New York Comic Con 2025: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
By Dan Q (IG @danielquintero)
In a city that never stops performing, New York Comic Con feels like both a stage and a mirror. Inside the Javits Center, under the hum of fluorescent light and the rush of capes, armor, and camera flashes, you can see the mythmaking machine at full speed. Four days where pop culture is a religion, and every badge, panel, and costume feels like a declaration of who we wish we could be.
Comic Con used to be about comics. Not anymore, now it’s about everything that holds narrative power: cinema, streaming, toys, animation, fan art, and even fashion. The heroes are still here, but so are the questions. What do these stories say about us in 2025? What happens when fandom replaces faith, and the convention floor becomes a living map of identity, nostalgia, and collective imagination?
Is it the Daily Bugle or the Planet… anyway, these are the news
Beyond the spectacle, NYCC 2025 delivered a packed slate of announcements.
Star Wars returned not as a galaxy far, far away, but as a meditation on Legacy: what we inherit and what we choose to rebuild. Marvel leaned on its multiverse like a mirror room, showing us infinite versions of ourselves, tired and hopeful at once. DC tried to find gravity again, between myth and mess, while independent creators reminded everyone that real rebellion still begins on a blank page.
At the Lucasfilm Publishing panel, Star Wars proved that its galaxy is still expanding, not through special effects, but through imagination. Executive editor Jennifer Heddle gathered a dream team of writers to unveil a constellation of upcoming releases, from Legacy, where Rey and Leia embark on a journey to restore the Skywalker lightsaber, to Eyes Like Stars, the franchise’s first-ever official romance novel. The announcements ranged from new manga (Visions: Tsukumo) and concept art books (The Art of The Mandalorian and Grogu) to thoughtful retrospectives, such as Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation.
Over at Marvel, during Saturday’s Empire Stage showcase, Head of Marvel Television and Animation Brad Winderbaum previewed upcoming and returning TV titles. It opened with the first footage of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 2, where Peter Parker faces off against a familiar, gooey black symbiote. Winderbaum then welcomed X-Men: The Animated Series creators Eric and Julia Lewald, who confirmed their return as executive producers for X-Men ’97 Season 2.
Two of Marvel’s most iconic New York heroes also stopped by, with Charlie Cox and Krysten Ritter teasing Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again. Cox shared that Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk’s rivalry will continue to evolve, while Ritter—clearly thrilled—told the crowd: “Jessica is back, and it’s exciting to be in the action again. And she looks cooler than ever.” Later, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Sir Ben Kingsley took the stage to reveal the first look at Wonder Man, debuting January 27, 2026, on Disney+.
On the comics front, Marvel Comics teased Queen in Black, a major crossover launching next summer that spins out of Venom and the upcoming Knull solo series. During the Spider-Man and His Venomous Friends panel, Spider-editor Nick Lowe also unveiled Death Spiral, a collision course that will entangle Peter Parker’s Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson’s Venom, and Eddie Brock’s Carnage.
Meanwhile, at the X-Men Panel, Conductor of X Tom Brevoort and Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski introduced Shadows of Tomorrow, a storyline where the mutants must stop a dystopian future before it begins — a new era of X-Menstorytelling spanning ongoing and limited series.
Before the Convention, Hasbro also unveiled its latest Marvel Legends line, spotlighting fan favorites like Cardiac, Apocalypse, Spider-Man 2099, Medusa, Gorgon, WWII Logan, Iron Man Mark 72, Werewolf by Night, Enchantress, Dark Avengers Spider-Man, Warbow, Phantom Rider, Black Bolt, and Triton.
Major series reveals followed: HBO confirmed that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the Game of Thrones prequel based on George R.R. Martin’s novellas, will follow Sir Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) a century before the original saga. The network also previewed Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake Season 2, teasing more multiverse-hopping chaos.
For Prime Video viewers, Invincible fans rejoiced with the first teaser for Season 4, set to premiere in March 2026. Even without new updates from Amazon-MGM’s He-Man universe, the toy front drew massive attention: Mondo unveiled its 1/12 scale Masters of the Universe 200x figures — easily one of the show’s most talked-about collectibles. Wave 1 is open for preorder at the Mondo Shop through October 17, with Skeletor and Man-At-Arms leading Wave 2 in November, and Wave 3 (featuring Merman and Teela with Orko) teased during their panel.
Over at the DC Comics panel, the mood was pure electricity. The publisher unveiled DC Next Level, a creative movement meant to redefine how the world’s most famous superheroes will live on page and screen. Rather than just teasing new titles, DC outlined a vision. The initiative promises stories that honor the myth while daring to rewrite it.
Beyond the Spotlight
But NYCC wasn’t just about Hollywood muscle. The Artist Alley continued to thrive, highlighting independent voices from Latin America, Asia, and the U.S. underground scene. Panels on diversity in storytelling, digital ownership, and the role of AI in creative industries packed the smaller rooms, proving that the Convention’s heart still beats for creators who color outside the corporate lines.
And between the big banners and bright lights, an unmistakable sense of cultural self-awareness hovered in the air. We are participating in the stories.
Walking through the aisles felt like crossing the modern agora: illustrators sketching their dreams, collectors bargaining for relics, and fans debating the canon with the passion of philosophers. The Convention is a place for communion. Every cosplay is a performance of belief. Every shared selfie is a gesture of belonging. NYCC remains one of the few places where people still look up from their screens to meet someone who shares their passions.
There was also a new current running beneath the spectacle: the recognition that storytelling is no longer the domain of big studios alone. Panels on independent publishing, AI-assisted art, and web-based comics were filled. Fans and creators spoke the same language, one of ownership, authenticity, and control.
And probably that’s the heart of where we are now. Culture no longer flows from the top down. It’s a web, constantly rewired by those who dare to imagine themselves in it. Comic Con, in its chaos, has become one of the most democratic spaces in entertainment: a living network of imagination where anyone can step into a story and claim it as their own.
Between the spectacle, there were quieter moments. A Puerto Rican artist’s booth filled with bright, defiant colors that spoke of home and diaspora. A panel where creators discussed mental health and burnout, not as a weakness, but as a shared reality. A small publisher selling zines about identity and migration.
New York: The Original Comic Book City
Photo courtesy of NYCC
Outside the convention center, New York buzzed in perfect counterpoint. The same city that gave birth to Spider-Man and was close to the X-Men still feels like a comic in motion: crowded, heroic, broken, and endlessly alive.
That’s why NYCC belongs here, more than anywhere else. Because New York understands something fundamental: identity is both costume and truth, that chaos can be creative, that every street corner has a story waiting to be drawn.
By the time Sunday ended, the crowd had thinned, the banners were starting to come down, and the myth machine had quieted. People carried away prints, collectibles, autographs, but mostly, they carried the invisible weight of imagination.
For a few days, the lines between reality and fiction blurred in the best possible way. We remembered that the worlds we escape to are often reflections of the one we live in and that the stories we tell are how we learn to see ourselves again.
Because at the end of the day, every Convention is a confession. Every hero’s mask, every villain’s speech, every artist’s line is a small, beating truth about what it means to be human right now.
We walk away with new stories to tell from the world outside our windows.
This is just a small part of what happened in NYCC, discover more at @newyorkcomiccon