Warning: this article contains spoilers for Donkey Kong Bananza.
Donkey Kong Bananza is now out in the wild, and one of the biggest burning questions ahead of launch centered on DK’s new best friend: Pauline. She’s a teenager in Bananza – 13 years old, to be precise – and this has led to rampant speculation that Bananza is a prequel to Super Mario Odyssey, which features an adult Pauline living in New Donk City.
We’ve played through the main story of Bananza and completed most of its major post-game beats, which means we now have the answers to that question and more. But be warned, we’re about to spoil the entirety of Donkey Kong Bananza's finale. So if you’re still working your way to the Planet Core, turn back now, and join us once you’ve seen Bananza through to the end yourself.
Bananza eventually reveals that 13-year-old Pauline does, in fact, call New Donk City home, just like her Odyssey counterpart, and the story’s grand finale takes place in the metropolis after it’s been completely overrun by the returning King K. Rool. When DK and Pauline break through to the surface, Pauline exclaims “This is MY city!”, confirming the fan theory that Bananza would end by returning Pauline home to Odyssey’s most iconic location. But is this city connection enough to confirm that Bananza is a prequel to Super Mario Odyssey?
First, some background on Pauline, who is central to this mystery. In Odyssey, Pauline (who’s a full-grown adult) is the Mayor of New Donk City, perhaps most memorable for her performance of Jump Up, Super Star! at the New Donk City Festival. Teenage Pauline and Mayor Pauline share a lot in common: Beyond their shared name, they are both singers and performers, with much of Teenage Pauline’s character arc revolving around gaining enough confidence to perform in front of her hometown. She also sings the Bananza Transformation songs, and Void Kong is obsessed with the power of her voice… at least until King K. Rool boots him out of the story entirely.
Based on Pauline’s age, most expected Bananza would be a prequel to Odyssey, and potentially an origin story for New Donk City itself. It would make sense that DK, acting as Pauline’s hero and best friend, would prompt the people to name the town after her savior once she was safely returned. But in Bananza, New Donk City is already established before DK and Pauline arrive, and during one of Teenage Pauline’s monologues at a Getaway, she references New Donk City’s nickname “The Big Banana”, a Kong-inspired parody of New York’s “The Big Apple.” It’s a nickname we’ve heard before, first uttered in Mario Odyssey by a New Donker.
Using all that as a starting point, it seems that there’s actually more evidence to suggest that Bananza is a sequel to Odyssey, and that Teenage Pauline is Mayor Pauline’s daughter, and the granddaughter of original Pauline (who we’ll call Arcade Pauline). Let us explain.
Teenage Pauline regularly references her grandmother throughout Bananza, including one time directly in the main story. After the pair run into Diddy and Dixie Kong in the Racing Layer, Pauline says to DK during the dive to the next layer, “I’m glad you got to see your friends again! But if I don’t get home, Grandma will worry.” Teenage Pauline’s Grandma is the only family member she directly mentions in Bananza, so Nintendo clearly wants us to think about who her grandma is.
The most likely answer becomes clear when we consider Donkey Kong’s grandfather: Cranky Kong. It is well-established that Cranky Kong is the original Arcade Donkey Kong that kidnapped Arcade Pauline way back in the day. Bananza reinforces this lore, as Cranky rants about his old rival who wore overalls, clearly referencing Mario… or Jumpman, as our favorite plumber was originally known. Cranky and Wrinkly Kong’s son is Donkey Kong Jr., who - despite what the Super Mario Bros. Movie may have tried to tell you - is not actually our current Donkey Kong. Junior starred in the Donkey Kong Jr. arcade game and made various other playable appearances before being essentially wiped from the face of the earth. The tie-wearing Donkey Kong we know and love – first introduced in Rare’s Donkey Kong Country – is actually Donkey Kong the Third, son of Donkey Kong Jr. and an unknown Kong mother.
So, we’ve established three generations of DK, which brings us back to Pauline. Arcade Pauline and Mayor Pauline don’t look like the same person. Arcade Pauline has blonde hair, while the Mayor is a brunette. You could argue this is just a character redesign, but a billboard in Odyssey’s New Donk City shows a blonde version of Pauline. Perhaps that’s just a fun easter egg, but perhaps it’s a clue to canon, and we have to use all the evidence we can. The New Donk City Festival – which sees Mario recreating gameplay from the Arcade Donkey Kong game – is held to “tell the story of our city's beginnings," according to Pauline. This implies that New Donk City was founded after the events of the arcade game, built on the foundation of the girders Jumpman climbed up towards Donkey Kong.
New Donk City is a sprawling metropolis, and it likely took the course of at least a human generation to build it up to such an enormous size. That, combined with the different appearances, leads us to believe that Arcade Pauline and Mayor Pauline are two different people. Perhaps, dare we say, they are mother and daughter?
I suppose it’s possible that Bananza could still be a prequel, that Mayor and Teenage Pauline are one and the same, and that Arcade Pauline is her grandmother with a missing generational link between them, but it feels cleaner to suggest that there are three generations of Pauline: Arcade, Mayor, and Teenage, just like there are three generations of DK: Arcade/Cranky, Jr., and the main DK of today.
We really hope our theory that Teenage Pauline is the granddaughter of Arcade Pauline is true, because it’s absolutely adorable that the grandchildren of two of the oldest Nintendo characters have now teamed up and become best friends in Bananza. It’s very cool to think that Nintendo has found a clever way to redefine one of its oldest character dynamics over 40 years later. Unfortunately, completing the bulk of Bananza’s postgame content – which are called Bananza Rehearsals and leads to Bananza’s true final platforming challenge – doesn’t really shed any more light on this. Pauline returns to the surface to perform a song for her city, but all we see of that is a new piece of art that appears after the credits have rolled.
So while Bananza’s position as a prequel may make a lot of sense, it ultimately can never be more than a theory. There’s just not enough concrete evidence from Nintendo. This theory does raise some concerning, perhaps even supernatural questions about Mario, though. If he has really interacted with multiple generations of Paulines and Donkey Kongs… does this mean Mario never ages, while those around him do? Or are there multiple generations of Mario? Is Nintendo implying that Mario and Jumpman are two different characters? It’s probably best not to think about it too much.
Finally, and perhaps most crucially, it’s important to remember that Nintendo historically doesn’t care about lore and continuity across its games. Even The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild – has lore inconsistencies that are ultra-hand-waved away. So it’s quite possible Nintendo doesn’t even have a truly established timeline between the original Donkey Kong, Odyssey, and Bananza, and just loves to keep fans guessing.
What do you think is going on in Donkey Kong Bananza? Is Teenage Pauline the daughter of Mayor Pauline and granddaughter of the original Pauline Cranky Kong kidnapped all those years ago, or are we being completely ri-Donk-ulous? Let us know in the comments!
Logan Plant is the host of Nintendo Voice Chat and IGN's Database Manager & Playlist Editor. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game franchise of all time, and he is patiently awaiting the day Nintendo announces a brand new F-Zero. You can find him online @LoganJPlant.
With The Fantastic Four: First Steps opening this month, based on the comic that launched Marvel as we know it, it’s a good time to tell Marvel’s unknown origin story.
Through its comics, movies, merchandising and more, Marvel is the biggest and most valuable intellectual property in history. And just like its superheroes, it started in an unlikely manner – with a young man named Martin Goodman.
Yet Goodman remains a relatively obscure figure in the annals of comics. Very little has been said, or is known, about him (so much so that researching this article took the better part of a year). But his story is a dramatic and exciting adventure worth telling.
It’s the story of Marvel.
From Humblest Beginnings
Martin Goodman was born Moses Goodman in Brooklyn, New York, on January 18, 1908, the same year as the launch of the first mass-produced car by Ford and the first flight by the Wright Brothers.
He was one of 13 children, born to Jewish immigrants fleeing the pogroms in Vilna, Lithuania. His father eked out a living as a tailor and his mother as sewing machine operator at a dress factory. “He grew up very poor,” Martin’s grandson, Jason Goodman, told IGN. “He had to rip the heels off of his sister’s shoes as hand-me-downs so that he had shoes.”
He found escape from his hardscrabble life in books and magazines, reading stories about brave men on fantastic adventures.
According to Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Martin’s father supplemented his income as a construction worker, but fell from a roof and broke his back. Unable to work, he became a peddler, and Martin had to drop out of school in tenth grade to help out.
With 15 mouths to feed, Martin did odd jobs and sold newspapers and gum by subway entrances. He found escape from his hardscrabble life in books and magazines, reading stories about brave men on fantastic adventures. He dreamed of one day writing them. Then, around 1928, right before the Great Depression hit, he decided to leave home.
“Martin traveled around like a hobo,” Myra Wilkinson (née Goodman), Martin’s niece, told IGN. “It was at least a year, maybe longer.”
Jerry Perles, Goodman’s lifelong friend and Marvel’s in-house counsel from 1939 to 1968, recounted in a 1987 interview how Goodman bummed across America on freight cars, cooking beans over fire.
“I think he just wanted to go see how everybody else was living,” Wilkinson said. “He’d listen to people’s stories. A lot of times he would sit and write them… I know that’s where he got a lot of information for stories he wanted to write.”
