Marvel Teases New ‘Ruthless’ Team Ft. Blade, Winter Soldier and More

There’s a new superhero team appearing in the Marvel Universe, and they’re positively ruthless.

Check out a new teaser image for this mystery team below:

Art by Mike Deodato, Jr. (Image Credit: Marvel Comics) Art by Mike Deodato, Jr. (Image Credit: Marvel Comics)

This image reveals a very eclectic lineup of Marvel heroes, including Daimon Hellstrom, Spectrum, Wiccan, Angela, Blade and the Winter Soldier. The teaser promises the seventh and final member will be revealed on June 11 in an episode of Marvel’s web series The Pull List.

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Everything We Know About Netflix’s Locke & Key Series

Netflix is about to add yet another original series based on a critically acclaimed comic book. Following in the footsteps of Umbrella Academy and Mark Millar’s Millarworld imprint, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key is coming to Netflix in the near future. Finally, an adaptation that’s been trapped in development hell for the past decade will see the light of day.

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New PS4 Game Announcements At E3 2019: Watch Dogs Legion, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, And More

Enter for a Chance to Win a Tera Summer Fun 2019 Pack

Welcome to Daily Win, our way of giving back to the IGN community. To thank our awesome audience, we’re giving away a new game each day to one lucky winner. Be sure to check IGN.com every day to enter in each new giveaway.

Today we’re giving away a digital Tera Summer Fun 2019 Pack for PC. To enter into this sweepstake, fill out the form below. You must be at least 18 years old and a legal U.S. resident to enter. Today’s sweepstake will end at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Entries entered after this time will not be considered.

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix: Every Easter Egg and Reference

HBO’s Chernobyl: Russia Planning Its Own Series Blaming CIA

HBO’s Chernobyl has been a critical success for the premium network and has captivated viewers across the world. However, it has not gone over so well in Russia and, more specifically, in the “power corridors of the Kremlin.”

Via The Washington Post, THR reports that a Russian company is in post-production on a similar series that “implicates the United States as playing a role in the disaster.”

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E3 2019: See The Giant Posters Outside The Convention Center

E3 2019 is about to begin. The annual gaming expo officially kicks off in only a few days, and just as every year, publishers are hanging massive posters around the Los Angeles Convention Center and other buildings throughout downtown LA to hype up the event.

GameSpot is now on the ground in LA, and we’ve taken some pictures of the giant video game posters we’ve seen decorating the city. Many of this year’s biggest releases are featured prominently around town; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the upcoming reboot of the massive shooter franchise, has the honor of adorning the entrance of the LACC’s Wes Hall this year, greeting attendees as they make their way into the show, but it certainly isn’t the only game represented; Bethesda’s Doom Eternal is gracing the Hotel Figueroa, and we’ve also spotted a poster of CD Projekt Red’s highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077.

You can take a look at some of the E3 posters we’ve seen in the gallery below. We’ll continue to add more photos as the week progresses. We’ll also have photos of the show floor once it opens, so be sure to check back on GameSpot for our full coverage of E3 2019.

No Caption ProvidedGallery image 1Gallery image 2Gallery image 3Gallery image 4

E3 officially begins on Tuesday, June 11, when the show floor opens to the press and public. However, many of the industry’s biggest publishers will be holding press conferences and other events in the days leading up to then, including Microsoft, Bethesda, Square Enix, and Nintendo. The one notable exception is Sony; for the first time since it entered the industry, the PS4 maker has decided not to attend E3.

We’ve already gotten a wealth of news before E3 has even begun. On June 5, Nintendo aired a special Pokemon Direct, which revealed a ton of new details about Pokemon Sword and Shield. The next day, Google streamed its first Stadia Connect presentation, sharing new information about its upcoming game streaming platform. And that’s nothing to say of the numerous leaks and rumors to crop up before the show. You can find all the biggest news and announcements on our E3 hub.

Who is Swamp Thing? The Origins Of DC’s Greenest Character, Explained

Though at first glance Swamp Thing’s origin is about as straightforward as it gets, the reality of a man who ends up becoming a green monster is a little more complicated than you’d think.. From a simple talking tree who occasionally fights villains, to becoming a defender for all plant life to becoming a human again, Swamp Thing is as versatile as the plants that inhabit the swamp he lives in.

With a new take on Swamp Thing arriving on DC Universe, though it was already canceled, it gives the perfect opportunity to explore the character’s origin. What better time to revisit the complex and bonkers backstory of Swamp Thing?

The Origin

Originally intended as a stand-alone horror story, writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson introduced the Swamp Thing in an eight-page story in House of Secrets #92 in 1971 as a character named Alex Olsen, an early 20th century scientist in Louisiana married to a woman named Linda. Alex’s assistant Damian Ridge was jealous of Alex and in love with Linda, so he caused one of Alex’s chemical experiments to explode–seemingly killing his boss–and buried the body in a nearby swamp. Using Linda’s grief to his advantage, Damian swooped in and married her. But of course, Alex didn’t really die. His body mixed with the chemicals and transformed into a humanoid vegetable monster. The titular Swamp Thing then kills Ridge, but the sight of him scared Linda away, leaving Olsen to wander the swamps all alone and green.

