Digimon, as a franchise, has always had the perception of being Pokémon‘s less successful younger brother. That’s bound to happen when two Japanese media franchises choose to name themselves after the pneumonic of “Adjective + Monster,” with Pokémon meaning “Pocket Monsters” and Digimon meaning “Digital Monsters.” That perception, however, isn’t entirely fair. Digimon never reached the cultural heights that Pokémon did because truthfully: very few franchises do. But that doesn’t mean that Digimon didn’t have plenty going for it back during the dawn of the 21st century.

First starting as a series of virtual pet toys before moving on to video games, card games, other merchandizing, manga, and ultimately a moderately successful anime, the Digimon franchise was genuinely successful in the late ’90s and early ’00s. So much so that the digital powers-that-be must have felt they had everything they needed to compete with Pokémon. There was just one thing missing: a feature film.

Pokémon had released its first movie, fittingly titled Pokémon: The First Movie, in 1998 to middling critical reviews but tremendous financial success. Digimon parent company Saban Entertainment (now defunct) wanted a piece of that ‘mon movie action.

Thankfully, come the year 2000, Saban and North American theatrical distributor 20th Century Fox had their choice of three Japanese Digimon films to present to American audiences: Digimon Adventure (1999), Digimon Adventure: Our War Game (2000), and Digimon Adventure 02 (2000). Which movie did they pick to localize into English? Why, all three of course: Frankensteined together into one barely coherent plot spread across eight years.

To be fair to Digimon: The Movie, the Japanese films it was drawing from were all shorts and not fit to release to theatrical audiences expecting a full 90 minutes. Additionally, combining two or more shorts into one feature film is far from unheard of in the context of anime adaptations, hell, the aforementioned Pokémon: The First Movie is broken down into three segments itself, though the main one “Mewtwo Strikes Back” runs a respectable 75 minutes.

Still, for mainstream American audiences not yet fully accustomed to the rhythms of anime, Digimon: The Movie was mostly a dud. Though the film has its Digi-fan defenders today *meekly raises hand* it was far from the successful Pokémon competitor Saban and Fox hoped it would be, taking in a paltry $16 million and enduring much critical deriding. For most people, Digimon: The Movie‘s ultimate legacy is that of a curious, largely forgettable fad flopping. “Remember when that other ‘mon franchise thought it could come at the king? Hilarious.” For others, however, Digimon: The Movie is remembered fondly for one unexpected reason. Its soundtrack.

On the off chance you’re not familiar with the Digimon: The Movie soundtrack yet, I want you to take a second and think of what types of songs might make it onto the soundtrack of an animated film about children raising, training, and fighting digital monsters.

Got it? Great. Whatever you were thinking of, you’re wrong. Because THIS is what’s on the Digimon: The Movie soundtrack.

The first track is pretty much what you’d expect. You can’t have an early aughts animated property without a good-old fashioned rap. And since it’s not on Spotify, here is the YouTube link to fully appreciate it.

But after the perfunctory rap track, things truly go off the digital rails. Yes, that is Smash Mouth’s seminal 1999 hit “All Star” there as track two. In addition to becoming just generally inescapable for the better part of a decade, “All Star” also became inextricably linked with its use in Dreamwork’s 2001 animated film Shrek. It’s so disarming to see it there one year earlier as though Smash Mouth label Interscope knew it needed an animated film to make the song a hit and just happened to whiff SO hard on the first attempt.

From there, the soundtrack takes an incredible turn for the ska. Ska, the genre characterized energetic horns womping over punk riffs, had largely left the mainstream by the mid ’90s. The folks at Digimon never got that memo though, bless them. This album features two giants of the genre with The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get” and Less Than Jake’s “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads.” Since that latter one’s not on Spotify either, go ahead and enjoy this forever classic.

Why is the Digimon: The Movie soundtrack so ska heavy? That’s unclear. But late ’90s techno is also in there for some reason with Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank” coming in at track three. That was actually a reasonably large radio hit at the time of the soundtrack’s release. Similarly big was band that pens track 4 “Kids in America,” Len (of “Steal My Sunshine”) fame. That song even plays over a notable moment of the film where the kids … arrive in America.

Oh right, have I not mentioned that part yet? This is not one of those “music inspired by” soundtracks. All of the songs here are actually included in Digimon: The Movie! And truth be told, sometimes they actually weirdly work! The song “Here We Go” is an original composition for the film written by composer Jason Gochin, but it fits into the movie and soundtracks larger ’00s ska and punk aesthetic. Watch as it captures the urgency of WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon’s battle against Diaboromon.

But for every “Here We Go” Digimon battle, there’s are at least two more inexplicable musical moments. Like when the movie opts to include’s Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” for seemingly no reason.

All in all, the Digimon: The Movie soundtrack is one of the stranger pop cultural artifacts you’re ever likely to find. Are there any lessons we can draw from it more than two decades later?

Nope! This isn’t that kind of article. The soundtrack is weird and it’s ok to either appreciate or condemn it as the weird little early aughts time capsule that it is. If you unironically love its blending of Fatboy Slim, Less Than Jake, and Smash Mouth though, just know that you’re not alone on this here internet.

This article contains nothing but Shazam! Fury of the Gods spoilers.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a big movie. It’s essentially a team movie, with not only Billy Batson, but his entire foster family bringing a total of six superheroes to the table (not to mention the presence of Djimon Hounsou’s Wizard). And they’re facing off with three villains, in the form of Helen Mirren as Hespera, Lucy Liu as Kalypso, and Rachel Zegler as Anthea. And then there are a menagerie of magical monsters that populate the film’s final act. And if all of that ain’t enough, there’s a massive DC cameo (which has been inexplicably spoiled in commercials for the film), plus some other fun deep cuts from throughout Shazam history.

So with all of this in mind, we sat down with director David F. Sandberg on the latest episode of our DC Standom podcast and he walked us through all of it, including how his own love of and history with horror movies has continued to influence even a family movie about magically powered superheroes.

A VERY DIFFERENT SHAZAM 2

Fans certainly remember that the end of the first film teased a very different Shazam sequel, one in which Sivana teams up with the diminutive Mr. Mind. While this was once again teased in new post-credits scenes, Sandberg reveals that Mr. Mind was almost one of the villains in this film during the earliest stages of Fury of the Gods‘ development.

“Mr. Mind and Sivana were a part of this plot,” Sandberg tells me. “Originally, it was Mr. Mind who enabled the Goddesses to come to Earth. But it was just too much story to tell because even without that part, it’s still an over two hour long movie. So it just didn’t fit, unfortunately. But I’d love to see more of Mr. Mind.”

