Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital.
It’s Comic-Con week, and the comics are out in droves this Wednesday. There’s a brand new Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtles title, the debut of the new EC Comics and the return of Flash Gordon. The Nice House on the Lake gets a sequel, while an early 2000s X-title finds new life. Plus there’s Moebius, Spawn, Keanu Reeves, Johnnie Christmas and a whole lot of Jason Aaron, giving you plenty of reasons to stay home and read comics if a trip to San Diego isn’t on your itinerary.
I’ve pulled out some of the other highlights for this week 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 #1 (IDW, $4.99): Jason Aaron, writer of Wolverine, Punisher, Avengers, Batman: Off-World and a whole lot more, left an exclusive contract at Marvel behind to work on several iconic properties for other publishers — including this high-profile relaunch of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at IDW. Each of the first four issues will focus on a different member of the team and will be drawn by a different artist, starting with Joëlle Jones and continuing with Rafael Albuquerque, Cliff Chiang and Chris Burnham.
Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 (Oni Press, $4.99): Oni’s revival of EC Comics begins with this 40-page first issue of a horror anthology that features stories by Brian Azzarello, Chris Condon, J Holtham, Stephanie Phillips, Jorge Fornes, Phil Hester, Peter Krause and more.
Absolute Power: Origins #1 (DC, $3.99): With Amanda Waller playing a prominent role in Absolute Power, John Ridley and Alitha Martinez set out to tell the “definitive origin” of the founder of the Suicide Squad and current big bad in the DC Universe.
NYX #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing and Francesco Mortarino revive an old X-title from earlier this century as they focus on five young mutants — Kamala Khan, Laura Kinney, Anole, Prodigy and Sophie Cuckoo — living on the Lower East Side of New York City.
Hello Darkness #1 (BOOM! Studios, $5.99): BOOM! gets back into the horror anthology business with this new series that features contributions from Garth Ennis, Becky Cloonan, James Tynion IV, Werther Dell’Edera, Brian Azzarello, Vanesa R. Del Rey, John Arcudi, Ryan Sook and more.
Flash Gordon #1 (Mad Cave Studios, $4.99): The pulp hero returns in a new series by Jeremy Adams and Will Conrad. In this first issue, Flash finds himself trapped on a prison planet when he learns that Dale Arden is the subject of an assassination plot. He’s forced to break out and make his way across the galaxy to save her.
Spawn Kills Every Spawn #1 (Image Comics, $2.99): McFarlane Productions return to the world of humor and satire with this sequel to Spawn Kills Everyone and Spawn Kills Everyone Too, as John Layman, Rob “Sketchcraft” Duenas and Robert Nugent send the tiniest Spawn, Spawny, to kill another set of comic characters — the Spawn universe.
The Nice House By The Sea #1 (DC Black Label, $4.99): The award-winning team behind The Nice House on the Lake returns with another house, another cast and more end-of-the-world drama. James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno, Jordie Bellaire and Andworld Design reunite for the story of Max, a woman who invites several “titans of industry” to her house by the ocean as the human race is being eradicated.
Nemesis: Rogues’ Gallery #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Mark Millar makes his Dark Horse debut with this new miniseries featuring Nemesis, with artist Valerio Giangiordano. “Following the events of the smash-hit Big Game, Nemesis lies broken and destroyed, but hell-bent on vengeance against every single person who wronged him.”
The Big Burn #1 (DSTLRY, $8.99): Hell is a casino in this new series by the Skyward team of Joe Henderson and Lee Garbett — and what better place for a couple of condemned thieves to try and break into, to steal their souls back?
BRZRKR: A Faceful of Bullets #1 (BOOM! Studios, $9.99): A second title from Jason Aaron arrives, as he teams with Keanu Reeves and artist Salvador Larocca for a BRZRKR tale set in the Old West.
Absolute Power: Task Force VII #2 (DC, $3.99): The second issue of this Absolute Power tie-in series is by John Layman and Max Raynor, and it features the Amazo robot known as Depth Charge going after Aquaman and the Aqua-family.
