SDCC 2026: The News, Announcements And More That We’re Excited About

This past Sunday, San Diego Comic-Con 2026 wrapped up, drawing the biggest geek event of the year to a close. After a few years of “eh” news, we actually found ourselves excited about more than one piece of news that hit. So here’s a rundown of our favorites from this part weekend.

A New Ghost Rider

Like many fans, we’ve started to get a little disillusioned by Marvel Studios’ output. Outside of a couple releases, the past five years since Avengers Endgame started to feel like a directionless corporate product, not a passionate, fandom-centered journey. So the announcement that Ghost Rider was coming from Marvel Studios in 2028 was exciting enough, but it also included the news that Shawn Levy was directing and starring Ryan Gosling –– on a hot streak following Barbie and Project: Hail Mary. 

–Tony Thornley

Masters Of The Universe Stays Hot

We really liked the new Masters of the Universe Chronicles He-Man release, and have been excited to pick more up. Mattel is gearing up for a massive year in 2027, and while they weren’t ready to reveal their new DC Comics line, they did preview the next wave of Chronicles. As expected there’s more movie designs like Mekanek and Goat-Man, but also totally new versions of Teela, Mer-Man, Clawful, Panthor and Laser-Light He-Man.

And on the Origins side, it looks like the line is starting over with new versions of all the classics that have been hard to find, build-a-figures, and even a few new figures in there, like a Battle Damage Man-At-Arms.

It looks like Mattel is headed for a banner year (and may even be doing Ninja Turtle collectors’ lines on top of this).

–Tony Thornley

An Unexpected Princess

Dungeon Crawler Carl is becoming one of the fastest growing fandoms in geekdom right now, with its insane plots and excellent character growth and development. With the upcoming Peacock TV adaptation starting to gain steam, many hoped that SDCC would bring casting developments, and sure enough, it did, as DCC audiobook narrator Jeff Hays was announced as the voice of series co-lead GC BWR NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, AKA, Carl’s sentient cat. Not only does the casting acknowledge Hays’ contribution to the fandom, but also shows fans that the adaptation is gaining speed.

– Tony Thornley

DC Black Means Something Else Now

The voices have been heard, DC Comics is quite a bit less white now, on and off the page. The publisher announced a handful of new ongoing titles joining their Next Level initiative, all of the featuring Black superheroes at their forefront with Black creators at the helm. We’re getting Vixen from Stephanie Williams and Khary Randolph, Static from Cody Ziglar and Diego Olortegui, and Steel from Morgan Hampton and no artist announced yet. This is Steel’s first ongoing in almost 30 years, Static’s first since 2012, and the first ever ongoing for Vixen. A bit too late but very welcome overall. 

– Scott Redmond

Heroes In A New Half Shell

IDW Publishing relaunched their long-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series in 2024, and the title is on it’s second set of big name creators. In January, the baton passes once more as the publisher announced that Matthew Rosenberg and Juann Cabal will lead the four turtle brothers through a new gauntlet as the next series creative team. All they’ve said is that villains new and old assemble to hunt down the Turtles over the course of one night. Sounds like the kind of street-level grit that one might expect from these radical pizza-eating heroes. Issue #25 kicks off this next Turtle-verse era. 

– Scott Redmond

The Trilogy Stands Complete

While the MCU as a whole is a bit stale and clearly desperate, hello Avengers: Doomsday, there are still some small bright spots to at least perk up about. One of those was the announcement that Ryan Coogler’s long rumored third Black Panther film is a reality, and is coming out in 2028. Not only that but we’re getting a new T’Challa, albeit T’Challa jr., as David Jonsson (The Long Walk, Alien: Romulus) is set to play an aged up version of the child we glimpsed in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Just like comic books, kids don’t get to stay kids for long, soon enough they are thirty or more year olds.

– Scott Redmond

Marvel Masterworks Reborn

I’m not personally a Masterworks guy (I went all in the Epic collections), but I am a fan of collected editions and comprehensive archiving in general. Plus, I know all too well the sting of an ambitious publishing initiative being cut short by market forces. And so it was with the opposite of schadenfreude that I cheered the news of Clover Press resurrecting the Marvel Masterworks line. Clover Press as made a name for themselves as publishers of exceptional art books as well as archival collected material (including their ongoing Dick Tracy and Amazing Spider-Man comic strip lines), and applying the crowd-funding approach to the high-end Masterworks line seems like a smart way. Hopefully, they’ll be able to continue the excellent restorative work done by the previous Masterworks team (and if that leads to better Epic collections for me, well, all the better).

–Austin Gorton

Marvel Remembers They Can Do Indiana Jones Comics

While Marvel has presumably had the capacity to create new Indiana Jones comics for as long as they’ve been doing new Star Wars comics, they haven’t. But that will change this December. Following on the heels of the recent announcement of a spiffy hardcover collection of their previous Indiana Jones comics (itself long overdue), it was announced at San Diego Comic-Con that Indiana Jones and the Sword of Pandemonium is coming. Set in the aftermath of Raiders of the Lost Ark (which means the opportunity for plenty of Nazi-punching action), the five issue miniseries is written by Jason Aaron (who helped launch Marvel’s rebooted Star Wars comics back in 2015) with art by Aaron Kuder. Five issue minis are a dime-a-dozen these days, but this announcement, combined with the hardcover reprints, hopefully means Marvel will continue to mine this long-ignored vein of storytelling going forward. 

–Austin Gorton

LEGO Continues Into The Final Frontier

While LEGO has long been the purview of Star Wars, Marvel, and DC, in 2025 the brick maker went where few toy companies have gone before. LEGO debuted its first Star Trek set — the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D. At SDCC, the company followed up on that massive set with something different, the bridge set from the original series. That’s right, you get to build the original black and red bridge complete with minifigs of Kirk, Spock, and even Nurse Chapel.  There’s even a Klingon on the large center screen. To round the set out, the transporter room is attached. And to make it even more appropriate, the set features 1,701 pieces!

–Tom Smithyman