DF Interview: James Patrick unleashes cool science fiction, a dash of horror and, oh yeah, perhaps the end of the world in ‘Astronaut Down’



By Byron Brewer

Douglas Spitzer wants to be one of the "astronauts" selected for the crucial Mission Politzer. And just as astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride, Douglas is brave, adaptable and self-sacrificing. He's one of the program's best candidates.

But if he qualifies, Douglas won't be traveling through space; he'll be launched into alternate realities on a desperate mission to save Earth from a horrific crisis that has our world on the brink of extinction. Unfortunately, it's a mission where everything will go wrong, where Douglas' training and very humanity will be put to the test, and where a deep-seeded secret could sabotage everything.
Writer James Patrick (Kaiju Score, Campisi: The Dragon Incident) and artist Rubine (Search for Hu) lead us on a perilous undertaking to save the planet from total destruction in Astronaut Down! They had ME at “Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride”, so I tethered myself to a wall and floated into an anti-grav chamber to discuss the coming comic with scribe James Patrick.


Byron Brewer: James, tell readers a little about the inspiration for Astronaut Down coming soon from AfterShock Comics. Curiously, I heard it had to do with your fondness for the 2020 film Possessor, written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg?



James Patrick: Sure. And yeah, Possessor had kind of pushed me into making this particular book. I watched and loved that movie, and the aesthetic and originality was just mesmerizing to me. It had a unique mix of sci-fi, realism and violence. It was one of my favorite movies that year. And so I wanted, initially, to kind of just create after seeing that. To do a unique mixture. You come out of certain art, viewing it or listening to it, with kind of a high and kind of an urge to create. Now, the final product that is Astronaut Down does not resemble Possessor. It didn't inspire it in that way. It's more of a carrot that gets you off the couch and to the keyboard, and that was the big giant carrot at that moment. And I've heard a lot of creative people say that same thing about the Green Knight lately – a kind of, "I want to do something that feels like the Green Knight!" – and this was exactly that. So yeah, this thing started spinning out of that spark, and we threw in some 70's NASA, some Akira, and a dash of maybe Moebius when the scripts started growing.

And the other inspiration for the book was that I had a sh*t ton of stuff rejected and I wanted another book! I'd just come off the success of Kaiju Score, I knew there was a window in there to maybe take advantage of, and I didn't want it to pass by.
So yeah, my two motivations were Possessor and practicality.


Byron: Before we discuss more about the comic and its cast, what can you say about the world you and artist Rubine are building here? Give us just a taste of this Earth, where folks travel through things other than space and oceans.



James Patrick: The canvas here is kind of our world and kind of not our world. It resembles ours. I've said this in interviews before, but it gets the point across. Frank Miller once said he uses iconic pieces of different eras to fill Sin City. So, he might like a gun from the 20's or a car from the 50’s and so on. Astronaut Down isn't exactly like that, but to put the reader in the right sort of mindset, hopefully, we used a little 70's NASA, even though what's occurring hasn't occurred in our world yet and would technically be the future. All while society is in a place that's straight out of two years ago to now. So there's no locking down if this is our world or when it would be in our world. And all of that doesn't work on a conscious level unless people think about it. So there's this world where there's a similar program for sending people into alternate realities just like NASA sends astronauts to space or the moon. It's approached the same way, here it's been sped up out of necessity, and all the problems that come with an expedited space race arise. And the backdrop is a world that is dealing with a crisis that has changed it dramatically physically and societally, the latter of which is very similar to covid. There's just no denying this is a post-covid book the same way you can feel the post-9-11 influences in entertainment after 9-11. I did not set out to make some allegory on covid in any way, but when I needed certain elements to populate this story, it made sense. It made sense for the mechanics of the story.



Byron: Introduce us to Douglas Spitzer. Who is he as a character, his vocation and family, and how those may or may not have bearing on what we’ll be reading in this exciting new mag?



