Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital. This week is all about the returns, as Greg Capullo returns to Marvel in a big way, Jenny Sparks is back in a Black Label series, James Robinson returns with a new series and Joe Sacco’s Palestine gets a new printing.
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.
Wolverine: Revenge #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Greg Capullo drawing covers for Marvel again last year, but now the Batman and Spawn artist is doing interior artwork for them as well. He teams with Jonathan Hickman on a five-issue miniseries that finds Wolverine battling Omega Red, Sabretooth, Deadpool and more. Each issue will come in a standard edition and a “red band” edition, meaning it’ll be polybagged with bloodier, more adult-oriented content.
Jenny Sparks #1 (DC, $4.99): The leader of The Authority returns in a new Black Label miniseries by Tom King and Jeff Spokes. The Spirit of the 20th Century comes to the 21st to attempt to save five people taken hostage by an out-of-control Captain Atom.
Patra #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Starman writer James Robinson returns to comics this year with two new series that were recently announced by Dark Horse, starting with this one — a horror title drawn by Scott Kolins (Solomon Grundy, The Flash) about a girl with no memory being hunted by a serial killer.
Standstill #1 (Image Comics, $4.99): Writer and colorist Lee Loughridge teams with artist Andrew Robinson for this eight-issue miniseries about a psychopath who steals a device that allows him to stop time. Chaos ensues.
Something Crawled Out #1 (Vault Comics): Vault’s long-delayed horror title from Son M. and Cas ‘MadCursed’ Peirano arrives in stores this week; it was originally announced in July of 2023 for an October release. It is also part of Vault’s Free-To-Retailers program, meaning they are giving it away to comic shops to give away or sell for whatever price they want. So, your price may vary depending on where you shop. The comic is about a woman who enlists her best friend to help find her missing sister — only for her to start to suspect her best friend is the Devil himself.
Predator vs. Black Panther #1 (Marvel, $5.99): While Spider-Man and the Avengers have their hands full with Ultraman this month, Black Panther is crossing over with another of Marvel’s licensed properties in this four-issue miniseries. Benjamin Percy and Chris Allen show what happens when a young Predator arrive in Wakanda looking for vibranium.
Archer & Armstrong #1 (Alien Books, $4.99): Fred Van Lente and Emiliano Urdinola bring back Valiant’s odd couple, as they “unravel a twisted mystery and expose a dangerous conspiracy” on the road to the Resurgence of the Valiant Universe, the upcoming crossover that’ll reset and reinvigorate the Valiant line at their new publisher.
Huge Detective #1 (Titan Comics, $3.99): Adam Rose and Magenta Kin bring this high-concept title to life, as they introduce a world where a race of giants emerged from under the Earth and set up their own country on the surface. Now a human and a giant must team to solve a mystery that could endanger the fragile peace between their two people.
Power Rangers Infinity #1 (BOOM! Studios, $7.99): This oversized issue by Sam Humphries and the artist team Brandt&Stein features a new team of Power Rangers that’s described as “off-kilter” and spins out of Power Rangers: Darkest Hour. Yeah, I think “off kilter” describes the team on the cover, at least …
Giant-Size Thor #1 (Marvel, $6.99): Marvel’s tribute to the 1970s Giant-Size titles continues with this one-shot by Al Ewing and Brian Level that features Thor and Hercules battling an actual Giant-Size Thor.
Night Club 2 #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Mark Millar’s vampires-as-superheroes story continues as he teams with artist Juanan Ramirez for this next chapter from his new publisher, Dark Horse.
Local Man #13 (Image Comics, $3.99): Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs’ Eisner-nominated series wraps up its latest story arc, “Lost Ones,” which finds our Local Man facing off with the brainwashed denizens of his hometown. But this is an Image title, and he’s bringing lots of guns …
Luchaverse: Catalyst #2 (Massive, $5.99): Marco Lopez, Ivan Plaza, Javier Caba, Bryan Magnaye and Alessandro Micelli return to Massive’s new Luchaverse with another look at real wrestlers turned into fictional supernatural heroes. This issue spotlights arguably AEW’s best tag team, the Lucha Bros. (who may not be in AEW for long, it seems?) as brothers Penta Zero M and Rey Fenix search for a mysterious power source that could change the course of human history. In a second, related story, luchas Solar and Super Astro are reimagined as cosmic beings who return to Earth to protect the planet from whatever the Lucha Bros. discover. I sense a tag team match is coming …
Venom War: Venomous #1 (Marvel, $3.99): Erica Schultz and Luciano Vecchio send the Black Widow to war — the Venom War, that is — where she and her symbiote should be right at home. They’re teaming with Agent Anti-Venom to take on Alchemax in this three-issue miniseries.
