SFX

Bless me, fellow nerds, for I have sinned. I admit that I am quite literally bingeing Gen V in the final days of this issue being put together. When I read Jack Shepherd’s great cover feature for season four of The Boys, I realised the superhero spin

“MY DAD GAVE ME SOME GREAT advice. He said, ‘Pick the thing that feels like an endless well – something you would never tire of going deeper into.’” As the daughter of The Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan, Ishana Night Shyamalan is aware that h

SET TO BE THE BASIS of 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars made comic book history when it was first published in 1984. Written by Marvel’s then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and illustrated by Mike Zeck and Bob Layton, the 1

THERE CAN SURELY BE FEW contemporary lives better documented than William Shatner’s. The erstwhile Enterprise captain has conducted thousands of interviews, and penned a shelf-full of memoirs. However, a new film by Alexandre O Philippe (director of

WHILE SEASON THREE RECENTLY CONCLUDED ON the small screen, Resident Alien is about to return to comics (where it began). However, according to writer Peter Hogan, fans of the TV series should be wary of diving in at the deep end of the Steve Parkhous

AFTER AMERICAN GODS AND Norse Mythology, Dark Horse Comics is now adapting Neil Gaiman’s 2005 novel Anansi Boys into a trio of eight-issue miniseries. While Gaiman liaised with writer Marc Bernardin and artist Shawn Martinbrough during the developmen

STICK AN ANDROID IN a person’s home against their will and you’ve got the perfect scenario for murder and mayhem. Irish author Colin O’Sullivan explored that premise in his 2018 sci-fi/noir novel The Dark Manual. A few years later, screenwriter Katie

WITH FALL OF X HAVING brought the Krakoan period to a devastating close, the X-Men are now entering an all-new epoch. Written and drawn by an entirely new line-up of writers and artists, From The Ashes heralds the launch of a new range of comic books

WHILE THEY HAVE PREVIOUSLY APPEARED IN EACH other’s strips, 2000 AD’s characters are truly coming together in this year’s Sci-Fi Special, which features a selection of alternate universe amalgamations of some of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic’s best-kno

FOLK HORROR has been undergoing something of a renaissance in recent years, but mostly on the big and small screens. Now it’s theatre’s turn to get in on the act with the arrival of a new play that brings those themes of isolation and superstition to

WHILE NCUTI GATWA and Millie Gibson’s inaugural season in the TARDIS will soon draw to a close, the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday’s adventures are continuing in a new miniseries from writer Dan Watters and artist Kelsey Ramsay – who were venturing

◆ Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson made a number of appearances in the US in May as part of the promotional launch for Doctor Who on Disney+. The pair posed in front of billboards at New York’s Times Square and alongside a specially-themed subway train.

Tell us about your protagonist. ? Jordan is an ex-Lost Boy, exiled to the real world but still in withdrawal from the addictive Dust of her childhood. With nothing left to lose, she returns to the Island intent on facing Peter one last time, on her o

ERIC KRIPKE HAS HAD TO KEEP his mouth shut for a really fucking long time. In fact, the showrunner behind the world’s bloodiest, sweariest, and downright weirdest “supe” show, The Boys, has yet to speak publicly about the upcoming season – until now,

What sort of threat does Vic pose being the soon-to-be VP this season? Claudia Doumit: It’s the unchecked power of it. I mean, I don’t think any of us want someone like that getting to any position of power, really. But the thing about this season in

AFTER ALMOST A two-year wait, it’s time to collect your chain mail and dragon kibble: Westeros is ready to rumble once more. The first season of House Of The Dragon left audiences in fear for House Targaryen when by season’s end, fans – spoiler alert

THE FIRST QUIET PLACE FROM 2018 was a model example of in medias res, a film that dropped us into the middle of an unimaginable dystopia, 471 days after the Earth was invaded by an army of visually impaired ETs. Yet while 2020’s A Quiet Place Part II

If the world really was invaded by blind extraterrestrials with a keen sense of hearing, some people would be naturally better at surviving than others. We wouldn’t, for instance, bet on Brian Blessed or Alan Carr living more than a day before being

