Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what’s coming to your local comic shop this week. It’s a huge week for comics, so let’s get to it.
I’ve pulled out some of the 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 + Mad Cave + 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 check with your retailer to see what’s arriving at their shop this week.
Fantastic Four/Gargoyles #1 (Marvel/Dynamite, $5.99): DC isn’t the only company Marvel is doing crossovers with these days. Gargoyles creator and acclaimed Marvel writer Greg Weisman teams with artist Enid Balám to unite Marvel’s First Family with the Manhattan Clan in this crossover—both properties now technically owned by Disney, making this a true corporate family reunion. Danger strikes when super villain Diablo learns stone gargoyles may hold the secret to eternal life, but the Gargoyles aren’t about to let him succeed. Fortunately, they’ve got help from expert Diablo-bashers—the Fantastic Four. Plus: Tony Stark and David Xanatos compare facial hair, Marvel’s own Gargoyle Isaac Christians (who remembers him?) bonds with his new kin and more in this collision of beloved universes.
Dungeons & Dragons: The Fallbacks Series 1 #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Greg Pak teams with Wilton Santos and Edvan Alves to bring Jaleigh Johnson’s Fallbacks to comics for the first time. In a time of fickle gods and feckless governors, the world yearns for heroes—but what it gets are the Fallbacks, a party of daring, dubious and dysfunctional adventurers who arrive in Loudwater seeking gold and glory. An encounter with kobold thieves puts them in the crosshairs of a rival team of local heroes, forcing the Fallbacks to choose between pulling off a heist for the ages or sacrificing it all to put these “heroes” in their place.
Artillery: Weapons of Art #1 (Invader Comics, $7.99): Jimmie Robinson of Bomb Queen fame delivers a high-concept three-issue series about the battle to save human creativity. All art and creativity comes from an ancient power source amplified by magical gateways around the world, but a sentient AI is closing the gateways to control all creative arts. As humanity loses the ability to create, the last gateway brings the Mona Lisa to life to form a team of artists who can steal creativity back from the AI. Three artists—a graffiti artist, a film FX artist and a comic book artist—are given magical abilities that transform their art into weapons for an elaborate heist to save the last gateway of creativity.
Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 (IDW, $4.99): Mikey Levitt and Louie Joyce launch new tales based on the newest Ninja Turtles animated series. When Donatello is invited to a prestigious robotics camp for genius kids, he’s excited to rebuild Metalhead and compete for the camp’s prize for best robot. But when the competition goes haywire, Donnie’s forced to wonder who really invited him and what do they want with Metalhead?
Yuletide #1 (Oni Press, $4.99): George Northy and Rachele Aragno deliver an epic holiday adventure that explores why our brightly colored Christmas festivities are held at the peak of winter’s frigid darkness. Christmas, Pennsylvania is the merriest place on Earth, or so they’d like you to think. While the town pulls out all the stops for America’s biggest holiday display, teens Jake, Abe and Wyn are more interested in the dark side their parents pretend doesn’t exist: the ancient legends of mythic monsters and pagan pandemonium tied to the festival’s long-forgotten origins. You can read our preview of it here.
Save Now #1 (Bad Idea, $5.99): Matt Kindt teams with Tomás Giorello for an action-packed science fiction saga about a man cursed with the ability to “save” any moment in his life and relive from that point forward. Saver can rewrite his past, altering his actions until he gets things right—but he can only travel backwards, never forwards, forcing him to relive every moment in agonizing real time. He’s seen our future and the impending apocalypse, but no matter how many times he goes back or how far, he can’t steer the world away from armageddon.
Terrorbytes #1 (Mad Cave Studios, $4.99): Mark Russell and Felix Ruiz launch a speculative fiction series that delves into the shadows of digital existence, exploring the uncharted territories of human consciousness shaped by technological evolution. The first issue features a headset that lets users relive their greatest memories at the moment of their death—but it extracts a brutal price.
Hector Plasm: Hunt the Bigfoot #1 (Image Comics, $3.99): Benito Cereno and Derek Hunter bring back itinerant ghost-hunter Hector Plasm for a new three-issue adventure that pits him against a creature more solid than his usual unquiet spirits. A series of murders in a Pacific Northwest town leads Hector to confront Bigfoot, forcing him to track down a beast that doesn’t want to be found while clearing his own name and saving a struggling local business at the same time.
X-Men: Age of Revelation various titles (Marvel, $3.99-$4.99 each): It’s week two of Marvel’s latest X-event, as the line is being temporarily replaced with three-issue miniseries set 10 years in the future — a future where the Heir of Apocalypse, now known as Revelation, has created a mutant nation and all sorts of trouble. This week brings four titles to choose from by Gail Simone, Lucas Werneck, David Marquez and more.
Ten Ton Titan Terrier (Papercutz, $17.99): David Pepose and Ornella Greco deliver a heart-warming sf adventure about a boy and his dog—with ten tons of over-the-top, monster-battling action. When an asteroid unleashes alien monsters known as Bio-Titans, Earth must turn to a suit of extraterrestrial battle armor to save the day. There’s just one catch: the only creature on the planet capable of turning it on is an 11-inch-tall terrier named Holly. As the Bio-Titan threat escalates, Holly and her scientist owner Sam will find their unique bond tested as he trains his mischievous pup to become not just man’s best friend but humanity’s only hope.
The Croaking HC Vol 02 (Rocketship, $24.99): Megan J. Grey continues her acclaimed series, first published as a webcomic, set in a world of Avians—human/bird hybrids inhabiting a mysterious island with a dark secret and a caste system based on bird species. Scra, the first Crow ever accepted into the prestigious Roost military academy, recovers from a Magpie attack and gets indoctrinated into the BlackAsh Murder. His newfound friendships with Ky and Ree are tested as they must overcome prejudices, pass classes and question the very system that governs them while uncovering whispers of a super-weapon called “The Croaking.”