Wizards of the Coast is bringing together some top genre names for what they promise to be the most star-studded Dungeons & Dragons event ever assembled to raise money for the Red Nose Day charity. D&D Live 2020: Roll w/Advantage hopes to bring gamers together online and reveal the latest D&D storyline. And it expects to feature Doctor Who and the Marvel Cinematic Universe star Karen Gillan and Stranger Things and Black Widow star David Harbour, among others. And it’s all happening next month, available to everyone from the comfort of their homes.
Jon Bernthal returned to Netflix this weekend for Season 2 of Marvel’s The Punisher, continuing in the role of Frank Castle, the comic book vigilante that makes all of the Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Keanu Reeves movie action heroes look wimpy by comparison. Bernthal’s performance as a 21st century hero offers more than the beatings he dishes out (which will make viewers wince, flinch, and duck throughout 13 episodes), it has that subtlety and nuance that shows again Bernthal has the acting chops to be the next Robert De Niro. And he’s probably the most believable actor as a Marvel comic book tough guy on the big or small screen.
The Punisher fits the superhero bill in his strength, cunning, and skill, and writers Steve Lightfoot, Ken Kristensen, Angela LaManna, Dario Scardapane, Christine Boylan, Felicia D. Henderson, Bruce Marshall Romans, and Laura Jean Leal outperformed the stellar first season with more elaborate set-ups for Castle & Co. In 2017 the series’ first season made our borg.com best comic book adaptation and best villain with Ben Barnes‘ Billy Russo, and Barnes does it again, creating a worthy foil very different from last time, a character similar in many ways to the complex and somewhat sympathetic Killmonger in Black Panther. In many ways it’s more of the same, with Amber Rose Revah(Emerald City) as Dinah Madani and Jason R. Moore(The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) as Curtis back supporting Castle, this time balancing two big threats. The cast plays exceptionally well off each other, and it’s a shame this is the final season for the series.
Castle steps in as good Samaritan to protect a teenager played by Giorgia Whigham (The Orville) who becomes the season’s co-lead, a key part of a strange, Manchurian Candidate-inspired political scheme. Meanwhile Madani pursues Billy Russo, now under the care of a psychiatrist played by series newcomer Floriana Lima. The beating by Castle in Season One left Russo with memory loss, forgetting Castle nearly killed him only because he killed Castle’s family in the first season of the show. The key theme again is PTSD and the results of coming home from war as a trained killer with little community support. In many ways The Punisher is a modern-day read of the post-war classic The Best Years of Our Lives. Loyalty is a key theme again, too, as is doing what is necessary to protect your own.
Along with a special sneak peek that can be found in theaters at the end of the credits for Marvel’s Venom, a new trailer for the animated Miles Morales Spidey pic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse has landed this week, revealing some of the key characters fans of the modern comics stories have been waiting for. It has Shameik Moore as Miles, BumbleBee’sHailee Steinfeld as Spider-Gwen, Nicolas Cage as Spider-Man Noir, New Girl’sJake Johnson as Peter Parker, Lily Tomlin as Aunt May, and Liev Schreiber as The Kingpin. And a few other cool surprises.
DC Entertainment’s latest effort, Aquaman, got its own extended trailer this weekend, too, showing more of the story arc with Jason Momoa‘s Arthur Curry and Amber Heard‘s Mera. The CGI sharks are the highlight of this trailer, plus Yahya Abdul-Mateen II‘s Black Manta in action, and the first look at Aquaman in a new costume that more closely matches his classic look.
On the small screen Marvel’s Daredevil is back with its third season this month. Charlie Cox is back as Matt Murdock, with Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Foggy, and Vincent D’Onofrio returns as the season’s key villain Wilson Fisk.
And in case you missed it, the new Hellboy movie has a new official poster, featuring Stranger Things’David Harbour in the updated prosthetics. And a new wide-angle poster released at New York Comic Con shows a first look at co-stars Milla Jovovich, Daniel Dae Kim, Sasha Lane, and Ian McShane.
Dungeons & Dragons continues to enjoy an increased popularity among gamers and folks open to roleplaying experiences, and continuing the excellent line of campaign adventures is the latest offering, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. This is an excellent 224-page book and contains a large fold-out map of the massive city of Waterdeep in the back. The folks at Wizards of the Coast have listened to their community of players and dungeon masters, who have lamented past maps, which provided the DM with a numbered and heavily marked map–not that useful for players as it displayed all areas of interest. The map in Dragon Heist is two-sided: one side marked and numbered for use by the person running the campaign, and the flip side unmarked and for use with the players. Huzzah!
Waterdeep has always been the “City of Splendors,” once the most important and influential city in the Forgotten Realms, the imaginary world where the adventures of the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons all take place (but not for long!). The adventure Dragon Heist takes players from 1st to 5th level during a heavily investigative and dynamic mystery involving a missing treasure and evil villains who want to beat the players (and everyone else) to the prize. Unlike other adventures, Dragon Heist contains multiple paths to progress through the story, depending on the dungeon master’s choice of villain to pit the characters against.
