Cartoon Network’s New Ben 10 Reboot Makes A Major Change To A Beloved Character

Published Nov 14, 2026, 2:30 PM EST

Twenty-one years after the premiere of Cartoon Network's original Ben 10 series, the franchise has grown into a massive multimedia titan spanning five main animated series, multiple animated and live-action movies, video games, toy lines, and Dynamite Entertainment’s modern comic book revival. Whenever a franchise accumulates that much lore and overlapping character histories, it inevitably reaches a point where fresh starts become necessary. Reboots strip away convoluted continuity, reintroduce characters to new generations, and reimagine classic concepts from the ground up without losing the spirit that made the original so beloved.

The Ben 10 franchise provides the perfect basis for body horror, and the series' new reboot fully takes advantage of the concept with its reinvention of Ben's many alien transformations.

Ben 10's XLR8 Form Is So Powerful Ben Can't Control It At First

Ben 10 #6; Written By Joe Casey, Steven T. Seagle, Joe Kelly, And Duncan Rouleau; Art By Robert Carey & Ren Spiller

Dynamite Entertainment’s Ben 10 comic introduces a realistic twist to one of Ben Tennyson's most powerful transformations. In Ben 10 #6, Ben realizes that XLR8's super-speed is so great that nobody can understand his speech, and when he puts his speed to the test, he accidentally rockets across an entire desert and crashes straight into a college campus in a nearby town, knocking himself out cold and placing himself right onto a villain's silver platter. While Ben first tests the Kineceleran form in issue #5 while fooling around at a fair, issue #6 marks the moment he truly pushes his super-speed to the limit, with disastrous consequences.

XLR8's rocky debut in Dynamite's Ben 10 contrasts with how effortlessly Ben mastered his speedster transformation in the classic Cartoon Network animated series. In the 2005 show's second episode, "Washington B.C.," Ben transforms into the speedy alien for the very first time and immediately demonstrates his precision, tying up bullies and dodging projectiles without missing a beat. Dynamite's reimagining of XLR8’s early outings as a disorienting high-velocity hazard adds an interesting vulnerability to one of Ben Tennyson's best alien forms and shows how much he needs to learn in order to use his newfound powers.

Ben 10's Reboot Comic Leans Into The Aliens' Body Horror

Ben Tennyson's Early Transformations Are Unsettling To Look At

In Dynamite Entertainment’s Ben 10 comic series, artist Robert Carey and the Man of Action team give Ben’s classic alien roster a dramatic visual overhaul that leans into genuine extraterrestrial anatomy. For example, mighty forms like Four Arms and Heatblast look far more imposing than their animated counterparts, with Four Arms' black sclera and Heatblast's vest-like magma-and-rock layout helping them stand apart from the original designs. Meanwhile, Diamondhead sheds his traditional black-and-white uniform to appear as a hulking crystalline golem, and XLR8 trades smooth animation lines for a sharper raptor-like appearance complete with heavy, wheel-like spheres on his feet.

Where the Ben 10 reboot comic truly breaks away from the original Cartoon Network show is in its unapologetically grotesque body-horror approach to Ben’s weirder transformations. Stinkfly looks far more unsettling and insectoid, covered in jagged chitin and oozing slime. Grey Matter drops his cute frog-like proportions in favor of an uncanny hyper-detailed alien body with an exposed brain and heavily detailed bulging eyes, and Wildvine transforms into a tangled mass of creeping tendrils and a single glaring eye surrounded by organic growths. By issue six, there are still plenty of aliens left to adapt into horrifying monsters.

Which Ben 10 alien would you like to see redesigned?

Ben 10 #6 is now available from Dynamite Entertainment