THE HORROR INFLUENCES

Both movies have little nods to the fact that Sandberg made a name for himself as a horror movie director, with the scary Seven Deadly Sins in the first film, the way the Daughters of Atlas use their powers in this one, and all of the horrific takes on mythological monsters throughout. In fact, one scene almost took it a little further.

“I think it’s very important just because it adds a real sense of danger,” Sandberg says of the horror elements. “It shows what the threat is that people can actually die and get hurt, so you get more invested in the story. And then, yes, it’s fun to just go wild with monsters and things like that. Even in the museum, we actually cut some stuff because it was just kind of too much, because we had like guards getting impaled and stuff like that. It’s fine to just turn people into statutes and break them and things like that.”

If you look closely throughout the movie, you’ll see tributes to some of Sandberg’s favorite horror directors. There’s a (Lucio) Fulci Theater, a Dr. Bava, and a (Ruggero) Deodato Hotel.

THE BURNING VIOLIN

First glimpsed in the first movie, and back again in Fury of the Gods, there’s a mysterious burning violin, which seems to perplex the Shazamily as much as it does audiences.

“That was one that [DC Comics writer and Shazam! Fury of the Gods executive producer] Geoff Johns was like ‘there’s gonna be like five people in the world who know that one,’” Sandberg says.

In particular, he’s referring to a story from 1946’s Captain Marvel Adventures #64, and the story “Cult of the Curse: Flames of the Magic Fiddle” where a demon’s henchmen named Nero ends up with a magical violin that can shoot flames.

TAWKY TAWNY

The first movie was full of tiger imagery (and if you look closely at the cape clasps on Shazam’s suit, they have tiger heads on them). Those were all nods to Tawky Tawny, the talking tiger from a magical realm who would often accompany the Shazam family on adventures. In Fury of the Gods, Darla adopts a kitten who she names “Tawny.” So once again, we’re getting nods to this beloved character from DC history. But it turns out…we almost really DID get Tawky Tawny in this movie.

“We’ve been talking about ways of getting like Tawky Tawny into the movie, and there was very early talk [doing it in] this one,” Sandberg says. “But you kind of need a little bit of an explanation for it. I don’t think you could have something like that just show up, this tiger in a suit who’s talking. You need to have a little bit of an explanation for it, I think for audiences to accept that…I think they could if  if he comes from a different world through the room of doors or something like that. But it wasn’t really ready for this movie.”

THE BIG CAMEOS

Of course, the big cameo that everyone is talking about is…Michael Gray, TV’s Billy Batson from the 1970s TV version of Shazam!.

“The funny thing was that for his scene, he had a different line,” Sandberg says. “But on the day we shot it I said ‘hey, we should do a version where you say, you’re the best, Captain Marvel!‘ So we get to actually call him Captain Marvel. But I figured that they weren’t gonna let us use that. But then when I talked to DC, they were like, ‘well, Marvel has mentioned DC characters in their movies… so why not? They can’t say anything.’ So I was really happy. We got to do that reference and then put him in that shirt, so he looks kind of like he did on the old show.”

GAL GADOT AS WONDER WOMAN

OK, fine, that’s not really the cameo everyone is talking about. That one is Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, who shows up to resurrect Billy Batson after he sacrifices his life to defeat Kalypso and save the world. Of course, the first film had a fakeout with a Superman cameo that was decidedly not Henry Cavill, so the director was aware of the pressure this time, especially since they tease a cameo with a “headless” Wonder Woman earlier in the movie.

“We could only do that because she actually shows up at the end,” Sandberg says. “Otherwise, we would have pissed people off way too much. And even when she does show up, the first shot of her, it’s from the neck down. But then we quickly tilt up before people leave the theater in frustration.”

But even though the plan was always for Wonder Woman to show up at the end, the director never thought they’d be able to do it.

“It was in the script, right from the start, but I never believed [we’d get to do it] because of what happened on the first movie where we had to do a headless cameo,” he says, noting that even while shooting the scene, they had to use a stand-in, because Gadot was unavailable to come to Atlanta at the time. “So I started thinking about plan B. ‘What other god can we have to resurrect Shazam? Can we have Helen [Mirren] come back? We’re gonna need something when Gal falls through.’ But then we actually did it, we got to shoot it. I mean, I had to shoot her separately, and then put it together, but I think it worked out really well. And she was just a pleasure and a dream to work with.”

You can listen to the full interview with David F. Sandberg here:

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is in theaters now.

“Happiness is a Warm Gun” isn’t the only connection between The Beatles and Peanuts. Both groups exemplified the optimism of the 1960s era. Charles M. Schulz’s Charlie Brown was so assured of positive outcomes he repeatedly tried to kick a field-goal-placed football held by the town’s resident five-cents-a-session psychiatrist, Lucy, in spite of the knowledge she would pull it out from under him at the last moment. He faced defeat and realized “the world didn’t come to an end.”

When Schulz’s comic strip moved into animated TV specials, much of that expectant wonder was expressed through the music. Jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi joined the Peanuts’ creative gang in 1964, when he was hired to score a TV documentary about Schulz, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. The documentary never aired, but jazz label Fantasy Records released the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack, Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown in December 1964. The album was a crossover hit in the midst of the Beatles’ domination of the charts.

The earth shook when The Beatles conquered America, changing the cultural and musical landscape, and rendering many old-school entertainers obsolete overnight. “In the early 1960s when the British Invasion was beginning to hit our shores, the influence it had over venues presenting live music was pernicious,” says Derrick Bang. The Peanuts historian was discussing recent reissues of Guaraldi’s It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Original Soundtrack Recording) and Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus.

“Jazz musicians were losing places to play because the clubs wanted rock acts,” Bang tells us. “The Greater San Francisco Bay Area, where Guaraldi was living, responded to the British invasion with our own crop of what very quickly became extremely popular bands.”

The Bay area quickly became a mecca for the new beat music. “Bill Graham built a new infrastructure for the music business,” explains John Lingan, author of A Song for Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival. The community became renowned for rock music venues. The rise of radio-friendly pop tunes drowned out a lot of jazz sounds, and many traditionalists tried to swim against the tide, mocking the music as teeny bopper noise, and hoping things like Beatle wigs would be a passing fad.

