Neo-Reality Collective | Pop-Culture News and Reviews Talk · Eric Brown

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Assassin's Creed Shadows; X-Men: From The Ashes | NRC 83

·1 hr 7 min·4 clips

Jonathan Hickman and Greg Capullo are teaming up for Wolverine's Revenge, a five-issue limited series with a Red Band edition.

Eric Brown spends Episode 83 clearing the table of end-of-May pop-culture news. He says he had meant to get back to reviews, but news kept breaking and the weeks kept slipping away from him. That setup is basically the mood of the whole episode: fast, noisy, and very online. The first major topic is Jonathan Hickman and Greg Capullo returning to the world of X-Men. He treats that like the kind of announcement that gets Marvel fans talking before the issue even exists. From there he leans into the long shadow of Krakoa and Hickman's role in it. X-Men '97 comes up as the bright counterweight. He talks about how the show has people hyped again and how it keeps the 90s X-Men lane feeling alive. Spider-Man enters next, with the return of Mary Jane Watson getting the kind of cheer only a deeply invested fan can give. Peter Parker, meanwhile, is still miserable, which Brown treats as both a joke and a tragedy. He also brings up the old original-series cliffhanger about finding the real Mary Jane after the clone reveal, and he clearly wants more legacy threads like that picked up and made to matter again. He talks about the head writer and about not wanting to close the door on future returns, which keeps the Marvel segment drifting between excitement and exasperation. He then pivots into gaming and touches on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. He hopes Black Ops 6 lands well, while joking that Call of Duty and microtransactions are basically old acquaintances by now. The episode keeps its rapid-fire rhythm through the end, with side comments, self-corrections, and franchise memory doing most of the work. It closes in the same register it started, with Brown signing off like a frustrated fan who still wants the next thing to be good.

As heard by us

A lively, fan-first pop-culture roundup that turns wide-ranging news into an opinionated listen.

Eric Brown's weekly pop-culture roundup moves briskly across comic books, gaming, tech, and media news, keeping a skeptical, fan-first tone throughout.

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For weekly pop-culture news, comic-book chatter, and one more Marvel spiral, press play.

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