SPOILER Magazine Los Angeles Comic Con Special Edition

Almost Dead is a postapocalyptic horror-drama adventure about triumph, growth, and the resiliency of the human spirit. With their cinematic comic book series which depicts vicious and visceral events in a raw yet beautiful way, Galaxy, Brehm, and Napolitano have redefined the genre and nearly invented one of their

own. Infusing the perilous and unexpectedly exciting journey with absolute horror and an attention to detail that’s rooted in and dedicated to realism, the writers have established a nexus point between exhilaration and terror.

Pick up Almost Dead in late-2022.

OUR TEAM Editor-in-Chief Galaxy Print Editor Art Director Sara Hope Kent Klarks Design and illustration Supervisor Ronald Garcia Design Manager Zerologhy Copy Editor Ethan Brehm

Staff Writers The Greatest Writing Team in Our Universe Ethan Brehm Tom Tormey Matthew Mclachlan Vanessa Bellew Robert Napolitano David Grand Phuong Pham Natalie Reade Michelle Fontana Moses Gamer Social Media Manager Thor the all mighty Advertising Ads@SpoilerMagazine.com Sponsorship sponsorship@SpoilerMagazine.com Press Please send all press releases to: press@SpoilerMagazine.com Please send all review material to: review@SpoilerMagazine.com Subscriptions For all subscription enquiries please contact: sub@SpoilerMagazine.com Check out our website for details on how to get our DIGITAL EDITION Circulation Do you want this magazine at your local book store, comic book hangout, toy shop, or anywhere else for that matter?

Let us know, we can make it happen. circulation@SpoilerMagazine.com SPOILER Magazine is published by Spoiler Media Magazine Publishing. Nothing in this magazine can be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. Whilst every effort is made to ensure all information in the magazine is correct, details maybe subject to change. All photographic material is copyright to the relevant owner and appears with their kind permission. Visuals are used in a review context and no copyright infringement is intended. All rights reserved.

SPOILER Magazine is printed in the USA SPOILER Magazine 7095 Hollywood Blvd Hollywood, California 90028 “Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening” - Galaxy

INSIDE OUR y UNIVERSE x a l a

by G

Hello readers, both old and new! Welcome to our exclusive Los Angeles Comic Con issue of SPO!LER magazine!

Inside these pages you’ll find some of the most amazing articles and interviews from our past issues. We’ve curated a perfect sample of all that SPO!LER has to offer.

You’ll notice that each of these articles is truncated just a bit in order to fit the most content possible as a taste of our magazine for those of you who are new to our universe. We’ve included the corresponding issue numbers at the bottom of each piece so that you’ll have the opportunity to go to our website SpoilerMagazine.com and read the full articles in the Digital Editions section.

Among the fabulous celebrities interviewed here are The Boys’ Jack Quaid and Stargirl herself, Brec Bassinger. We’ve also provided clips from some of our biggest articles ever, including our massive 50-page “History of Marvel” piece from this past July and a retrospective glimpse at the Star Trek franchise from the March 2021 issue.

In addition, you’re going to find tons of info about this convention, including which celebrities are going to be in our panel room and our signing area.

We’re so excited to be invading LA Comic Con this year! It’s going to be huge!

To top it all off, check out ALMOST DEAD, the new post-apocalyptic horror/ drama adventure series created by yours truly, Galaxy, and my right-hand pen, Ethan Brehm, launching in 2022. This story is a reimagination to the max…

Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram @comicconradio and @spoilermedia Thank you, once again, for taking a peek into what we’ve been up to these past couple years.

Have fun and stay safe!

Galaxy Galaxy EDITOR-IN-CHIEF @ComicConRadio special edition lacc 2021|

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table of contents

FEATURES

34 Chris Demoulin Exclusive Interview

42 The History of Marvel

14 LA Comic Con Guide

the watch

the base

22 Brec Bassinger

26 Comic Book Review

30 Martin Kove

08 star trek

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SPOILER MAGAZINE

BY vanessa bellew

It began, as all great things do, with an idea.

But its journey to becoming Star Trek shaped what the Federation and the 24th century would be as surely as the experiences of its beloved creator shaped the man behind the franchise; as surely as the franchise continues to shape our 21st century world and how we imagine our future.

The question is: What will we do with it?

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Star Trek/ViacomCBS

That idea was not Star Trek.

the idea the idea Gene Roddenberry didn’t always know he wanted to create the Starship Enterprise. He didn’t even always know he wanted to be a writer. In fact, he originally set out to follow in his father’s footsteps and majored in police science before the onset of World War II. He was a pilot—first in the Army Air Forces and then for Pan Am—then a police officer, then the speech writer for William Henry Parker III, the controversial anti-corruption Chief of Police of the Los Angeles Police Department.

It was then he began to advise on the writing of a television program about a crusading District Attorney, the hilariously-named Mr. District Attorney, which eventually led him to write for the show under a pseudonym. By 1956, Roddenberry resigned from the LAPD and embarked on a career as a screenwriter.

Surely this is the moment, you might think, free for the first time of his former martial identities, when our intrepid hero begins to write about

aliens and spaceships and peace.

But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how humans work.

No, Star Trek did not come to Gene Roddenberry at a dangerously high warp, straining its engines to the brink of physics, but rather in little thruster bursts: an ethical boundary drawn here, an actor found there.

Gene Roddenberry spent his early writing career on procedurals and Westerns. His time as a police officer and a pilot in the war perfectly suited him for the kind of John Wayne Americana fare that made up the majority of the network television landscape at the time. But however much he fit into the demands of these hypermasculine genres, they never quite fit into his.

He began subversively. TV Westerns at the time were expected to end in a quickdraw shootout, but while lead writer on Have Gun, Will Travel, Roddenberry began submitting scripts in which the climax was solved without violence, or in which Paladin, the main character of the show, played no part in whatever violence occurred. As Gene once said in a 1991 interview with The Humanist, “I think we sanitize violence and escape any real feeling about what it really is. Television violence has no agony in it—or anything else, for that matter. People who are shot clutch their breast with a brave little smile and die…but off-camera.

Violence is an ugly thing. When it is done, it should be done for the sake of the ugliness so that you are saying to the audience, ‘This is a terrible thing, even the hero is doing an ugly thing.’ There should be a comment on that ugliness.”

By the late 1950s, with a few awards under his belt, that quiet progressive streak had grown like an un-

supervised tribble nest. When asked to develop a show called Riverboat set in 1860s Mississippi that included not a single Black cast member, Roddenberry argued so much that he lost his job. Frustrated, he briefly considered moving to England, only to be offered more money and his first producing credit by an American company called Screen Gems, which also backed his first pilot.

It was during this time that he began collecting the puzzle pieces that would eventually fit together to make Star Trek. The main characters of Roddenberry’s first pilot were named Philip Pike, Edward Jellicoe, and James T. Irvine. He was contacted by an actress newly arrived in Hollywood who wanted to meet with him, launching a friendship and eventual romance with the oneand-only Mother of Star Trek, Majel Barrett. His second pilot was about a lawyer, played by our very own DeForest Kelley. He first entertained the idea of a show about a multiethnic crew on a ship—though it was an airship and their mission took them around the world, not around the galaxy—in 1961 after seeing the movie Master of the World, but as the time wasn’t right for a science fiction show on TV (this writer thinks

the time is always right), he instead created The Lieutenant in 1963, set on a Marine base. The cast and crew was littered with stars that would eventually shine in the Star Trek universe: Majel Barrett, Gene L. Coon, Joe D’Agosta, Gary Lockwood, D.C. Fontana, Leonard Nimoy, and Nichelle Nichols.

Nichols’ first television role was an episode of The Lieutenant in which Roddenberry openly portrayed interracial cooperation. Called “To Set It Right,” it featured a White soldier and a Black soldier finding common cause in their roles in the Marines.

The Pentagon had been approving scripts for the show, but withdrew their support in the wake of the episode’s airing. The Lieutenant was canceled after its first season.

But Roddenberry was already dreaming up something entirely new.

That’s right, reader.

He took a few of his earlier ideas, especially that one about the multiethnic crew on an airship, and set them in outer space.

He called it Star Trek.

Yes! you may be thinking, Finally, Roddenberry knows what he’s about!

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The fight to create Roddenberry’s ideal Star Trek began almost immediately. On one side were Roddenberry, Desilu Productions (including producers Herb Solow, Bob Justman, and, of course, Lucille Ball), his writers, the cast of the Enterprise’s intrepid crew, and history. On the other side were NBC, oppressive moral codes on what was allowed on television at the time, a strict bottom line, and an American television audience who had never seen anything like Star Trek.

Though Roddenberry sold the show to Desilu Productions and then

to NBC as a space Western—”a Wagon Train to the stars”—he privately discussed his vision as something closer to Jonathan Swift’s subversive adventure story Gulliver’s Travels.

The galaxy he intended to create was post-scarcity, post-sexism, post-racism, post-religion. Humanity would have achieved its fullest potential, having united centuries before upon First Contact with the Vulcan species. The reigning power in our sector of space, The United Federation of Planets, would be an intergalactic cooperative government modeled on the United Nations. Roddenberry’s crew, part of the peacekeeping and exploratory armada known as Starfleet, would not only be multiethnic; it would be multispecies.

The network was less than thrilled.

The mid-1960s were a turbulent time in the American political and social landscape. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The infamously discarded first pilot, “The Cage,” went into production in November of 1964, caught in time between the hopeful highs and violent lows of one of the most volatile years in United States history. In July of 1964, the Civil Rights Act ordered the integration of schools across the

Star Trek/ViacomCBS

the evolution the evolution

country, and a summer of brutal race riots began in Harlem and spread quickly to New Jersey, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. By the end of 1964, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the midst of this, Roddenberry put a Black woman in a position of authority on the bridge of the Enterprise. From the second pilot onward, Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura, an African-born, Swahili-speaking communications officer.

The ramifications of that choice are still being felt. The stories by now are the stuff of science fiction and television legend: Martin Luther King Jr. himself convincing Nichelle Nichols how important it was she stay on the show, a young Whoopi Goldberg running through the house yelling about a Black woman on TV who wasn’t playing a maid, and the first interracial kiss that almost wasn’t, saved from the cutting room floor by a wily Bill Shatner.

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Things were far from perfect, of course. Uhura had to wear a revealing and impractical uniform (though at the time getting to wear a miniskirt on TV was a feminist victory) and occasionally made choices or said things that were tone-deaf to the realities of being Black and a woman, even in the 24th century. The character never got an episode of her own and had shockingly few lines, but Nichols’ portrayal is ever-present and alive in the background, reacting, opinionated; fully human.

In the US, the Civil Rights Movement was at its chaotic apex, the Vietnam War and the last American draft had been going for over a decade, and the Women’s Liberation Movement was just getting started. Meanwhile, the world held its breath each time Russia and the United States found a new way to test each other in a Cold War that had launched nearly the moment World War II ended and would still be going by the time Star Trek: The

Next Generation began. American children regularly hid under their desks in drills to prepare for Russian nukes. On the island nation of Japan, reconstruction in the wake of World War II and the devastating effects of nuclear war was ongoing. It was an effort spearheaded by the US, who had dropped the bombs, and whose own Japanese citizens were still struggling to recover from years of imprisonment at the hands of their neighbors and friends.

In Roddenberry’s future, humanity

was beyond such things. Despite the network’s persistent protestations, Ensign Pavel Chekov, a Russian wunderkind, and Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, a Japanese American, took their positions on the bridge. Actor George Takei, who spent years of his childhood in an American internment camp for the crime of a shared ethnicity with one of America’s then-enemies, was cast as the swashbuckling Sulu.

With the global social and political temperature at such a fever pitch, a more cautious writer might have made a point to avoid controversial topics.

But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how humans work.

Roddenberry built the perfect vessel to fly cloaked past the censors’ sensors.

For the Full Article Visit SpoilerMagazine.com and Read the March 2021 Digital Edition

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STAY CONNECTED WITH #COMICCONLA AT COMICCONLA.COM

TOS Fluxx Tournament 513

saturday

Larp 101 : Bloodlines of Mytherium 303A Crowdfunding Tips and Secrets 306AB Geekfest Film Fest Monsters 405 Liquid Avatar Technologies 406AB Droid Building 101: How to Start Building a Droid!

304ABC Marvel Cosplaying with the Avengers Initiative 308AB Virtual Reality, The Future of Gaming 409AB The Corps presents “An Immortal Bond: A Demon Slayer Short Film” 409AB Cost Effective Filmmaking 101 301A

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Dispatches from Middleearth: LOTR, the Next 20 Years 410 Over30 Cosplay – Costuming and Cosplay Advice for the Mature Cosplayer 404AB Bat in the Sun Presents 406AB “Scouting Towards the Future with Scout Comics” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402 “The Pokemon Craze, Powered by Whatnot” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402 Geekfest Film Fest – Science Fiction 405 VFX of Doctor Who 503 Meet the Cast of: Marvel Universe PETREE HALL C Disrupting Society with Cartoons: A Panel with Adi Shankar 306AB

Women of SciFi 304ABC Diversity in Comics Creators 303A Cursed Truths!

409AB Legion M: Fans Unite To Take Over Hollywood 404AB From the Golden Age to All Ages 301A How To Make Giant Cosplays That Can Fit In A Suitcase 308AB Comic Con Radio LIVE! 402 The Business of Anime in the United States 404AB Cosplay Comedy 403B The Dragons of Melgor – Sneak Peek of the New Animated Series 410 “It Came From the Video Store” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402

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FRIDAY Dec 3 / SATURDAY Dec 4 (Non-Main Stage Events)

Gay Geeks and Where to Find Them 303A

TOS Fluxx Tournament 513

Rodeo FX – Go Behind the Scenes with Marvel!

404AB

Geekfest Film Fest – More Fan Films 405 Control Your Narrative: A Discussion on Mental Health in Professional Wrestling 406AB Pop Culture and Mysticism 301A

“NFT and Our Universe” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402

Sync Heroes: Behind Music of Top Comic Film/TV 403B

Mortal Kombat Reunion 306AB

TikTalks 308AB

Las-New: A Fallout Snow Globe Road Trip – Documentary Screening and Q&A 409AB

Queering Fandom: Finding LGBTQ+ Representation in the Media We Love 303A

The Greatest Voices in Animation 403A

Future Indies You Must See 308AB

AR/VR and the Expansion of the Metaverse 410

Are U Game: Business of VO Panel WEST HALL WORKSHOP 1

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Inside the Horror Film Bundy Manor 404AB

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Meet the Cast of: Resident Evil PETREE HALL C

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Good VS Evil Live Trivia Game, a NaturNaL Project presents 304ABC

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Geekfest Film Fest – Fan Films 405

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Stand-up Spotlight: Comics and Comics 403B

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Meet the Cast of: Fairy Tail PETREE HALL D

100 Years of Visual Effects 503

Are U Game: Dumb Ways to Die WEST HALL WORKSHOP 1

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Meet the Cast of: Demon Slayer PETREE HALL C

Yes, You Can SelfPublish Your Own Fantasy/Sci Novel 301A

The Women of VO PETREE HALL D

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Geekscape Presents: The Fantasy Storytelling Explosion!

306AB

The Nacelle Company Presents: Boldly Going Forward…in Pop-Culture!

403A

Why 99% of Movies Today Are Garbage 304ABC Dr. Moogega Cooper 503

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STAY CONNECTED WITH #COMICCONLA AT COMICCONLA.COM

Q&A with Celebrities Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402 Uncharted Fan Film Premiere & Creating A Fight Scene 409AB Mobile Workspace 410 The Original GLOW Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling 303A Owning Your Space: A Discussion of Inclusivity 306AB TOS Fluxx Tournament 513 We Talk for a Living: Live Script Reading PETREE HALL D Unnecessary Debates 403A Matinee Heroes Presents CastOff! 406AB How to Make Indie Films (and a Living too!)

301A Geekfest Film Fest – More Science Fiction 405

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Greenlighting Yourself 503 Women of Horror 304ABC Geekscape Presents: How To Add The Lamest Marvel Characters Into The MCU! 308AB G4TV Attack of the Show Documentary Preview 404AB “How to Succeed in Hollywood with Audience Participation” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402 Process Hex: How to Make Your Own Short Comic 410 The Writer’s Journey: Navigating COVID as a Creator 306AB Disability Representation In Film & Television: How It Can Impact Your Bottom Line in a Positive Way 303A JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure PETREE HALL C

The Boys of Summer: Sitting Down with the Cast of The Sandlot 403B Power Rangers Beast Morphers Watch Along Panel 409AB Geekfest Film Fest – Heroes 405 Tarzan, Jane Porter, and the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe 301A Smallville Nights (Separately Ticketed Event) 304ABC

sunday

The Best Of The Worst: Comic Characters That Shouldn’t Have Been 306AB Voices of Diversity – A Measure of Progress. A Discussion of Diversity in Animation/New Media 301A Cosplay – in Service to Others 410 Fangirling: Celebrating the Women in Comics and Culture 405

SATURDAY Dec 4 / SUNDAY Dec 5 (Non-Main Stage Events)

Beyond Superheroes: Exploring Genre in Juvenile Comics 303A

Trending on TikTok 406AB

Six Degrees of The Blob, The Legacy and Science of Hollywood’s Favorite Alien SCREENING ROOM 411 Comics and Classrooms: The Ultimate Symbiote 301A Animation Heroes and Superstars!

403B

GO TO COMICCONLA.COM FOR FULL GUIDE

The Impact of Fandom on SciFi Franchises!

308AB Meet the Cast of: Final Fantasy PETREE HALL C Meet the Cast of: Trails of Cold Steel PETREE HALL D

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Halo Costume and Prop Building with Anvil Station 308AB

“It Came From the Video Store” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402

2

Mortuus Est: Legacy 410

Independent Creators Unite 406AB

Queer Comic Book Culture in the Time of COVID 303A

0

How Will I Die Presents The Live Episode 306AB

Heroes of Latin America 405

Do, Re & Mi – Cast and Special Guests from the New Hit in Animation 409AB

2

People of Color in Comics 301A

Geekfest Filmmakers 304ABC

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X-Men: The Art and Making of an Animated Series 403A

VOICENADO! Voice Actors Unleashed 403A

Masters of the Universe: Eternity Unlocked 404AB

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Slicing Stereotypes to Ribbons: Fearsome Female Empowerment with the Ladies of Resident Evil: Village 403B

Meet the Cast of: Fire Emblem PETREE HALL C

Where the Ladies At? What Will it Take to Achieve Gender Parity in Geek Entertainment 306AB

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Back to Back to the Future 304ABC

Geekscape Live!

Celebrating 15 Years of the Geekscape Podcast!

303A

So You Want to Be A Mando – Meet the Mercs 410

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So Your Kickstarter Funded… Now What??

308AB

Paranormal Insider 409AB

Are U Game? Business of VO Panel WEST HALL WORKSHOP 1 Comic Con Radio LIVE! 402

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Fan Film Extravaganza 405 Riddle Me This Trivia Prize Game (Audience Participation) 304ABC Comicprov: Making Comics Starring YOU! 406AB “NFT and Our Universe” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402 Screening of The Room with Tommy Wiseau 403A The History of Comics Distribution…in 30 minutes or less 410 Breaking Into the Industry and Pop Culture Discussion Panel Hosted

by Matt Ramos “Supes” and Brad R Lambert 403B World Premiere: I LIVE ALONE with cast and crew Q&A presented by Horrible Imaginings 404AB Queer Creators of Color Assemble!

308AB

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Fans Assemble! the Avengers Initiative 409AB The Greatest Pod: The Greatest Part of ComicCons is Diversity 301A From Food Stamps to Fully Funded with Slow City Blues 303A Multi-Grammy and Emmy Award Winner Malik Yusef presents “Sympathy for the Devil” 406AB The World Of Sid Krofft: Featuring Sid Krofft and the Cast of Land of the Lost 306AB We Talk for a Living: Live Script Reading WEST HALL WORKSHOP 1

friday Ridley Scott’s ‘Raised by Wolves’ Cast: An Exclusive Sneak Peek of Season 2 Laugh Factory Takes Over the Main Stage

saturday SpongeBob SquarePants: Tom Kenny & Rodger Bumpass Spotlight On: Bruce Campbell Boy Meets World: Will Friedle, William Daniels & Rider Strong ROBSERVATIONS Live!

Arrow: Caity Lotz, Katie Cassidy, Katrina Law & Neal McDonough Smallville: Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum, John Glover & Laura Vandervoort Eras of Batman Animation with Kevin Conroy, Will Friedle & John Glover Spotlight On: Zachary Levi Spotlight On: Giancarlo Esposito Gerard Way Interviews Frank Miller

Q&A with Celebrities Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402

Cosplay National Championship

“Scouting Towards the Future with Scout Comics” Presented by Comic Con Radio/Spoiler Magazine 402

Apex Comics Publishing Group 2021-2022 Exclusive Previews

sunday All Things Metaverse

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Jason David Frank & David Yost

We can almost guarantee there have been updates and changes to the schedule and information so please go to comicconla.com for up to date schedules and info and to stay connected! |special edition lacc 2021

SUNDAY Dec 5 / MAIN STAGE - STAR TREK - TILTIFY ALL DAYS s ta r t r e k a l l d ay s Dreadstar Returns with Jim Starlin The Mandalorian: Ming-Na Wen & Giancarlo Esposito My Hero Academia: J Michael Tatum, Brandon McInnis, Ricco Fajardo, Alexis Tipton & Christopher Wehkmap

friday

Uhura Costume Contest 515 “What If” Debate Trek Edition 513

“What If” Debate Trek Edition 513

Walter Koenig 515

Mae Jemison 515

Trek Jeopardy Feud 503

Science Fiction is Becoming Science Fact 515

Star Trek Radio Play 515

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Kids Costume Contest

Star Trek TOS Guest Stars on Nichelle Nichols 515

Trek Mad Libs 513

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Discussing the Difference Between Acting for Animation and Acting for Games

Captain’s Monologue 503

Trek 503

Star Trek Fandom 515

How to Start a Chapter in the Fleet 503

Nichelle Nichols Family Panel 515

Star Trek Starship Smackdown 515

Nichelle Nichols Finale Celebration 515

sunday

saturday

Trek Jeopardy Feud 503

saturday Star Trek Writers 515

Trek Jeopardy Feud 503 Star Trek TOS Guest Stars on Nichelle Nichols 515 Captain’s Monologue 503

Trek Jeopardy Feud 503

Star Trek: The Mother of SciFi 515

Beat the Beast 513

The Music and Sound of Star

GO TO COMICCONLA.COM FOR FULL GUIDE

Super Smash Bros Ultimate – Live Gaming Persona 25th Anniversary Panel Game Night: Casual Gaming with the Crew

1

Beat the Beast 513

Beat the Beast 513

Whose Script is it Anyways?

2

Star Trek: Of Gods and Men 515

Star Trek Memories 515

JackBox – Live Gaming

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Gene Roddenberry’s 100th Birthday 515

Star Trek Discovery/New Shows with Doug Jones 515

2

Captain’s Monologue 503

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Trek Mad Libs 513

“What If” Debate Trek Edition 513

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Lucifer: Lesley-Ann Brandt & DB Woodside

From the Bridge Preview 403A Trek Mad Libs 513

sunday Guilty Gear Live Gaming Yakuza/Judgement – Food Tasting/Power Drink AVOX Stories AVOX AMA

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INTERVIEW BY GALAXY INTRO BY ETHAN BREHM

if you ask any actor or actress, they’ll tell you that getting the title role on two different TV shows is like getting struck by lightning twice.

And before she even turned 21, Brec Bassinger had already starred as Bella in Nickelodeon’s Bella and the Bulldogs and now as superhero Courtney Whitmore, aka Stargirl, in DC’s Stargirl, whose second season debuted on The CW back in August.

Brec joins the short list of actresses to ever do so—let alone this young.

And this success doesn’t go unnoticed by the actress, who’s constantly counting her blessings and looking to improve in her craft.

Brec speaks with the incisive clarity of a veteran twice her age (after all, she’s been in this industry for nearly a decade now), offering some great advice for aspiring young actors, speaking on the value of acting classes and always being willing to learn. But she also shares with us the tougher aspects of auditioning and the amount of rejection she’s faced despite her two big breaks.

Always so humble and with a great head on her shoulders, the young star is only in the sunrise of her career, of which Stargirl will undoubtedly level up even higher.

Starring in the upcoming films Saturday at the Starlight and The Man in the White Van, Brec continues to look ahead as she chats with Galaxy about what it’s like being part of the DC lineage, as well as her similarities to her character and how she handles being a role model.

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interview interview SPOILER: How does it feel being Stargirl?

BREC BASSINGER: It’s so surreal.

I don’t think in my wildest dreams I ever thought I would get to be a superhero. It’s something that’s so special. It’s like your name gets put on this list. I’m forever part of the DC Universe. It was also so much more fun than I was ever expecting.

Brec Bassinger/Shannon Wright/Jack Junk/Manfred Baumann/Stargirl:Warner Bros.;DC Comics

SPOILER: And this is the first ever time Stargirl has gotten her own show.

BREC BASSINGER: Yes! There have been two other actresses who have played Stargirl very quickly on other series [in Smallville and Legends of Tomorrow]. But there’s never been a show where she’s been celebrated and highlighted. I personally think she is so underrated. Even the JSA as a whole—which is a big part of Stargirl—they’re the first superhero group ever in comic book history.

brec bassinger

So it’s been so fun to be part of a show that brings these underrated, underappreciated characters to the forefront.

SPOILER: What’s it been like working on the show?

BREC BASSINGER: It’s a lot of hard work, but it is very rewarding! I have met some of my best friends who I believe will be in my life forever.

SPOILER: Do you miss them when you’re not filming?

BREC BASSINGER: Yes! Especially now since I’m not living in LA. But I do see them some! Yvette [Monreal] and I actually went on vacation over this past hiatus.

SPOILER: Season 2 is called “Summer School,” and it highlights these characters in a way that’s so relatable.

BREC BASSINGER: Growing up, one of my favorite superheroes was always Spider-Man, specifically the Tom Holland Spider-Man. The first one came out when I was graduating high school, so I just loved seeing this guy balance high school while simultaneously balancing being a superhero.

And Stargirl has so much of that.

This group of kids who weren’t necessarily the popular kids— misfits you could say—coming together and becoming a group of superheroes. So you have someone to relate to, whether it’s the parents of these kids or the kids themselves.

Season 2 has a tonal change. It’s a lot darker. It still has the heart that makes our show, but there is a new horror aspect that the first season didn’t have.

SPOILER: It’s a very wholesome show as well.

BREC BASSINGER: Our showrunner Geoff Johns, he created the show in honor of his sister, Courtney Johns, who passed away. So obviously this show is very important to him, but he wanted to create a show that brought people together and didn’t have a lot of negativity.

And interestingly enough, our season 1 came out in the midst of the pandemic last May, and [the pandemic] was very scary, and is still scary, but all people wanted was new content to watch. They were just sitting at home with their families. And I had so many people reaching out saying that they looked forward to it every week and they would sit down and watch it with their kids, and it was a show that their kids liked that [the parents] could actually enjoy as well. So I think it did exactly what Geoff set out for it to do, probably even more so than he was expecting.

For the Full Article Visit SpoilerMagazine.com and Read the November 2021 Digital Edition special edition lacc 2021|

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Writer: Mark Russell | Artist: Sean Izaakse | Colorist: Nolan Woodard

what’s it about?

Marvel’s First Family, the Fantastic Four, overcame adversity, acquired amazing superhuman abilities, and became America’s darlings throughout the 1960s.

Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards, emerged from the 1960s a changed man. The cosmic rays that bombarded him, his wife Sue Storm, now the mother of his child, her brother Johnny Storm, and friend Ben Grimm, aka the Thing, allowed Reed a keener sense of introspection.

He is continuously haunted by what he saw in his cosmic quest.

Something is coming for Earth.

Something has reawakened.

That something is Galactus and Galactus hungers. Now, in the 1970s, without any tangible proof, Reed must convince a skeptical public that the entire planet is in imminent danger. Will Reed be able to do it in time or is the Earth doomed?

the good

Let’s start with the art. Every single panel in the entire book pops right off the page. Sue

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Storm takes center stage in this issue as she emerges from the shadow of her genius and obsessed husband. Sue proves she is more than a wife, more than a mother, she is a hero that millions look up to and are inspired by. Black Panther, Captain America, and Namor quickly recognize what Reed cannot: that Sue’s genius and humanity make her the perfect hero. Her strife is perfectly encapsulated in Mark Russell’s narration and dialogue.

the bad

Whereas Life Story #1 combines the 1960s and the fictitious Fantastic Four seamlessly, Life Story #2, while set in the 1970s, bares little-to-no connection to the decade itself barring a few panels sporadically throughout the issue. It was the link between fiction and history that made me connect with the first book. I love cameos and guest appearances but this issue felt as if Russell were trying to cram every major supporting Fantastic Four character from the last six decades into a single issue without much development.

SCORE

7.5/10

Fantastic Four/Marvel Comics/We Only Find Them When They’re Dead/Boom! Studios

FANTASTIC FOUR: LIFE STORY #2

COMIC BOOK REVIEW |

WE ONLY FIND THEM WHEN THEY’RE DEAD Writer: Al Ewing | Artist: Simone Di Meo | Colorist: Mariasara Miotti

what’s it about?

At the edge of space in the year 2367, Captain Malik and the crew of the autopsy ship, the Vihaan II, harvest the remains of humongous dead gods, both for profit and for the sake of humanity. Big pharmaceuticals pay big payouts for the meat and protein harvested off the fallen deities, which should be enough for most people, but not for Malik. He’s on a mission to see a living god.

the good

I’m jumping on We Only Find Them When They’re Dead roughly a year after its first publication.

I heard great things about the book and the team behind it so I had to pick it up! This sci-fi epic drags us head first into the dark and dangerous world of god scavenging at the edge of everything. With amazing work on titles like Harley Quinn and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, it should come as no surprise that Simone Di Meo’s art is stunning and fluid. Both the ships and the character designs are amazing.

Al Ewing is on point, setting the tone for the series as he introduces us to Captain Malik’s world.

the bad

WOFTWTD suffers in that it’s often exposition heavy. While that’s completely understandable and expected in a book that is establishing a great deal in a single issue, there are many aspects of the world presented that leave us in the dark. The book gets bogged down in its emphasis on nautical accuracy over giving us a clear picture of where our characters were and where they’re going. I’m hoping issue two will bring more character and plot development than the first outing does. I can definitely see why readers are recommending this title, but after this issue I don’t find myself as invested in the characters as I’d like to be in order to pick up #2.

SCORE

6.5/10

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Interview by Galaxy Intro by Ethan Brehm

O Fans of The Karate Kid undoubtedly know Martin Kove

from his role as Sensei John Kreese, but the New York native has had a long, illustrious career that’s spanned nearly five decades. With an early role in The Last House On the Left, and later on in the popular procedural drama Cagney and Lacey, Martin eventually became a household name and icon for anyone who grew up in the ‘80s, starring in the aforementioned Karate Kid in 1984 and then Rambo: First Blood Part II the following year.

Born in Brooklyn, Martin dons a filmography that consists of over 200 credits in both TV and film.

His prominent features and intimidating glare earned him some early antagonistic roles in action flicks. With his first bit of notoriety in 1975’s Death Race 2000 and later that same year from White Line Fever, Kove got a big break and made a turn as the honest detective Victor Isbecki in Cagney and Lacey, showing us all that he can easily play both sides.

The actor’s ability to play both good guy and bad guy throughout his career has not only been so profitable to Kove himself, but has infused his performance of Sensei Kreese, making him the quintessential ‘80s antagonist. Nowadays when villains are written to have much more depth,

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Kreese translates perfectly, as he was constructed ahead of his time. And the nuance of the Karate Kid reunion series, Cobra Kai, has been justified by the quality of the films it’s based on.

Martin has had such a resurgence in recent years with his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and his return as Kreese on Netflix’s Cobra Kai—first with a surprise appearance in the finale of season 1, which turned out to be just the beginning. Kove not only became a regular in season 2, but a significant pillar of the series as a whole.

His presence takes the show to another level. After all, he basically is Cobra Kai. Now with its third season coming out in January, Martin analyzes the unbelievable popularity of the show and why the property still resonates with people all

these years later. Cobra Kai didn’t invent the ‘80s/’90s reunion series, but definitely set a trend for HOW to bring back a franchise.

The actor also reflects on his own career and how much he’s grown as an actor and as a person. He admits that he didn’t always have the discipline for the job, but has learned an immense amount of tenacity and integrity over the years with his craft. Referring to his personal life, he explains how he’s learned a lot from his character John Kreese, for better or worse. Once willing to channel all of his traits at full force, he’s now become master over his alter ego and found a way to mine only for the good parts off screen.

Martin is still inspiring us, even during these times of isolation. Early in quarantine, Kove issued what he refers to as the Cobra Kai Challenge, which is quite simple, but so important. He urges us to be as creative and as productive as possible while we’re alone and utilize this time the best we can, so that when this is all over, we can all go out and apply our growth and just take life by the horns. And the world will be even better for it.

As he says, “Fans love to hate John Kreese and hate to love John Kreese,” but Martin Kove is a different story.

The incredibly charming and humble man who plays the nuanced antagonist just might be what we need during these times. Evoking nostalgia for the past and providing a silver

GabboT/Albert L. Ortega/WireImage/Bryan David Hall/Alamy/ Rambo/First Blood/StudioCanal/Manfred Baumann

lining for the present, the world could always use some more Martin Kove in their life.

SPOILER

John, there are debates out there, so let’s hear it from you. Was The Karate Kid one of your biggest movies at the time? Or was it Rambo II?

MARTIN KOVE

Martin Kove(Previous Spread)/Martin Kove/Karate Kid/Columbia Pictures/Sony/Cobra Kai/Netflix/YouTube/Getty/IMDb/AlamyViral Panda

Well, I did them back to back. And I was doing a TV show called Cagney and Lacey. That was really a big, classy show. I was doing that for about six years. And then I was able to go off and do different projects.

One of the interesting projects I did was an action picture called Steele Justice that I starred in. That was fun because it was my first romantic lead. Yet, it was an action picture.

It was very enjoyable to do. But I

would say Karate Kid made so much noise. We never knew it would be as successful as it was. And Rambo, I remember reading Rambo in my dressing room on the set of Cagney and Lacey, and it was 85 pages of nothing but mayhem [laughs]. And I realized this movie would make equal to Karate Kid, which at that time had grossed around 100 million. This was 1984, and I said, “Wow, this is really interesting. What a follow up.

I better do it.” And it holds up today.

I think they’re both memorable for different reasons to society, to kids, to people of that age, to adults today.

They have different meanings but they both hold up and it’s really my pleasure to be a part of them.

SPOILER

After The Karate Kid, did everyone look at you like you were this martial arts master?

MARTIN KOVE

My introduction to karate was, we were going to do a movie called Lion of Ireland, which was a book

written by Morgan Llywelyn about the Vikings, about Brian Boru, who unified all the tribes in Ireland to fight the Vikings in about 1080. It was a fascinating book and we were all training and I was to be the Viking adversary. We were working out with Shihan Tak Kubota and his dojo.

Shihan Tak Kubota trained the police academy. He’s been in a multitude of movies from The Killer Elite to The Mechanic to anything. He’s a brilliant shihan. He’s a wonderful sensei. I was working with him and we were using plywood axes because my character was an axeman. The style was right out of Conan. It was the first time that people would start doing movies, instead of wielding an axe or a sword like in the old Viking picture from 1958 with Kirk Douglas, we were going to do a style of Taekwondo.

It was all going to be Kendo moves and it was very rich and very much involved with learning the foundation of karate. So I had to work out every other day. And then unfortunately the tax laws changed in England and they lost the movie. They couldn’t make the movie. A month later I had the audition for this film called The Karate Kid. I didn’t know what to expect. To me it was just another heavy. That character was so well structured by Robert Mark Kamen, the writer. I think the star of that movie was the writer. I really do. I believe we all would not be in the position we’re in—Ralph [Macchio] or Billy [Zabka] or myself—if it had not been so articulately and meticulously written. Like Cobra Kai, our show is so terrific because the writing is so good. Our show is about us 30 years later, but if the writing wasn’t on the money, it wouldn’t work and people wouldn’t love Cobra Kai. For the Full Article Visit SpoilerMagazine.com and Read the NYE 2020 Digital Edition

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INTERVIEW BY GALAXY INTRO BY ETHAN BREHM

You listen to Chris DeMoulin, the head honcho

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interview interview SPOILER: How did LA Comic Con start?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: The show was founded by a sister and two brothers back in 2010. For the second year in a row, they couldn’t get tickets to a certain comic convention that’s south of here [laughs]. So, in their frustration they thought, “Heck, we’ll just throw our own show!” They reached out to friends and have a lot of connections within the community. And their first show was in November of 2011, called Comikaze. I was fortunate enough to get introduced to them the following year because I was in the trade show business and their largest investor was an old friend of mine.