“Guaraldi did not run away from this, however,” Bang says. “He was very quick and in fact, quicker than many jazz musicians to incorporate pop into what he delivered. Whereas, in the 1950s, most of what he would perform during a club gig would be drawn from songs on The Great American Songbook. He has a great version of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ that became a very steady part of his set list as the 1960s moved into the early seventies.”

Throughout the decade, the Beatles provided the soundtrack to the generation, while Schulz’s Peanuts gang grew to reflect the children growing up during the period. By the 1970s, both groups were up against each other.

“The best story regarding their relationship with the Beatles was the fact that both Guaraldi and the Beatles were nominated for an Oscar the same year,” Bang says. “It was when A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the big screen film came out, and Guaraldi and John Scott Trotter and Rod McKuen were nominated for the song score. The Beatles were nominated for Let It Be.”

Directed by Bill Melendez, produced by Lee Mendelson, and written by Schulz, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the first theatrically released feature Peanuts film, premiered on Dec. 4, 1969. Guaraldi’s soundtrack was nominated for Best Music, Original Song Score at the Academy Awards. It found itself in competition to the soundtracks to The Baby Maker, Darling Lili, Scrooge, and Let It Be, which was released in theaters in May 1970.

By the time the Oscars were presented, The Beatles had broken up. The one who announced their breakup, Paul McCartney, was the only band member to attend the pre-Oscar dinner. The Peanuts gang filled the extra chairs.

“Lee Mendelson tells a wonderful story of attending,” Bang says. “They wound up sitting at the same table with some of the Beatles. Well, all Mendelson wanted to talk about was what the Beatles were doing, and all Paul McCartney wanted to talk about was Peanuts. Of course, they lost to the Beatles. But as Mendelson said very cheerfully later, ‘If you’re going to come in number two, who better to come in number two to than the Beatles?’”

It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Original Soundtrack Recording) and Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus are available on CD, LP, and digital formats.

If you’ve watched Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, you might notice that the cast of the film is somewhat different from that of the first two Ant-Man movies. The main quartet of characters—Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer)—remains the same, and Scott’s daughter Cassie is also back, now played by Kathryn Newton.

Quantumania also introduces a slew of new characters, such as big bad Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) and the inhabitants of the Quantum Realm. But missing this time are the members of Scott Lang’s X-Con Security crew of thieves-turned-security-experts, including Kurt (David Dastmalchian), Dave (Tip “T.I.” Harris) and, most significantly, Luis (Michael Peña).

Dastmalchian actually has another role in Quantumania, as the voice of the gooey red creature Veb, while Harris has been embroiled in allegations of sexual abuse since 2021. As for the beloved Luis, whose hilarious escapades and fast-talking recaps of plot points in the first two Ant-Man movies made him one of the films’ most popular characters, director Peyton Reed told Den of Geek that a role for Scott’s best friend was initially discussed early in the development of Quantumania.

“In some of our earliest script meetings where we were talking about what the movie was going to be, we talked about that at the beginning,” says Reed. “But there’s so many characters to service here,we already have our immediate family to deal with and then introducing Kang. Plus we wanted to meet some new characters down there. A part of me felt like, you want to turn the page on some of this stuff and show the audience something different.”

Also missing in addition to Luis is Scott’s ex-wife Maggie, played by Judy Greer in the first two films, as well as her current husband, Jim, portrayed by Bobby Cannavale. Both were integral to the first Ant-Man, a little less so in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and are not present at all in Quantumania, just like Luis and the X-Con Security crew.

“I love those characters,” Reed adds. “I always love those characters. But there just wasn’t a place for them in the movie, and had we tried to shoehorn them in there, I think it would have felt rushed and not organic to the movie.”

One character who does return for Quantumania—after sitting out Ant-Man and the Wasp—is Darren Cross, played by Corey Stoll, although he resurfaces in quite a different form than we last saw him. In Ant-Man, Cross is a protégé of Hank Pym who forces the latter out of his own company and plans to sell the Pym Particles shrinking technology to Hydra. Donning his own suit and becoming Yellowjacket, he ultimately loses a battle with Scott Lang and is shrunk rapidly and uncontrollably until he vanishes into the Quantum Realm.

As Quantumania begins, Cassie’s device to map the Quantum Realm allows Cross to lock onto the Ant-family and draw them down there where they discover that the physically damaged Cross has been mutated by Kang into a hybrid of human and machine known as a Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing, or M.O.D.O.K.

Marvel Comics fans, of course, know that MODOK has a long history in print, dating back to 1967, while the character, with his oversized head, atrophied limbs and mechanical harness, has been a candidate for inclusion in the MCU as early as the first Iron Man movie (he also starred in the acclaimed 2021 animated series produced by Marvel Television for Hulu, where he was voiced by Patton Oswalt).

His origin story, however, has been significantly changed for his live-action debut in Quantumania, to allow fans to discover the fate of Darren Cross.

“From the jump, we knew that the shrinking that you see happen at the end of Ant-Man, where Darren goes in the Quantum Realm, was a very satisfying conclusion to that villain,” says producer Stephen Broussard.

“But it also felt like it could be a hanging chad a little bit,” Broussard continues. “It always felt like a little bit of a no-brainer to us that maybe he went to the Quantum Realm, and maybe he looks like MODOK because of what happened to him. That was always just a germ of an idea that we had from way back, and as we built the movie, he became Kang’s henchman, his Igor in a lot of ways.”

Once it was decided that MODOK would be the mutated remnants of Darren Cross, it was a matter of getting Stoll back onboard, which didn’t require a particularly hard sell.

“Corey reads comics, so when Peyton called to tell him this, he knew,” Broussard says. “Imagine not knowing what MODOK is, and getting that call and having that pitch explained to you: ‘So it’s just going to be your head, floating.’ But Corey got it and was giggling. He totally was down for it. He knew what it meant.”

It meant that we got to see Darren Cross, or at least his deformed cranium, one more time in the MCU where no good character ever sits unused for very long. Perhaps even Luis will be back one day…

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is out in theaters now.

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Get your copy here.

Marvel comics are known for their stylish drawings, bold colors, and dynamic splash pages, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has achieved incredible box office success utilizing expensive VFX, razor-sharp fight choreography, and a parade of recognizable faces. But how do you create a sprawling, action-packed Marvel project without using any of that? This was the challenge Marvel faced when it decided to develop a six-season scripted podcast featuring some of its most beloved superheroes and villains but in a surprising new context.