When he returned to New York, at around age 20, he found work as a file clerk or sales rep (or both) at Eastern Distributing Corporation, a national distributor of magazinesandpulps. Within a year he was promoted to circulation manager, where his supervisor, 29-year-old Louis Silberkleit, became his mentor and friend. (According to Goodman’s New York Times obituary, he also established himself as a cartoonist, creating comic strips for different publishers, though there’s nothing to support this.)
In October 1932, Eastern went bankrupt. By that point, Goodman and Silberkleit’s new companies were already a month old: Newsstand Publications, where Goodman was editor, and Mutual Magazine Distributors, where Goodman was co-owner.
But it was the peak of the Depression, and within two years Mutual went bankrupt too. With no distribution arm, Silberkleit decided to jump ship, selling his share in Newsstand to Goodman. Martin didn’t get to become a writer, but he was now a full-fledged publisher.
Silberkleit went on to found MLJ Magazines in 1939 together with partners Maurice Coyne and John Goldwater, which in 1946 changed its name to that of its most popular publication: Archie Comics.
Goodman eventually managed to turn Newsstand around, and in 1933 founded a new pulp imprint called Timely. In 1935 he followed with another, Red Circle Magazines, which published Marvel Science Stories. The pieces were beginning to fall into place.
In 1934 he also met and married Jean Davis. Likely because he was busy running his fledgling business, they didn’t go on their European honeymoon until 1937. They planned to return in style aboard the posh zeppelin Hindenburg, but couldn’t find seating together so decided to catch a plane instead. On May 6, as the Hindenburg was about to touch down in New Jersey, it burst into flame, becoming one of the most famous aviation disasters in history.
By 1938, Goodman was a successful publisher of at least 27 magazines, ranging from pulpfiction to sports. He bought his parents a house in a nice area of Brooklyn and hired his brothers and even uncle-in-law for various roles in the company. It might seem like nepotism today, but between the Depression and rampant antisemitism, it was customary then, even necessary.
Goodman wasn’t only business savvy, but, according to Blake Bell and Michael Vassallo’s The Secret History of Marvel Comics, was a hands-on publisher with a keener understanding of the importance of cover art and logos than arguably anyone else in the business. “I remember hearing and seeing that,” Wilkinson confirmed. “He knew what he liked.”
Goodman published under a variety of company names, which helped him both appear bigger and mitigate legal and financial risk. It was common practice then, though over the course of his career he purportedly created more than 120 imprints and shell companies.
Bell and Vassallo, as well as some other accounts, present this leapfrogging between ventures as dishonest, a way to stay a step ahead of creditors and the law. And that may well have been the case. But Goodman was also a restless entrepreneur, often buzzing with more ideas than patience, and the anxiety of his impoverished childhood never left him.
Wilkinson remembers discussing it with her father David, Martin’s younger brother. “That’s just normal business,” she said. “He wasn’t doing that to hurt anybody. He wasn’t trying to do something that was illegal. That wasn’t Martin.”
Still, Goodman did engage in some unsavory practices, like republishing material from one magazine in another with a changed title and character names, without notifying or compensating the writers. Without notifying buyers it was also illegal, and by 1942 the Federal Trade Commission sanctioned him. Not that he let it stop him.
The Punch That Launched Marvel
Goodman was also quick to catch on to trends. Superman, the first superhero, debuted in a comic magazine, Action Comics #1, in June 1938, and was a smash hit. Batman followed in May 1939’s Detective Comics #27, to similar success. Within three months Goodman was a comic book publisher, introducing the Human Touch and Namor the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Comics #1.
He didn’t produce the comic himself. He dipped his toe in the water by subcontracting a studio “packager” called Funnies, Inc. to provide a finished product, which he then published under his Timely imprint. (The industry being in its infancy, Funnies’ owner, Lloyd Jacquet, had also been the editor of New Fun Comics #1, DC’s first comic.)
Goodman’s own creative contribution was repurposing two of his pulp heroes, Ka-Zar (a Tarzan knockoff) and the Masked Raider (a Lone Ranger knockoff), technically making them the first Marvel characters.
He printed 80,000 copies, which quickly sold out. A second printing sold 800,000. So he decided to cut out the middleman and produce comics in-house. Timely Comics was born.
“Martin moved forward big. He always thought big. He was not a small-minded man. He was a gambler. He was a crapshooter,” Perles remembered.
He created a comics department in his offices at the McGraw-Hill Building off Times Square, and hired one of Funny’s freelancers, a tall, genteel 26-year-old named Joe Simon, as the editor and writer. On Simon’s recommendation, his second hire was a squat, gruff 22-year-old named Jack Kirby as art director and artist.
Their parents were also Jewish immigrants and tailors, and the three got along. “He was a very sweet man,” Simon described in a 1990 interview. “He was about 35 at that point. His hair was snow white.”
According to Kirby’s biographer and former assistant Mark Evanier, Goodman was willing to pay Simon handsomely, including profit share on books he created, but balked at paying Kirby the salary he wanted. It’s a pattern that repeats itself throughout Goodman’s career, of appreciating writers but treating artists as hired hands, which would later shape the creative conflicts at Marvel.
The rest of Timely was staffed with relatives. His younger brother Artie ran the coloring department. Brothers Dave and Abe were involved in various capacities. His wife Jean was a writer and editor, and even credited as co-owner in 1952. There were more, but it was a haphazard field and records weren’t always kept properly, so it’s unclear who exactly did what and when. What’s clear is that Martin was loyal to his family, and that the Marvel juggernaut of today started out as a small family business.
Goodman also hired Simon and Kirby an office assistant, a 17-year-old named Stanley Lieber. Lieber has usually been referred to as his cousin, but in truth he was Jean’s cousin (their mothers were sisters) and, coincidentally, also a nephew; his and Jean’s uncle Robbie was married to Martin’s sister Sylvia.
He hired a squat, gruff 22-year-old named Jack Kirby. He also hired Simon and Kirby an office assistant, a 17-year-old named Stanley Lieber. (In time, Lieber would come to use a pen name: Stan Lee.)
A year into Timely’s existence, Simon and Kirby came up with Captain America. Recognizing the character’s potential, Goodman decided to give him his own title instead of an anthology feature—the third superhero to ever get one, after Superman and Batman, and the first to debut in one.
He also agreed to pay them an unorthodox royalty fee. According to Joe Simon, “Goodman offered 25 percent of the profits, 15 percent for me, 10 percent for the artists. We shook hands on the deal. Artists are notoriously poor businessmen.”
Captain America Comics #1 was an instant hit, selling about a million copies. The sensational cover showed Captain America punching Hitler, dated March 1941 but published December 20, 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and when almost 95% of Americans opposed getting involved in WWII.
Much has been said about Simon and Kirby’s bravery in lampooning Hitler so brazenly, and rightfully so. The German American Bund mailed and called in death threats, yet they continued.
But as the publisher, it was also Goodman’s decision. It was his name on the Timely shingle, his investment, and he made himself a target just the same. He’d also done it before, in the pulp Dynamic Science Stories #2 (February 1939), and soon after, in Sub-Mariner Comics #1 (April 1941).
There was more trouble. His old partner, Louis Silberkleit, sued him over Cap’s similarity to his own character (and the first patriotic-themed superhero), the Shield. The case was either dropped or dismissed, but Goodman had Simon and Kirby change Cap’s shield to a round disc to help differentiate them.
Lieber mostly ran errands, but was given the occasional writing assignment. His first was a two-page prose story in Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941) in which he had Cap throw his mighty shield for the first time. Like Goodman, he had aspirations of becoming a writer, and he wanted to save his real name for “the great American novel” he would one day write. So he used a pen name: Stan Lee.
Ten issues in, Simon and Kirby found out that Goodman was stiffing them, putting all of Timely’s overhead against the Captain America profits to minimize their royalties. Disgruntled, they started doing work for DC in secret. When Goodman found out in late 1941, indignant, he fired them. (Kirby believed it was Lee who told him, though Simon doubted it. But it didn’t matter. Their style, in popular titles like the Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion, was unmistakable.)
With the pair gone, Goodman was left with no staff. But his instincts had always served him well, and he had little choice anyway, so he made Lee, at the age of 19, the temporary editor. He let him stay in the role for 31 years.
Goodman never struck gold again after Captain America, but he did well with Namor and the Human Torch as well as some others, and non-superhero titles like Terry-Toons Comics. Most of it was imitative and not very good, but that was okay. “Fans are not interested in quality,” he told Literary Digest in a rare interview.
Vince Fago, a Fleischer animator whom Lee hired as a freelancer, explained that “a lot of guys thought comics were going to die after the war, so doing things like recycling stories didn’t seem to matter.”
When all is said and done, Goodman was a schlockmeister. He saw comics not as an art or literary form but as a cheap, disposable product. He was selling junk food. And to make a profit, he had to sell large quantities fast, not invest in long-term quality. Even the name he chose—Timely—implied something current, in vogue, a fad.
But he was still a successful businessman, and it was important to him to be taken seriously. The atmosphere around the office was formal, and he made even his brothers call him “Mr. Goodman.”
When the US joined the war, he got himself a cushy assignment as a nighttime air warden patrolling Long Island, where he lived, against air raids, U-boats and saboteurs. During the day he continued growing his publishing empire. Around August of 1942 he moved his operations to the plush Empire State Building, where Fago filled Lee’s shoes as editor-in-chief while Lee was in the service. He remembered the office being small. “I don’t think he expected to expand too much,” Fago said.
