Che Grayson Chats Absolute Catwoman and Cassandra Cain

Golden Axe is now out on Paramount Plus! We spoke with co-creators and showrunners Mike McMahan and Joe Chandler about the show. We dove into what it means as storytellers to work in a fantasy setting and more. We also spoke with Danny Pudi and Carl Tart about their respective roles in the show. We discussed what it takes to craft a distinct voice for each character they embody. The show is another instant classic, which I expected from the former Mike McMahan and Joe Chandler shows. The mix of humor and heart makes this a must-watch for fans of the original Sega series and newcomers alike. Even though I played the games when I was younger, I was unfamiliar with the world's lore, but I had no trouble diving headfirst into the show. Plenty of references and easter eggs cater to longtime fans of the SEGA series, but it never feels inaccessible. The cast is stacked with some of the best voice talent working in the business, with Emmy Award winners like Matthew Rhys or the absolutely hilarious improv god Lisa Gilroy. It makes for an extremely fun watch, with plenty of sword-swinging action and all the emotion you expect from a McMahan show.  

We got the chance to sit down and chat with the incredibly talented Dawnn Lewis about her role in the new season of Futurama. Her new character is Coco Charm, a pop star. Dawnn co-composed Episode 5, "The Charm Offensive." She created the original melodies and vocal arrangements for all of Coco Charm's songs in the episode. She also sang all of the harmony parts in one session. We talk about what it was like working on music for a show like this, what music means to her, and more. Check it out!

We talk to one of the biggest writers at Marvel today, Jed MacKay, known for Black Cat, Moon Knight, Avengers, and of course X-Men. Ahead of 2026s big X-Men event DNX, we dive into how Jed crafted his X-Men team and their new antagonists, 3K, how he keeps sneaking Black Cat into books and how it feels to write one of the longest running books in recent Marvel history. Jed MacKay is a Canadian comics writer best known for his work at Marvel Comics, including notable characters like Doctor Strange, Taskmaster, and the Daughters of the Dragon. He first worked with Marvel in 2011 for a short story in X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4 but had his big breakthrough with Black Cat in 2019.  

Archie is entering a new era for the character and all of Riverdale's favorites with Oni Press and Archie's new #1s. Ben H. Winters, the acclaimed novelist, takes up the main title, Archie! We spoke with him about bringing his mostly serious literary background (dark mysteries, drama television) to pure comedy for the first time, tracing his sense of pacing back to his college comedy troupe and punk band roots. He describes his Riverdale as infinitely elastic, a setting that can stretch from the diner to a mountaintop while staying instantly recognizable, and explains that his debut arc centers on a film festival specifically so he can reintroduce the whole core cast at once, each filtered through a different genre pastiche. Beneath the gags, Winters talks about weaving in a quieter thread about the anxiety of late adolescence, using a recurring Jughead's Journal backup feature to hint at an unfolding, faintly sci-fi mystery about why Riverdale never seems to change, while also pushing to diversify the town's cast to reflect a more realistic version of the world.

Nicholas Binge's new novella The Abyss opens with an idea that horror fans will recognize immediately, even if they've never set foot near a Lovecraftian tentacle: the soul-crushing claustrophobia of showing up to the same job, on the same loop, until the walls start to feel less like walls and more like a death sentence. In our interview, Binge breaks down how he built a cosmic horror story from something as mundane as an open-plan office (the absolute worst idea), and why he thinks late-stage capitalism is the closest thing we have to a real-world Lovecraftian entity. We also get into the book's eerily prescient AI subplot (written years before ChatGPT was a household name), the self-directed rage that fueled its doom-scrolling horror, and that unforgettable scene from The Matrix that's haunted Binge since he was eleven years old.