The denizens of Marvel’s Wastelanders are living in an alternate future Marvel timeline where the villains have ultimately won, and very few heroes have lived to tell the tale. In this new world order, Wolverine, Hawkeye, and Black Widow are scattered—either in hiding or as shadows of their former selves. When Star-Lord suddenly crashes back to Earth on a curious mission, a series of events forces them all to assemble one last time.

Jessica Jones and Supergirl TV writer J. Holtham’s background as a playwright helped him flesh out the aural world of Marvel when he first came aboard to pen Wastelanders: Hawkeye, the second in the interconnected series of podcasts.

“So much of theater is in the dialogue and conversation,” he tells Den of Geek magazine. “With a scripted podcast, there’s a lot more that you have to describe to the audience. You have to figure out how to make it okay for people to narrate what they’re doing. Pulling an arrow back in a bow might seem like a distinctive sound. It is not! Neither is shuffling cards. So we asked ourselves, ‘what are distinctive sounds, and how can we incorporate other things that are happening into the dialogue?’”

Similarly, Marvel Comics veteran Mark Waid tells us he was inspired by the storytelling of 1930s and ‘40s radio serials when writing Wastelanders: Doom. “My father introduced me to the old-time radio shows he loved as a kid, and I’m still a fan. Having listened to thousands of hours of shows like The Shadow and Inner Sanctum really trained me to write visually.”

But it’s the incredible voice talent who make the world of Wastelanders come alive in this format. The cast boasts the likes of Susan Sarandon, Robert Patrick, Sasha Lane, Dylan Baker, Stephen Lang, Keith David, and Chris Elliot. “Everyone wants to be a part of the Marvel Universe,” Holtham says. “It attracts a lot of people across all spectrums, and there are a lot of secret geeks out there!”

Wastelanders features a massive cast of characters, and the actors playing them had to understand that the action would incorporate not just their performance and various sound effects but the audience as an active participant. 

“You don’t have to narrate every single punch, but you have to be able to communicate the physicality of a scene,” Holtham explains. “You can add your grunts and ‘oofs, but mostly it’s about getting these characters into a room so they can talk and letting the audience’s imagination fill in the scope, especially with the big action sequences.”

The first five seasons of the podcast focused on individual character journeys, but as those stories unfolded, a bigger picture emerged.

“When we started working, we were a bit siloed,” Holtham says. “We did have a couple of writer’s summits to agree on some basics, but when I built Hawkeye, I was given a fair amount of latitude [which] this world allows because it’s divided into sections, and each section can be very different from the other. Once we moved into the team-up aspect of Wastelanders, we were all pulled together, and it became a much more traditional, collective effort.”

This collective effort has led to a final team-up, gathering Wolverine, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Star-Lord together to face the consequences of living long past their relevance. Nostalgia for an Earth with a protective stronghold of mighty heroes has faded. The future is dangerous, often lawless, and villainy is around every corner. The Old West is new again. What do our remaining Marvel heroes have left to fight for?

“These are broken people who have lived through an apocalypse and its aftermath, and they have done terrible things,” says Holtham. “They have lost everything they cared about and have to reckon with that. Wastelanders is a conversation about how to rebuild the world. Are you trying to build the world as it was before? Are you trying to build something new? For me, that’s always an interesting conversation. To do it with these characters makes it extra exciting.”

At 10 episodes, Wastelanders’ concluding team-up might be the longest Marvel climax in history, so it naturally stands apart from the kind of final act we’re used to seeing on the big screen—there aren’t a lot of prolonged, deep talks at the end of your average MCU film. 

“The trickiest part has been to take all of these series that have had their own emotional arcs and their own stories and find a way to tie them all together,” says Holtham. “In that way, the slow burn helps.”

Marvel’s Wastelanders is available wherever you get your podcasts.

This article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

By the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and his superhero family have defeated Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors)—this version of him, anyway—restored freedom to the denizens of the Quantum Realm, and returned home safe and sound. But while Scott has learned that a superhero can never rest on their laurels, and that there are always more battles to be fought, he also expresses unease about the future, a future in which Kang warned him that terrible things are coming.

The end credits scenes certainly indicate, as promised, that we’ll be seeing much more of Kang. And it seems almost a given that Ant-Man will regroup with the Avengers to fight him at some point. But what about further standalone adventures for the world’s tiniest Avenger, his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), Hope van Dyne/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer)?

The Lang/Pym/Van Dyne quintet has certainly become Marvel’s superhero family, at least until the Fantastic Four comes along, and the end of Quantumania leaves the possibility of future adventures open for this formidable team both before and after the coming Avengers double feature of The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.

Peyton Reed has directed all three Ant-Man movies to date (a hat-trick matched only by James Gunn with his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy), and while he stays diplomatically vague about the idea of an Ant-Man 4 when we chat with him, he’s also not closing the door to it either.

“Listen, I think we all want to do different things,” Reed tells Den of Geek. “But at the same time, I’m superstitious about this, because you never know if you’re going to get to make another one. After the first one, it was not a guarantee we could make a second one and so on. I love these characters. We’ve been doing these movies together for eight, nine years now and we’re a family. We’ve made these movies together. We’ve seen these characters grow, and that’s been exciting. I’m very proud of the movies. So never say never. I’ve loved working at Marvel.”

While Marvel certainly doesn’t shy away from doing a fourth standalone movie for its primary characters—see Thor: Love and Thunder and the upcoming Captain America: New World Order—it’s frankly too early to say whether an Ant-Man 4 will be on the menu. A lot depends on the actors’ contracts and whether Rudd, Lilly, Pfeiffer, and Douglas are all willing to return.

On the other hand, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania does subtly drop some of the final pieces into place for another long-rumored MCU play: Young Avengers. Over the course of Phase 4 and this opening entry of Phase 5, nearly every major member of the junior team of Earth’s mightiest heroes has been introduced in a Marvel movie or TV show.

That includes Cassie Lang herself, who is known on the team as Stature, along with Patriot (Eli Bradley, introduced in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Wiccan and Speed (Wanda’s children, introduced in WandaVision, although they’re currently not “real”), Kid Loki (seen in Loki), America Chavez (introduced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), Kate Bishop/Hawkeye (introduced in Hawkeye), and even a version of Hulkling (glimpsed briefly at the end of She-Hulk).

Bizarrely, the founder of the Young Avengers in the comics is Nathaniel Richards, aka Kang himself, with the future tyrant going under the name of Iron Lad. Whether that will play out in some fashion in the MCU, or if we’ll someday see all these characters team up onscreen as the Young Avengers, is a question we bring up to Quantumania producer and Marvel inner circle member Stephen Broussard.