But expand Goodman did. Timely was now selling 250,000 to 500,000 copies per issue, putting out five books a week or more. “You’d see the numbers come back and could tell that Goodman was a millionaire,” Fago said.
Yet the specter of his childhood never left him. He spent every afternoon pouring over sales charts. “Goodman knew the hard times, and though things were going great, he banked on things changing later.” Fago said. “And he was right.”
When Atlas Shrugged
After the war the superhero genre fell out of favor, though comic books were selling better than ever. By 1952 Goodman had given up on superheroes, but he’d occasionally test the waters with Cap, Namor or Torch here and there.
Instead, he followed popular trends like Western, jungle adventures, horror, teen romance, science fiction and othercomics.
Meanwhile, his other businesses flourished. He became a big player in the down-market publishing industry, producing everything from men’sadventuremagazines to celebritygossip magazines to crossword digests to paperback books, all under different imprints of his Magazine Management Corporation, formed around 1947.
“He was pretty much a genius when it came to newsstand publishing,” Stan Lee later said. “He had a feeling for what the average reader looked for.”
Goodman also had an eye for talent, at least with writers. He gave several their first break, including Bruce Jay Friedman, Mickey Spillane and Patricia Highsmith. In 1959 he hired a young postal worker named Mario Puzo to write for his crime pulps, who a decade later serialized his new novel in Goodman’s Male magazine. It was called The Godfather. (A few years after that, Puzo also wrote the script for Superman: The Movie.)
In 1951, Goodman made another bold move, forming his own newsstand distribution company, again cutting out the middleman. He called it Atlas—after the Greek titan who bears the weight of the world on his shoulders—and added its globe logo (inconsistently) to the covers of his magazines, books and comics. It was never the official name of his comic division, but as time went by readers started referring to it as Atlas Comics, and the name stuck.
Being his own distributor allowed Goodman to foster relationships with wholesalers, get real-time feedback on what was selling, and adjust quickly. He was a trend-chaser, but he knew when to come in: right after something had proven itself and before it became outmoded. He’d commission his own version, often a cheap knockoff, and if it sold well, flooded the market with a bunch more until the fad sputtered out. Then on to the next thing.
For better or worse, he understood the value of monopolizing shelf space before other publishers did. For the average impulse-buying kid at the newsstand, there was a higher chance of picking up one of his comics than anyone else’s.
But by mid-decade, America was in the grip of anti-comics hysteria, and the rise of television threatened the industry’s future. Goodman saw the writing on the wall (or thought he did), and in 1956 sold his distribution company, soon retiring the Atlas logo, and signed with one of the two biggest distributors in the US, American News Company.
This gambit didn’t pay off like the others. The following year ANC shut down suddenly, leaving him stranded. With little choice, he signed with the other big distributor, Independent News.
The problem was that Independent was owned by Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, who were also magazine publishers and owned DC Comics. Seizing the opportunity, they only agreed to distribute a limited number of his magazines, and only eight comics a month (though the clever Lee rotated 16 bimonthly titles instead).
According to Evanier, Liebowitz regarded Goodman as a loose cannon who was harming the marketplace by flooding it, and sought to rein him in.
By 1959, Goodman went from publishing as many as 80 comics a month to eight. By 1961, he fired his entire comics staff—or rather, he had Lee do it—leaving only Lee as a “human pilot light” to oversee freelance artists from a tiny cubicle. Lee has told this story often, but what’s been left out is that Goodman had to fire many of his own family members.
With crisis came opportunity. Goodman had Lee write almost everything himself and work closely with a handful of freelance artists, which was all he could afford. One was a newbie named Steve Ditko.
“I’d hear them talk about it,” Wilkinson said. “I just remember my dad saying, ‘He had to do what he had to do.’”
Things were bad, but Goodman never said die. He’d turned things around before. (Some Marvel histories have claimed that he considered shutting down the comics division, but there’s no real evidence of this.)
And with crisis came opportunity. Goodman had Lee write almost everything himself and work closely with a handful of freelance artists, which was all he could afford. One was a newbie named Steve Ditko. Another was Jack Kirby, who was willing to swallow his pride and come back to work for Goodman because he had a family to support.
These conditions are ironically what allowed a small group of immensely talented creatives to maintain control over their output, which would soon result in a cohesive, dynamic new universe....
The Marvel Age
Atlas Comics, as it was still known, was crammed in Magazine Management’s offices next to the pulps. “Fabulous” Flo Steinberg, Lee’s multi-talented assistant, recounted: “Mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and he would say, ‘Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.’”
But they made the best of it, churning out comics about cowboys and giant monsters. Then, in 1961, everything changed.
DC was experiencing some success with superheroes again. As Lee’s story famously goes, Goodman, who was an avid golfer, met Liebowitz for a game, where Liebowitz bragged about the sales of his new comic, Justice League of America.
When Goodman returned to the office, he charged Lee with creating their own superhero team. And thus, the Fantastic Four were born. The story has been widely recounted in articles and books, but it’s almost certainly apocryphal. Liebowitz later insisted he never played golf with Goodman, nor discussed his sales.
More likely, Goodman, who always had his ear to the ground, got wind and followed suit, as he always did. Whatever the case, it was Goodman’s idea to create a new team of superheroes, which kickstarted the Marvel Revolution.
What he didn’t know was that Lee was a day or two away from quitting. As Lee often said (and often quipped, “I’ve told this so many times that for all I know it might even be true”), he was bored with creating comics that were juvenile and banal, but Goodman thought they should be made for young children.
When he asked Lee to try superheroes again, it was Lee’s wife, Joan, who suggested that, since he had nothing to lose, he might as well write them the way he’d always wanted to. So he reached out to Kirby, whom he considered “the most creative artist of all,” and in November 1961 they introduced the Fantastic Four. In 1962 came the Hulk, Thor and Ant-Man. Then in 1963 Iron Man, the Avengers and the X-Men followed. In 1966, Silver Surfer and Black Panther. And countless other characters and concepts.
Lee also collaborated with Ditko to create Spider-Man in 1962 and Doctor Strange in 1963, as well as Namor creator Bill Everett to create Daredevil in 1964.
There were other creators involved, notably Don Heck and Larry Lieber (Lee’s younger brother and another Goodman cousin-in-law), and together their inspired, manic creativity changed comics forever.
The company was now known as Marvel Comics, and more than just new characters, it created a whole new approach to superheroes. Stories were more realistic, featuring “heroes with feet of clay” who didn’t always manage to stay noble and graceful.
Equally innovative, they all lived in the same world, where they’d meet, fight, team up and even date. When Superman and Batman crossed paths, it was in a special event or team book, not their regular comics. With Marvel, what happened in one character’s series had repercussions in another’s. It mattered.
As the publisher, Goodman was, in today’s parlance, an industry disruptor. As much of a safe-bet copycat as he was, he was also willing to take risks and let Lee try out new ideas, like superheroes that were a dysfunctional family, persecuted minorities, a scary monster and a mopey teen (though he resisted that one at first).
He was also more involved in editorial decisions than given credit for. “He wanted something done a certain way, and if they strayed away from the story plot or something didn’t look quite right, he’d give his input, whether it was nice or not,” Wilkinson said.
“Anything I put into the books and he didn’t like, he’d let me know,” Fago confirmed. But he “never interfered with what Stan was doing. He had faith in Stan.”
Goodman 'never interfered with what Stan was doing. He had faith in Stan.'
Comic creator JL Mast has been working on a graphic novel series about the history of Marvel for the past eight years, the first volume of which is due out next year. “His influence on Marvel Comics is often underestimated or deliberately downplayed,” he told IGN. But “Goodman was a hands-on publisher. Most decisions ran through him. He didn’t usually shape characters or stories directly, but he dictated how many pages each story could be, which characters might be paired in one book to save on costs,” and “he knew all of the Marvel heroes, their specificities, and how to market them.”
Lee, a human exclamation point, became the public face of Marvel, and by mostaccounts was a resourceful editor and natural leader. But, Jason Goodman adds, “I occasionally wish that he would have given more credit to my grandfather. Somebody had to be there to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and pay the bills. If he had been on the Hindenburg, would there be any of the characters that Stan Lee is credited with?”
The new Marvel was a huge success. In 1963, it reportedly sold 22.5 million comics. In 1965, it was 45.5 million—all while limited by Independent News.
According to Howe, Puzo now changed his tune. “For Stan Lee,” he signed a copy of his book, “whose imagination I cannot hope to equal.”
Still, Marvel constituted at most a third of Magazine Management’s revenue, according to Lieber. The real money was in the men’s magazines and, as Goodman soon learned, licensing.
Grantray-Lawrence Animation, who mostly made subcontracted work for Hanna-Barbera like Top Cat and the Jetsons, paid Goodman a king’s ransom for the rights to produce two cartoon series, The Marvel Super Heroes in 1966 and Spider-Man in 1967.
Just like Goodman did in his early pulp days, the shows, especially the former, reused stories and art straight from the comics, without giving Kirby, Ditko and the others credit or pay.
