Marvel TV and Hulu gave fans their first look at the upcoming streaming series M.O.D.O.K. -- Marvel's first venture into adult-oriented animated comedy -- at New York Comic Con on Friday, during a panel moderated by series star Patton Oswalt. Read on for the details on what happened at the panel, and be sure to also check out our preview of the NYCC 2020 panels we're most excited about. Joining Patton Oswalt on the panel was the series' co-creator/writer/executive producer Jordan Blum and cast members Aimee Garcia, Melissa Fumero, and Ben Schwartz. Here's what you need to know about MODOK!

What Is MODOK About?

Hulu's stop-motion animated series follows MODOK -- the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing (voiced by Oswalt) -- as he suffers a midlife crisis after being ousted from his villainous organization A.I.M. Not only does MODOK hate all the other Marvel superheroes, but he also loathes his rival supervillains because he thinks he should be the alpha supreme among them instead of being a D-lister. "It's just double-barreled resentment every episode," Oswalt said. "He really wants to have his amazing ominous entrances and they're always undercut by something mundane everyday. And that's what drives him crazy." At home, MODOK struggles with his teenage kids Lou (Ben Schwartz) and Melissa (Melissa Fumero), while his wife, Jodie (Aimee Garcia), is more interested in her mommy blog than in him. MODOK must also contend with the workplace machinations of his fellow mad scientist Monica Rappaccini (Wendi McLendon-Covey) now that A.I.M. is owned by tech firm GRUMBL. The show's co-creator/writer/executive producer, Jordan Blum, says the series aims (no pun intended) to "honor" the ludicrous Marvel character's roots while putting a funny spin on it for a mainstream audience. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=marvels-modok&captions=true"] "This was born out of our love for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby who created MODOK and we wanted to honor that while still finding a comedic slant on the character and his world and kind of expand that beyond the comics," Blum said. "Again, see what are the mundane moments of trying to run an evil organization. Or how does a giant floating toilet relate to his rebellious children or his wife? That's what we wanted to explore. And I think what we did was, it's fun and it's action-packed and it's very much a Marvel project but I think no one's expecting this show about this monstrous, megalomaniacal supervillain to have hopefully a ton of heart [or] to be way more relatable than you think he'd be just from seeing him." Oswalt added, "Yeah, these are really cold, hard times. We wanted to give people a show where they could come away from it and go, 'We are all giant floating toilets.' You know, that kind of thing to give people some optimism and hope."

MODOK's Voice Cast

In addition to Patton Oswalt as MODOK, the show stars Aimee Garcia as his wife Jodie and Ben Schwartz and Melissa Fumero as his kids Lou and Melissa, respectively. The voice cast includes SNL's Beck Bennett as GRUMBL boss Austin Van Der Sleet, Jon Daly as MODOK's android crony Super-Adaptoid, and Sam Richardson as MODOK's flunky Gary. Schwartz described teenage Lou as happy, excited, weird, and different and not like his other family members, so the audience will want to see him succeed. Ben, it was revealed, was created in a lab. "He's so into building and magic and Judaism," Schwartz exclaimed. Fumero said Melissa -- who looks like her giant floating head dad and yet is the most popular girl at her high school, basically the leader of her school's "Heathers" -- has daddy issues and wants to become a supervillain like MODOK, "but at the end of the day she just wants him to love her." As for Jodie, who runs a successful mommy blog, Garcia revealed, "I personally get to go on a villainous journey and catch the attention of a superhero which does not fare well with MODOK. ... She's unlike any animated wife we've ever seen where she goes from housewife to supervillain." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=nycc-2020-13-panels-were-most-excited-about&captions=true"]

MODOK's Marvel Comics References and Easter Eggs

In addition to MODOK, the Hulu series also includes Marvel Comics villains Monica Rappaccini and the Super-Adaptoid, who Blum described as "an artist who wants to express himself and hates that he's enslaved to MODOK." MODOK's makers are taking a page from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The LEGO Batman Movie where everything from the canon counts and they're pulling in whatever they need. "Marvel was great about giving us a lot of the toys [to play with]," said Blum. "A-listers and D-listers and people you'd have to dig deep into the Marvel Handbook to even find existed and all those characters, there's so much comedy built into them. And using them in these big sci-fi stories that are grounded by these very human relationship stories between family or co-worker or whatnot. Mixing all that together, it was a blast." "We dig up a couple of characters and a couple of objects and even I'm wondering if Marvel knew they had them," said Oswalt. "We had a lot of fun digging deep." Blum specifically cited Mark Gruenwald's Captain America run as a source of where they pulled characters and references from: "That's the fun that we're having. That we're pushing the boundaries of what the Marvel Universe is and having a lot of fun with the toy box." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-top-25-marvel-villains&captions=true"]