“It’s very exciting to think about it leading to something at one point,” says Broussard in classic Marvel misdirection. “Part of Phase 4 was about introducing new characters and new people taking on the mantles of characters that had existed. That’s germane to Ant-Man as a character, because [he] is this generational torch-passing character in and of itself.”

That brings us back to where we started, with the overriding theme of Quantumania suggesting that the fight is never done, even if the people fighting it change—or eventually become a new generation of Avengers.

“Just because you’ve made progress, or you’ve won some battles, you don’t ever get to sit back,” says Broussard. “That’s just not the way life works. Cassie and her burgeoning adulthood remind her father of that. I think that’s a really beautiful theme in the film, and that’s a theme that can permeate the MCU at large, you know. It’s generational, and I think that’s exciting… we’ll see how it comes together and where it comes together, but personally I think it’s very thematically interesting.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters now.

Milestone Media was founded in 1993 by McDuffie, Cowan, Dingle, and Davis. Others were there and involved in its formation—Christopher Priest, the incredible mind behind one of the best Black Panther runs of all time as well as a brilliant recent run on DC’s Deathstroke, was working behind the scenes to launch the company, as was the media mogul who would eventually be instrumental in its return, Reginald Hudlin. “When we first started Milestone, Reggie was one of the original people who was invited to be part of the company, [but] he couldn’t do it because he was directing a movie called Boomerang with Eddie Murphy,” Cowan says. “I couldn’t believe that he would turn us down for something like that.”

The company was part of the mini-labor revolution in early ‘90s comics that saw superstar creators breaking away from traditional superhero publishers and striking out on their own. “Thirty years ago, everyone was younger, all the ideas we had were gonna be great, and we were gonna do everything to change the world,” says Cowan. For others in the creator rights movement, it was about controlling their own ideas and stories. That was a big part of the goal for the Milestone founders, but it was also about making more Black superheroes. “I’ve had people who were very heavy into collecting comics at the time,” says Clark, “who would just talk to me about what it was like going into the stores, picking up Blood Syndicate, picking up Hardware, picking up Icon. I could feel the love and passion from them.”

The founders formed their company and made a deal with DC for distribution and promotional support, and they were initially very successful. The characters they created resonated. Icon is a super-powered alien who crash lands on a plantation in 1839 and is adopted by an enslaved woman, takes the form of a Black child, grows into his powers, and doesn’t age beyond adulthood. Hardware, aka Curtis Metcalf, is a young genius inventor whose patron is a mega-industrialist and who uses his brilliance to create technology to fight crime. He breaks away from his patron after being denied a share of the profits from his labor (sound familiar?). There’s the Blood Syndicate, a group of people who gain superpowers after a gang war in Dakota City is broken up by police using tear gas laced with an experimental chemical. And there’s one bystander to that police attack who became Milestone’s biggest character—Virgil Hawkins, the beloved Static. 

The line sold like mad for a bit and grew to include new titles like Shadow Cabinet, a super team dedicated to protecting humanity, and Xombi, about a Korean-American scientist named David Kim who got loaded up with nanites and became nearly immortal. But after that early success, the comic industry took a turn, and so too did Milestone’s publication fortunes. Static remained broadly popular because of the cartoon, but by 1998, the comics ceased publication, and there began a decade-long struggle to return the characters to the public eye. 

DC worked to integrate the characters into the main universe, with then DC Editor-in-Chief Dan DiDio announcing Static would join the Teen Titans at San Diego Comic-Con in 2008; the publication of a new Xombi series in early 2011; and Static Shock as a launch title for DC’s big New 52 reboot later that same year. But despite those green shoots, the comics never took a firm hold, and with McDuffie’s tragic passing in 2011, it seemed like Milestone’s return was going to be a heavy lift.  

But in a way, it was McDuffie’s death that helped set the stage for  Milestone’s huge return, even if it took several more years. Cowan, Dingle, and Hudlin spoke at McDuffie’s wake and resolved to get these characters back into print. “Derek said, ‘It’s been too long. We’ve got to restart the company’,” Hudlin told the Washington Post in an interview in 2015. “So the three of us have been working…on sorting out all the business, and now we are the core of Milestone Media 2.0.”

Flash forward a decade, and Milestone is on fire. The whole line is back in regular publication and being created by some wildly talented people. Icon & Rocket, by Chills, Hudlin, and Doug Braithwaite, follows Augustus Freeman and Raquel Irvin as they try to use their powers to change the world for the better. Hardware, by Cowan and Brandon Thomas, has Curtis Metcalf fighting his crime lord ex-boss to protect his own creations. Blood Syndicate Season One paired original Milestone talent ChrisCross with Geoffrey Thorne to tell the story of Dakota’s super-powered gang war. Duo updates the old Xombi concept with star creators Khoi Pham and Greg Pak. And Static: Season One matched Vita Ayala’s thoughtful character work and sharp dialogue with thrilling, energetic visuals from Nik Draper-Ivy. 

While the characters and the concepts are familiar, the execution is very different. Back in the day, you “…couldn’t walk out of a burning house [with Jefferson Davis’ severed head],” Cowan laughs, referring to the page in Icon and Rocket Season One #2 that sees Icon doing just that. “I love the direction it’s going in… it’s just taking all those things [we were trying to do] and pushing even further.” The fresh talent—Chills, Draper-Ivy, Ayala, even Hudlin, who is only now finally getting to play with the toys his friends set up—are taking these stories in fun new directions. “When we have our brainstorming sessions, [Reggie’s] extremely excited,” says Chills. “It’s his first time getting to actually write for Milestone, even though he’s been part of the history for so long.”

Case in point: Icon vs. Hardware, the new crossover written by Chills and Hudlin, with art from Cowan. “The book is about the battle between two ideologically different superheroes and their approach to creating a utopia,” Chills tells us. “And there’s a time machine.”

Hardware gets his hands on a time machine created by 18th-century inventor Benjamin Banneker and plans to use it to right wrongs in the past. But while there, he runs into the nigh-immortal Icon. “Icon comes from a utopia, in Terminus,” Chills tells us. “And then, with the time machine, Hardware has the ability to make changes, to create what he hopes will be a utopia. He certainly thinks he’s smart enough to make those changes with no consequences.” 

It’s safe to assume that those consequences will be the crux of the story. “With Curtis… there’s an element that because he’s Black, there are certain atrocities that he feels like he can potentially effect to create a better future for his people,” Chills says. “[It’s] him trying to do what’s best for his people.”

