The biggest shocker of the week is my actually liking a Strange New Worlds episode! I told my wife this morning usually I dread Thursdays because it’s such a chore as a job to sit through these and review them, but this week actually was enjoyable. Wonders never cease!
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The Man Who Played Robilar Says WotC Is Rewriting D&D’s Birth, and He’s Naming Names
Robert J. Kuntz spent his teenage years three blocks from Gary Gygax’s house. He became Gygax’s co-Dungeon Master, played the character Robilar in the campaign that would become D&D’s founding myth, and was the first player to survive Gygax’s Tomb of Horrors. In a new Bleeding Fool interview, the last major living original creator of Dungeons & Dragons accuses Wizards of the Coast and its in-house historian of running a coordinated campaign to paint the game’s founders as bigots. He backs it with a list of named grievances, a documented legal dispute, and a threat to sue. And it arrives at the tail end of nearly two years of Wizards controversies this outlet has tracked one by one.
Rockstar Finally Talks, Take-Two Loses $2.8 Billion, and the Studio’s Own Netflix Deal Made the Crisis Worse
Rockstar Games broke a week of silence on Wednesday, posting an apology to fans hours before tonight’s Netflix reveal of GTA VI’s first real gameplay footage. It is a unusual move from a studio that has weathered leaks before by saying almost nothing.
The Prophet Who Saw 2010 From 1968: A John Brunner Retrospective
On the evening of Friday, August 25, 1995, at the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland, Robert Silverberg stepped to the podium at the Hugo Awards ceremony and told four thousand fans that John Brunner had died of a stroke earlier that day, in his hotel room, at the age of sixty. Silverberg suggested that instead of a moment of sil…
Deadpool, Spider-Man, and the Trap of “Feeling Like Itself”
The last line of my Deadpool & Wolverine article drew a useful objection. I wrote that under the current system these properties were unlikely to become themselves again. A reader put it more precisely: the answer is actually yes. It is just a disappointing yes.
“Off-Hour” Turns Strange New Worlds Into a Disaster Movie, With a Prequel Problem It Can’t Escape
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds delivered its long-teased disaster movie episode this week with “Off-Hour,” and the hour lands on strong character work weighed down by a structural problem the show cannot escape: everyone watching already knows how it ends.
Dynamite’s Buffy And Angel Cancellations Expose A Publisher In Freefall
Dynamite Entertainment cancelled every retailer order for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel on Wednesday, then followed it hours later by cancelling the newly launched Firefly series too. The publisher’s official explanation: writer Kelly Thompson’s story “evolved and became more ambitious,” so the books need bigger page counts and a resolicitation. Dynamite owner and CEO Nick Barrucci told Bleeding Cool the change comes “at no additional cost to readers or retailers.”
Faces of the Culture War
Debra Wilson has had a long career as a comedian and voice actress. She was an original MadTV cast member, did sharp impressions of Oprah and Whitney Houston, and has logged extensive credits in games and animation. None of this is in dispute. There is, however, an ongoing issue with the pattern of how she keeps appearing.
Ridley Scott’s ‘The Dog Stars’ Struggles for Buzz as the Director’s Post-’Martian’ Losing Streak Continues
Ridley Scott’s new post-apocalyptic thriller The Dog Stars hits theaters August 28, and the first wave of reactions out of its London premiere shows a filmmaker once again leaning on visual polish to paper over a screenplay critics can’t defend. The film stars Jacob Elordi as Hig, a pilot surviving in a world gutted by pandemic, and Josh Brolin as Bangl…
The Leaker Who Turned Rockstar’s Silence Into a Crypto Pump
Grand Theft Auto VI has leaked before. In 2022, a teenager broke into an internal Slack channel and posted more than 90 clips of unfinished development footage. This time is different. This time the leaker has a manifesto, a countdown clock, and a cryptocurrency token trading on Solana.