Legally, Goodman didn’t owe them anything. It was all work-for-hire, which he already paid for and owned. But what he owed them ethically was a different question, and according to Evanier, they were angry. (According to Howe, Goodman did promise Kirby a share of earnings from his creations but kept stalling.)
Ditko and Kirby famously quit soon after. Bell and Vassallo argue that it was primarily over Goodman’s stinginess, though by their own accounts it was as much about not receiving proper credit by Lee. (According to former Spider-Man editor Jim Salicrup, while Spider-Man remained a sore spot, Lee and Ditko eventually buried the hatchet.)
The Secret History of Marvel is unequivocal in its portrayal of Goodman, claiming that he “relished lording over the people who worked for him” and “was proud of the miserly wages he paid them.” And indeed, more than one account has described him as bullish and hot-tempered, prone to outbursts when things didn’t meet his expectations.
But he wasn’t a Dickensian villain, even if some employees may have felt that way. He operated by a logic of his own, which didn’t always make sense to others. He paid low salaries, but gave generous bonuses. He stiffed freelancers out of royalties, but covered medical and mortgage bills. He pinched pennies at the business, but donated liberally to charities.
“I’ve heard all those descriptors, sometimes from the same person,” Mast said. “He could be cold and calculating with one freelancer, then crack a joke and hand out a bonus to another. I think he liked to keep people off-balance.”
Fago also remembered: “He seemed like a kind man to me at times. But then he’d say, ‘After the war, I’ll get those sons of bitches!’” by which he meant “his staff and freelancers.”
“A lot of that is true,” Wilkinson said. She remembers visiting cousin Stan at the Marvel bullpen as a child and hiding from uncle Martin under Ditko’s desk, where he was working on The Amazing Spider-Man #1.
“He was an unusual man. Sometimes he’d be the warmest thing on the planet. Other times….” Wilkinson describes him as someone who kept a collected veneer, but underneath was turbulent. “They all were. My uncles were like that… Stan was pretty much the same way.”
Goodman was a first-generation American who grew up in poverty and scraped his way to success. His approach to business was unsentimental, and more than once criminal. But he was also smart, creative and loyal to family. He was complex, like all good Marvel characters.
Changing Fortunes
In early 1968, Goodman was contacted by Martin Ackerman, owner of Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation (renamed Cadence Industries in 1970), a small conglomerate of photo labs, drugstores, plastic manufacturers and other holdings. Ackerman was expanding into publishing, and had recently bought several national magazines, including the esteemed Saturday Evening Post. Marvel was next in his sights.
He made Goodman a princely offer: a reported $9 million (+$83 million today), which Goodman, as the sole owner, would pocket.
The deal was signed by June. It included all of Goodman’s companies, subsidiaries and imprints, listing 84. It also included the seven lawsuits pending against him, one by Joe Simon for the rights to Captain America.
Martin Goodman was complex... like all good Marvel characters.
Kirby, who according to Evanier was irate that he didn’t see a cent from the sale of the house he helped build, said that Goodman sold Marvel for “less than the value of Ant-Man alone.”
“I can't speak to what it was actually worth,” Jason said, but “it was explained to me by my father that, being from very humble beginnings, grandpa finally had a big chunk of money and could take… pride in that.”
Goodman was still only 60 years old, and as part of the deal stayed on as publisher until 1972. Then, in 1969, Perfect Film bought magazine distributor Curtis Circulation Company, which allowed him to switch from Independent News and publish as many comics as he liked. Which is exactly what he did.
Marvel expanded throughout the 1970s, and by the second half of 1972 had reportedly overtaken DC as industry leader, a position it’s largely retained since. (According to Jim Shooter, Marvel’s editor-in-chief from 1978 to 1987, by 1984 Marvel’s market share was 70% to DC’s 18%, and DC almost licensed its publishing rights to Marvel.)
Goodman, meanwhile, continued taking risks, often trusting Lee’s judgement. He agreed to publish Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (May–July 1971), for example, despite the Comics Code Authority’s objection and without their seal of approval—a big deal then—to promote an anti-drug message.
He also continued running Marvel in his idiosyncratic style, staffing it with family but keeping his distance. “When I graduated from college they gave me a job,” Wilkinson, who joined in 1972, remembers. “I was in the main bullpen with the magazine people… doing the paste-ups, the layout and all of that stuff.”
She reported mostly to Martin’s son, Charles “Chip” Goodman, but “I don’t ever remember seeing either one of them come through that office the whole time.” What she does remember is the security camera behind her workstation. “I always thought [that] was kind of weird,” she said.
In 1972 Goodman was ready to retire, and planned to leave Chip, whom he’d been preparing to succeed him, as the new publisher. But Lee wasn’t having it.
“Stan felt unappreciated,” Mast said. He was well-paid, but at the end of the day didn’t own his co-creations any more than Kirby did, nor did he get a cut of the company’s sale. After 31 years as the editor, he felt he’d earned the promotion.
According to Shooter, he was ready to quit. “He went to DC and actually negotiated a deal with DC. He was going to revolutionize the whole place… he already started working on it.”
Purportedly, Cadence had promised to make Chip the publisher after Martin, but never put it in writing. And so, afraid of losing Lee, whom they saw as the face of Marvel, they made him the new publisher and president instead. Chip took over the men’s magazines, but Goodman and Lee’s relationship was chilly thereafter, according to Mast. “They got along occasionally. Other times, if they fought in the office, everybody kind of ran and hid behind their desk,” Wilkinson said.
Around November 1972, Marvel moved to bigger, plushier offices at 575 Madison Avenue, a block-long ziggurat on a row of posh ad agencies. Wilkinson believes it was at least in part because of Goodman and Lee’s growing clashes. “It was getting kind of claustrophobic,” she explained.
Then Al Landau entered the drama. Described by Howe as “short, abrupt, and aggressive,” he was the owner of Transworld Features, a news syndicate and photo agency Goodman used for his magazines, and coincidently Chip’s summer home neighbor. He asked to be introduced to Sheldon Feinberg, president of Cadence.
When Lee stepped down as Marvel’s president, a job he hated, in 1973 (but remained publisher, soon of all of Magazine Management), and the Goodmans expected Chip to take his place, Feinberg informed them that he’d given the job to Landau.
They were furious. According to Howe, Landau was unmoved. His response to Chip was, “Do you want to be fired or do you want to quit?”
Vengeance, Inc.
Hurt, betrayed, his family legacy taken from him, Goodman wanted revenge. “He wanted to take Marvel down,” Marvel VP of Publishing & Executive Editor Tom Brevoort said. “He also wanted to show that it was really his business acumen that had been responsible for the success of Marvel.”
In June 1974, he and Chip launched Seaboard Publishing and its imprint, Atlas Comics. They set up shop literally around the corner from Marvel’s offices. Today their company is generally referred to as Atlas/Seaboard, to distinguish it from the 1950s Atlas, but people in the industry then called it by a different name: “Vengeance, Inc.”
They came out swinging, publishing 23 comic book series and a variety of monster, sci-fi, and other magazines. They hired Lieber away from Marvel, who was somewhat disgruntled that his brother wasn’t giving him more work, and made him co-editor with Jeff Rovin, whom they hired from Warren Publishing. (But for reasons unknown, they put Lieber in charge of the black & white comic magazines and Rovin in charge of the color comics, when their experience was almost exclusively the opposite.)
If Marvel was known as “The House of Ideas,” Atlas declared itself “The NEW House of Ideas.” Ironic, seeing as their characters were, true to Goodman form, derivative. There was Tiger-Man (Spider-Man), Destructor (reverse Spider-Man), Brute (Hulk), Devilina (Vampirella), Wulf the Barbarian (Conan) and others, though, in fairness, also originals like Scorpion.
Atlas’s covers were also obviousswipes, possibly not just to ape what was selling but to give Marvel the finger. Lieber called it “a very tacky business.” Landau contemplated suing.
He enticed them with higher rates than Marvel or DC (reportedly in some cases by 50%), ownership stake in their creations, and returned original artwork. His new company was, again, a disruptor.
'He wanted to take Marvel down and show that it was really his business acumen that had been responsible for the success of Marvel.'
Lee wrote a panicked letter to Marvel’s freelancers, comparing Goodman—careful not to name him—to Hitler, as a dictator who captivated people by making extravagant promises. According to comics historian Alex Grand, Goodman and Lee never spoke again.
Despite all the talent involved, Atlas proved to be less than the sum of its parts. Some of the comics were good, or at least experimental, but mostly they were insipid schlock.
Rovin later explained: “Anger is a lousy reason to start a publishing company; not only are bad calls made in an effort to be vindictive or to recapture lost glories, but the angry party tends to lose interest when the anger fades and the bills continue to mount.”
Without Magazine Management’s muscle, Atlas struggled to make sales and, according to Howe, distribution troubles prevented it from reaching many regions. Evanier also believes that DC and Marvel closed ranks, increasing their number of titles to crowd Atlas off the newsstands.
In late 1975, just over a year in, Atlas closed. It had published a total of 67 issues, with the longest series reaching #4.
The failed venture lost Goodman a fortune, but he did succeed in revolutionizing the industry yet again. It led other publishers to start returning original art, raise rates and offer better deals to creators.
Goodman’s long and tumultuous career ended on a loss. But in the final tally, he scored many more wins.
As for Chip, Jason said that his father “never, ever, ever expressed bitterness… he was a very successful man in his own right… he made peace with it.”
Marvel After Martin
Weeks after shutting down Atlas, Goodman retired to Florida.
“I think he enjoyed his retirement,” Wilkinson said. “He played a lot of golf, and that made him happy.”
Jason remembers visiting him often, and their games of Scrabble. “Grandpa was always very proud of being as good at Scrabble as he was, and of being a publisher, because he didn’t have formal education. So to be a man of letters was significant for him.”
At Marvel, meanwhile, Landau was fired before 1975 was out, when Cadence found out he was artificially inflating sales figures. According to Shooter, he was also caught embezzling.
Landau’s successor, Jim Galton, sold Magazine Management’s Playboy-like publications Stag and Male back to Chip and folded the rest, effectively dissolving Goodman’s original company.
Chip, who also owned the similar Swank, transitioned the magazines from erotica to pornography, eventually selling them in the 1990s. “Chip had gotten into those 976 [phone sex] numbers,” Wilkinson remembered. “Made them a lot of money.” But, she added, “he was always a nice guy.”
Marvel continued to struggle through much of the decade, almost going bankrupt. After 30 years under Goodman, between 1986 and 1997 it changed corporate hands three times. It went public in 1991 and bankrupt in 1996, became solvent in 2004, and evolved into a movie studio in 2005.
Goodman died on June 6, 1992, at the age of 84, at his home in Palm Beach. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s since around 1980, Jason said. A hard fate for a proud man, whom Lee described as “sharp as a tack.”
All Marvel did to honor him was a single paragraph notice in Marvel Age. “Nobody talks about Martin Goodman,” Irwin Linker, an art director at Magazine Management, is quoted in Howe’s book. “It’s like he never lived, and he’s the guy who started the whole thing. It’s like he never existed.”
'When I tell people that my grandfather founded Marvel Comics, they say, 'Stan Lee is your grandfather?''
“When I tell people that my grandfather founded Marvel Comics,” Jason said, “they say, ‘Stan Lee is your grandfather?’”
Legacy
In August 2009, the Walt Disney Company bought Marvel for $4.2 billion. Marvel is now part of Disney’s stock, but is worth over $50 billion, according to Forbes. It’s something Goodman couldn’t possibly have imagined when he founded the company in 1939 to cash in on the comic book fad.
Stan Lee, though always a hired employee, never a stakeholder, became synonymous with Marvel, and arguably the most famous man in comics. Especially with his MCU cameos, he grew to become a global pop culture icon. He’s been the subject of countless articles, books, and documentaries.
Martin Goodman, meanwhile, remains largely obscure. What few depictions of him exist have tended to be negative, as creators and fans tend to side with artists over business owners.
But whether he was a visionary entrepreneur or a ruthless opportunist, a creative marketeer or a shameless exploiter, passionate or temperamental—or any combination of the above—he was a key figure in American publishing of the 20th century.
And just like without Lee or without Kirby, without Goodman there would be no Marvel today.
The team behind the best PlayStation 4 emulator, shadPS4, has released a new version of it. And, for the first time, this PS4 emulator can launch and run The Order: 1886. Spoiler alert: the game remains unplayable. Nevertheless, this is a huge step towards emulating it. Below, you can watch two videos that show 30 … Continue reading PS4 emulator shadPS4 can run The Order: 1886 for the first time→
A jump starter is an essential part of car's emergency kit and you don't need to pay a premium for a cordless model that gets the job done reliably. Amazon is currently offering Prime members the Bookoo 12V 2,000A Cordless Car Jump Starter for just $22.05 after you apply coupon code "OEGAZA8E". This brand of jump starter (including all of its color variations) has over 3,800 reviews on Amazon with an average 4.6-star rating.
Bookoo 12V 2,000A Car Jump Starter for $22.05
The compact Bookoo 12V cordless car jump starter can supply up to 2,000A of peak power and is capable of jump starting 8L gas or 6.5L diesel engines. The battery boasts a 20,000mAh capacity, which is much bigger than most other jump starters at this price point. The battery uses lithium (NMC) cells and will retain most of its charge even after 24 months of non-use. The jump starter also doubles as a portable power bank with 18W of Power Delivery over USB Type-C, enough to charge up your smartphone or Nintendo Switch in a pinch.
Additional features include two extra USB Type-A charging ports (one 5V/2.4A and one 5V/3A with QuickCharge 3.0), a DC output and flashlight with strobe and SOS modes. Jumper cables, wall charger, USB Type-C to USB Type-A cable, and cigarette lighter adapter are all included.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
The third entry in the animated Spider-Verse franchise will now open in theaters on June 25, 2027 instead of the previously announced June 4, 2027.
Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson are directing Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse from a screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller & David Callaham. The film is produced by Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Amy Pascal, Avi Arad and Jinko Gotoh. Executive producers are Aditya Sood and Christina Steinberg.
The filmmakers said at CinemaCon in April that their already delayed film needed time to make sure they got it just right.
Lord said at CinemaCon that Beyond the Spider-Verse picks up the second where they left off in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales’ friends may or may not be enough to save everyone.
indie.io is a video game publishing platform that works with lots of different developers and publishes games in a variety of genres. They’ve published dozens of games, several of which are discounted on Nintendo Switch right now as part of a sale that will run through July 30.
As with indie.io’s library as a whole, the sale includes a wide range of genres. There’s cozy adventures, tactical RPGs, creature collectors, management sims, and more. You can check out the full sale here, but we thought we’d highlight six games that showcase the diversity of titles that are available. Let’s get started:
The cozy farming sim genre has been thriving in recent years, and Echoes of the Plum Grove adds to the formula by letting you experience multiple generations. Initially, you wash up on an island shore and start with a modest plot of land. Over time, you can expand your homestead, start a family, and grow that family. You can befriend or insult your neighbors, form an alliance with a local witch coven, or poison people who cross you. As the generations pass, these decisions will shape your descendents’ experiences and ultimately define your legacy. The game world is fully hand drawn, with 2D characters in 3D environments that heighten the cozy feel. And while forming relationships through the generations is the central core of the game, there are also mysteries across the island for you to uncover.
Dark Deity is a strategy RPG that was clearly inspired by classics of the genre. You build up an army, lead your soldiers in turn-based combat, and choose what classes to promote them into as they grow stronger. There are 30 playable characters, and if one of them falls in battle, they’ll suffer grave wounds that drop their stats. So you need to be careful and strategize as you lead your squad from rookies to heroes. The main story is told across 28 chapters that take more than 20 hours to complete, and the “Suns Out, Swords Out” DLC is also available for 20% off as part of the current sale. It adds seven additional levels, each telling a story from before or after the events of the base game.
Another modern game that takes inspiration from and builds upon the classics of the genre, Coromon is a monster tamer with more than 100 monsters to catch and train. Each monster is defined by its element, traits, and skills. The battle system is stamina-based and every skill costs SP, so you need to be strategic about when you use your most powerful skills. Meanwhile, traits are inherent to a monster and can trigger when certain conditions are met. They don’t sap stamina when they trigger and differ between monsters of the same species, so they can be an important factor of building your perfect team. The story of Coromon takes you across six biomes as you try to stop a mysterious threat, and there are more reveals and plot twists than you might expect in a typical monster tamer.
Game titles don’t get much more clear than this one. In Cat Cafe Manager, you … manage a cat cafe. You inherit an old, rundown cafe in the town of Caterwaul Way, and you’ll need to rebuild and renovate it to give the local stray cats a proper home. You can decorate and expand the space to fit your personal tastes, as well as hire new employees and refine their skills. You can make plenty of feline friends, but you’ll build relationships with humans too. It is a cafe, after all. The villagers will want to stop by and take a load off after a long day, and you can travel across the town to chat with the locals and discover new recipes and other opportunities for your cafe. Who knows, you might even uncover a mystery or two in need of solving.
And now, for something completely different. 9 Years of Shadows is a side-scrolling Metroidvania where color has been drained from the world for almost a decade (hence the name). You play as Europa, a warrior bent on fighting her way to the mechanical giant Talos and stopping the corruption seeping out of it before everything is swallowed in darkness. You’ll befriend a cute floating bear called Apino who has the ability to bring back color, and together you’ll wield elemental armors, restore vibrant hues, and try to free the world from the colorless curse that plagues it. And as you do, enjoy a soundtrack from composers Michiru Yamane and Norihiko Hibino, known for their work on Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid, respectively.
Our list ends by circling back around to a cozy, relaxing game. Mail Time is a cottagecore adventure set in a whimsical forest where you’re a courier who uses light platforming to deliver letters. You can customize the look of your character and run, jump, and glide your way across the forest to make deliveries to the critters who live there. Relaxation is the focus of the game, with gameplay that doesn’t saddle you with anything stressful. There’s no time limits, pressure, danger, or fall damage. You can just chill, make your deliveries, upgrade your gliding, and do it again. Simplicity can be nice sometimes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a seminal figure in contemporary mystery fiction; he's gone on to inspire countless other characters like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Benoit Blanc from Knives Out, and even Batman in some iterations. The iconic detective has also countless adaptations in various other media, like Sherlock Holmes (2009) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as the titular investigator, and most notably BBC's Sherlock, a modern-day take on the classic stories headed by Benedict Cumberbatch.
What these adaptations all have in common is their faithful-enough recreations of the source material, which was published from 1887 to 1927 in various lengths and forms. Many of these books are collections of dozens of short stories, totalling over 50 individual works. It can be a bit overwhelming knowing how and where to start since the publication dates of the narrative chronology are all over the place, so we've done the research for you.
Our list below only consists of stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, nothing from authors after him is included.
How Many Sherlock Holmes Books are there?
Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon is made up of 56 short story collections divided up into multiple books and four full-length novels. After his passing, his son Adrian Conan Doyle took over and continued the Sherlock Holmes legacy with 12 more short stories, which some fans don't consider when reading through. Other authors have been approved to write their own Sherlock Holmes stories over the years too, but we won't be focusing on those here.
Sherlock Holmes Reading Order
1. A Study in Scarlet
The first book published and the first in the vast chronology, A Study in Scarlet introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes, his mustachioed companion Dr. John Watson, and their iconic residence, 221B Baker Street (which LEGO has turned into a pretty neat book nook). In it, the duo investigate a gruesome murder and traverse Victorian London and beyond in search of an answer.
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
This collection of 12 short stories feature Holmes and Watson in their prime. The first story " A Scandal in Bohemia" introduces Irene Adler, who has been reinterpreted over the years as Holmes' love interest and is a prominent figure in the mythos. All of these short stories feature detective cases of various magnitudes, and serve as a great way to get deeper into minds of Holmes and Watson after finishing A Study in Scarlet.
3. The Valley of Fear
The Valley of Fear is actually the last full length novel that was published, but fits somewhere near the middle of the greater chonology. Holmes and Watson are once again called upon to investigate a grisly murder, this time taking them all the way to Vermissa Valley (the Valley of Fear, as it were) in the United States. A portion of the book is told from Pinkerton agent Birdy Edwards' point of view, offering a closer look into the mind of motivations of the antagonist.
4. The Sign of Four
Next up is the Sign of Four, which introduces Watson's eventual love interest, Mary Morstan, as well as Sherlock's struggles and dependancy on drugs. Mary brings the case of her missing father to the duo, who disappeared ten years prior. Once a year for six years, Mary receives a pearl in the mail, with the sixth pearl including an invitation to finally meet this mysterious sender. What follows is another great story of mystery and intrigue with larger consequences.
5. The Hound of the Baskervilles
Probably the most popular and recognized Sherlock Holmes tales, the Hound of the Baskervilles (the third novel to be published) is a veritable ghost story rife with suspense and chills. Naturally, not everything is as it seems, as the duo has to race against time and contend with a phantom hound to save the endangered Baskerville heir. Some folks prefer to read this a bit later, but as this is a chronogical reading order, it stays here.
6. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is made up of 12 short stories and is the first appearance of both Sherlock's older brother Mycroft Holmes, and his deadly nemesis, Professor James Moriarty. Moriarty's name has been sprinkled throughout the stories leading up to his first phyical appearance in the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", in which Sherlock Holmes falls to his death at the Reichenbach Falls. Or did he?
7. The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Moreso a real-world financial incentive for Arthur Conan Doyle than a creative literary strategy, The Return of Sherlock Holmes sees our favorite detective return from the dead. The first short story in this collection of 13 is "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which Watson is investigating the murder of a judge with the help of a disguised Sherlock Holmes. Holmes reveals himself to Watson, and tells the tale of how he actually was victorious over Moriarty and spent years traveling across the globe.
8. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes can be read at any time, as the collection of 12 short stories (and the last to be published) is meant to be enjoyed as a standalone experience. It's at this spot on our list, however, because a character from the short story "The Advenure of the Illustrious Client", mentioned in previous stories, dies. What can I say, I don't like spoilers.
9. His Last Bow
The final collection of eight short stories, and the true conclusion of the tales of Sherlock Holmes. It includes a meta, "in-universe" statement from Dr. Watson assuring readers that Sherlock is alive and well, although retired. We also get an atypical look at Sherlock's life during his war service. This collection has grander stakes than the previous, with Sherlock coming out of retirement to aid the government in the events leading up to World War I.
Sherlock Holmes Full Collections
Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection (Paperback)
Everything outline above can be picked up in one place with the Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection. It includes all nine books; the four novels and every short story compilation. This version also includes a journal for you to take notes and keep track of events with. Even the publishers know how complicated the timeline can be.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection (Leather-bound)
If prefer a more classic feel when reading these timeless stories, I'd suggest the 1,000+ page leather-bound collection of all the Sherlock Holmes stories. It looks better on the bookshelf with its massive spine or serves as a centerpiece for a coffee table. It's currently only $18.65 (38% off), not a bad deal for such a massive collection of incredible mysteries.
One of the best Audible deals of the year for Amazon Prime members is availabe now. Until July 31, new and returning Audible subscribers can sign up for three months of Audible Premium Plus absolutely free. You will need to be logged into your Amazon Prime membershp to see this promotion. Premium Plus is Audible's highest tier plan and normally costs $14.95/mo. As a additional subscription perk, you get a free audiobook of your choice for each of those three months and you get to keep them indefinitely.
3 Free Months of Audible Premium Plus
Audible is a subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of thousands of the best audiobooks without ever having to purchase them. There are two paid membership plans: the lower tier Audible Plus ($7.95/mo) and the higher tier Audible Premium Plus ($14.95/mo). The biggest difference between the two is the size of the audiobook library. Whereas Audible Plus only lets you listen to a selection of about 10,000 audiobooks, the Audible Premium Plus plan gives you access to a whopping 500,000 audiobooks.
Although the seriously expanded library is the main draw of the Audible Premium Plus membership, there are some other nice perks as well. Every month Premium Plus members get to pick one audiobook to keep in their library indefinitely, even after the membership expires. Also, Premium Plus members can get 30% off any additional audiobooks they wish to purchase in addition to exclusive limited-time discounts.
If you were already planning to purchase a couple of audiobooks, then it makes more sense to pay less than $3 to get three audiobooks you get to keep indefinitely and enjoy all the benefits of Audible Premium Plus for three months. This deal only pops up a few times per year, so don't waste your "first-time subscriber" eligibility status on a short 30-day trial.
Catch up the the latest novel releases, audiobook style
Several best-selling new and recent releases are available in an audiobook format and part of Audible's Premium Plus subscription plan. Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest Hunger Games novel, is narrated by Jefferson White, who you may already know from Yellowstone where he played Jimmy Hudstrom. The audiobook has a listening time of about 12 hours and 48 minutes. Stephen King released his Never Flinch crime novel in May 27 and it's also available as a nearly 15-hour long audiobook narrated by veteran Jessie Mueller. If you're a fan of Brandon Sanderson, check out Wind and Truth, book five of the popular The Stormlight Archive series. It was released in December of 2024 and runs an epic 63 hours long.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
Alienware released a new flagship gaming laptop this year - the Area-51 - and it brings to the table a host of upgrades over the m-series laptops including a sleeker redesign, current generation components, and better cooling potential. As part of the Alienware Black Friday in July Sale that's slated to end this weekend, select Area-51 gaming laptops have dropped to the lowest prices I've seen this year. They're all equipped with the newest Intel Core Ultra 9 processors and Nvidia RTX 5000 series Blackwell graphics cards. Check out all of the deals below.
Alienware Area-51 Laptops on Sale for Black Friday in July
The Area-51: New Style, More Power, Better Cooling
New for 2025, the Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop features a magnesium alloy chassis with upgraded cooling to tackle the latest and greatest heat generating components. This includes more fans and bigger cutouts enabling greater airflow, more generous use of copper, and a new thermal interface material to better transfer heat away from the core components. Dell claims that the laptop can handle a higher power ceiling of up to 240W TDP without raising acoustics.
Design-wise, the Area 51 accentuates its smooth contours, with rounded edges and soft corners replacing the squared off design you'd see in most other laptops. The hinges are also mostly internally positioned so that they're near invisible. As befits an Alienware laptop, there are ample customization options for RGB LED lighting.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a top performing CPU
The Area-51 laptop is also equipped with a very powerful CPU as well. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz with a whopping 24 cores and 40MB total L2 cache. According to Passmark, this is the second most powerful Intel mobile CPU available right now and goes head to head with AMD's Ryzen 9 7945HX3D.
The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 mobile offer the best performance for your dollar
As expensive as these laptops are, you don't want to spend even more on trivial upgrades. The RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU boasts performance on par with the RTX 4080 but with the added benefit of faster GDDR7 RAM and DLSS 4.0. The RTX 5080 mobile GPU represents a healthy improvement over the RTX 5070 Ti for a nominal price bump; it's about 15%-20% more powerful than the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 4080 that it replaces. It also happens to be about 5% more powerful than the RTX 4090 and has the same amount of memory (16GB). Unfortunately, the RTX 5090 only appears to be just 5% more powerful than the RTX 5080, and its only real benefit is the 24GB of memory, which isn't that useful for gaming (but is an attraction option for professionals who work with AI applications).
Check Out More Alienware Black Friday in July Deals
Check out our Best Alienware Deals article with all of Dell's currently ongoing deals on gaming laptops and desktop PCs. Not everyone is the DIY type. If you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of the best brands we'd recommend. Alienware desktops and laptops feature solid build quality, top-of-the-line gaming performance, excellent cooling (further improved on the newer models), aggressive styling, and pricing that is very competitive with other pre-built options. Best of all, there are plenty of sales that happen throughout the year, so it's not difficult to grab one of these computers at considerably less than their retail price.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
Donkey Kong: Bananza is out now, and while most of us are having a bananza smashing our way through Ingot Isle, some players are taking things a bit slower, and spending hours in the game's Artist Mode making wild sculpted creations.
If you're out of the loop, Donkey Kong: Bananza has an unlockable artist mode where you can use your rock-sculpting powers to make 3D shapes, color them in, and share them online with other players. It's basically a virtual carving tool, and it's pretty dang fun to mess with even if you're not much of an artist.
But as with every other game that lets players create with any amount of freedom, players are making some truly excellent stuff already and sharing it online. This is helped by the fact that the Nintendo Switch 2's Joy-Con mouse controls make it much easier to sculpt at a fine level of detail than just flailing around with the joysticks, resulting in some pretty good art overall that's only getting better as people master the system.
A lot of folks are making Nintendo characters, the Kongs obviously, but also...this guy?
I'm also seeing a weird amount of DK-Homer Simpsons being made - I guess because his head is nice and round and easy to sculpt? And also very similar to Donkey Kong's, I guess?
It is probably worth mentioning that yes, you can also make inappropriate or bawdy sculptures in the game's artist mode. You do you, of course, but be warned that if you share these creations online, Nintendo might bust out the ban hammer on you and could potentially restrict your Nintendo Account as a result.
Donkey Kong: Bananza is out today, and we highly recommend it, having given the game a 10/10 in our review. As our reviewer put it, "Donkey Kong Bananza is a truly groundbreaking 3D platformer, with satisfying movement, powerful abilities, impressive destructible environments, and clever challenges that all come together in complete harmony to create Nintendo’s first Switch 2 masterpiece."
When the Switch 2 preorders were first going up (and selling out), I wrote about how it's still worth buying a Switch 1. I wasn't planning on picking up the new Nintendo console off the bat, but the incredible reviews of Donkey Kong Bananza convinced me to cave and buy one much earlier than I'd expected. IGN gave the game a rare 10 out of 10 review and people are already talking about how it's giving GOTY vibes barely a week after release. As a lifelong Nintendo fan, the potential of missing out on a Donkey Kong masterpiece for a full year was just enough to push me over the edge.
I was first introduced to Donkey Kong in the Super Nintendo days. Donkey Kong Country was challenging and fun, and my brother and I spent countless hours playing it. Then came Donkey Kong 64, which if I remember correctly, actually required an Expansion Pak to function. It was the first 3D game I'd played that truly felt new and sits comfortably as one of my favorite games from my childhood.
These feelings of nostalgia are definitely what drove me to move up my Switch 2 purchase timeline, but who am I to deny myself a little bit of magic every once and a while? I was pretty worried I wouldn't be able to find a console available anywhere since stock has been pretty spotty since release, but I actually managed to secure a Mario Kart Switch 2 bundle at Target today. We've also been getting reports of folks receiving Switch 2 invites on Amazon.
If you're like me and have decided to pull the trigger on the latest Nintendo console, you can check IGN's ongoing Switch 2 stock updates or try jumping to the links below to see if any are available in your area.
Where to buy Switch 2 Consoles
Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World
Nintendo Switch 2
Why I'm Excited to Start Playing Bananza
I was generally uninterested in Bananza until Nintendo dedicated an entire Direct to it. After that, we learned that the team behind Mario Odyssey were the ones who worked on the game. Then, IGN's review really sealed the deal for me when I got an in-depth look at the game from someone I know and trust for anything Nintendo.
Like everyone else, I loved Mario Odyssey when I played it on the Switch. It was flat out fun, and exploring those new 3D worlds and taking on those challenges really hit the spot. Getting that same feeling from a Donkey Kong game would scratch a decades-old itch I didn't even know I still had. The freedom to smash, climb, and barrel through a world as Donkey Kong is something I'm really looking forward to.
Regrettably, my Switch 2 isn't set to arrive until three days after my copy of Bananza. I guess I'll just have to stare at it in anticipation for days until my console finally shows up.
Jacob Kienlen is a Senior SEO Strategist and Writer for IGN. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, he has considered the Northwest his home for his entire life. With a bachelor's degree in communication and over 8 years of professional writing experience, his expertise is spread across a variety of different topics -- from TV series to indie games and popular book series.
LEGO increasingly caters itself towards an adult audience, which begs the question: where are adults going to keep these massive sets after they finish building them? The LEGO Art sets provide one possible answer to this dilemma. There's plenty of wall space in the average dwelling – at least in comparison to the amount of shelf space.
Real-life masterpieces inspired these brick-based works of art. Here are the best LEGO Art sets you can buy in 2025.
Best LEGO Art Sets at a Glance
If you want a blurb-free list of the sets recommended in this article, you can scroll through them above. Otherwise, read on for details about each of them, including dimensions and piece count, as well as why I picked them.
Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night
Launched in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art (where the original work resides), this LEGO reproduction of Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" uses 3D to mimic the master's thick brushstrokes. Van Gogh painted "The Starry Night" during his asylum stay at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The set comes with a tiny Vincent van Gogh minifigure – a bit of levity for a man who led a very complicated, distraught life.
Hokusai - The Great Wave
One of the most recognaizable works of art in the world, "The Great Wave" was a woodblock print created by Hokusai in 1831; only about 100 prints survive to the current day. This LEGO recreation uses LEGO Dots to achieve its printed appearance, and it comes with a tile piece that bears Hokusai's signature.
Leonardo da Vinci - Mona Lisa
Da Vinci loved to experiment. He worked on "Mona Lisa" for 15 years, making slight alterations and additions and never giving it to the man who commissioned it. It is purportedly a depiction of Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo. Today, it's primarily known for the subject's mysterious smile, but it was infuential and known even in Rennaissance times. The LEGO recreation of "Mona Lisa" replicates the colors that da Vinci used centuries ago; the actual painting looks much darker today than it once did owing to age and varnish.
Vincent van Gogh - Sunflowers
We built LEGO Vincent van Gogh - Sunflowers for its launch, and were impressed by its vividness and its size; who knew that yellow-on-yellow-on-yellow could be so distinctive? Van Gogh painted Sunflowers during his stay in Arles, France, and he created seven different paintings total. LEGO based this set on the second repetition of the fourth version, known in the art world as F458.
Robert Indiana - LOVE
First made famous by its inclusion on the Modern Museum of Art's 1965 Christmas card, Indiana recreated LOVE as a pop art sculpture in 1970. It has been reproduced numerous times since, perhaps most famously as the centerpiece of Philadelphia's LOVE Park (officially John F. Kennedy Plaza). This LEGO set captures its inspiration's original color scheme: red with green and blue edges. It makes for a great office display or holiday gift.
Keith Haring – Dancing Figures
Heavily inspired by graffiti, Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work took on political themes. Haring died of AIDS-related complications in 1990. This set, which pays tribute to his legacy, comes with five separate instruction booklets (one for each dancing figure). They convey movement, freedom, and joy in a colorful, accessible way.
Batman: The Animated Series - Gotham City
Inspired by the Art Deco movement of the 1910's and 1920's, this set is a large, interactive skyline of Batman's Gotham City. It is on our list of the Best LEGO Sets currently available, and so of course, we had to include it on our LEGO Art list as well. Many of the building's interfaces are removable to reveal the inner workings of Wayne Manor, Arkham Asylum, and more. As a tribute to Batman: The Animated series, it's a worthy of any LEGO Batman collector with a love for the show.
Why LEGO Art?
Promoting LEGO as a lifestyle is a stroke of marketing genius, because of how it seamlessly integrates LEGO into people's spaces. It's neither a toy apart from the room, nor is it a hindrance that demands front-and-center prominence.
LEGO Art is decorative and adds ambience to the room without complicating or cluttering it. It is for everyone to enjoy and appreciate, especially for the builder, who gets to admire their creation every day instead of tripping over it.
Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.
Star Trek will forever be one of the most influential sci-fi franchises of all time. Born in 1966, the legend of the USS Enterprise still lives on today, and no prop is more iconic than the original Tricorder. This essential item first appeared in 1996 and was used to perform environmental scans, record data, and analyze it. Despite being so iconic and inspiring numerous devices, the original Tricorder has never been released to the public in its true, authentic form. However, that changes today.
The Wand Company, known for its premium prop replicas, has finally completed its nine-year journey to create a replica of the original Star Trek Tricorder. If you're a fan of the legendary sci-fi series, this is an incredibly unique item that will upgrade your entire collection to the next level.
Pre-Order The Original Series Tricorder Today at IGN Store
The Original Series Tricorder is as authentic as can be, as a huge undertaking went into the design of this forever iconic prop. Don't be mistaken: this is not a toy, but a working display-grade replica. The Original Series Tricorder was crafted using 3D scans of the last known hero prop, and it is fully functional, including every feature you'd expect.