And then there’s the other piece of the returned Milestone’s work: the Milestone Talent Initiative. In partnership with Ally Bank and DC, Cowan, Hudlin, and Dingle have brought in a new generation of talent from historically marginalized backgrounds to teach them about the comics industry. You see the Talent Initiative starting to bear fruit in this year’s DC Power: A Celebration anthology.

The Milestone Talent Initiative is a piece of DC’s Next Generation pipeline, a way to nurture and support diverse new voices and bring them into the DC Universe. Jordan Clark and Dorado Quick are two members of this inaugural class, and they co-wrote a Kid Flash/Aquaman story in DC Power that tackles DC’s legacy heroes (something these characters speak to very effectively) from a distinctly Black lens. Their story has Wallace Wells and Jackson Hyde—Kid Flash and the new Aquaman—arguing about their places and struggles as Black legacy heroes, and trash-talking each other the way only old friends can. Quick says that he and Jordan Clark developed the idea out of “a combination of three things: our love for the characters; owning a name like [in] Creed; and Issa Rae’s Insecure about [being] comfortable about who you are.” 

There’s a bit at the end of their story where a young boy asks Kid Flash for his autograph. Clark and Quick meant that piece as a reflection on their time in the Milestone Initiative. “You go through something; it’s not just for you,” says Clark. “It’s often for someone else to look at your example…everything that Wallace and Jackson are going through, some little kid who is aspiring to be like them, if they don’t exist, if they’re not there, no matter what they’re going through, that young person doesn’t ever believe that they can be that.”

Despite this success, the work isn’t done. “I’m not usually a person who focuses on all the wonderful things we’ve already done,” says Cowan. “It’s always what we have to do next. So all that stuff with the Milestone Initiative is awesome. It’s great. Did it fulfill whatever mission I had back then? No, [but] it’s a start. You know, it’d be great if there was a Milestone Initiative every year for the next 10 years.” Let’s hope the Initiative can keep bringing new voices to superhero comics for longer than that.

Icon vs. Hardware #1 from Chills, Hudlin, and Cowan is out now in comic shops and digital platforms. DC Power: A Celebration, featuring Quick, Clark, and several other Milestone Initiative grads, is also available now.

This article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

“I have so many names…” Yes, that’s Al Pacino speaking as the titular fallen angel in The Devil’s Advocate. But the line may apply just as well to Kang the Conqueror, the new supervillain played by Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, who’s poised to menace the Avengers and the MCU from now until at least 2026—when some kind of massive showdown will take place in Avengers: Secret Wars.

Of course regular MCU viewers have already met one version of Kang previously thanks to the last episode of the Disney+ series Loki. There he was billed as He Who Remains. His stated mission on that series? To keep the multiverse (and the multitudes of much more malevolent Kangs in them) contained. It’s also a goal which ended with his death at the hands of Loki variant Sylvie.

However, diehard Marvel Comics readers already know that there are many more alter-egos and variants of Kang, some of whom are glimpsed in the end credits scenes of Quantumania, including Immortus, Rama-Tut, Iron Lad, the Scarlet Centurion, Victor Timely, and others. Kang’s ability to travel through all of space and time and reality, hopping from universe to universe, makes him a particularly fearsome, unpredictable, and incredibly dangerous villain, which is why he’s stuck around Marvel since 1963.

That’s also what makes Kang’s official debut in Quantumania so ironic: The Ant-Man movies have been, until now, one of the MCU’s “smaller” franchises, focusing on self-contained, localized stories with little connection to the wider narrative of the universe. In this case, however, the idea of both introducing Kang as the next MCU big bad and doing so in an Ant-Man movie kind of came about simultaneously.

When asked about how the idea of introducing Kang into the MCU came about, Quantumania producer Stephen Broussard tells us, “The order was probably He Who Remains as an idea, as this person at the end of time, and then sort of folding it into the notion of him being some version of Kang, some version of Immortus, which was a character that had lived forever, is what we drew inspiration from—not exactly, but it’s kind of a little bit of a pastiche from the comic books.”

Broussard adds that once Marvel and director Peyton Reed (back for his third Ant-Man adventure) settled on the idea of spending most of the third Ant-Man picture in the subatomic mysteries of the Quantum Realm, the notion of discovering Kang there solidified.

“As we started to build that story out, when we looked at the mythology we were building, that was when the notion of Kang in this film came around,” the producer says. “We learned in Endgame that you go into the Quantum Realm to travel through time. The analogy we use is that the Quantum Realm is like the basement of the multiverse. That’s why [Kang] is banished here, because you can trap him. It’s outside of the multiverse, it’s outside of space and time. So we started to build on the ‘science’—I use quotation marks—of the MCU, about what the Quantum Realm is and who might be down there and why.”

Once it was established that Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his team would collide with Kang in the Quantum Realm, thanks in part to a subatomic mapping device created by Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) and in part to Janet van Dyne’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) own enigmatic connection to Kang, the question of where and when Kang could go next began to surface.

“Moving forward, the connectivity and where these films can talk to each other in exciting ways starts to come together,” Broussard explains. “That form follows the function of making something entertaining, aspiring to make a great series in Loki and aspiring to make a great movie in Quantumania.”

While Kang’s story has woven itself throughout the entire history of the published Marvel Universe, he does have one notable connection in the comics that bears closer scrutiny. Depending on what you’re reading and who you ask, Kang, whose real name in the comics is Nathaniel Richards, is either a far future descendant of the first Nathaniel Richards, father of the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards, or a descendant of the Fantastic Four’s arch-nemesis, Doctor Doom.

With the Fantastic Four themselves set to debut in the MCU in 2025, kicking off Phase 6 and leading to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, it’s worth asking whether those bloodline connections to Marvel’s First Family will play a role in the events that will unfold in either the Fantastic Four movie or the MCU in general.

“I don’t want to speak too specifically about what might or might not happen in that film [Fantastic Four],” says Broussard. “They obviously have an amazing rogues gallery, and the sky’s the limit with them. But Kang as a force, Kang as a plurality, feels very exciting to us, and I think there will be no corner of the MCU that won’t be affected by Jonathan and by Kang moving forward.”

Broussard adds in conclusion that he thinks Kang, the many versions of him, is unprecedented in terms of cinematic villains, in the MCU or otherwise.

“That feels very exciting to us, the idea of Jonathan playing these characters is very unique,” the filmmaker says. “I was just trying to think this morning about, like, is there anything comparable in movies, to this character playing radically different versions of the same person? It feels unique to explore and I’m glad we get to be the ones to do it.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters now.

