Exclusive Preview: Grodd Is a Summer Bummer in DC's 'Beach Blanket Bad Guys'

San Diego Comic-Con may be over, but the summer is still heating up for the DC Universe. And in DC’s Beach Blanket Bad Guys Special #1, in stores July 25, some of the most notorious villains of the DC Universe will spend their vacation plotting and scheming against our beloved heroes.

But it’s Gorilla Grodd’s stand-alone chapter, “Cruel Summer” from writer Tim Seeley (Nightwing) and artists Minky Jung, John Kalisz, and Tom Napolitano that will send chills down readers’ spines. In an exclusive preview on Inverse, you can see the beginning of Grodd’s vile definition of “fun in the sun.”

On Wednesday, July 25, DC will release Beach Blanket Bad Guys Special, a giant-sized, 80-page anthology that puts the spotlight on various supervillains, including Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, Black Manta, Cheetah, Bizarro, and Joker together in a twisted story. But it’s in Seeley’s Gorilla Grodd-centric story where Beach Blanket gets particularly dark.

As Flash fans know, Grodd is truly one of the most powerful villains in the DC Universe. It’s not his awesome raw strength that gives him power, but his supreme intellect and telepathy that makes Grodd a simian-shaped force of nature. In “Cruel Summer,” The Flash confronts Grodd moments after he mind-controlled his own fellow gorillas in Gorilla City to kill each other during a seasonal religious ceremony.

As The Flash tries to reason with his longtime Rogue, the rest of “Cruel Summer” explores an untold story in Grodd’s history, when a specific summer in Grodd’s youth determined the rest of his life.

Check out an exclusive preview of Beach Blanket Bad Guys Special below:

DC’s Beach Blanket Bad Guys Special #1 hits stores on July 25.