Marvel Reveals Spider-Man’s Bizarre New Costume for 2021

Like everyone else in the world, Spider-Man has had a pretty rough go of things in 2020, especially after learning the true identity of the mysterious villain Kindred. Peter Parker will be looking for a fresh start in 2021, and that includes a brand new costume.

Marvel is giving fans their first glimpse of this new suit, which was designed by X-Force cover artist Dustin Weaver and will make its debut in the pages of March’s The Amazing Spider-Man #62. Check out the new duds below:

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The Amazing Spider-Man #63 variant cover by Dustin Weaver. (Image Credit: Marvel)

As you can see, the new costume is quite a departure from previous Spider-suits. For one thing, the traditional red and blue color scheme has been replaced by a mix of blue, white, silver and orange. The eyes are also a major departure from the norm, with glowing orange lenses contained inside a larger black space.

Marvel isn’t revealing much about the origins of this new costume, other than that Peter Parker dons the suit in the aftermath of “Sins Rising” as part of his latest confrontation with Kingpin. As with past costume changes like the Tony Stark-designed Iron Spider suit and the Peter’s own Parker Industries armored suit (both of which are among the many alternate costumes included in Insomniac’s Spider-Man game), this costume will add some much-needed tech upgrades to Spidey’s usual arsenal.

“This design was really a collaborative effort between Nick Spencer, Editor Nick Lowe, and I. They reined in the weirder and more techy features I was bringing and helped create something that I think is simple and both futuristic and classical,” Weaver said in Marvel’s press release. “I can’t wait to see Patrick Gleason really bring it to life!”

The Amazing Spider-Man #63 variant cover by Dustin Weaver. (Image Credit: Marvel)
The Amazing Spider-Man #63 variant cover by Dustin Weaver. (Image Credit: Marvel)

It remains to be seen if Peter will continue wearing this new costume throughout 2021 or if it’s a temporary wardrobe change. Do you think it deserves to become a regular part of the Spider-Man arsenal? Let us know in the comments. And cast your vote for your favorite alternate Spider-suit in the poll below:

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Animal Crossing Adds New Year’s Seasonal Items

2021 is just around the corner, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons is ringing in the new year with a couple of new seasonal items. Four New Year-themed food items have now been added to the Nook Shopping catalog, but you only have a few days to grab them.

From now until December 31, you can order the sparkling cider (1,000 Bells), Twelve-grape dish (1,200 Bells), Berliner (1,200 Bells), and New Year’s noodles (1,300 Bells). Like other limited-time items, these can be found in the Seasonal tab of the Nook Shopping catalog.

On top of the New Year’s foods, you also still have a few more days to claim this month’s other seasonal items: the Aurora wall and the Midwinter sweater. Both will be available to purchase from the Seasonal tab until December 31. The Aurora wall costs 7,000 Bells, while the Midwinter sweater runs for 1,200 Bells.

Although Toy Day is now over, there are still a few wintry activities to enjoy in New Horizons. The game is holding a New Year’s countdown on December 31. Players with Northern Hemisphere islands can also still build snowboys, catch snowflakes, and learn festive DIY recipes.

Nintendo has another big Animal Crossing update scheduled for late January. While the company hasn’t shared any details about it yet, it has teased that the Festivale event will be added as part of the patch. A line of Mario-themed furniture is also coming to New Horizons in March to celebrate the Super Mario series’ 35th anniversary.

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Boss Baby Sequel Gets Pushed Back For New Release Date

Just when we thought the news in 2020 couldn’t get any stranger, word has come out from Variety that the upcoming Baby Boss sequel has been pushed back from its planned March 26 release date to September 17, 2021.

Boss Baby is a 2017 film in which Alec Baldwin plays a talking baby known as Boss Baby–and it last made waves and headlines in 2018 when it was nominated for an Oscar. Its sequel, The Boss Baby: Family Business reportedly “follows the Templeton Brothers, Tim (voiced by James Marsden) and little brother Ted (voiced by Baldwin), who are now all grown up and have grown apart. “

While these films–and their Netflix spin-off The Boss Baby: Back in Business–are catnip for some easy internet snark, the sequel’s cast is pretty formidable. Amy Sedaris, Jimmy Kimmel, Eva Longoria, Lisa Kudrow, Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Craig Robinson, Marc Maron, and Jeff Goldblum will also be voicing roles in the film. Sedaris (BoJack Horseman, Strangers With Candy) voices the new baby boss in town.

Tom McGrath (The Ren & Stimpy Show, Madagascar) will return to direct this sequel. Baby Boss: Family Business comes from a screenplay by Michael McCullers (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Baby Mama).

New On Netflix This Week: Cobra Kai, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, And More

This is it–the year we thought would never end will finally be over before the week is done. And for a 2020 that’s been full of many things worth binging on Netflix, it looks like 2021 right out of the gate will be continuing that tradition. Even if many of us weren’t already stuck inside for most of the year, the upcoming week makes a strong case for continuing to do so, ideally curled up on the couch with the heater blasting.

New Year’s Eve will have Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Part 4, the final season of Netflix’s Riverdale sister-show. If you need a bit of a refresher of what’s happened so far in the series and want to know a bit about what’s ahead, we have just the handy guide for you right here.

Otherwise, things are a little light until New Year’s Day, when 35 new offerings will be coming to the streaming service. There’s something for just about everyone once January kicks off, with the big headliner being the highly anticipated third season of Cobra Kai–Netflix’s new season of the Karate Kid TV series. (The move to New Year’s Day was a recent surprise holiday gift from Netflix.) Because Ralph Macchio told us in a recent interview, we already know Season 3 will have Daniel return to Japan and some secrets about his mentor Mr. Miyagi will be revealed. If you’ve been patiently–or impatiently–waiting for the new season, here’s a good accounting of everything we know (and think we know) so far about Season 3.

Rounding out the list on New Year’s Day is Eddie Murphy Raw, the comedian’s landmark second stand-up special from 1987 (yes, he’s wearing that leather outfit). If you have never seen the special but only heard of it, the price is right and the laughs are timeless–except for a few of the bits that didn’t age too well. Even if we didn’t just have the brutal 2020 we all lived through, it’d still be worth your time.

Another classic going up January 1 is Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s classic adaptation of the 1985 non-fiction book Wiseguy–about the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill and his friends and family from 1955 to 1980. (Just over the horizon, Scorsese has the documentary love letter to NYC Pretend It’s a City coming to Netflix on January 8.)

Below, you’ll find everything coming to Netflix this week, and if you’re interested in more streaming news, check out the biggest shows that are just over the horizon in 2021. For a look back at shows you can definitely catch up on, here’s a list of every show Netflix canceled in 2020.

What’s new to Netflix this week?

December 28

  • Cops and Robbers

December 29

December 30

  • Equinox (Trailer)
  • Transformers: War For Cybertron Earthrise
  • Best Leftovers Ever!

December 31

  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Part 4 (Trailer)
  • Best Stand-up 2020

January 1

  • Cobra Kai: Season 3
  • Dream Home Makeover: Season 2
  • Headspace Guide to Meditation
  • The Minimalists: Less Is Now
  • Monarca: Season 2
  • What Happened to Mr. Cha?
  • 17 Again
  • 30 Minutes or Less
  • Abby Hatcher: Season 1
  • Blue Streak
  • Bonnie and Clyde
  • Can’t Hardly Wait
  • Catch Me If You Can
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
  • Cool Hand Luke
  • The Creative Brain
  • The Departed
  • Enter the Dragon
  • Gimme Shelter
  • Good Hair
  • Goodfellas
  • Gothika
  • The Haunted Hathaways: Seasons 1-2
  • Into the Wild
  • Julie & Julia
  • Mud
  • Mystic Pizza
  • The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
  • Eddie Murphy: Raw
  • Sex and the City
  • Sex and the City 2
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • Striptease
  • Superbad
  • What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

January 2

  • Asphalt Burning (Børning 3)

Cyberpunk 2077: CD Projekt Confirms It Will Defend Itself Against Lawsuit

Cyberpunk 2077 publisher CD Projekt S.A. has confirmed that it has received notice of the lawsuit filed against the company and will “undertake vigorous action to defend itself against any such claims.”

The Management Board of CD Projekt S.A. made the regulatory announcement in response to New York-based Rosen Law Firm filing the aforementioned class-action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers in the USA of the securities of CD Projekt S.A. between January 16, 2020, and December 17, 2020.

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It acknowledges that the lawsuit is meant for the court to decide “whether the actions undertaken by the Company and members of its Management Board in connection with the release of Cyberpunk 2077 constituted a violation of federal laws, i.a. by misleading investors and, consequently, causing them to incur damages.”

CD Projekt also notes that the “complaint does not specify the quantity of damages sought” and that it will, as previously mentioned, “undertake vigorous action to defend itself against any such claims.”