Though short, the look and concept were popular enough for DC to give Wein and Wrightson a solo series for Swamp Thing. Here they swapped Alex Olsen for Alec Holland and introduce the idea of a “bio-restorative” formula that accelerates plant growth. The origin was basically the same, but involved criminals attacking Holland rather than a jealous coworker.

These early stories mostly dealt with Alec/Swamp Thing seeking the men who caused his transformation (and murdered his wife), as well as searching for a cure to his monstrous look. These comics also introduced Abigail Arcane (a character played by Crystal Reed on the DC Universe show), as well as her husband Matt Cable, who befriends the Swamp Thing.

The Anatomy Lesson

In 1982, Horror director Wes Craven made a live-action Swamp Thing film, the success of which prompted DC to hire young up-and-comer Alan Moore for a new ongoing title. Moore decided to throw everything the readers knew about the Swamp Thing out the window, with the first issue of The Saga of the Swamp Thing literally showing the autopsy of a supposedly deceased Alec Holland. As they cut open the vegetable-human monster, we learn that this is not a human that looks like a plant, but rather “a plant that thought it was Alec Holland. A plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland.”

This, of course, led to a very existential and cosmic comic book that is still regarded as a cult classic today. Moore also went deeper into the horror roots of the character and had Swamp Thing encountering several archetypal horror monsters including vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

If this wasn’t enough, Moore then added a ton of mythology to the character, starting with making Swamp Thing an avatar of an elemental energy field called “The Green” which connects all plant life on Earth. In order to incorporate Alex Olsen’s version of the character into his new continuity, Moore introduced the Parliament of Trees, a council of elders made out of thousands of Swamp Things who in their time all died in a fire and were reborn as plant elementals. This connection to “The Green” added a whole lot of new powers for dear old Swampy, including being able to destroy and build bodies at will and teleport anywhere in the planet instantly. He also could increase his own size to be bigger than Godzilla, and even control the tiniest amount of microscopic algae inside people’s bodies to kill them from the inside.

Oh, and he made Swamp Thing fall in love with Abby Arcane, and even had them conceive a child (yeah, don’t ask.)

Everything Old Is New (52) Again

When Scott Snyder took the reins of Swamp Thing following the New 52 reboot, he decided to bring Alec Holland back to life, separating him from the vegetable that called himself Alec. Even if he ends up becoming the green monster eventually, he now has Alec’s real consciousness instead of just a copy or replica of it.

Snyder introduced the idea of “The Red” which was an energy field for animal life that served as an explanation for Animal Man’s powers. He then went further and added “The Black” to give an elemental to death and decay. Most of Snyder’s run then dealt with the war between elementals, as we got cool action scenes with characters as powerful as Swamp Thing and an exploration of what balance means when one elemental clearly wants to destroy everything but the other wants to fill the world with life.

After Snyder left the series, Charles Soule took over and went even deeper into the mythology. In his run, Soule focused the politics of the Parliament of Trees and the flaws and humanity of Alec Holland as he grows disillusioned with their demands and going to war with them. This run also introduced other elementals, including one for fungal life and an energy field for all machinery.

Because of the untimely cancellation of the show, it remains to be seen how much of this mythology Swamp Thing will explore. The showrunners have said they were mostly inspired by Moore’s run, so here’s hoping the 10 episodes explore at least some of the many, many themes and ideas introduced in the pages of the Swamp Thing, as that’s the only space it will get to do so as it will not be renewed for a second season.

Dark Phoenix’s Biggest WTF Questions

The latest — and the last, not counting the will-it-or-won’t-it-ever-come-out New Mutants — X-Men movie from Fox has arrived, but the plot of Dark Phoenix raises a lot of questions, even while answers are less forthcoming. Yeah, you could even say they’re WTF questions, as in “WTF were these guys thinking when they wrote this script?!”

Let’s dig into the biggest head-scratchers we have coming out of Dark Phoenix…

Warning: Full spoilers follow for Dark Phoenix!

Did Everyone Forget Jean Already Turned Into the Phoenix in Apocalypse?

The new, younger versions of Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Storm and Nightcrawler made their debut in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, played by Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp and Kodi Smit-McPhee. They were portrayed as young students still coming into their own as X-Men in that film, but the climax of the story did give us Turner’s Jean going full Phoenix. Just when all hope was lost and it seemed Apocalypse was going to defeat the X-Men, a psychically beaten-down Xavier telepathically calls for Jean to unleash her full power. Which she does, manifesting the Phoenix firebird around her as she incinerates the ancient villain.

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