Smile: Any Given Smile (2026)

January 1995. All eyes are on the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The Sharks gear up for the most significant event in the AAL’s 20-year history, and Maximillian Dupree—their sudden-star backup quarterback—is feeling the pressure from his teammates, his fans, and his debts to the city’s gambling underworld. A string of suicides hits the community hard, drawing a desperate sports journalist to examine their connection to the big game. No one can trust anything they see as a mind-bending entity and its frightful visions threaten their payouts, their sanity, and their lives… Based on the critically acclaimed Smile film franchise, writer Stephanie Williams (Nubia, Roots of Madness) and GLAAD Media Award–winning artist Pablo Collar (Avengers Academy) are sure to run fear across the goal line. Time to place your bets. Kickoff approaches for a Sunday ritual that will have you ready to win…or die smiling.

The AAL Football Championship is days away—and quarterback Max Dupree is cracking under the weight of it. The pressure to win, the whispers from the sidelines, the sense that something bigger than just the game is at stake…it’s starting to cost him more than his focus. Across town, St. Augustine Tribune reporter Rita is chasing a lead no one else will touch—a string of suicides with a chilling connection to the AAL. The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes: This isn’t coincidence. It’s a pattern. And each and every one of the deceased died smiling… As Max spirals and Rita closes in, the truth behind the city’s gambling underworld threatens to surface. And it could cost them both everything. The clock is ticking. The game is fixed. And someone is going to lose far more than the championship in issue #2 of Any Given Smile, based on the critically acclaimed film franchise.

With just four days remaining before the AAL championship, a stress-rattled Max Dupree fields questions from the press about rumors—a sports betting scandal attached to his prior football career —and his outlook on the most important game of his life. His teammates are beginning to take notice, but is it just pregame nerves, or something far more sinister taking over his mind?Meanwhile, Rita Nash follows a lead to a professor at a local university who may be able to help her connect the alleged suicides and their strange circumstances surrounding the championship. Dr. Lee has a personal interest in a local history of similar deaths, and Rita may not be prepared for the connection she is about to discover.

Rita confronts Max on the dock after another shocking death that puts him front and center in her investigation. Four deaths, all tied to a sports betting ring, and the up-and-coming quarterback seems to be at the center of it all. Can Max keep it together under the pressure of the high-stakes game and the terror facing him from the looming dark entity dead set on making him the next victim? Find out in the penultimate issue of Any Given Smile, based on the critically acclaimed Smile film franchise.