The lawsuit from Rosen Law Firm claims that CD Projekt had “made false and/or misleading statements” and/or failed to disclose that “Cyberpunk 2077 was virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or PlayStation systems due to an enormous number of bugs.”

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In response to the above and the messy messaging surround the game’s launch, Sony removed Cyberpunk 2077 from the PS Store and Sony, Microsoft, and CD Projekt would “be forced to offer full refunds for the game.

If you have been able to get past some of the issues in Cyberpunk 2077, be sure to check out our walkthrough, cheats and secrets, and tips on hacking.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

How Cosmic Horror Went Mainstream

When Chilling Adventures of Sabrina returns to Netflix on December 31 for its fourth and final season, the titular witch and her allies will be facing down a series of eldritch terrors endangering Greendale and possibly the entire world. Explicitly inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, the plot is just the latest example of how the century-old “cosmic horror” genre has made its way from geeky obscurity into mainstream media.

Alternately called cosmic horror or Lovecraftian horror, this brand of story is focused on unknowable and ancient terrors. While the genre’s most iconic monster, Cthulhu, slumbers in a lost underwater city, cosmic horror just as often directly lives up to its name and comes from the cold of space or is lurking in isolated areas like Antarctica. The genre has few real heroes, mostly focusing on people who are already deeply flawed or struggling before they confront these horrors. While they may be killed, the protagonists are just as likely to be rendered insane or somehow fundamentally transformed into something as equally unknowable and terrible as the unspeakable creatures they have encountered.

But how did cosmic horror seep into the mainstream of movies, TV, and games? Let’s trace that history from D&D to True Detective to Nicolas Cage and beyond…

Nicolas Cage stars in Color Out of Space.
Nicolas Cage stars in Color Out of Space.

Forbidden Knowledge, From Pulp Magazines to Dungeons & Dragons

Lovecraft died in poverty at the age of 46, most of his work only ever seeing publication in pulp magazines. His stories also remain controversial today because so many of them are rooted in racism and antisemitism. But despite this, he’s had an outsized cultural influence because of the other authors he directly worked with and inspired, and the fact that his works fell into the public domain and therefore could be freely borrowed and adapted.

Lovecraft corresponded with multiple other pulp writers on a shared universe called the Cthulhu Mythos, creating a pantheon of horrific entities known as the Great Old Ones and secret-filled locations such as the New England town of Arkham. The best known of these collaborators was Robert E. Howard, who incorporated many of the elements of cosmic horror into his Conan the Barbarian stories to found the sword & sorcery genre.

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Both authors were hugely influential on the creators of Dungeons & Dragons. While J.R.R. Tolkien brought the game the idea of elves, wizards, and halflings teaming up in an epic quest to save the world, Howard provided the groundwork for parties of mercenary adventurers looting forgotten dungeons. Lovecraft, meanwhile, inspired aberrations, the entire group of monsters typically identified by an overabundance of eyes, mouths, or tentacles.

As fearsome as D&D creatures like beholders or illithid may be, the game has never been a really good fit for cosmic horror. It’s hard to have something be unkillable and unknowable in a game that is designed around everything having a hit point total that a savvy, high-level, and appropriately geared character can reduce to zero. But other games would make better use out of the concepts.

Madness Spreads Through Call of Cthulhu, Arkham Horror, and The Thing

The ’80s marked an enormous surge in the popularity of cosmic horror, starting with the Cthulhu Mythos being included in the 1980 publication of the D&D supplement Deities & Demigods and the release of the first edition of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu tabletop game. Unlike D&D, that game expected player characters to die or go mad in their quest to investigate dark cults and forbidden lore, with sanity becoming a statistic in the game that was all too easy to lose.

deities-and-demigodsChaosium also published an Arkham Horror board game in 1987 where players worked together as investigators trying to stop horrors from overwhelming the titular town. The game, which also used sanity as a limited resource, was eventually sold to Fantasy Flight Games where it remains a top title that has spawned numerous spinoffs, including the globe-trotting Eldritch Horror and the fast-paced game Elder Sign.

While there had been some direct adaptations of Lovecraft’s work to television and film before the ’80s, that decade marked the release of two of the most influential films to integrate aspects of the Mythos or cosmic horror. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead and its sequels featured the Necronomicon, a book of dark magic Lovecraft invented for one of his short stories, while John Carpenter’s The Thing, the beginning of the filmmaker’s Apocalypse Trilogy, was an adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 cosmic horror story Who Goes There? Those films became cult hits, and combined with the cosmic horror-themed board games to inspire a new generation of stories.