This latest “season” adventure was announced during the live streaming weekend event The Stream of Many Eyes where several actors and D&D aficionados along with the Wizards of the Coast staff and some high-profile game streamers all played several games of D&D and discussed the new campaign book and associated gaming paraphernalia. Joe Manganiello (Rampage, Magic Mike XXL, True Blood), Deborah Ann Woll (Daredevil, True Blood, The Punisher), Matthew Lillard (Scooby-Doo, Bosch, Twin Peaks (2017)), Ashley Johnson (Blindspot, Teen Titans Go!, Marvel’s The Avengers) and Matthew Mercer (Critical Role, Attack on Titan, Overwatch) were just some of the celebrities involved in the three-day extravaganza.
Dragon Heist is the first in a set of two hardcover adventures, the second being Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (available November 13, 2018). It follows the adventurers as they perform a favor for famous explorer, raconteur, and part-time scoundrel Volothamp Geddarm. The favor nets them a base of operations in the middle of Waterdeep, and from there things escalate as the characters are caught up in a grand mystery concerning the whereabouts of a lost treasure hoard of golden coins (called “dragons,” hence the name of the adventure). The characters investigate some mysterious happenings and eventually can discover the whereabouts of the hoard and must battle other interested parties to try to claim it.
The adventure takes a cue from the previous hardcover campaign Storm King’s Thunder, offering dungeon masters four alternate ways to run the adventure for their groups. This choice comes in the form of four different villains which the party is pitted against in their race to discover what is going on in Waterdeep and eventually recovering the hoard of gold dragons. Each villain is assigned a season (winter, spring, summer or fall) and this choice dictates not only the time of year in which the adventure takes place, and the main villain, but the order in which various locations around the city are visited while in search of the clues. Continue reading →
Superhero adaptations seemed to experience a coming of age this year. After one appearance after another as a Wolverine fans all expected to see, Hugh Jackman finally gave us something entirely new. Gritty and real, Jackman’s swan song as the ageless superhero in Logan took comic book movies into an incredible new place–a modern classic, a drama with depth and an unparalleled fierceness. The DC Universe continues its consistently entertaining productions on the CW Network. And although this year’s new FX series Legion succeeded in telling a different kind of superhero story, its convoluted and frenetic storytelling and visuals often felt like an indecipherable muddle, and the eagerly awaited Marvel team-up Defenders just didn’t gel. Then comes Netflix’s unlikely comic book adaptation series The Punisher.
It may be less of a trick to take a lesser known character and make him or her approachable, and easier to foul up a well-known commodity, but The Punisher provides engaging drama and compelling storytelling for TV watchers whether or not you’re familiar with its source material. And its one of the finest examples of the new wave of superhero TV–not that The Punisher aka Frank Castle portrayed by the craggy Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead) has any superpowers. He is somewhere near the Batman or Green Arrow superhero type, an on-again, off-again anti-hero with special forces–and MacGyver-esque–mad skills, he is a vigilante bent on avenging his wife and kids’ murders (refer to his origin in the Daredevil series) and eliminating those that ruined his life. Or sometimes those that just get in his way. Bernthal possessed the mystique of Roddy Piper’s put-upon everyman construction worker in They Live. Bernthal’s Castle is brutal, angry, tormented, tortured, unrelenting.
He was counterbalanced in the series’ first season by soldier/opportunist-turned-CEO Billy Russo, played convincingly by Ben Barnes (Westworld, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian), who rises to the top of his list, a painful result for Castle since they were practically brothers in the squad where Castle’s life was turned upside down. Castle is practically a walking dead man, he has nothing to live for, nothing good to look forward to, no purpose left that he can discern. He’s believed to be dead, living a miserable life of PTSD flashbacks and recurring dreams of his lost family. His methods of revenge break all societal mores, yet actor Jon Berthal’s phenomenal portrayal of grit and resolve make his character easy to root for. Even despite the real-world violence he dishes up along the way.
The CW Network revealed Brandon Routh’s latest supersuit–for his role as The Atom, Ray Palmer’s alter ego from the DC Universe playing out this month Wednesday nights on Arrow. Unlike the classic Captain America-esque suit, this live-action version has more in common with the classic Marvel Ant-Man garb. It’s a cool outfit and seems to fit his role on the show, much different than anything else seen in the series so far. We’re sure Routh, awesome as Superman and everything else he tries, will make it work.
Check it out:
Look for Routh in the supersuit for the first time on the February 25, 2015, episode of Arrow. He’ll then be in a team-up with Grant Gustin’s running man on a future episode of The Flash with the most comic book title yet: “All-Star Team-Up.”
Netflix has also released the first full trailer for its new series, Daredevil. So far it looks like it could be as good as Ben Affleck’s movie version (good or bad, depending on whether you liked that effort or not). Check it out for yourself, after the break:
