Heroes & Villains is a brand that fans can always expect to deliver products that invoke the classic characters and worlds we all know and love. Each year, it brings new ideas to San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), and this year is no exception.
Last year, the company had a heavy focus on Star Wars. While that franchise did still have its own booth on the SDCC convention floor this year, the main focus was on Doctor Doom and the X-Men.
The Direct caught up with Heroes & Villains Creative Director Doug Johnson at SDCC 2026, where he discussed the unique challenges Avengers: Doomsday posed, how the company approached embodying classic characters in its products, and the process for designing its incredible backpacks.
Of course, SDCC isn’t the only convention the company attends. New York Comic-Con is equally important for Heroes & Villains, and the brand went all out with its booth, incorporating some cool photo ops.
Doctor Doom Is Here, and Heroes & Villains Is Ready to Wow the Fans
Doctor Doom and the X-Men Were the Focus of SDCC
- The Direct: “Can you talk me through just choosing how you were gonna put Doom on your merchandise?
Doug Johnson: Okay, well, so with it being that Doomsday is around the corner, but we are still under a bargain for Doomsday, so it’s a struggle to really do anything that’s like specific to Doomsday… So we focus more on like the comic Doom, and then just kind of like the old school Doom iconography.
Despite the limitations that Heroes & Villains currently has on sharing its Avengers: Doomsday products, Marvel did allow one exception at SDCC:
Johnson: Like gray and green, kind of cosplay adjacent, but like wearable, totally normal hoodie. And then, of course, the comic Doom below that. And then the really cool thing is that those stained glass pieces that we have, those are actually embargoed pieces that Marvel allowed us to break the embargo for San Diego Comic Con only, so that artwork cannot be found anywhere else.
For the X-Men, the key items were a Cyclops hoodie and Professor X’s jacket ripped straight from the Avengers: Doomsday trailer.
Johnson:The Cyclops hoodie, obviously inspired by Cyclops with a red stripe, right? Like the visor. But in fact, the bomber jacket at the top. If you’ve seen the trailer and you’ve seen Professor X, yeah, that’s his jacket from the trailer. When we caught that trailer, we were like, all right, we’ve got to jump on that now. So the first time we saw it, I was like, okay, we got to make the jacket, and it’s just a classic jacket.
- The Direct: “I love your backpacks, and I see an amazing-looking Doctor Doom backpack. Just in general as well, can you talk about developing those backpacks and how they grow over the years, and how you decide to kind of tweak and add new interesting things that catch people?”
Johnson:Yes, this is a debut [for the Doctor Doom backpack]. So, this is the first time it’s being sold. But yeah, you can see the Doom piece up there. Just a really dope bag. Like it really vibes like old school Doom, Laveria, rucksack, like the like distress canvas and the leather straps and everything that just falls into like classic style Doom from Latveria… A lot of times, like with the bags, we let the character kind of dictate what the bag’s gonna vibe like. So when you see the Cyclops one, you will see that it’s a lot more like technical and tactical, much more so than what Doom is, where it’s kind of like this rustic whole world vibe.
- The Direct: “What would you say is your mission statement as a company and where you want to go with your line, and how you want to grow and offer new things to fans of everything you put out?”
Johnson:We’re all fans of the story. Our focus is to build the story into the product. I feel like the fans see that and resonate with it. We just want to continue pressing that model. And the other big part is the experience. So, being at the show is more than just slinging merch. We want to have experience and an engagement with fans. This is a unique situation where we’ve partnered with Marvel, so it’s like a totally different thing than we’ve ever done. Other than New York, where we had our own booth separate from.
Johnson pointed out that the booth at Marvel this year is almost a full-circle moment for Heroes & Villains:
Johnson:That has its benefits and its limitations as well. So we can’t really do the experiential photo op cosplay stuff that we do at some of our other events because we’re kind of restricted [due to] being part of [the Marvel booth]. But still, at the same time, like the really cool part about this booth is that—one of the first Marvel booths we ever did was in New York, and it was the Xavier Mansion. And we basically did, like, you know, come to the Xavier Mansion! We had framed artwork of all the alumni all over the place, and it was this wood-grain, kind of library vibe. So it’s like a really cool, likefull circle opportunity for us to be like we’re back in the Xavier Mansion, but now it’s been blasted apart because the X-Men are fighting the Sentinels and Doom.