SPOILER: What made you get into the convention business?

Chris DeMoulin:George Chinsee/(cover image): Chris DeMoulin:Footwear News

of Los Angeles Comic Con, speak about this massive undertaking each year in Downtown LA and you can tell that there’s nobody better suited for his job. The CEO has been helping build up the convention since 2012, during the show’s second annual event, and each and every year he and his team have continued to evolve LACC while maintaining its roots. Chris has been working in the trade show industry for around 20 years, and event planning for even longer, and knows what it takes to run one of these colossal events smoothly, but also totally grasps what fans want out of the experience, because he’s a fan himself.

The mantra over at LA Comic Con is, “for fans, by fans,” and Chris lives by that mission whole-heartedly. Growing up a collector of comic books and a Star Trek devotee, Chris never dreamed that he’d one day inherit and help grow the biggest convention in the pop culture mecca of the world. LACC represents Los Angeles, and vice versa. ”We want to reflect the eclecticism of LA in the show, because LA is a sort of smash-up of every cultural influence in the world,” remarks the CEO of the importance of maintaining that homegrown identity.

It’s what separates this convention from all the rest, fusing mainstream fandoms with the spirit and local culture of Los Angeles itself.

After a year without conventions across the globe, LA Comic Con is back and better than ever. Chris discusses their recent expansion to take over the entire Downtown Convention Center, which includes an additional hall specifically for anime and gaming. The show also features 800 vendors and exhibitors—their most ever—who are all thrilled to finally be able to sell in person

again. But with COVID still being at large in our world, LACC has taken the proper precautions while still widening its scope to decrease crowd density as well.

Chris talks, almost poetically, about his love for conventions. They’re not only his career, but a fervent passion.

“Trade shows are sorta magical, right?” he says, referring to the experience of taking an empty convention center and briefly turning it into a bustling metropolis packed with people of similar interests for only three days. It’s like a dream, and then you blink and it’s gone. Well, Los Angeles Comic Con is a city within a city; a fandom mecca in its own right.

But staying true to his credo, the CEO concerns himself less with attendance numbers than he does with what’s best for the fans: “I hope everyone who comes has a great experience, but whether it’s 100,000 or 160,000 people, it doesn’t matter. I just hope everyone who comes feels like they got to do what they wanted, has a smile on their face when they leave, and looks forward to coming back next year.”

erview erview

CHRIS DeMOULIN

CHRIS DeMOULIN: I moved to LA almost 30 years ago to work for Disney, where I worked in their licensing group. And I got very involved in entertainment. But I had little kids, so after about 10 years of working at Disney, I decided to spend some more time with them. I never thought about the trade show business, but as a person who worked for Disney, I went to trade shows all the time. Trade shows are sorta magical, right? Because you take over this giant convention center, it’s a million square feet of space and it’s empty, and you essentially build a city so that all the people who care about something come together for three days. Sometimes you’re creating a marketplace, sometimes you’re creating an experience for fans. And they come and there’s this explosion of “wow.” And literally 24 hours later, it’s gone and it’s back to being an empty box.

I ran trade shows in the apparel industry, one called MAGIC, I ran the Licensing Expo. And when I met the founders for Comikaze, I thought, “This is great! I work with all the studios, but what the studios do eventually gets represented in stuff for the fans.” Comic Con is the final resting place for all that work. It was a great opportunity, not just to work with the studios on the business side, but also be able to bring the fans together and see the results of all that hard work.

SPOILER: The guests this year are amazing! Were some of them scheduled for 2020 or did you start from scratch for this year?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: We’ve always been driven by the fact that this is a show for fans, by fans. And all of us who work on it are, ourselves, fans. And it’s a delightful responsibility to be able to think about who we would [want to see at the convention] as a fan. And we want to reflect the eclecticism of LA in the show, because LA is a sort of smash-up of every cultural influence in the world. So, we started building the talent base for the 2021 show when we were originally scheduled for September 2020. And now we’re finally getting to do the show. Zachary Levi

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CHRIS DeMOULIN has been planning to be with us for two years. Frank Miller for a year and a half. Tom Kenny for a year.

And some other people, like MingNa Wen, we just added in the last couple of months. So, it’s really been this sort of rolling process of trying to add new pieces to compliment who’s there. We try to cover all the bases of the fandoms because that’s what LA’s all about. And that was the impetus for us adding this whole extension into West Hall for anime and gaming and esports because that’s a big part of what’s growing in LA and in entertainment right now.

The show should always reflect what the fans love at any given time.

We’re also gonna have 800 vendors and exhibitors who haven’t been able to sell their stuff to fans in person in two years. That’s so exciting to us that they’re going to be able to see their fans again!

SPOILER: This year, LA Comic Con will feature a Nichelle Nichols Farewell event. What can we expect from that?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: The folks who have done a number of these—they did James Doohan’s farewell a few years ago—they came to us and said that they had been hoping last year to do a farewell event for Nichelle.

They had been working with her and her family, and Nichelle was 100% on board with what they were planning, but with COVID, they didn’t have a place to do it. And we said that we’re expanding to take over the whole Convention Center, because we wanted to do that anyway just to be able to space things out, and for people who aren’t entirely comfortable coming out in crowds yet—we figured if we were in a much bigger space, it would lower the crowd density. So, we said, “We’ll give you guys thirty-five or forty thousand square feet of space. Why don’t you just do it with us?”

Star Trek’s one of my fandoms. I’m a huge fan. We just thought it was a terrific opportunity to be part of a farewell for Nichelle and do it in a proper way. They have it really well thought out. They have 20 or 25

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cast members from every single TV show that there’s been, and some movies. And they have some really cool props. So, we said, “We’re happy to give you a home for it. Just bring it here.”

I think “honor” is the right word.

She’s had such an amazing career, and an impact on so many young women. For us to just be part of her last farewell, [it’s an honor]. And for her family and her team to really be part of planning it, that’s really important too.

SPOILER: I know Stan Lee is a big part of LA Comic Con’s lineage. What was his role before he passed [in 2018]?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: Stan met the founders and actually came to the very first show. And he sensed that they were really creating a fancentric convention. It was actually a licensing agreement with him. We were involved with Stan and Stan’s company. And the show became “Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo,” and

then eventually “Stan Lee’s Comic Con.” And so we worked with Stan and his team. We would bring in a prop museum. We would figure out what panels Stan would want to join on the Main Stage and how much signing he wanted to do, and we would facilitate that, and would build the rest of the show around that.

For me, as a kid I grew up a huge comic collector in the suburbs of Rochester, New York. So, 50 years before I ever met him, I already worshipped the talent that he brought together and what he accomplished with those stories—such an important part of my life. And to come full circle years later and be able to work with him was such a magical, amazing thing. He was an unbelievable human being—incredibly caring and creative.

He really was a force of nature. You met him and he did not disappoint.

For those couple of years that he was involved, we would bounce creative ideas off of him and he was always at the show all three days. He would call up his friends and ask them

Chris DeMoulin/Los Angeles Comic Con/Magic

CHRIS DeMOULIN

to do things. One of the panels I’ll never forget, in 2013 or 2014, Todd McFarlane came to interview Stan on the Main Stage. And we’ve always put our Main Stage right in the middle of the show floor, because I don’t like that thing that happens at a lot of the other Cons, where in order to see the really cool stuff, you have to leave the convention and go wait in line for three hours. So, when the panel started and Todd and Stan started talking to each other, almost every single person in the Convention Center—it’s a big building, it’s 350,000 square feet— they all turned around and made their way towards the Main Stage.