Greaser: Gemini Blues #1 (Magma Comix, $3.99): Darick Robertson and Stephen Jones team up for the story of a greaser in the future who makes his living fixing space ships for the aliens that arrived on Earth decades before. His life takes a turn when a motorcycle gang leaves some precious cargo on his property — something its owners will kill to get back.
Fence Challengers: Long Shot #1 (BOOM!, $7.99): The award-winning team of C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad are back with another volume of Fence, their comic series about an aspiring fencing champion. In this volume, the Kings Row fencers are heading for the state championship, bringing with them “the burden and blessing of a brand-new reputation as the underdog champions.”
Marvel Zero #1 (Marvel, $6.99): Marvel collects their 2024 Free Comic Book Day titles, which featured stories about the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Ultimate Universe and Blood Hunt. This time they aren’t free, however.
Warriors: The Prophecies Begin (Harper Alley, $15.99): Erin Hunter’s Warrior Cats prose series comes to comics courtesy of Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter. This is a straight-up adaptation of the first two novels in the series — Into the Wild and Fire and Ice — which is about four clans of wild cats whose lives change when a house cat named Rusty turns up in their forest.
Moebius Library: The Major (Dark Horse, $39.99): Dark Horse brings the Moebius classic The Major to English-reading audiences for the first time with this edition that includes translation by Diana Schutz and lettering by Adam Pruett.
Thorn: The Complete Proto- BONE College Strips from 1982 to 1986, and Other Early Drawings (Cartoon Books, $30): Prior to the release of Bone as a comic book — and it eventually becoming a worldwide phenomenon — Jeff Smith had a college comic strip called Thorn. It introduced several of the characters who would eventually evolve into the ones we know and love in the Bone series, including Thorn and Phone Bone, and Smith would reference many of those early strips directly in the early issues of Bone. Smith crowdfunded a collection last year, which he is now releasing to the direct market.
Skinner (Dark Horse, $24.99): Video game veterans Micky Neilson and Samwise Didier co-wrote this graphic novel that features the art team of Piotr Kowalski, colorist Dennis Calero and letterer Frank Cvetkovic. It’s about six internet celebrities who accompany a superstar survivalist on a one-week trip deep into the remote Canadian wilderness — onyl to have their plane crash and find themselves stalked by a mountain man of local legend who tracks, murders and skins his victims.
Tunis to Sydney (Fairsquare Graphics, $24.99): Meriam Carnouche, Christian Carnouche and Sam Rapley tell a story of grief, healing and family legacy. It’s focused on Lilia and Bill, whose lives in Australia are met with tragedy and turmoil when Lilia’s parents unexpectedly die thousands of miles away in Tunisia.
The Old Willis Place (Clarion Books, $15.99): Mary Downing Hahn, Scott Peterson and Meredith Laxton tell the story of a haunted mansion where two kids live in total freedom — until a new caretaker and his daughter show up and threaten their way of life. I mean, if they’re even really alive …
The Ghostkeeper (Penguin Young Readers, $17.99): Johanna Taylor writes and draws this story of a man who can see ghosts in a world where the key to Death’s Door is stolen, trapping all the ghosts in the land of the living
Gamerville (Harper Alley, $15.99): Johnnie Christmas is back with a new graphic novel about a kid who qualifies for a video game championship, only to have his parents send him to Camp Reset, a video game-less wasteland of fresh air and sunshine.
The Blizzard (Image Comics, $14.99): Geoff Johns and Andrea Mutti’s story from Image! 30th Anniversary Anthology #1-12 gets collected into one trade paperback. It’s set in the same world as Johns’ Geiger and Junkyard Joe, and features a group of convicts and transport guards stranded on a Colorado mountain during a blizzard, where a ferocious monster threatens to tear them all apart in retribution.
Search & Destroy (Fantagraphics, $14.99): Atsushi Kaneko reimagines Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo as a “cyberpunk thriller” in this first of three volumes. The original Dororo was set in feudal Japan and featured a swordsman and a thief hunting for the swordsman’s organs, which were bartered away by his father to demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Search & Destroy moves the story into a dystopian post-cold-war future where mercenary robots serve the human elite and victimize the city’s scrabbling, desperate masses. The violent death of one of these robots connects an orphaned thief named Doro with a mysterious girl with deadly cybernetic implants.