Cosmic Horror Infects Gaming

Cosmic horror stories often feature a corrupting influence that infects the minds of those who encounter it. In reality, Dungeons & Dragons acted as a vector for the creatures and concepts of cosmic horror to reach a wide variety of other games.

The Old Gods, ancient and unfathomable beings of immense power with way too many eyes and tentacles, were imprisoned in the World of Warcraft setting of Azeroth… and players have been fighting their influence since 2006. Their threat was a major plot point in the recent expansion Battle for Azeroth, which culminated in a fight with the Cthulhu-like entity N’Zoth.

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When Wizards of the Coast purchased Dungeons & Dragons, the game’s developers ramped up the role of cosmic horror in the game with 4th Edition, which let players pledge themselves to alien beings of the Far Realms as Star Pact warlocks. The genre then came to Wizards’ collectible card game Magic: The Gathering in 2010 with the release of Rise of the Eldrazi, which introduced the titular group of imprisoned horrifying beings capable of corrupting and devouring entire worlds.

Dungeons & Dragons spinoff and rival Paizo integrated the Mythos even more tightly into Pathfinder. While they didn’t have the rights to illithids and beholders, the Mythos was fair game so they packed Bestiaries with Elder Things, Gugs, and Great Old Ones.

Meanwhile, cosmic horror was also creeping into comic book series like Joe Hill’s Locke & Key and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, as well as making its way back to screens through the first Hellboy film. But while the genre was reaching ubiquity within geek culture, it wouldn’t achieve crossover success until 2014.

True Detective Crack the Seals

As superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and video games moved from the fringes of pop culture to near dominance, it’s probably inevitable that cosmic horror would move with it. But the first title to really achieve that crossover wasn’t an adaptation but a strange anthology mystery show: HBO’s True Detective.

Noir and cosmic horror both often tell nihilistic stories of people in over their heads searching for answers that don’t leave them better off, so the two genres are a natural pairing. Matthew McConaughey’s eccentric homicide detective Rustin Cohle perfectly straddled both worlds with his strange rants about time being a flat circle.

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The series drew direct influence from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, which predates Lovecraft but was integrated into the Mythos. While the show never really delivered on the promise of its mysterious Yellow King, the ideas captured the minds of fans who took to the internet with elaborate theories about his identity and the true meaning behind every cryptic clue. Future seasons of True Detective left the cosmic horror behind, but other writers and directors surely took note of the interest these elements had sparked, leading to a fresh wave of big-budget projects.

The Stars Align for Cosmic Horror’s Dominance

The tendrils of cosmic horror can be found just about everywhere today. A star-studded cast including Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac investigated the impact of an alien influence in the horrifyingly beautiful 2018 film Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel of the same name. The plot is somewhat similar to the Lovecraft short story The Colour Out of Space, which recently received a direct adaptation starring Nicolas Cage that featured grotesque monsters and Cage convincingly succumbing to madness. Director and co-writer Richard Stanley said he hopes to make it the first in a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations.

HBO tried again this year with Lovecraft County, an adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel that confronts and subverts Lovecraft’s racism by making the protagonists African Americans dealing with monsters and the horrors of segregation. Even Stephen Colbert showed off his knowledge of the Mythos during a Late Show monologue spurred by learning that Cthulhu received some write-in votes during the 2020 presidential election.

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Meanwhile the genre continues to be ubiquitous in gaming with the releases of Darkest Dungeon, Call of Cthulhu, The Sinking City, Moons of Madness, and most recently Baldur’s Gate III, which really leans into D&D’s cosmic horror elements by focusing the plot on an illithid invasion. Sabrina may be ending, but Netflix has renewed its adaptation of Locke & Key. And Sam Raimi seems likely to get another chance to show off his love for Lovecraft on the big screen by directing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Cosmic horror’s staying power comes from its ability to be spliced into just about anything. It can stand alone as stories of normal people confronted with strange forces and terrible truths who are doomed to fall into madness and despair, but it can also provide terrible antagonists for fantasy or science-fiction heroes. Its themes of isolation, corruption, and the dangers of exploration remain relevant so long as humans are lonely, distrustful, and curious. Now that it’s been firmly planted in our cultural consciousness, its influence may prove just as long lived and powerful as a Great Old One.

What are your favorite cosmic horror stories? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Martin Scorsese’s New Netflix Movie Gets First Trailer, And It’s Unlike Most Of His Other Work

Noted gangster film/digital de-aging enthusiast and Marvel movie hater Martin Scorsese will be bringing a surprise new documentary to Netflix in two weeks on January 8. Pretend It’s a City, about Scorsese’s longtime friend author Fran Lebowitz, is a “furiously funny guidebook every New Yorker has at one point wished for.”