By the end, there were about 14,000 people watching them talk. And we have this picture from behind them on the stage: these two guys who are amazing creative forces interviewing each other, and then there’s thousands of fans in front of them listening and eating up every word. To me, that’s what the essence of LA Comic Con is all about, bringing creators together and then giving them the opportunity to talk about what they do in a way that the fans can experience firsthand.

SPOILER: What’s your favorite part of the convention?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: One of my personal favorites is when we bring on voice casts from animated TV

shows, because I have two kids— they’re 25 and 22 now—but when they were little, we spent hours and hours of wonderful time together watching animated shows. So, Tom Kenny’s a guest this year, and he came last time as well, and both my kids came because that’s SpongeBob. And we spent a lot of SpongeBob time together as a family [laughs]. Folks like him get a very warm reception.

Regularly, we’ll have about six or eight thousand people at a panel where we have a reunion of a voice cast.

I’m also really thrilled that we have Sideshow Collectibles coming to our show for the very first time.

They’re putting together a museumquality experience. And one of the things they’re going to have there is their life-size Grogu from The Mandalorian. And, of course, we have Giancarlo Esposito and MingNa Wen coming from the cast, so I’m hoping at some point we can get them over and have a photo op with Grogu.

And the other thing I’m really looking forward to is Gerard Way— I’m a big Umbrella Academy fan and he’s a brilliant creative—interviewing Frank Miller on the Main Stage. To me, that’s going to be the sort of next generation moment of that Todd McFarlane/Stan Lee interview.

As a fan, those are the three highlights that I’m looking forward to, but we also added this whole anime and gaming hall. So, we have a whole second Main Stage in the West Hall. And we’ve got over 40 voice actors coming in from some of the largest anime shows and video games out there—the whole casts are coming. In some instances, for the video games, we’re hoping to get some of the cast members into a pro-am competition where we load

CHRIS DeMOULIN

SPOILER: What is your wish for this year?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: My wish for this year is that everyone comes and not only sees the things that they came to see, but they find something that reminds them of the shows that they loved as a kid that nobody else quite got. One of the things I love about this convention, and I think makes this convention different, is we try so hard to have such an eclectic mix of stuff. As a fan, we love the big stuff— we all love Avengers, we all love Star Wars—but we also have those little individual personal things that are so meaningful to us. And I hope people have the opportunity to have those moments as well. And that’s why we’ll have 120, 130 talent here,

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because we want people to have that opportunity to have that moment of discovery, that moment of wonder where something just resonates, something that was so important to them as a kid that they’ve carried it into adulthood.

About 30% of our attendees bring their kids, and I love that. I love that this is one generation sharing their love of these stories and these characters with the next generation.

I’m not as focused about how many people come. I hope everyone who comes has a great experience, but whether it’s 100,000 or 160,000 people, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone who comes feels that joy of being together in a crowd of fellow fans again and feels good about the fact that we can finally get out and, with safety precautions, start to re-indulge in some of these wonderful activities with friends and like-minded folks out there. I just hope everyone who comes feels like they got to do what they wanted, has a smile on their face when they leave, and looks forward to coming back next year.

SPOILER: The website is also very easy to navigate. Was that something that you’ve worked hard on?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: Yeah, I think we’ve really tried to learn a lot about making the website easier to use.

One of my obsessions, having been a trade show person for ten years, running hundreds of shows with millions of people attending them, I think it’s super important that the organizer thinks through where all the possible bottlenecks are and solves for them before the first fan shows up. It’s just inexcusable to have to wait in line for an hour, hour and a half to get through something.

I know there are going to be 20,000 people who wanna come in the first three hours on Saturday morning, so we need to develop the capacity to get those people in. We have 36 different entrances people can use, so they’ll be spread out. 15,000 of our tickets were mailed in advance this year, so they already have their badges, they don’t need to go through the third badge check. As

Los Angeles Comic Con/Getty Images

the games on the Main Stage and they play against each other and do a little improv voice over of what’s going on on screen.

Also, a special thing Friday night, Laugh Factory is programming two hours of a comedy show on the Main Stage, so they’re going to bring in six or eight headliners and do a comedy show. I think it’ll be somewhat similar to what we did with Jack Black a couple years ago where he and Tenacious D took over the stage for an hour and a half and just entertained.

SPOILER: Any tips for attendees?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: If you have younger kids, Sunday’s a great day to come because we’re doing a kids costume contest. On Sunday, kids 6 and under are free. They can get up on the stage and repurpose their Halloween costumes one more time [laughs].

If you’re a hardcore shopper or collector, Friday’s always a good shopping night because it doesn’t tend to be as crowded, and so you really have an opportunity to go around and see all the show exclusives. You can spend a little more quality time with the artists and talk with them about why they do what they do and their inspiration.

a fan, your time is precious. You’re paying good money to come here.

And if you’re gonna be at the show for eight hours, you should be going around doing things you like for eight hours, not spending four or five of those hours in lines that don’t need to be there. We give as much attention to the logistics as we do to who the guests are that we should bring in.

SPOILER: If fans want to meet you during the weekend, where can they find you?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: I’m everywhere.

If anyone really wants to say hello, they can ask any of the security people. We have a lot of people with “Ask Me” shirts on. They’ll get on their walkie talkie and call me, and I’ll come over and say hi. Look, we do this because we’re fans. It’s really a true story that three siblings got frustrated that the convention they used to go to, they couldn’t get in anymore. And so, they wanted to create a convention that’s 100% fan-focused. And we keep that as our mantra—it’s at the center of

everything we do. I always say, if there’s something you don’t like, tell me. If there’s something you love, tell your friends.

We have a new ticketing partner this year, called Tixr, so when people go to buy tickets, it’s through them.

And Tixr has a rewards program.

When you buy a ticket, you get a code. And if you give that code to your friend and they buy a ticket, then you get money back on your ticket. So, if you bring in 10 friends, your ticket will be free!

SPOILER: Where do you see the convention going in the future?

CHRIS DeMOULIN: I think the convention should go where the fans want it to go. So this year, this expansion of talent and gaming and anime is an important expansion.

Because we’re not walking away from anything we’ve been doing.

All of the traditional Con stuff—the comics, the toys, the collectibles, the guests, the panels—we’re still doing all of that stuff, but we’re adding these other things because we’ve seen so much growth in fan

interest in those areas. And the stories cross over. Avengers isn’t just a big movie, it’s a big video game.

And you get terrific anime shows that become collectible lines and then they become video games.

We’re going to really expand that [in the future] and we’re going to make an announcement at the show about continued expansion we’re going to do in that area. So, you’ll see LA Comic Con always trying to make sure that we represent the full spectrum of entertainment that really represents Los Angeles.