James Patrick: Douglas has had one course his whole life. He's aimed, trained and been focused on one thing: to be an astronaut. Whether it be to explore space or, in this case, the more symbolic version of what that means and explore alternate realities. He's been on this path and he thinks he has everything that's necessary – the exact tool-set – but when his destiny occurs and everything is on the line, he realizes there's been a wrench thrown into it. And it begins to reveal itself at the worst time.



Byron: No spoilers needed, but talk a little about Mission Politzer and how that converges with Spitzer’s life.



James Patrick: Mission Politzer is one of the missions to put an "astronaut" into another reality in an attempt to save the world. Previous missions have ended in disaster. Launches have gone horribly wrong for the "astronauts", and it's basically all come down to this to save everything. It's going to be their last shot since they're out of time. So imagine if you had to send a space shuttle up after Challenger and the stakes were, well, everything. Douglas is one of the astronauts. He's exceptional. Physically. He thinks that there is no way he can not succeed at this mission.



Byron: Are there a few other characters in the series that you can tell readers about? Maybe spotlight two or three here?



James Patrick: After Douglas, the Project Manager of Mission Politzer is Beverly Engle, and she has to not only save the world, she has to deal with all the fallout and bullsh*t that revolves around the mission. A press that's critical of her every decision. Her own self-doubt. The very stakes of the decisions she makes when it comes to selecting the astronauts, the timetable, etc. And then there's Maddie, who I won't get into, but she's a breath of fresh air that is completely the opposite of the duty-driven Douglas. She evens him out.



Byron: I will probably get a “Read the book” comment for this, but I am going to see if I can get a bit about some of the book’s mysteries. Can you give readers even the slightest of clues about a crisis which threatens Earth or an existing secret which may lead to the failure of Mission Politzer? (Haha! I know, I know… read the book.)



James Patrick: The crisis is essentially a crisis that has to do with the laws of physics and I won't get into the specifics or its origins. This is comics, so it's executed in a visual way. And how the world deals with this crisis is, as I've hinted at, similar to the different ways we dealt with covid. Where it goes from there I won't spoil, but I will say that, yes, there is a deep-seeded ticking time bomb that all of this place into Mission Politzer. A personal truth that nobody knows. It's very hard to describe it more without giving too much away.



Byron: What makes artist Rubine a great fit for this series?



James Patrick: Well, firstly and generally, he's just an exceptionally talented artist. But he also has a knack for finding that realism while still drawing amazing sci-fi. His storytelling is also very clean. And they say that the more complex a story, the more need for a cleaner art style. I'm not saying the story is super complex, but in any event he delivers it perfectly.



Byron: James, what other projects in which you are involved can you tell readers about?



James Patrick: Campisi: The Dragon Incident TPB, which collects the series, just came out on May 11th, Kaiju Score: Steal from the Gods, the sequel to Kaiju Score (optioned by Sony) is coming out right now and issue 2 hits stands on May 18th. I can't say too much about anything after those and Astronaut Down.



Dynamic Forces would like to thank James Patrick for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Astronaut Down #1 from AfterShock Comics is slated to be on sale June 1st!
For more news and up-to-date announcements, join us here at Dynamic Forces, www.dynamicforces.com/htmlfiles/, “LIKE” us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/dynamicforcesinc, and follow us on Twitter, www.twitter.com/dynamicforces.

There’s a running joke on the internet about how many movies are about trying to get Matt Damon home. The answer is four and Hollywood has spent over an estimated $600 million on this premise but they’ve made good money doing it. The real question is why are so many people interested in seeing him try to get home? In 1998 he was the titular Ryan in Saving Private Ryan and while it only opened for $30 million, it made $482 million worldwide over its theatrical run. In 2014 audiences flocked to Interstellar with a $47 million domestic opening and $764 million worldwide run. And just a year later he was stranded again in The Martian and the film opened for $54 million and made $630 million in theaters. This weekend Christopher Nolan is rolling out his epic adaptation of The Odyssey and in the lead role of a Greek soldier trying to get home to his wife he decided to work again with Damon… and other stars like Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya and Tom Holland to name a few. And the new film is looking to open at almost what all three films opened for combined. The film is expected to open for $120 million domestically making it the highest opener of 2026, but it’s doing just as well internationally and is expected to have a worldwide opening of $257 million, surpassing Nolan’s previous best with The Dark Knight Rises. Looks like Odysseus is going to beat Batman… maybe Nolan and Damon should team up one more time in a movie about Batman trying to get back to the Batcave. I mean, it's obvious people would go see it. 

