yet, live from the convention floor at New York Comic Con and available worldwide on eBay Live! Once again, fans will have a chance to own some truly rare and exciting collectibles while supporting a worthy cause. The auction will take place at 4:30 PM ET on the eBay Live stage located in the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, or you can tune in from home here.

This year’s auction features a range of highly sought-after items. Among them is Mondo’s complete set of all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the coveted Mirage variant. Additionally, a special horror bundle from Mondo is up for bid, including Michael Myers from Halloween II and the Blood Moon variant of the Nightmare Demon from An American Werewolf in London.

Collectors will also have the chance to win one of two limited edition Funko Pop bundles and a Transformers One bundle that includes four prized items. For Pokémon enthusiasts, the auction offers two coveted cards: one signed by Al Kahn, and another with a PSA grade 10 rating, making them incredibly rare additions to any collection.

Are you more of a comics fan? Among the offerings up for bid are Marvel‘s Mystique #1 signed by writer/artist Declan Shalvey as well as coveted Image comics, including Falling in Love on the Path to Hell #5 signed by co-creator Gerry Duggan, Local Man #25 signed by co-creator Tim Seeley, and a rare first printing of Ice Cream Man #2 signed by co-creator Martin Morazzo.

The best part? All proceeds from the auction will go to the First Responders Children’s Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting the families and children of first responders. By participating in this exciting event, not only could you walk away with unique collectibles, but you’ll also be contributing to a great cause.

Join Den of Geek at the eBay Live stage during NYCC for this unmissable auction, where your next favorite collectible could be just a bid away, or make sure you tune in on eBay Live at 4:30 PM ET from wherever you are.

The post Den of Geek Presents NYCC Live Charity Auction: Rare Pokemon Cards, Signed Comics, Mondo Bundles, and More! appeared first on Den of Geek.

“HauntTV, the free streaming channel offering 24/7 ghostly programming, announced today its eagerly anticipated Countdown to Halloween programming lineup, running from October 25 to 31. Featuring a chilling array of supernatural treats, the weeklong programming event includes marathons of popular ghoulish series such as Ghost Chasers and Haunted Discoveries with paranormal investigators, Brandon Alvis and Mustafa Gatollari, as well as Haunted Hospitals, Celebrity Help! My House is Haunted and Hotel Paranormal.”

More at Haunt TV

Building on recent news of a Scrubs reboot, Zach Braff is in the spotlight again for his involvement in a charity concert featuring music from his 2004 film, Garden State.

“After 20 years, Zach Braff is bringing the sounds of Garden State to the Golden State. The 3x Golden Globe nominee announced a 20th anniversary soundtrack concert, which will happen March 29, 2025 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, benefitting homeless shelter The Midnight Mission. Tickets are now available on Ticketmaster.”

Read more at Deadline

In a recent video appearance for Sesame Workshop, Andrew Garfield found a sympathetic ear from one of the best therapists out there, Elmo.

“Andrew Garfield spoke from the heart about his late mother in a video with Elmo for the Sesame Workshop. In the video, Elmo asks Garfield how he is doing, to which he replies, ‘I’m just thinking about my mom today. She passed away not too long ago and you know, I just miss her a lot.’ Garfield’s mother, Lynn, passed away in 2019 from pancreatic cancer.”

Read more at Variety

Given the success of his movie Challengers, director Luca Guadagnino may be uniquely suited for the daunting task of reinventing American Psycho for a modern audience.

“Luca Guadagnino’s career isn’t slowing down any time soon. The acclaimed filmmaker is in talks to direct a new adaptation of American Psycho for Lionsgate. The screenplay for the new project will be written by Scott Z. Burns. Instead of taking inspiration from other adaptations of the popular novel by Bret Easton Ellis, Guadagnino’s vision for the movie will come directly from the pages of the book.” 

Read more at Collider

Publicity for Al Pacino’s recently published memoir, Sonny Boy, depicts the historically important actor as someone unaware of his own fame.

“Al Pacino has a new memoir out, Sonny Boy, exploring his legendary acting career. We haven’t picked our copy up yet, but we have been experiencing the book through the usual round of excerpts, and it’s given us a question: Does Al Pacino understand how ludicrously famous he is?”

Read more at The A.V. Club

The post Link Tank: HauntTV Unveils Its Spooktacular ‘Countdown to Halloween’ Programming Lineup  appeared first on Den of Geek.