In the context of quarantine viewing, the film–which has Lebowitz wander around NYC and offer her observations and philosophies on her surroundings–looks to unintentionally double as a historical document of what life was like in New York before the pandemic. Check out the trailer below to get a taste of the movie’s free-wheeling flavor.

The official synopsis offers a bit more shading and context for the film: “Pretend It’s a City checks in with a classic urban voice on subjects ranging from tourists, money, subways and the arts to the not-so-simple act of walking in Times Square. (There is a right way to do it.) Along the way, Lebowitz’s own past comes into focus: a life marked by constant curiosity and invigorating independence.”

The film also stands as an unusual entry in Scorsese’s filmography. While known for being a director who does not often make sequels, Pretend It’s a City is a follow-up to 2010’s Public Speaking. Public Speaking was another fly-on-the-wall documentary about Lebowitz, only–as the title suggests–composed of interviews and clips from various speaking engagements.

Pretend It’s a City will hit Netflix on January 8, 2021. Scorsese has new projects in the works for Apple, some of which are set to begin filming in February 2021.

Cyberpunk 2077 Class Action Lawsuit Is Happening, CDPR Will Defend Itself

As threatened earlier in December, CD Projekt S.A. is being taken to court in the United States over claims that the bug-ridden state of Cyberpunk 2077‘s PS4 and Xbox One releases were hidden from investors, causing them to incur losses. Now the company has responded to acknowledge the class action suit, with a brief statement saying it will defend itself vigorously.

The class action refers to Cyberpunk 2077’s release on PS4 and Xbox One, which ranged from incredibly buggy to literally unplayable. The issues encountered by players on these consoles led to CD Projekt Red putting out a statement that invited unhappy players to seek a refund, and later caused Sony to remove the game from the PlayStation store in a rare move. These issues caused CD Projekt stock prices to plummet, with the company’s founders losing approximately $1 billion in value off their joint share.

CD Projekt has already received criticism from many within the gaming community for only providing advance review copies on PC, meaning the numerous issues on PS4 and Xbox One didn’t come to light until the game’s retail release.

The class action suit alleges that “(1) Cyberpunk 2077 was virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or Playstation systems due to an enormous number of bugs; (2) as a result, Sony would remove Cyberpunk 2077 from the Playstation store, and Sony, Microsoft and CD Projekt would be forced to offer full refunds for the game; (3) consequently, CD Projekt would suffer reputational and pecuniary harm; and (4) as a result, defendants’ statements about its business, operations, and prospects, were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.”

The suit is being brought by investors represented by New York’s Rosen Law Firm, who specialize in securities cases like these. “CD Projekt shareholders have an opportunity to recover their investment losses,” the firm’s class action case page reads.

CD Projekt has now released a statement saying it received confirmation of this suit. “The Company will undertake vigorous action to defend itself against any such claims,” the statement to investors reads.

Neither party is likely to have closure on this issue anytime soon, as class action suits are often a drawn-out process. The first step is for the court to certify that the issue is in fact eligible for a class action. By the time this case is resolved, it’s likely that Cyberpunk 2077 will already be a very different game thanks to ongoing patches.

Now Playing: Cyberpunk 2077 – Best Bugs And Glitches

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Nintendo Is Now Selling Real Life Animal Crossing Dodo Pilot Jackets

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the game we needed in 2020, providing a cute world to escape to with friends as the world was shutting down due to the global pandemic. Now, Nintendo is releasing the snazzy Dodo Airlines Pilot Jacket as a real piece of merchandise that you can wear to match your Animal Crossing character.

While the real-life Dodo Pilot Jacket was announced by the brick and mortar Nintendo store in New York City, it’s also available from the online Nintendo store at a price of $80. The jacket is entirely based off the in-game DAL Pilot Jacket, with patches on the front and right sleeves, a zipper pouch in the left sleeve and a large Dodo applique on the back. It joins a Dodo Airlines t-shirt and cap, as well as a handful of similar Nook Inc. merchandise.

Animal Crossing isn’t slowing down with new seasonal events and additions, with winter seeing snow come to players in the northern hemisphere. Check out some of our favorite Christmas-themed island creations, or have a look at our guide to some of the new ice-themed DIY recipes in the game.

Now Playing: GameSpot’s Top 10 Games Of 2020

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