The pandemic affected most everyone in one way or another, but for actor Kyle Chandler it left him in a unique state of mind. The Friday Night Lights actor wouldn’t call it a depression or anxiety or even an agoraphobic reaction but rather a “strange haze in the air” that “kind of shook me up” and left him in ruminations. What got him out of it is his upcoming role as former test pilot and intergalactic space cop Hal Jordan in the upcoming HBO series Lanterns. Chandler talks about taking on the DC Franchise as "The old man upstairs said, 'Hey, I'm gonna give you a gift.' He threw me a bone, and I chewed that thing all the way through. Before I went out, I decided I'm gonna have fun. Damn the torpedoes." The veteran actor is paired with rising star Aaron Pierre as John Stewart in a prestige crime thriller likened to the hit HBO series True Detective. While the series has a cosmic origin, the approach to this first season at least is much more grounded as Jordan comes to investigate a murder in a small, midwestern town and brings along the new recruit forced upon him by his bosses, the Guardians. Stewart is the first recruit selected by the Guardians where all the other Green Lanterns were selected by the rings after the previous owner dies. Jordan doesn’t respond well to his new partner and that animosity carries over into their investigation. The series will take place in two timelines set ten years apart with the investigation starting in 2016 and then we see what is happening now. The series premieres on August 16th and while a second season has not been green lit yet, writer Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire) has been hired to work on scripts for season two… so DC Studios and HBO must like what they’ve seen. 

Long before Lin Manuel Miranda took the Founding Fathers to Broadway with the Tony Award Winning Hamilton, the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin sang about the birth of the United States of America and the musical led to an amazing musical called 1776. With this being the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, now would be a good time to watch this classic film that’s available on streaming services like Hulu and Tubi. The film adapts the celebrated musical by Peter Stone with an all-star cast that includes William Daniels (Boy Meets World), Ken Howard (The White Shadow), Howard de Silva (The Great Gatsby) and Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents). The film focuses on the days leading up to the Continental Congress debating and eventually declaring independence and gives us look at the chaos that existed leading up to the birth of the nation. While dealing with a serious topic, the film is laced with humorous moments and unforgettable songs while showing just how difficult it really was to get the thirteen colonies to agree and how different parts of the country had different priorities. Not too unlike the way the country is now. 1776 is entertaining and sneakily educational and I watch if every July 4th… which I’m doing as I type this article. 

With Supergirl underperforming at the box office there is a rush to point fingers… as often happens when it comes to big studios like DC, Marvel and Star Wars. Will there be similar handwringing with the latest Minions film coming in about $17 million below it’s expected opening… probably not. But The Hollywood Reporter has exclusive details about what happened with the Milly Alcock project that seems to pit director Craig Gillespie against James Gunn and the studio. The criticism of the film varies with complaints about the editing, the musical choices, the depth of character for the villain to the changes from the source material. The new report focuses on a few of those and talks about the test screenings happening back in March of this year. Gillespie was given free reign on his film until test audiences had their say and the best the film was able to do was score in the 60s. This led to the studio getting involved and creating their own cut of the film. Gunn brought in Guardians of the Galaxy editor Fred Raskin to re-edit and Jeremy Slater of Godzilla X Kong to work with screenwriter Anna Nogueira on a few new scenes. Then Gillespie’s original cut, edited by Tatiana S. Riegel from Cruella, and the new cut were both shown to audiences to see which would faire better. Neither film stood out too much with the studio version scoring about two points more than Gillespie’s. While the director’s cut came in about 11 minutes longer and scored higher on the villain and the music, two things complained about in reviews, the overall score favored the studio cut and it was chosen to be the theatrical release. Though reports don’t say what the specific scores were, it does say the highest score reached among all the testing was only 70 out of 100. While this may sound like a behind-the-scenes struggle and signs of studio interference, things like this happen all the time in Hollywood with the goal of putting out the best film possible and had the film had a higher opening, this probably wouldn’t be news at all. An on-line movement is now building to have the “director’s cut” released even though a handful of people claim to have been in the audience for the Gillespie cut and claims that the film isn’t that different than what was released to theaters. Perhaps the deleted scenes will be included on the Blu-ray release. 

DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation used this week’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival to signal a broader push into animation, unveiling three new series built around some of DC’s most recognizable characters. The slate includes Absolute Batman, Joker: Laugh Riot, and Krypto, each aimed at a different corner of the superhero audience. The boldest announcement may be Joker: Laugh Riot, described as DC Studios’ first anime series. Produced with Sola Entertainment and directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, the show imagines a Gotham where Batman has been murdered and the Joker hunts for the killer who robbed him of his greatest obsession. That premise turns the usual Batman-Joker dynamic inside out, pushing the Clown Prince of Crime into uneasy detective territory. Absolute Batman adapts the recent comic by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta, reimagining Bruce Wayne as a working-class hero rather than a billionaire crimefighter. Snyder is expected to serve as executive producer and showrunner, while Dragotta will produce. The series’ “no manor, no money” approach positions Batman as a more grounded figure facing wealth, power, and corruption from the outside. Rounding out the lineup is Krypto, a children’s animated series centered on Superman’s loyal super-dog. Developed by C.H. Greenblatt, the project gives DC a lighter, family-friendly entry alongside the darker Batman and Joker titles. Together, the announcements show DC Studios treating animation not as a side lane but as a flexible creative engine. From anime to kid-focused comedy to a radical Batman reinvention, the Annecy slate suggests DC is betting that familiar icons can still feel new when placed in unexpected formats and tones. 

How well is Supergirl going to do in theaters? It’s really hard to say, especially if you are reading on-line takes. Since the tickets were made available for presale, the opening projections have moved all over the place with initial thoughts being between $40 - $50 million, then after a few really positive days it jumped to $60 - $75 and has bounced higher and lower to where now they’re saying $50 - $60. The film is set to open against a popular Toy Story 5 that will be on its second week and likely to stay at the top of the box office if it has an average second week drop. Bottom line the expert seem to be having a hard time locking in on this one. What about critics’ thoughts? The film was screened for reviewers and while originally embargoed until next week, the studio lifted the embargo for reactions a week early and now you can see what they thought. Not their full reviews, but their short initial reactions and if you look online most sites are claiming they’re “mixed”… unless you go into the comments and read them yourself. Even sites like Deadline are saying that yet of the reactions they list, the positives outnumber the negatives three or four to one. There is consistent praise for Milly Alcock, Jason Momoa, the action and the heart of the film. The villain is often called bland and the pacing gets called out, but to call it mixed is a stretch. The problem is that like everything in life, film coverage has become political. Sites use negative headlines to get attention and with DC Studios particularly you have a split fan base between what is happening now and those that prefer the previous films… which means that narrative gets created to further their own cause. The truth is, Supergirl will struggle a bit with a film like Toy Story 5 going against it, the character is not popular on her own and is a derivative of a bigger character and in a lot of ways, the previous incarnations, while entertaining, did nothing to make the character stand on her own. Regardless of how it does, there will be a narrative claiming success and another claiming failure. The only way to judge the truth is to see the movie yourself and decide… but that’s really how we judge all movies isn’t it?   