We’ll be throughout the entire Convention Center, and I can see us [in the future] having activities over at LA Live, really spreading out over that whole part of Downtown LA, and all of Downtown LA becoming a celebration of pop culture fandom on our weekend every year. There’s a lot of people in this city and a lot of fans of different things. I mean, we’re doing a crossover effort with the LA Kings this year. That’s the thing about LA: There’s all these different fandoms and we all live side by side, and we gotta find ways to celebrate together. special edition lacc 2021|

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Marvel Comics/Marvel Database

B

eginning in 1961, the company began displaying “MC” on their covers with Journey into Mystery #69 and Patsy Walker #95. That same year Lee had the idea to introduce a new batch of superheroes that would appeal to older audiences rather than the predominantly child audience that cultivated in the wake of strict CCA guidelines. In November of 1961, Lee and Kirby’s creation, The Fantastic Four, made its debut, and with it a brand-new superteam that would go on to subvert the typical superhero conventions. Our four heroes consisted of Mister Fantastic, with the ability to stretch his body incredibly far, Invisible Woman,

self-explanatory, The Thing, a rocklike human who possessed super strength, and a new version of the Human Torch, a flying hero who could engulf himself in flames. Its titular characters argued, got angry, and embraced the celebrity status of their personas rather than hiding behind masks. Another important feature was that their stories were set in the real world.

It was there that the Marvel ethos was truly born, and established what separated them from the likes of DC—and really everyone else for that matter. Where DC’s characters were more mythological, idealistic exemplars of goodness and truth, Marvel’s were flawed and broken— even the villains were sympathetic at times. They grew and changed as people, holding onto that change from issue to issue, as opposed to the sitcom “reset” button that occurred in the serialized comics of their contemporaries. Marvel comics often dealt with more adult issues, and so therefore adult readers could relate. And so Marvel was able to

connect to readers without being sordid or violent. They found the authenticity and reality underneath the surface. If DC had defined what it meant to be a superhero, Marvel made it okay for them to be human. This era (from 1961 to 1978), known by fans as the “Marvel Age of Comics,” would produce most of Marvel’s most famous and longlasting characters, not only changing the landscape for the medium and the industry moving forward, but still informing the pop culture age we’re currently living in today.

The Fantastic Four was a surprise hit. Marvel started receiving fan mail, and with issue #3 the cover would read the slogan, “The Greatest Comic Magazine in the World!!” changed the following issue to “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” which stuck around for decades. Lee had been planning on leaving the comic book industry for good prior to debuting his latest series, but the success of Fantastic Four convinced him to stay.

The series was decisive in determining the direction Marvel would then take with their heroes, and they would go on to influence an entirely new generation of creatives.

With Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby would invent a type of storytelling that would expand long narratives over the course of months, rather than wrapping them up in several issues or less. Throughout the years, the series would also introduce other ideas and characters that would become Marvel mainstays.

The MCU may not have been the first to establish a shared universe in film, although it certainly put the idea on a whole new level, much like Marvel Comics began doing in 1961 with its new line of titles that would build a fictional world out of events from different properties and crossing over characters between series. Over the next couple of years, Marvel would set the wheels in motion for what would eventually culminate in their own superteam series, The Avengers, with the first issue released in September 1963.

1962 was a huge year for Marvel as they introduced a plethora of iconic properties. Hank Pym made his debut in the science fiction anthology comic Tales to Astonish #27 in January of that year, in a one-shot story about a scientist who shrinks himself down to the size of an ant. It sold well and Lee

thought it would be fun to make the character into a superhero named Ant-Man, officially debuting later that year as such. Popularity for Ant-Man as a solo series never really caught on, but the character would later become a founding member of the superteam the Avengers and a mainstay in the series.

The Incredible Hulk #1, which came out in May of 1962, follows Bruce Banner, a doctor who becomes exposed to gamma radiation which turns him into a large muscular creature. Lee originally wanted the character to be grey, but due to printing problems he ended up looking more green, a trait that stuck. However the series was canceled after only six issues, with

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Two years later with Fantastic Four Annual #2, we eventually uncover his backstory to becoming a super-villain.

With The Fantastic Four flying off the shelves, Marvel quickly wanted to find their next big hit. Lee had the idea to blend the superhero genre with the teen comics popular at the time. Supposedly inspired by a spider crawling on a wall, he had the idea for Spider-Man, a teenager named Peter Parker with superpowers that he gets from being bitten by a radioactive spider.

He pitched the idea to Goodman, who continuously rejected it, until finally agreeing to test the character out in issue #15 of the Amazing Fantasy anthology series in August 1962, since the series was going to be canceled anyway. Despite his steady collaboration with Kirby up until then, Lee disliked the artist’s proposed design for Spider-Man, and so he approached Ditko instead, who had the idea of covering the superhero’s face entirely. Lee loved

his vision for the character, and so they began a partnership that would last for the next several years.

Lo and behold, the comic was a success, and over the years this first issue has become Marvel’s most valuable release ever for collectors.

Spider-Man soon starred in his own solo series, The Amazing Spider-Man beginning in March of 1963, which would quickly go on to be a massive hit. The hero was representative

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the title character immediately guest-starring in issues of The Fantastic Four, and later, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Avengers, where he would also become a founding member. It wasn’t long until Marvel realized that the character had found its audience retroactively, especially among college students. A year and a half later, the Hulk became a main feature in the anthology series Tales to Astonish.

Marvel’s Golden Age hero Namor the Sub-Mariner would also make his return in The Fantastic Four #4 as the superteam discovers him living as a homeless man in Manhattan and must help him restore his memory.

Once he does, he discovers that his underwater kingdom of Atlantis has been destroyed, thus turning him into a vengeful antihero once again. Over the years he would have short-lived allies with certain Marvel villains and make guest appearances in other series, much to the delight of fans. However, due to publication restrictions, Sub-Mariner wasn’t able to get his own solo revival until 1968.

The Fantastic Four #5 would be the first to feature the team’s most frequent adversary Doctor Doom, a wealthy genius inventor famous for his various doomsday machines.

of what teenagers were going through at the time, and unlike the stereotypical superheroes who would find respite in their “human” alter-egos, Peter Parker was a struggling teen who found comfort in his secret crime-fighting persona— being a teenager was the hard part.

Going along with the trend of most characters of the time, Marvel’s version of the mythological Thor would debut in yet another sci-fi anthology series desperately in need of a boost, Journey into Mystery, the same month as Spidey, in issue #83. Thor wasn’t the first comic book incarnation of the Norse god— heck, he wasn’t even the first to be designed by Kirby—but Lee felt that a modern spin on the mythology would be pretty interesting. Thor’s adversary and adopted brother Loki was introduced two issues later. Thor would also go on to be a founding member of the Avengers, and Journey into Mystery would be renamed Thor by 1966.

If 1962 was big, 1963 was even bigger. Marvel dropped the initials “MC” and began putting “Marvel” in the upper left-hand corner of each comic. The Marvel Age was well underway. Over the next five years, Lee and Kirby’s approach would take comic books beyond mere fad, and establish them as a permanent

media much like television or film had become. And despite down periods, we would eventually see that comics would always prevail.

That year saw the debut of one of Marvel’s most intriguing heroes, Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man, created by Lee with artists Don Heck and Kirby. The idea was simple enough: a businessman superhero, a billionaire, a playboy—not dissimilar to Batman’s Bruce Wayne. But where Wayne was merely pretending to have vices, Stark would actually be

a highly flawed individual. Where Wayne had a definitive moral compass, Stark would be a selfserving hedonist. And as Wayne was highly trained even without his super suit, Stark was just a billionaire playboy, albeit with a magnetic chest plate as a heart regulator. However, it was Stark’s backstory that made him unique.

A weapons manufacturer for the US military who gets captured by enemy forces in Vietnam, Stark is now forced to make weapons for the other team. However, due to an injury from a booby trap, he has a piece of shrapnel lodged in his chest, moving towards his heart.

While imprisoned, he and fellow prisoner Ho Yinsen develop the magnetic plate that would become a permanent fixture in Stark’s body.

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