Joseph Eckert's debut novel The Traveler follows Scott, an average Midwestern dad whose car vanishes around him one ordinary commute — and who discovers he's been thrown 24 hours into the future. The twist: it keeps happening, and each jump doubles, flinging him two days forward, then four, then eight, sixteen, and on, while his brilliant son Lyle grows obsessed with figuring out the math behind his father's disappearances and finding a way to bring him home. He stopped by the show to speak about the novel. In our conversation, Eckert traced his time-travel influences back to a college paper comparing Terminator 2, Time Cop, and Back to the Future — and explained why he built his own story around forward motion instead of the backward paradoxes those films wrestle with. We dig into what makes the book hit harder than a typical high-concept premise is its personal nature. Eckert started writing it 15 years ago, identifying with the son, but returned to it as a father himself, reshaping Scott's interiority (with help from his editors and agent) to capture the specific horror of missing your child's life in irreversible leaps. He also softened the marriage at the story's center, moving away from his own experience as the child of divorce toward a more tragic, loving portrait of what a good relationship looks like under impossible strain. The Traveler is out now from Tor Books!

Late Fame tells a story of an artist who is finally "found" later in his life. Throughout the film, the lead character, Ed Saxberger (played by Willem Dafoe), must navigate the modern art world. The same group of artists yearns for the times that Saxberger comes from and the artists who existed in the circles in New York City at that time. In Late Fame, we see director Kent Jones navigate modern New York and its inhabitants. We were lucky enough to chat with Kent Jones about the film. Listen to our interview here. Kent Jones explains why Dafoe was essentially the only viable choice to play a poet-lead since Dafoe genuinely performs poetry and previously played Pasolini. He ties the thought together by tying it back to a Robert De Niro line about Brando having "the poetry of his whole being." The conversation moves into the film's love-letter-to-New-York quality, with the director talking about decades of watching the city change, the presence of the past haunting the characters (especially in Soho, tied to Dafoe's own history with the Wooster Group), and how gentrification and the "attention economy" have reshaped what it even means to try to make art in New York now.  

Sean Gordon Murphy and Dan have a conversation about the upcoming The Last Driver. The conversation focuses on the echo chambers and division that have separated people. We dive deeply into many topics, including the accusations he faced related to ComicsGate. The topics explore different things touched upon in the book, which uses humor and over-the-top action to tell a very human story. We, of course, also discuss cars because there was no chance we were having SGM on and not talking about cars. We also talk about the publishing choices Sean made for the book, including publishing it in a widescreen aspect ratio rather than the standard portrait orientation used by 99% of comics. The different range makes for a much better experience for a book so heavily focused on driving and the freedom that comes with it. He discusses the influences on the book and how he developed his cyberpunk capitalist wasteland to tell his story. We also talk about the plans for the series' future and for Sean's other big book, Batman: White Knight.  

Today on the podcast, we're joined by writer Che Grayson! Best known for their work on Dark Spaces: Good Deeds from IDW Publishing and Exquisite Corpses from Image Comics. Che is currently writing Absolute Catwoman for DC Comics and the recently announced Absolute Cassandra Cain: The Shadow's Hand, both of which we're chatting about today. Absolute Catwoman #1-2 are currently available, with #3 out August 26th. Absolute Cassandra Cain: The Shadow's Hand #1 releases September 9th.

Today on the GateCrashers podcast sees James Tynion IV join us to chat more comics with Dan. Known for his work at DC Comics with extended runs on Detective Comics, Justice League Dark, and Batman, James has been acclaimed in recent years for his horror work with his own comics imprint, Tiny Onion Studios. James started off with the acclaimed books Something is Killing the Children, The Department of Truth, and Exquisite Corpses. Now, James is back on the pod to chat his new series ODIN, a Norse horror story co-written with Marguerite Bennett and art by Letizia Cadonici, and the recent issues of W0rldtr33 with artist Fernando Blanco. Listen to our chat with James Tynion IV below! The first three issues of ODIN are available now, and issue four releases September 9th. The first three trade paperbacks of W0rldtr33 are available now, and Vol. 4 releases September 9th.