This includes a full-color LCD TFT screen, the complete 233 ship's logs archives from the Enterprise, removable function discs, environmental sensing, and so much more. You can even record a log of your own to store, allowing you to make this iconic prop personal. The Wand Company has paid immense attention to detail on every inch of this prop replica, with the use of quality materials to ensure an authentic and premium look and feel. In addition to the Tricorder, you'll also receive a leatherette travel case, which is essential to protecting this prop replica.
The Story Behind The Original Series Tricorder
The release of this product has been a labor of love from The Wand Company, with the team first conceiving an idea for this release in 2016. Development officially began in 2019 after Greg Jein allowed the team to scan his screen-used hero prop, allowing The Wand Company to get the most accurate model possible. This was the last known hero prop, and without it, a replica would have to be modeled without an exact reference.
The Wand Company revealed the ongoing development in 2020, and in 2021, a series of blog posts began to release every few weeks to update the progress of crafting this replica. These posts included insights on the modeling process, the technology behind the prop, in addition to reveals on what this replica would include. Despite a few production delays and development issues, The Wand Company managed to create something that many thought was impossible.
This incredibly special product is available to pre-order now at IGN Store. Pre-orders are expected to ship in August 2025.
About IGN Store
IGN Store sells high-quality merch, collectibles, and shirts for everything you're into. It's a shop built with fans in mind: for all the geek culture and fandom you love most. Whether you're into comics, movies, anime, games, retro gaming or just want some cute plushies (who doesn't?), this store is for you!
Christmas is still a ways away, but it's never a bad time to get fun Nintendo memorabilia. Hallmark is dropping a new selection of video game themed keepsake Christmas tree ornaments next week, on July 21. You can preorder them on Amazon now, and there are dozens of other ornaments from other games to pick from, like Minecraft, Halo, and Sonic the Hedgehog that are already available.
The latest batch of ornaments includes characters from notable Nintendo franchises like the Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Super Mario.
Hallmark Keepsake Nintendo Christmas Ornaments Are Available Next Week
Hallmark's upcoming Nintendo ornament selection is pretty cool for fans of their games. They're all made of plastic and vary in size but shouldn't stand more than just a couple inches high, making them easy to store away with the rest of Christmas stuff throughout the year. There's a handful of Pokémon available like Pikachu, Venusaur, and Blastoise, but there's no Charizard. What gives, Hallmark? You can also grab an awesome Elephant Mario from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, one of my personal favorite Nintendo Switch games. The Link from The Legend of Zelda ornament is easily the coolest one, as it not only features his classic NES design, but it plays sounds and music from the games. It's a good Legend of Zelda gift to give someone before Christmas. Other Nintendo themed ornaments you can get are Pikmin, Poké Balls, Cat Mario, Samus Aran, and Isabel from Animal Crossing.
A notable omission is an ornament featuring Donkey Kong. Donkey Bananza on Nintendo Switch 2 just released, so it's odd Nintendo and Hallmark wouldn't try to capitalize on the success of one of their biggest properties. IGN's Logan Plant gave Donkey Kong Bananza a ten, saying "Donkey Kong Bananza is a truly groundbreaking 3D platformer, with satisfying movement, powerful abilities, impressive destructible environments, and clever challenges that all come together in complete harmony to create Nintendo’s first Switch 2 masterpiece."
If you're envious of the Steam Deck experience or looking for an alternative to Windows 11, you're in luck. You can install the Steam Deck’s operating system, SteamOS, on your gaming PC for free using Valve's official SteamOS recovery image.
While Valve doesn't guarantee support for every PC yet, SteamOS can run on most AMD-powered systems. It only took an hour to get it up and running on my PC and you can do the same.
Before You Get Started
There are a couple things you'll need to install SteamOS on your PC, and a few things you should know before trying this.
For starters, SteamOS hasn't had a full PC release yet, so it's only officially supported on a handful of devices. You can still try to install it on PCs that don't have official support, but as a general rule, SteamOS works best with all-AMD systems. If you have an Nvidia GPU or an Intel processor, you're more likely to run into issues. For this guide, I installed SteamOS on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G CPU and Radeon integrated graphics.
It's also important to note that SteamOS is a distribution of Linux, which means apps that are only available on Windows won't run on it. Most games that require kernel-level anti-cheat aren't compatible, either.
To get SteamOS installed on your PC, you'll need an empty USB drive with at least 8GB of space. I also recommend having a second storage device on hand, whether it's an external hard drive or a USB thumb drive, to back up your PC beforehand.
How to Install SteamOS
1. Backup your PC
Installing SteamOS requires wiping your PC's drive, so I recommend backing up everything on your PC first. I use an external hard drive to back up all my files, but you can use any drive you like, including cloud storage. The important thing is to save your files on a different drive than the one you're planning to install SteamOS on (don't use the USB drive you're going to put your SteamOS recovery image on, either).
If you have multiple drives on your gaming PC and want to make sure data on your other drives isn't wiped while installing SteamOS, it's a good idea to physically remove those drives from your PC.
2. Download the SteamOS recovery image
After backing up your PC, download the official SteamOS recovery image. This contains the default version of SteamOS that ships with the Steam Deck. It's designed for restoring a Steam Deck (or another compatible handheld gaming PC, like the Lenovo Legion Go S) if something happens to your original installation, but you can also use this recovery image for a new installation of SteamOS. After downloading the zip file, extract it.
3. Flash the SteamOS recovery image to a USB thumb drive
The next step is creating bootable media with the SteamOS recovery image and an empty USB drive. Make sure the drive you use has at least 8GB of storage on it and doesn't have any other files (the drive will get wiped in the process of creating your bootable media).
To do this, you need a disk image writing tool like BalenaEtcher or Rufus. I used BalenaEtcher. With the empty USB thumb drive plugged in, I selected "Flash from file" and chose the SteamOS recovery image extracted from the zip file, then selected the USB thumb drive as the destination. It may take several minutes to flash the SteamOS recovery image onto your drive. Once it's done, shut down your PC.
4. Boot into the BIOS on your PC and update your boot priority
Next, turn your PC back on, but make sure you boot into your BIOS (not your operating system). If you don't know the BIOS key for your PC, you can find it by checking the manual for your motherboard (or laptop). Delete and Escape are common BIOS keys. As your PC is starting back up, repeatedly press your BIOS key.
The BIOS looks different depending on your PC, but the setting you need to update is your boot priority. This determines which drive your PC boots into first. Make sure you have your USB drive with the SteamOS recovery image plugged in and set it as the first option in your boot priority. Save the changes and exit your BIOS (which will start the regular booting process).
5. Boot into SteamOS recovery image
After exiting the BIOS, your PC should attempt to boot into the drive with the SteamOS recovery image. It can take a few minutes for SteamOS to start up. At first, all you'll see is scrolling lines of text on a black screen – that's Linux going through the SteamOS startup checklist. Once it's complete, your screen will go black, potentially for several minutes, while SteamOS is launching.
Eventually, the SteamOS desktop environment will show up, but this can also take a few minutes, so leave your PC alone while it gets everything up and running. When it's ready, your mouse and toolbar will appear on screen, along with four icons along the top of your screen.
To install SteamOS, double click the icon labeled "Wipe Device & Install SteamOS." You'll get a pop up warning you that this process will permanently delete everything on your device. If you're sure you want to go ahead with the installation, select "Proceed."
6. Allow SteamOS to install on your PC
After allowing the SteamOS installation to begin, a terminal will appear on your screen. Don't close it or attempt to change anything in it – this terminal is running the SteamOS installation. Don't attempt to do anything else in the desktop environment while this is running, either.
When the process is complete, you'll see a pop up asking if you want to proceed with a reboot. Select "Proceed" and let your PC restart. This can also take a few minutes, so don't hit your power button or unplug your system.
7. Reboot and set up SteamOS
After rebooting, you should see the SteamOS welcome screen. Go through the steps on screen to get your PC set up. When you're done, SteamOS will search for updates, download them, and restart again. After that, you should see the Steam sign-in page. Log in and you'll be good to go!
SteamOS will launch in Steam's Big Picture Mode since it's designed for handheld gaming PCs, but you can navigate it with a mouse and keyboard if you want (or a controller). It also has a normal desktop environment outside of Steam where you can install other apps, like Discord, and use your PC for any other normal tasks like web browsing. To move from Steam to your regular desktop environment, select the Menu button in the bottom left, then "Power" then "Switch to Desktop."
Tip: Epic Games and GOG don't have Linux apps, but you can play compatible games from those apps on your SteamOS PC using the Heroic Games launcher.
Can't Install SteamOS? Try These Alternative Linux Distributions
SteamOS doesn't have a full PC release yet, so it won't work on every system. If you can't get it running with your hardware, your best bet is to install a different Linux distribution until SteamOS gets a full release.
The first alternative I recommend is Bazzite. This is one of the best Linux distributions for gaming, especially if you're new to Linux. Bazzite even works on handheld gaming PCs, if you're looking to replace Windows 11 on your handheld.
If Bazzite isn't your cup of tea, beginner-friendly distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mint are also good options. Due to their popularity, it's easy to find troubleshooting help for these distributions and each can be configured to resemble Windows or macOS if you want a more familiar desktop environment.
Stevie Bonifield is a freelance tech journalist who has written for IGN, PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, and Laptop Mag, covering everything from custom keyboards to gaming on Linux.
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