MODOK's Animation Style

The show's stop-motion animation is done by Stoopid Buddy, the company behind Robot Chicken, SuperMansion, and Crossing Swords. The Stoopid Buddy crew shoots MODOK hand-held on their phones and the data is then sent to a motion-control rig. "It's real hand-held photography even though it's frame-by-frame," Blum explained. The humor evident in this stop-motion animation style will be on display in the show's fifth episode. As Blum revealed, "There's a Mad Scientist-off fight in Episode 5 that's insane. I've never seen anything like it."

MODOK Release Date

So when does iMODOK come out? That remains unclear as Marvel TV and Hulu have yet to announce an official premiere date for the series. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=marvel-cinematic-universe-every-upcoming-movie-and-tv-show&captions=true"]

Amazon's free-to-play team shooter Crucible is shutting down on November 9, 2020, just months after its official launch on May 20, 2020. The Crucible team shared their final developer update and discussed what lead to the decision following the team pulling the game back to Closed Beta in July. The team made a list of features that were meant to enhance the player experience and, with the exception of custom games (which is slated to arrive in the coming days), it completed them all. However, after shipping those features and evaluating the feedback from fans, paired with the data collected, the difficult choice to discontinue development was made. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/27/crucible-review"] "That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible," The Crucible team's statement read. "We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible. We’ll be transitioning our team to focus on New World and other upcoming projects from Amazon Games." For fans who played Crucible and made purchases, full refunds will be given, and more information can be found on its support page. Credit purchases will also be disabled shortly. In the next few weeks, Crucible will have a final playtest and community celebration, both in-game and on the official Discord. After those events, matchmaking will be disabled. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="legacyId=20059624&captions=true"] Custom Games will still live on until "noon PST on Monday, November 9, 2020." After that, the gates to Crucible will be closed for good. In our review of Crucible, we said, "I'm not angry with Crucible, just weary and disappointed. Its ambitious marriage of PvE and PvP has resulted in a whole that's less than the sum of its parts, especially thanks to the awful match pacing and agonizing respawn system that smashed my patience against a concrete wall. With continued support, it might evolve into something decent, but the underlying issues will take a massive overhaul to remedy." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Amazon's free-to-play team shooter Crucible is shutting down on November 9, 2020, just months after its official launch on May 20, 2020. The Crucible team shared their final developer update and discussed what lead to the decision following the team pulling the game back to Closed Beta in July. The team made a list of features that were meant to enhance the player experience and, with the exception of custom games (which is slated to arrive in the coming days), it completed them all. However, after shipping those features and evaluating the feedback from fans, paired with the data collected, the difficult choice to discontinue development was made. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/27/crucible-review"] "That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible," The Crucible team's statement read. "We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible. We’ll be transitioning our team to focus on New World and other upcoming projects from Amazon Games." For fans who played Crucible and made purchases, full refunds will be given, and more information can be found on its support page. Credit purchases will also be disabled shortly. In the next few weeks, Crucible will have a final playtest and community celebration, both in-game and on the official Discord. After those events, matchmaking will be disabled. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="legacyId=20059624&captions=true"] Custom Games will still live on until "noon PST on Monday, November 9, 2020." After that, the gates to Crucible will be closed for good. In our review of Crucible, we said, "I'm not angry with Crucible, just weary and disappointed. Its ambitious marriage of PvE and PvP has resulted in a whole that's less than the sum of its parts, especially thanks to the awful match pacing and agonizing respawn system that smashed my patience against a concrete wall. With continued support, it might evolve into something decent, but the underlying issues will take a massive overhaul to remedy." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

