Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what’s coming to your local comic shop this week.
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.
Destination Kill #1 (Oni Press, $5.99): Joe Palmer launches a visceral science fiction series set in 2125 London, where the all-powerful corporation Overcon has rebuilt Central City in its own image while displacing an army of human workers. As Overcon prepares to celebrate its Paradise Loop’s first anniversary, those workers flood the streets armed and angry, and the only thing standing between them and the gala is a pill-popping detective named Gina Serene and her ex-partner turned P.I. I spoke with Palmer about the book here.
Absolute Batman #20 (DC, $4.99): Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s powerhouse series deliver what the solicit calls a seminal issue, as a tragic loss rocks Gotham and the Absolute Robins — plural! — arrive ready to hunt.
Amazing Spider-Man/Venom: Death Spiral — Body Count #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Charles Soule and Kev Walker reveal the origin of Torment, the new villain the Death Spiral crossover introduced, in this one-shot.
Barbara Gordon: Breakout #1 (DC, $3.99): Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan reunite for a DC Next Level series that centers on Barbara Gordon getting framed, arrested and shipped to Supermax. Alone and surrounded by dangerous criminals and equally dangerous guards, Barbara Gordon investigates a facility where nothing is what it seems
Godzilla vs. America: Texas (IDW, $7.99): The kaiju city-smashing anthology tour hits the Lone Star State, and since everything is bigger here in Texas, Godzilla isn’t content with just one city. This 48-page oversized issue features four 10-page stories by Texas-based comics creators, celebrating the state’s comics community while simultaneously destroying it.
Archie Comics 85th Anniversary Presents: Archie’s Movie Mania #1 (Archie Comics, $4.99): Jamie L. Rotante, Steven Butler and Bill Galvan send Archie and friends not to the movies, with the Superteens battling souped-up zoo animals in an all-out brawl and Veronica Lodge squaring off against Ginger Lopez in a fashion critic showdown. Check out our preview here.
Olympus Saga: Megalith #1 (Bad Dog, $5.99): Matt Kindt and Lewis LaRosa reunite on this high-concept science fiction series. Twenty minutes ago, a massive monolith crashed into Baltimore. Ten minutes ago, it sprouted tendrils. Two minutes ago, it transformed into a hundred-story humanoid mech and started marching toward Washington. Now a beat cop named Jack Casey has to climb inside it and destroy it from within before the government’s nuclear response arrives.
Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Dan Slott, Marcus To and Marcos Martin revisit one of the most transformative (and controversial) periods in Spider-Man history. The story centers on Peter Parker stealing the Kingpin’s secret criminal directory, the Lexicon, and immediately painting the biggest target in New York City on his back as both Mr. Negative and the Punisher come after him for it.
Conan and Dragonero #1 (Titan, $4.99): Stefano Vietti, Luca Enoch and artist Lorenzo Nuti bring together two legendary sword-and-sorcery heroes for the first time: Conan of Cimmeria and Dragonero, the dragon slayer of Italian comics, thrown together by dark forces in the mysterious land of Erondár and forced to set aside suspicion to face a supernatural threat capable of dooming both their worlds. Previously unpublished outside of Italy, this offers an introduction to a character North American readers may not know yet.
Showdown #1 (Ignition Press, $4.99): Dave Wielgosz and Tadd Galusha deliver a grounded pulp drama about Trish Sullivan, who returns to her hometown with one goal: killing Harvey Harlowe, who she holds responsible for her little brother’s death. Harvey has just lost his father and his football scholarship. He’s not going to run. This is a story about two people on a collision course with nothing left to lose.
Hidden Springs #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Rob Williams and Nil Vendrell launch what might be the most purely delightful premise of the week: a group of aging ex-Hollywood stars on a retirement community field trip encounter a baby kaiju on the run from military agents, bond with it immediately and have to somehow get it to safety before it accidentally ends the world.
Lenore: Ghost Story #1 (Titan, $4.99): Roman Dirge takes Lenore and her crew camping for an evening of ghost stories under the stars that goes predictably sideways when painful memories resurface and the Ghost of Mr. Gosh shows up uninvited.
Tisena #1 (Rae Media, $5.99): TJ Sterling and the Xong Bros launch a Super Sentai-inspired action story about Tisena, the last Okemus Hunter from the future, now living in present-day New York City and fighting to protect our timeline. When her only ally is captured by a rogue military group weaponizing Okemus Hunter abilities, she reluctantly teams with an FBI agent whose missing sister connects to the same threat.
Captain America #11 (Marvel, $4.99): Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti put Steve Rogers on a collision course with the Red Hulk’s all-new strike team on the road to Armageddon while Steve is trying to protect Victor Von Doom’s ultimate weapon from both the U.S. and Latveria simultaneously. Zdarsky’s Cap run has been excellent, and this issue sounds it will ignite the upcoming summer event.
Innards #1 (Ignition Press, $4.99): Rob Guillory and Sam Lotfi, the team behind Mosely, reunite for a psychological thriller set miles beneath the Earth’s surface. After a catastrophic nuclear attack, humanity’s last energy source is Lucifium, a mineral accessible only by teleportation into a subterranean maze. Roy Wilder’s first day as a “diver” for the ONIS corporation cracks open a corporate secret that awakens something in the depths.
What We Mean By Yesterday Vol. 2 (Fantagraphics, $19.99): Part two of Benjamin Marra’s Instagram-born daily comic strip project, as this volume follows conniving peasant Ninkugel, who accidentally causes a plague, flees his village, and lies and cheats his way across the countryside until he convinces an entire town he’s a legendary demon slayer.
Beast (Magnetic Press, $24.99): Zidrou and Frank Pe’s Franco-Belgian graphci novel features a marsupilami that’s captured in the jungles of Palombia, sold to animal traffickers and eventually taken in by François, a young boy in postwar Brussels who is himself an outcast because of his father’s German military past.
Hana and Taru (Oni Press, $24.99): Leo Schilling and Motteux deliver an ecological fantasy about Taru, a misfit among her tribe of hunter-warriors, tasked with watching a human prisoner named Hana. They build an unlikely friendship, and when giant beasts begin rampaging through their world, the two must work together to understand a force that threatens everything.
Gunpunch (Rocketship Entertainment, $24.99): Fernando Pinto’s acclaimed webcomic began as a pandemic-era project and developed a devoted following, and now gets its print debut following a successful Kickstarter. It’s about Evan, who had an okay life until he lost his job and his girlfriend on the same day, hooked up with a mysterious woman, and woke up as Earth’s last hope against an alien invasion he didn’t ask for.