The Beat Digest 08/22/25: Marjorie Liu enters the world of BRZRKR

Welcome back to The Beat Digest, a twice-weekly round-up of the biggest comics-related news stories we’ve missed every Tuesday and Friday. Is there a story out there you think we should cover? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

§ BRZRKR will receive a new one-shot, BRZRKR: The Bleeding Tide, courtesy of writer Marjorie Liu (Monstress) and artist Garry Brown (Falling in Love on the Path to Hell) on November 26. Set during the East Asian golden age of piracy, the comic will revolve around a pirate captain who finds Keanu Reeves‘s immortal alter-ego B. trapped in a sunken box. It marks the fifth BRZRKR spin-off, as well as Liu’s second work at BOOM! Studios, following a 2011 story for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, and her first comic for something she didn’t create since 2016’s Han Solo series.

§ Image announced Bug Wars: The Spyder Wytch Special, a one-shot that’ll set up the upcoming second arc of Jason Aaron and Mahmud Asrar‘s series (out later next year). Releasing in January, the special will feature additional art by Baldemar Rivas (Unearth), and stories revolving around the Spider Sect, including the exiled warrior sorceress, Wysta the Wayward Wytch. In the meantime, the first six issues of Bug Wars will be released in trade paperback at comics shops on October 8, and bookstores on October 21.

Bug Wars: The Spyder Wytch Special, cover art by Mahmud Asrar

Additionally, Image will rerelease All-Negro Comics, the 1947 anthology that marked the first comic created entirely by African Americans. The new edition, which won an Eisner for Best Archival Collection/Project in 2024, was curated by writer/editor Chris Robinson, and features additional essays, comics, and prose by David Brothers, Shawn Pryor, Zipporah Smith, Samantha Guzmán, Ray-Anthony Height, Domo Stanton, and more (including Robinson himself). It will be released in comics shops on October 22, and comic book stores on November 4.

§ Writer Peter Milligan and artist Piotr Kowalski will reteam at Mad Cave on Liquidator, a time travel series starting November 12. The title refers to protagonist Aubrey Street, whose job is to fix glitches in time, and the plot follows her on a mission to retrieve a book from 1981 that appears in Gilded Age New York. Meanwhile, “John Hawksmore plans to kill a servant girl whose life has been turned upside down by the book she found in her employer’s library.” It marks the creators’ third collaboration, following the Dynamite series Terminal Hero, and the AfterShock one-shot God of Tremors.

Liquidator #1 cover A, by Piotr Kowalski

§ IDW unveiled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Battle Nexus, a weekly, five-issue series, that will see the interdimensional Mr. Ogg pit different versions of the TMNT universe against each other. Among the characters making a comeback will be the Shredder from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird‘s original TMNT run, still rendered in black-and-white. Contributors include Tom Waltz, Paul Allor, Sophie Campbell, Caleb Goellner, the Escorza brothers, Ben Bishop, Vitor Cafaggi, Omar Francia, and Hendry Prasetya, as well as Erik Burnham and Sarah Myer, who’ll provide back-ups. Issue #1 releases November 12.

§ Hulu released the trailer for Futurama season 13, all ten episodes of which will drop on Monday, September 15, and begin airing weekly (two episodes at a time) the same day on FXX at 8pm.

§ Via Variety, Warner Bros. has delayed the release of the new The Cat in the Hat movie to November 6, 2026. The animated film, starring Bill Hader as the title character, was originally set to arrive on February 27; this now means the first trailer, which arrived last month, was released 16 months before the film!

§ Variety also reports Tramell Tillman (Severance) has been cast in an undisclosed role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. He joins Sadie Sink and Liza Colón-Zayas in having mysterious parts in the upcoming film. Brand New Day, starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, and Mark Ruffalo, will be released on July 31, 2026.

§ Following last week’s Valiant Beyond transphobia controversy, Jody Houser has announced she will donate all proceeds from her store’s copies of her Faith series to Trans Lifeline. You’ll be able to “take 15% off Valiant with the code ‘LIFELINE'”. She says, “One of my first big comics was Faith from Valiant, an Eisner-nominated book that was positive & inclusive. The Bloodshot news from last week was beyond disappointing.” You can purchase the books with the discount code here.

Now for various news from this week’s gamescom event in Germany (which ends on Sunday):

§ Star Trek got two new titles announced: Infection VR, a horror experience from Broken Mirror and Played With Fire, releasing on the Meta Quest and SteamVR later this year, and Voyager: Across the Unknown, a survival strategy game set during the series, created for PC and consoles by gameXcite (Asterix & Friends: Remastered). The latter does not currently have an expected release window.

§ I Hate This Place will be released on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on November 7, 2025. Created by Broken Mirror and Skybound, the game is an isometric survival horror title based on Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin‘s comic of the same name.

§ Deadpool VR got a release date, and it was revealed one-time Clown John Leguizamo will voice Mojo. The game, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Wade, will arrive on Meta Quest 3 and 3S on November 18.

§ Mattel, Limited Run Games, and Bitmap Bureau announced He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction, a retro beat-em-up adventure. It will be released ahead of the new movie sometime early next year.

§ A new trailer for the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC The Order of Giants was released ahead of its arrival on September 4; it was also announced the game will be available on the Nintendo Switch 2 at some point next year.