American Gods showed off a first look at Season 3 during an NYCC 2020 panel today. After a panel including Ricky Whittle (Shadow Moon), Emily Browning (Laura Moon), Omid Abtahi (Salim), Bruce Langley (Technical Boy), Tetide Badaki (Bilquis), Ashley Reyes (new character Cordelia), and writer Neil Gaiman concluded, an "interruption" from the show's New Gods led into a first teaser trailer for the next season: [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/10/09/american-gods-season-3-official-trailer-nycc-2020"] The teaser is characteristically unusual, featuring clips of young Shadow Moon set against the story of the current day Shadow heading to the Wisconsin small town of Lakeside to escape from his past. As you might expect, that doesn't quite work out, and we see a number of gods - including Ian McShane's Mr. Wednesday -  before we see Shadow Moon begin to accept that he's a god too. Much of the panel centers on how this season takes the relatively small portion of the original American Gods book that makes up the Lakeside section, and how the season expands on many characters' stories to blow that up into 10 episodes: "What's magical about what the previous creators involved have brought to American Gods is this amazing ensemble cast, which is not there in the book," explained Gaiman. "So Shadow and Shadow's story was in some ways the easiest part of it – that was already laid out in the book." No release date has been set, but American Gods Season 3 is set to premiere in early 2021. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

American Gods showed off a first look at Season 3 during an NYCC 2020 panel today. After a panel including Ricky Whittle (Shadow Moon), Emily Browning (Laura Moon), Omid Abtahi (Salim), Bruce Langley (Technical Boy), Tetide Badaki (Bilquis), Ashley Reyes (new character Cordelia), and writer Neil Gaiman concluded, an "interruption" from the show's New Gods led into a first teaser trailer for the next season: [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/10/09/american-gods-season-3-official-trailer-nycc-2020"] The teaser is characteristically unusual, featuring clips of young Shadow Moon set against the story of the current day Shadow heading to the Wisconsin small town of Lakeside to escape from his past. As you might expect, that doesn't quite work out, and we see a number of gods - including Ian McShane's Mr. Wednesday -  before we see Shadow Moon begin to accept that he's a god too. Much of the panel centers on how this season takes the relatively small portion of the original American Gods book that makes up the Lakeside section, and how the season expands on many characters' stories to blow that up into 10 episodes: "What's magical about what the previous creators involved have brought to American Gods is this amazing ensemble cast, which is not there in the book," explained Gaiman. "So Shadow and Shadow's story was in some ways the easiest part of it – that was already laid out in the book." No release date has been set, but American Gods Season 3 is set to premiere in early 2021. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

In the tradition of Disney making movies based on its attractions, next on the block is Space Mountain which will be heading to the big screen courtesy of the writer for the Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars series on Disney+. The Hollywood Reporter has heard that the popular Space Mountain ride at Disneyland will be turned into a movie and has hired Joby Harold to write the script. Harold has credits on Zack Snyder’s upcoming Army of the Dead as well as the Obi-Wan series on Disney+. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-delayed-movie-due-to-coronavirus-so-far&captions=true"] Space Mountain is a popular roller coaster attraction based on Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. Funny enough Space Mountain was converted into a Star Wars-themed Hyperspace Mountain in 2017 that renovated the attraction with Star Wars sounds and visuals. So knowing that a current Star Wars writer is tackling a Space Mountain film adaptation is a humorous coincidence. Personally, I prefer Space Mountain over the Hyperspace variant, but to each their own. The Space Mountain movie will join a list of Disney attractions-turned-films including Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Tomorrowland, and the upcoming Jungle Cruise. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN. Header image via wikimidea commons.

In the tradition of Disney making movies based on its attractions, next on the block is Space Mountain which will be heading to the big screen courtesy of the writer for the Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars series on Disney+. The Hollywood Reporter has heard that the popular Space Mountain ride at Disneyland will be turned into a movie and has hired Joby Harold to write the script. Harold has credits on Zack Snyder’s upcoming Army of the Dead as well as the Obi-Wan series on Disney+. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-delayed-movie-due-to-coronavirus-so-far&captions=true"] Space Mountain is a popular roller coaster attraction based on Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. Funny enough Space Mountain was converted into a Star Wars-themed Hyperspace Mountain in 2017 that renovated the attraction with Star Wars sounds and visuals. So knowing that a current Star Wars writer is tackling a Space Mountain film adaptation is a humorous coincidence. Personally, I prefer Space Mountain over the Hyperspace variant, but to each their own. The Space Mountain movie will join a list of Disney attractions-turned-films including Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Tomorrowland, and the upcoming Jungle Cruise. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN. Header image via wikimidea commons.

Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN's weekly video game podcast. This week your Omega Cops -- Daemon Hatfield, Sam Claiborn, Justin Davis, and Seth Macy -- are discussing the future of Nintendo consoles. They also cover Super Mario 35, Star Wars Squadrons, The Last of Us Part 2, Rambo in Mortal Kombat, and so much more. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service. Listen on: Apple Podcasts YouTube Spotify Stitcher   Find previous episodes here!