IOM HOLLAND. BENEDICT Cumberbatch. Henry Cavill. A frankly ludicrous number of British actors have portrayed superheroes on-screen, yet few of them have played British heroes on-screen. Thank Odin, then, for Andrew Onwubolu aka Rapman, who wants to f

The show deals with normal people who get superpowers. Was that what attracted you to the script? ⬤ You’ve got these five people from South London but they’re all from different walks of life. The one thing they have in common are these powers. It’s

FOR 2022 SLASHER FLICK X and its same-year prequel Pearl, director Ti West did the standard amount of press for a low-budget horror, which is to say not a lot. But with his latest film MaXXXine (a direct sequel to X), things are different. Very diffe

In the film’s trailer, Maxine asks her friend “Name five celebrities who got their start in horror movies”, to which he replies, “John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Demi Moore and Brooke Shields.” Ti West reveals that there was an additional name in th

OSGOOD PERKINS HAD A VISITOR in his head. At first it was a nameless, half-glimpsed figure. Black clothes. Straggly hair. A face pale and powdery with make-up. Its intentions? Malevolent, naturally. “All writers are the same,” Perkins tells SFX, expl

TIMEY-WIMEY. ANY DOCTOR WHO interview is going to be caught in the vortex somewhat. It’s July 2023 and SFX is on a vast soundstage at Wolf Studios in Cardiff, where filming of the season one finale is underway. “Is this not shattering all your illusi

FORGET SPORTS ALMANACS AND ALMOST KISSING your mum – Marty McFly’s dealings with the Doc in Back To The Future feel tame compared to The Butterfly Effect. It’s perhaps the darkest time-travel movie ever committed to celluloid, with an alternate endin

FROM A MAN WHOSE LATEST BOOK IS A 500-page-plus fantasy, it’s an incongruous remark. “I was trying to figure out whether I still wanted to write,” Paolo Bacigalupi says of the exercise in “creative play” that resulted in Navola, his remarkable new no

IS THAT A TARDIS ON SUNSET Boulevard? The quintessentially British time machine made its way to the heart of Hollywood, California on 8 May for the US Disney+ premiere of Doctor Who. SFX was present as they rolled out an impressive blue carpet launch

… and get all these benefits • Never miss an issue! • No more traipsing to the shops in the rain – have the mag delivered to your door! • Pay significantly less than the shop price • Print subscribers also get a digital issue • Free access to a huge

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 148 minutes Director George Miller Cast Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne “You have about you a purposeful savagery!” says a character to the young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) in George Miller’s prequel to

RELEASED 28 JUNE TBC | 165 minutes Directors Yorgos Lanthimos Cast Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley If there’s any kindness in Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest wild and weird work, it’s hard to find. The director behind P

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 145 minutes Directors Wes Ball Cast Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon Jumping forward “many generations”, the tenth Apes outing both induces a warm glow of nostalgia via callbacks to the 1968 original (like a

UK/US Paramount+, streaming now Showrunners Alex Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise Cast Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, David Ajala EPISODES 5.01-5.10 Why do so many shows have a habit of getting good again just before cancellation? Because

UK/US Disney+, streaming now Creator Beau DeMayo Cast Ray Chase, Jennifer Hale, Matthew Waterson, Alison Sealy-Smith After years of teases, Marvel Studios’ first X-Men project has finally arrived, and it’d be easy to mistake it for shameless nostalgi

UK Sky Max/NOW, Fridays/streaming now US AMC, streaming now Creators Scott M Gimple, Danai Gurira, Andrew Lincoln Cast Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Pollyanna McIntosh, Terry O’Quinn EPISODES 1.01-1.06 Finally! This Walking Dead spin-off has lingered

RELEASED 17 JUNE 1971-1978 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Pete Walker Cast Susan George, Robin Askwith, Stephanie Beacham, Sheila Keith, Susan Penhaligon, Jack Jones, Anthony Sharp BLU-RAY DEBUT “I don’t think I ever made horror movies,” said Pete Walker, m