After much anticipation, the new James Gunn and Peter Safran-led DC Studios has finally announced their upcoming film and TV slate. The goal is to create a giant connected shared story spread out across movies, TV, and even gaming. Characters will move fluidly in and out of animation and into live action, and there’s a special DC Elseworlds label to distinguish standalone efforts and visions (such as Todd Phillips’ R-rated Joker movies).

But within the actual DCU shared universe, there are some surprises. Amongst familiar faced l ike Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and even Supergirl, there’s shockers like a Wonder Woman prequel drama with a Game of Thrones flavor and a Creature Commandos animated series. But perhaps there’s no choice more shocking than the one Gunn is seemingly most excited for: The Authority.

The Nature Of The Authority

Created by Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch, The Authority debuted at the dawn of the 21st century. Ellis and Hitch had been working on Stormwatch, a key title in Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Universe at Image Comics. The pair had turned the title from a typical ‘90s “badass action heroes” title into something more reflective and satirical, aimed directly at Western imperialism and global policing. But there was only one problem: it wasn’t selling great.

And so The Authority was created, conceptualized as the leaner, meaner, bigger sibling of Stormwatch. It would draw upon other successful, boundary-pushing team books of the period like Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s JLA, but push it farther, take it to places where the actual Justice League characters never could go.

While Morrison and Porter’s JLA series treated those DC icons as modern symbolic equivalents of the Olympian gods, The Authority boasted its own pantheon of figures representing elemental forces of modern existence itself. The team consisted of:

• Jenny Sparks – The team’s fierce leader, an immortal woman who had lived through the entire 20th Century and was its ultimate symbol
• Apollo – A Superman-esque figure and the roster’s elemental hero of light
• Midnighter – A Batman-esque warrior of the night and master strategist who knows every move you’ll make before you’ve made it
• Jack Hawksmoor – The avatar of the modern human world, with a connection to cities
• The Engineer – A master of technology capable of creating virtually anything
• The Doctor- The shaman and the healer, the mystic in tune with reality itself 
• Swift – The winged huntress and the master of speed

Just as Alan Moore and others changed American superheroes for good with books like Miracleman and Watchmen in the 1980s, Ellis and Hitch continued that British tradition and changed the American superhero once again in the 1990s. While Morrison and Porter’s contemporary Justice League proudly proclaimed that their purpose was “to catch humanity when it falls” and “to inspire them,” the Authority had a very different motto:

Be good, or else!

The Authority answered to no one except themselves. They didn’t just want to save the world. They wanted to change it. On the surface, they were the Justice League dressed in fetishy leather costumes, slick T-Shirts, suits, or chrome metal, and looked like pop idols or celebrities of the era. But they were also, crucially, much like a lot of the British tradition’s work on the American superhero, a sharp satire and critical assessment.

What if there were superbeings who were willing to re-shape reality, no matter the cost, in pursuit of a better world? What if there were those who hated the status quo and wanted to actively take action to get to their vision of a better tomorrow?

It was, in a way, a return to the ideal of the golden age idea of Superman, who would take dictators during wars and toss them around, forcing them to make peace, only taken to a (then) modern extreme via the lens of the British tradition. What if supergods existed, but they were on our side. It was a fantasy of the primal powers that would deliver brutal justice to every tyrant, corrupt official, and horrible CEO we hated, all the bastards who escaped judgment and never got what they deserved. 

It was a comic of violent catharsis, draped in Bryan Hitch artwork of grand spectacle, with buildings collapsing and cities reduced to rubble. But it was a book of discomfort, too. These weren’t exactly great people you wanted to hang around with. They’d level cities and accept the collateral damage of thousands dying if it meant they’d save a million more. They were cool action hero figures who shared some of your progressive ideals, but also made you deeply uncomfortable with the choices they made. This fine balance of sharp satire of the Western superhero with the utmost sincerity to the pledge of “a better world” is what defined The Authority.

It was so tremendously influential that it changed comics, and a little further down the road, pop culture itself. When Ellis left as writer, the book would be taken on by Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Civil War, Old Man Logan), and he would eventually move onto rebooting the Marvel Universe and the Avengers with Bryan Hitch as his artistic collaborator on The Ultimates, which sold over 4 times as much as the most successful issue of The Authority. The Ultimates was a much more mixed, messy, and uneven attempt at a satire, but it had a tabloid shock-value sensibility and it was a bonafide hit. The Ultimates (stripped of the satirical and uncomfortable elements) became the basis and foundation for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and as a result, you can trace a direct line from The Authority to 2012’s The Avengers film. 

But why The Authority? And why now?

When Wildstorm was absorbed by DC, the analogous characters created to be a commentary/critique/satire of the Justice League archetypes suddenly found themselves on the same playing field as the characters they had been critiquing. Until recently, it never quite worked on the page. But now they’re being brought in and cemented as DC Universe characters for good in cinema.

James Gunn has described his vision for the team in the DCU as follows:

“The Authority is a very different kind of superhero story. They’re basically good intentioned, but they think that the world is completely broken. And the only way to fix it is to take things into their own hands, whether that means killing people, destroying heads of state, changing governments, whatever they want to do to make the world better. We’ll see how that journey goes for them.”

But what purpose can The Authority really serve in a world where multiple seasons of The Boys exist? The ruthless satirical critique of superhero fiction that Ellis’ The Authority was can’t really work alongside a traditional superhero shared movie and TV universe meant to deliver blockbuster after blockbuster. Even if the intent is to do a serious, meaningful satire and critique of the genre, we may end with a shallow pretense of one, akin to the MCU’s handling of many heady questions. No matter how well-intentioned, it’s difficult for a cinematic Authority serving a traditional and commercial cinematic universe to escape the limitations placed upon it given the corporate and financial realities involved. Is this an interest in the ambitious questions posed by The Authority or merely the big, loud bombastic aestheticism of it? We’ve lived through over a decade of indulging in the latter, while only a handful of projects (The Boys, HBO’s Watchmen) have truly grasped the former. 

In a lot of ways, the original purposes and aims of The Authority comic have now been taken up and fulfilled by The Boys, with both works being deeply British satirical critiques of Western ideas and capitalist imperium. It’s possible that The Authority no longer has the purpose or meaning it once did, and its niche is well covered and occupied. But perhaps the most recent major attempt at bridging The Authority and the DCU may prove instructive in this regard for DC movies.

