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.
Absolute Green Arrow #1 (DC, $4.99): Pornsak Pichetshote and Rafael Albuquerque reimagine the Emerald Archer’s mythology as a dark urban murder mystery. There’s a serial killer targeting corrupt billionaires, leaving green arrows in their corpses, and executive protection specialist Dinah Lance is tasked with hunting down the killer from a roster of suspects — all connected to a recently murdered Oliver Queen.
Ultimate Impact: Reborn #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Chris Condon and Stefano Caselli pick up from the threads of Ultimate Endgame, as Miles Morales’ recent trip to the Ultimate Universe left him with a mission to protect the Origin Boxes, which can be used to bestow super powers on people. When the secret gets out, the conflict escalates into the broader Marvel Universe.
Odin #1 (Image, $4.99): James Tynion IV, Marguerite Bennett, Letizia Cadonici, and Jordie Bellaire launch a horror comic set in the cold forests of Norway. A journalist goes undercover with Neo-Nazi punks who are convinced they can summon Odin and achieve their promised destiny. What’s waiting in those woods is older and stranger than any of them can imagine.
Young Hellboy: Thrilling Sky Adventures #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Mike Mignola, Thomas Sniegoski and Craig Rousseau return to the Young Hellboy years with a story about Scarlett Santiago, Hellboy’s favorite comic book hero. This comic-within-a-comic adventure teams Scarlett with a mysterious feline figure, as their respective pasts of beating up bad guys catch up with them.
Babylon Cove #1 (Mad Cave, $4.99): Rafer Roberts and Joe Eisma deliver what sounds like a fun premise: A no-nonsense career woman returns to her New England hometown for a funeral, reconnects with the high school dreamboat who broke her heart and the shy boy she never noticed, and discovers that an ancient demon named Karthon is planning to eat everyone in town.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #51 (DC, $3.99): Mark Waid and Adrian Gutierrez take the World’s Finest team to Skartaris, the lost world of Travis Morgan, the Warlord, where Superman’s powers are at risk and Batman and Robin have to trade their capes for swords and sorcery.
Of the Earth #1 (Image, $4.99): Chris Condon, Andrew Ehrich and Charlie Adlard launch a neo-noir eco-horror miniseries pitched as Blood Simple meets John Carpenter’s The Thing. Tabitha Black returns to her quiet Texas hometown of Solitude looking for refuge, only to find that home isn’t what it used to be. And neither is Gramma.
Fantastic Four #11 (Marvel, $5.99): Ryan North and Patrick Boutin tackle the aftermath of the Invincible Woman’s defeat while Doom’s technology spreads into the hands of criminals who have no idea what they’re wielding. This issue also features the return of the Future Foundation and the Crimeasaurus Rex, which alone makes this issue worth picking up. The real draw for me, though, is the special backup story written and drawn by Stan Sakai.
Zorro #1 (Alien Books, $4.99): Howard Chaykin and Jorge Fornés helm a new Zorro series that sends Don Diego de la Vega up against the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte himself.
Rocketfellers #0 (Image, $3.99): Peter J. Tomasi and Francis Manapul launch a new chapter for the Rocketfeller family in this prelude to the Unbelievables crossover running through several Ghost Machine titles this summer.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Vol. 1 (Vault, $19.99): The Webtoon adaptation of Matt Dinniman’s bestselling LitRPG phenomenon arrives in print, as Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat Princess Donut become trapped in a sadistic alien game show, trying to survive a trap-filled fantasy dungeon while the Apocalypse is televised for the entertainment of the universe. The Free Comic Book Day preview generated a lot of buzz for this already mega-popular story.
Narrow Rooms (Drawn & Quarterly, $30.00): Sungmin Choi writes and draws this romantic thriller about a young woman who relocates to Seoul for self-improvement and obsessed with her handsome neighbor, collecting his discarded cigarette butts and rummaging through his mail, until a disturbing discovery forces her to confront her own behavior.
The End of the Arab of the Future (Fantagraphics, $22.99): Riad Sattouf follows up his celebrated autobiographical series with the first of two volumes about his teenage years in Brittany, where he navigates puberty, isolation and French society while haunted by the kidnapping of his brother by his father.
Olive: Lost in Inner Space (Abrams, $27.99): Vero Cazot and Lucy Mazel team for this fantastical coming-of-age story centered on Olive, an autistic teen who escapes the pressures of dorm life into her own vast inner world of vivid landscapes. Then a mysterious astronaut appears there who may be the same one who recently crash-landed on Earth.
Opioids and Organs (Drawn & Quarterly, $30): Arizona O’Neill writes and draws this heartbreaking graphic memoir. Grieving at her father’s hospital bed after a fentanyl overdose and pressured by doctors to make an irreversible decision, she uncovers the uncomfortable truths about the organ donation industry’s relationship with the opioid crisis.
Book of Jusko (Image, $49.99): Joe Jusko’s landmark career gets a definitive retrospective, as the man who helped redefine superhero illustration with his 1992 Marvel Masterpieces trading card set opens his archives for the first time, with rare and unpublished works, private commissions and personal pieces alongside the iconic images that made him a legend.
Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition (Oni Press, $49.99): Maia Kobabe’s autobiographical work, which is one of the most challenged and banned books in America, gets a deluxe annotated hardcover edition, with commentary from academics, librarians, cartoonists and writers deepening the conversation around Kobabe’s exploration of nonbinary and asexual identity.
Juniper Lodge (Image, $18.99): Dustin Weaver collects five standalone stories from his Paklis anthology series in one standalone volume, with stories about a demonic gun demanding sacrifices every 12 hours in an Old West town, a man trapped in an insect’s brain, a roadside motel that haunts a passing comic book artist and more.
Book of Murmurs (Fantagraphics, $18.99): Candice Purwin created this watercolored fantasy graphic novel about Little Moon, whose parents are slain and whose storybook is stolen, sending her on a quest through a richly imagined world of forests, fault lines and mushroom libraries to confront her grief.
Justice League: Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Watchtower Trade paperback (DC, $17.99): Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott deliver what is one of the most fun superhero comics I’ve read in recent memory. It has Cheetah and Cheshire assembling a crew of supervillain misfits to rob the Justice League’s orbital headquarters, navigating an AI security system and the world’s most powerful heroes in the process. It’s a heist comic! And a great one at that.
Marvels: The Novelization (Abrams, $26.99): This one’s not a graphic novel, but I thought it might be of interest to our readers. Steve Darnall, who co-authored the original Marvels proposal and wrote DC’s Uncle Sam, adapts Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s landmark series into prose, with new painted illustrations by Ross.