Venom War: Carnage #1 (Marvel, $3.99): What would a Venom War be without Carnage? Probably a lot less bloody. This tie-in miniseries sees Torunn Gronbekk team with artist Pere Perez, as the other “son” of Eddie Brock gets involved in the conflict.
The Last Harlemite #1 (Red 5 Comics, $4.95): Jeff Carroll and Rustico P Limosinero helm this new four-issue miniseries that’s about three friends and a dog navigating a post-apocalyptic New York, encountering crazy people, dangerous animals, dinosaurs and mysterious places.
Yor: The Hunter from the Future #1 (Antarctic Press, $4.99): I vaguely remember that there was a movie with the same overly clever title back in the 1980s that would pop up on cable at night, but I don’t think I ever actually saw it. But it did feature Reb Brown, who also starred as Captain America in the 1979 film and its sequel. Why he didn’t appear in Deadpool and Wolverine is a question for the ages. What I didn’t know was that Yor was based on a comic — Henga el Cazador, an Argentinian comic by Ray Collins and Juan Zanotto. Antarctic plans to release four 40-page volumes of Yor’s adventures, as he battles dinosaurs and the mysterious cult called the Blue Men.
Palestine (Fantagraphics, $34.99): First published back in the 1990s before being collected by Fantagraphics in the early 2000s, Joe Sacco’s graphic novel about life in Israel and Palestine is, not surprisingly, seeing a surge in demand right now given the current crisis occurring in the area. The nonfiction graphic novel recounts the two months Sacco spent in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as he interviewed hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis about their daily lives and the ongoing plight of the Palestinians.
Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp (IDW, $12.99): School might be back in session for a lot of kids, but summer isn’t technically over yet — so why not enjoy one more round of summer camp? Writer Rosie Knight and artist Oliver Ono take us to camp one last time this summer in this graphic novel about a young girl who discovers her art camp has been transformed into an “extreme sports nightmare,” and her wanderings away from it lead her to a portal that takes her to the world of monsters, where she befriends Minilla, the Son of Godzilla.
The Sunny-Luna Travelling Oracle (Dark Horse, $24.99): Incognegro creator Warren Pleece is back with a new graphic novel coming from Berger Books, the Dark Horse imprint run by former Vertigo chief Karen Berger. It’s described as “a dystopian eco-noir thriller about power, escape, creation, and the mark we leave on the world.”
Space Junk (Top Shelf, $19.99): Julian Hanshaw writes and draws this science fiction graphic novel about citizens fleeing a doomed planet — except for a group of lonely souls who’ve “spent their lives emotionally adrift” and are “pulled into one another’s orbits as they try to stay in place in a universe that is moving all too quickly.”
Pearl (Graphix, $12.99): Christine Norrie and Sherri L Smith tell the story of a Japanese-American girl who leaves her home in Hawaii to visit her sick grandmother in Hiroshima just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — leaving her unable to return home and conscripted into the Japanese army to translate English radio transmissions.
Swamp Thing by Rick Veitch, Book One: Wild Things (DC, $29.99): Oh, now this is both interesting and welcome — DC begins to collect Rick Veitch’s run on Swamp Thing, which ended in controversial fashion. This first volume features the beginning of his run, from issue #65 through #73, as well as the issues of Hellblazer that crossed over around that time by Jamie Delano and John Ridgway. It also includes a story from Secret Origin #23 that Veitch wrote featuring the Floronic Man, with art by Brett Irwin.
The question I have, though, is whether we’ll see a second volume — and if that volume will include the version of Swamp Thing #88 that Veitch wrote and Michael Zulli drew, that featured Swamp Thing meeting Jesus Christ. The controversial issue was completed but never published, and Veitch quit the title as a result. Which is too bad, because it was part of a bigger time travel epic that Veitch never got to finish.