Grant Morrison and Mikel Janin’s 2021 Superman and The Authority saw the Man of Steel  assembling a new generation of superhumans to take up his mission, connecting The Authority right back to the root of the angry Superman they once sprung from. Save for the usage of Midnighter and Apollo, Morrison would largely create or utilize DCU analogues/stand-ins for this Authority roster, avoiding any existing continuity baggage. The whole comic operates as a sharp satirical reflection on the superhero idea, both where it had been, and where it is now, laying bare all the ways that Superman had failed and could have done more. But it also gets at how the classic Authority had failed, digging into how the concept itself was a specific product of its time and zeitgeist, outside of which it struggles. As Grant Morrison put it in told us in an interview:

“The Authority was great at the time, it was punk superheroes. But really it kind of trivialized world problems that then became bigger and bigger. So this was something different. This was, could we make an analog team that was like the Authority but wasn’t the original Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, Frank Quitely Authority but took some of that attitude. It’s trying to capture that feeling but at the same time to interrogate it because it didn’t really work. A lot of what we hoped for, a lot of what the radical utopian left and the creative community hoped for didn’t really turn out the way we hoped or turned out in a way that yeah, that’s what we wanted but it was the bad guys who got it right.” 

You can’t exactly expect a militaristic Western superpower to make the world better. It can be cathartic and satisfying as a fantasy to read. Ultraviolent supergods can’t save us or make us a better world. Only we can do that, together in unity and solidarity. Playing Superman (and thus the superhero) as symbol and metaphor as opposed to the pseudo-realist approach of The Authority comics, Morrison leaned into the unreality and implausibility of the whole superhero enterprise. Veering away from the troubling imperialist figures, they pushed the superhero into inspiring figures of absurdity. More a critical essay than a story, Superman and The Authority currently stands as Morrison’s final word on DC, and the book is a fun trek through the history of thought on the superhero idea.

This, of course, does not play as well on screen or work for a traditional superhero cinematic universe of the sort that WB and its new chief David Zaslav are looking for. Which complicates things for DC Studios. The ideal adaptation of The Authority, if you were really dead set on doing it, would, of course, be a standalone HBO TV series, akin to Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen, a critical work of commentary on superhero fiction that could operate on its own, in its own bubble, without the weight of the shared universe. It’s largely why The Boys also works, as a singular show exploring the humanity of the regular people who live in a world of men masquerading as gods.

Gunn and Safran’s vision of the DCU is one of variety. You have the classical heroes like Batman and Superman, but you also have Green Lantern and Wonder Woman mythologies re-worked in the vein of modern prestige dramas like True Detective (with Lanterns) and Game of Thrones (Paradise Lost) respectively. Swamp Thing is intended to play to a proper horror niche, while Creature Commandos looks to be leaning more towards a horror action/comedy set-up. Booster Gold lends itself to comedy most readily above all others as well, while Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow occupies the space opera role traditionally slotted for Green Lantern. And while Waller will further explore the villainous world of DC, granting it its unique place, the intent with The Authority seems to be to place it squarely amidst all of these as counter-programming, a contrast to the ethos of both the classical heroic figures and the villainous bastards of DC. They’re not the weirdos and freaks to the side, happy to do their thing. No, instead they’re the freaks who bring the thunder and lightning and make some noise. 

This new DCU, and any screen vision of The Authority, has to live in a post-MCU world, wherein The Authority has been strip-mined for parts by everything that surrounds us starring superheroes, with its satire lost. We live in a post-The Boys world, wherein it continues as the torchbearer for the likes of The Authority, but an entire segment of the audience completely miss the point, with many rightwing morons thinking Homelander was a true hero all this time. This is the cultural zeitgeist and moment in the 2020s we’re in, which The Authority was never really designed for at all.

Will it have the same impact? Can it work at all?

Only time will tell.

This article contains some spoilers for DC’s Kingdom Come. Read our in-depth Shazam! Fury of the Gods cover story in the new issue of our magazine.

Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come is nothing short of a DC Comics classic. The dark alt-universe Elseworlds tale imagines an Earth where superheroes have become mad with power, as violent and dangerous as the criminals they’ve committed to stop. Ross’ gorgeous gouache-painted pages and a dynamic storyline that pits the Justice League against a new generation of ultra-violent caped crusaders means that Kingdom Come has garnered a loyal fanbase, one that constantly wonders why this hasn’t been adapted for film or TV yet. Those fans can now add another to their number as when Den of Geek speaks with Zachary Levi about Shazam: Fury of the Gods, the actor shares that Kingdom Come is his dream project for the hero he portrays, no matter what the cost to Billy Batson and Shazam. 

Shazam: Fury of the Gods is coming at a time of upheaval for Warner Bros, something that Levi acknowledges when we ask about his dream projects for Shazam. “There’s definitely little ideas here and there that I brought up in the past, but I’m sure I’m gonna sit down with [DC Studios heads] James [Gunn] and Peter [Safran] soon enough and we’ll talk about what we think the trajectory of all this will be,” he says. “You know, the success of the second movie will determine a lot.” 

Levi clearly trusts the new DC leadership and feels equally as positive about Shazam: Fury of the Gods. “I think we made a great movie and I think people are really gonna enjoy it,” he says. “So then it’s just a matter of just trying to figure out what we can do to keep making good material that includes Shazam that stays true to the character and does right by our fan base and all the people who have supported the comic and the character for coming up on a century. It’s a long time and I think it’s important to honor all that.” 

That doesn’t mean Levi doesn’t have dreams, though. And the one he’s happy to share is about Ross and Waid’s iconic DC story. “Kingdom Come would be something so amazing to do, even if it means me sacrificing my own life,” he laughs, referencing Shazam’s ultimate fate in the pages of Kingdom Come. 

If you haven’t ever checked out the 1996 comic, it’s a much darker take on the DC Universe. It begins with the death of one of DC’s most famous villains at the hands of an unusual new hero known only as Magog. The ramifications of this action change the shape of the DC Universe and put some of our favorite heroes into untenable positions. Without spoiling too much, Shazam’s role in the story is a far cry from the character in David F. Sandberg’s family friendly superhero movies. 

Levi isn’t just a fan of the controversial comic, which he calls “a great story,” but he’s also aware of just how fervent its fanbase is. “I think it’s something that fans would fucking devour.” 

Shazam: Fury of the Gods hits cinemas on March 17. We’ll have more from Zachary Levi, director David F. Sandberg, and other stars of the movie this week when the next issue of our magazine arrives!