We’re just weeks away from the release of the first Supergirl movie in over 40 years and with ticket presales well underway, experts are making their projects on opening weekend. After the initial sales started happening, most sites were predicting anywhere from $45 to $55 million domestically, but after a few days of higher-than-expected numbers, some sites have adjusted up to as high as $60 to $77 million. This would put the Milly Alcock lead film right in line with the last few Marvel Studios films (except Deadpool and Wolverine). While there has been some debate, Deadline claims the film’s budget is $175 million and the breakeven point would be around $315 million. Other sites claim it’s as high as $425 million globally to call it a success. Only DC Studios and its co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran know what would make this film a success for them, but with trying to rebuild a franchise that had been pretty much run into the ground with underperforming films like The Flash, Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2, having a film that makes most of its money back and is a critical and audience success could be more valuable. Coming off the success of last year’s Superman film, DC is hoping that Craig Gillespie’s vision will continue to excite fans and keep building the new DCU to higher and higher heights. The success of this film and this universe may be driven more on word-of-mouth than box office numbers and the studio appear to be confident enough in the film that they have already had media screenings over two weeks before the film’s release. Yes, there is still an embargo so they can have those reviews come out closer to when the film is in theaters, but you can probably tell the way the project is being covered whether or not it was well received.   

A new rumor is shaking up what fans are expecting from The Batman Part 2. On the same day that writer/director Matt Reeves posted that filming had begun, insider Jeff Schnieder posted about how everything we knew about Sebastian Stan’s role in the project was wrong. Sites had been reporting that Stan would be playing Harvey Dent/Two-Face and while that had never been confirmed by Reeves or DC Studios, people took comments from Stan as confirmation such as how he would be playing, “multiple roles” as a hint at him playing the split-personality of the Batman villain. But the new report claims that Stan is not Dent but rather the serial killer Victor Zsasz and actor Bryan Tyree Henry would be playing Dent. Other insiders have some out since and claim to have collaborating information. Zsasz is an interesting character, a killer who notches a mark on his skin for every kill. He’s been portrayed in live action a couple of times including on Gotham and in the Birds of Prey movie but has never been the main focus of a story. This would match up to Reeves saying that the film would be exploring a story never done in film before. It doesn’t really match up to Stan’s comment about “multiple roles” or reports that he was already working with make-up to figure out the look. Reeves is not confined by what is in the comics so he could make major changes to characters, even to the point of making Zsasz a divergent personality of Harvey Dent that manifested prior to the acid attack causing Two-Face to emerge. It’s also possible that Schneider’s information is slightly off and instead of playing the serial killer, Stan could be playing Charles Victor Szasz who is also known as Victor Sage or The Question. How’s that for a twist? The bottom line here is that Schnieder is hearing this from an insider, and it has not been confirmed by any official source and I wouldn’t put it past film studios to start leaking false information to protect a movie that is just starting to film. I think this one stays in the, “take with a grain of salt” category and we wait to find out more. 

DC Studios and their co-head James Gunn have talked about a lot of potential series and films with some of them being mentioned and then sort of forgotten about. One of those seemed to be Paradise Lost, a Wonder Woman prequel series showing life on Themyscira before the birth of Diana. Though after its initial mention, the project hadn’t been talked about in a while and someone asked Gunn its fate. Gunn insisted the project was still in the works and now we are seeing some possible confirmation. Back in 2024, two names were attached as writers on the series Kira Snyder and Janet Lin and now, according to the WGA website, both are set to work on Paradise Lost for 2027-2028. Snyder is known for writing and producing on The Handmaid’s Tale and The 100 while Lin has credits on Bridgerton, Cursed, and Bones. There has been talks recently about trying to fast track a new Wonder Woman film and while there is no confirmation, rumors persist that the character may debut in Man of Tomorrow, so seeing Paradise Lost finally moving forward would make a lot of sense. 

Sony’s new Spider-Noir series has out done the MCU when it comes to fans. According to Forbes, the new Nicholas Cage lead series with him playing a 1930s variant of Spider-Man has garnered the highest audience score of all Marvel related television projects on Rotten Tomatoes. In the new series, Cage plays detective Ben Reilly who used to be the web-swinging hero called The Spider but hung up his mask after the death of his fiancée. Audience have really taken to the series that is available in both color and B&W, giving it a 93% (a point higher than when Forbes did their article) and even scored well with the critics at 92%. While the critic score is impressive, other Marvel projects have done better such as X-Men ’97 with a 99% score and Ms. Marvel with a 98% among critics. But on the audience side, 93% is tops beating out shows like Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil (Netflix) and WandaVision. While there has been no word on a second season, it would be hard for Amazon and Sony to ignore results like this.