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1970 | 12 | 4K/Blu-ray Director Jess Franco Cast Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski, Maria Rohm BLU-RAY DEBUT By the late-’60s, Christopher Lee was habitually moaning about how far Hammer’s Dracula films had strayed from the

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 18 | 94 minutes Director Robert Morgan Cast Aisling Franciosi, Stella Gonet, Tom York, Caoilinn Springall SHUDDER Anyone who’s seen that The Fast Show sketch about stop-motion (“Just a tiny amount…”) may be sceptical about it

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1966/2024 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD Director Bill Sellars Cast William Hartnell, Peter Purves, Jackie Lane, Michael Gough BLU-RAY DEBUT The latest partly wiped Who to be reconstructed using audio and animation originated the Big Bad of 202

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1992/1996 | 15 | Blu-ray Directors Brett Leonard, Farhad Mann Cast Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Patrick Bergin, Matt Frewer BLU-RAY DEBUT Marketed as the world’s first VR movie, The Lawnmower Man was actually just a modern Frankenste

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | PG-13 | SVOD Director Brad Peyton Cast Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Mark Strong, Gregory James Cohan NETFLIX It’s a mark of just how real an existential threat Artificial Intelligence feels right now that we buy the premise of B

RELEASED 24 JUNE 1981 | 18 | 4K/Blu-ray Director Joe D’Amato Cast Luigi Montefiori, Annie Belle, Charles Borromel, Katya Berger The latest video nasty to get the UHD treatment is aptly named – though since it began life as a follow-up to cannibal hor

RELEASED 4 JULY 576 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Paolo Bacigalupi Publisher Head Of Zeus There are times when writers reach a creative impasse. As he outlines in his interview with SFX this issue, this was a situation encountered by Paolo Bacigalupi

RELEASED OUT NOW! 512 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Manda Scott Publisher September Publishing Manda Scott no longer thinks it’s enough to describe the world’s problems. In her mind, things are so dire that we need what she calls thrutopias

RELEASED 20 JUNE 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Sarah Brooks Publisher Weidenfeld & Nicholson As Agatha Christie taught us, long-distance trains make a great setting for stories. They’re hotels on rails, full of strangers with secrets: a

What is your daily writing routine like? ◗ Squeezing in one-two hours of writing time at night during the work week, and then a little longer on weekend mornings and during school vacations. Describe the room in which you typically write. ◗ It’s a li

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC/Black Label Writer Dan Jurgens Artist Mike Perkins ISSUES 1-3 One superhero subgenre that’s cropping up more and more in mainstream comics could be described as historical realism: portraying colourful vintage superhero

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Comics Writer/artist Peach Momoko ISSUES 1-3 Have you ever tried to get into X-Men comics but picked the wrong one and been baffled by the millions of characters and multiple ongoing plotlines? If so, then Ultimate

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on Xbox Series X Publisher Xbox Game Studios VIDEOGAME  Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is the most important game you’ll play this year. Don’t let its modest eight-hour runtime fool you; anyone who’s played Hellblade: Senua’s S

RELEASED OUT NOW! Running time 179 minutes Format CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA The huge advantage Big Finish has when it comes to Tarrant – the cocky space pilot from the last two TV seasons of Blake’s 7 – is how underwritten he was

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PS5 Also on PC, PS4, Xbox Series S|X Publisher SFB Games Limited VIDEOGAME  Love letters to original PlayStation-era survival horror should be opened more cautiously than ticking parcels addressed using letters cut out f

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewd on PS5 Also on Xbox Series X|S, PC Publisher Illfonic VIDEOGAME  The gloriously silly 1988 horror movie, as anyone who’s watched it can tell you, hurls plot and character development in the bin to make more room for fun. The

It can be embarrassing confessing what scared you as a kid. For example, I was terrified by Doctor Who’s Nimon – look, blokes in bull masks tottering about on platform boots are scary when you’re six. But I feel no shame about shivering at the though