Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital.
I’ve pulled out some of the highlights below, but for the complete list of everything you might find at your local comic shop and on digital this week, you’ll want to check out one or more of the following:
- Penguin Random House (Marvel + IDW + Dark Horse + more)
- Lunar Distribution (DC + Image + more)
- Diamond’s PreviewsWorld (BOOM! + Dynamite + more)
- ComicList (Pretty much all of the above)
- Amazon/Kindle new releases (digital comics)
As a reminder, things can change and what you find on the above lists may differ from what’s actually arriving in your local shop. So always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #150 (IDW, $9.99): Sophie Campbell’s long, epic run on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comes to an end with an extra-sized issue featuring an all-star roster of artists. IDW promises the story “pays off on years of storytelling, reckoning with the history of the Turtles while also setting the stage for the next mutation of must-read TMNT comics.” That new era kicks off this summer.
Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives! #1 (Skybound, $4.99): Skybound’s adaptations of the Universal Monsters into comics carries on with a new miniseries. The story follows the original Creature from the Black Lagoon movie while introducing some new characters: journalist Kate Marsden and serial killer Darwin Collier. Dan Watters and Ram V team up to write the miniseries, which features artwork by Matthew Roberts and Dave Stewart.
Daredevil #8 (Marvel, $9.99): Marvel celebrates the 60th anniversary of Daredevil in this oversized issue featuring multiple stories by past and present creators who worked on the title, including Saladin Ahmed, Aaron Kuder, Ann Nocenti, D.G. Chichester, Erica Schultz and more.
Dick Tracy #1 (Mad Cave, $4.99): The legendary yellow coat-wearing detective who first debuted on the newspaper comic page in the 1930s returns to comics, courtesy of Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, Chantelle Aimee Osman and Geraldo Borges. The writers promise a “grounded, noir take” on the post-WW2 detective, as he investigates a brutal murder in The City.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12 (DC, $7.99): DC’s anthology series continues with new stories about Batman + Gotham Academy, Lois Lane and Artemis by Karl Kerschl, Torunn Gronbekk, Delilah S. Dawson, Serg Acuña and more, but the hype for this issue has been built around Charlie Adlard and Herik Hanna’s Batman: Black & White story, which makes its debut.
Deathstalker #1 (Vault Comics, $4.99): Presented by Guns’N’Roses guitarist Slash and based on a story by Steven Kostanski, this new series that continues the story started in the 1980s fantasy film of the same name features the work of writer Tim Seeley, artist Jim Terry and colorist Kurt Michael Russell.
Operation Sunshine: Already Dead #1 (Dark Horse, $3.99): The sequel to last year’s Operation Sunshine, the story of a group of young vampires who want to be human again, sends the young anti-heroes down to Florida to find an artifact that will help them complete their goal. It’s by writers Marcus Parks and Henry Zebrowski, artist David Rubin and colorist KJ Diaz.
The Cult of That Wilkins Boy: Initiation (Archie, $3.99): The classic Archie character Bingo Wilkin received a makeover as a rock star-turned-cult leader last year courtesy of Archie Horror, and this week he return for another round of fame, fortune and satanic worship, courtesy of writer Cullen Bunn and artist Dan Schoening.
Darth Maul: Black, White & Red #1 (Marvel, $5.99): Following in the footsteps of Darth Vader, Darth Maul gets the Black, White & Red treatment, with a single creative team creating each issue vs. the anthology-style treatment we’ve seen in the past. The first issue will feature a story by Wolverine writer Benjamin Percy and artist Stefano Raffaele.
Drawing Blood: The Story Behind the Story #1 (Image, $3.99): The semi-autobiographical tale of Kevin Eastman’s rise in the comics world that was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter back in 2017 comes to Image Comics as a 12-issue series. Eastman is joined by co-writer David Avallone and artists Ben Bishop and Troy Little on the project, which follows “the jaw-dropping journey of Shane Bookman—a cartoonist whose real life has become more absurd and action-packed than any comic book story he could dream up.”
Spectregraph #1 (DSTLRY, $8.99): Two award-winning creators, James Tynion IV and Christian Ward, team up for a ” visceral, confrontational” haunted house story. It’s in that large-sized format that made Somna look so good, so I imagine Ward’s artwork will be spectacular here.
Mythologies & Apocrypha #1 (Fantagraphics, $5.99): Tim Lane, creator of Abandoned Cars and The Lonesome Go, returns to serial comics with this “new, ongoing series exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly of 20th century masculinity through a head spinning blend of fact and fiction featuring Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Walter Cronkite, and others – culminating in a quick-draw shootout on Mars between Steve McQueen, Johnny Cash, and Sammy Davis Jr.”
Everything Sucks (Silver Sprocket, $7.99): Michael Sweater continues his “Everything Sucks” series with a new comic about Noah, a broke sandwich shop employee who finds a bag of money in the customer restroom, changing his life forever. This one comes with stickers!
The Harrowing (Amulet Books, $24.99): This new graphic novel by Kristen Kiesling and Rye Hickman is about a teenage girl whose dark thoughts, she discovers, are actually premonitions of potential murders. She’s shipped off to Rosewood, where she learns to harness her power as a Harrow so she can stop murderers before they act.
Punk Rock Karaoke (Viking Books, $17.99): Bianca Xunise, winner of the 2017 Ignatz Awards for “Most Promising Talent” and part of the Six Chix comic strip collective, presents this debut graphic novel about a punk band in Chicago trying to make the big time.
Chernobyl: The Fall of Atomgrad (Palazzo Editions, $18.95): Matyas Namai writes and draws this in-depth and stark look at the impact the 1986 nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl had on the wildlife, towns and villages surrounding the site, not to mention the nuclear plant itself and everyone who worked there.
Love and Rockets: The Sketchbooks (Fantagraphics, $75): Fantagraphics brings The Brothers Hernandez’s sketchbooks back into print, offering 300 pages of sketches, inked drawings, early comics and “uninhibited graphic ephemera” that never made it into the pages of Love and Rockets.