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.
Five Gears in Reverse: A Criminal Book (Image, $24.99): Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips return to the Criminal universe with a new graphic novel following Ricky Lawless as he tries to pay off a dangerous debt to a mobster while everything keeps going catastrophically wrong. But don’t despair; this is also the story of how he and Mallory fell in love, so it’s also a love story.
Batman #163 (DC, $4.99): Ten issues of Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez’s new Batman run have shipped in the time it took to get here, but after months of delays due to Jim Lee’s health issues, the conclusion to H2SH Part One by Jeph Loeb, Lee and Scott Williams finally arrives. You have to wonder at this point if we’ll ever see Part Two.
Doomquest #1 (Marvel, $5.99): One World Under Doom scribe Ryan North teams with Francesco Mobili for this “evergreen story” that sends Doctor Doom on a time-spanning quest. When Reed Richards announces that his retirement project will be going back through history to optimize humanity’s worst eras, Doom decides he has to do it first. The Fantastic Four intervene, and suddenly Doom is at war across all of time and space.
BRZRKR: Light Draws Breath #1 (BOOM! Studios, $9.99): China Miéville, Season Butler and Alessio Avallone take the BRZRKR universe to the Bronze Age. The titular character is dead again, but two rogue scientists have siphoned off a fragment of his protoplasm before he can fully reconstitute, and something new has been born.
Star Trek: Celebrations 2026 (IDW, $5.99): IDW’s annual Star Trek anthology returns with an all-LGBTQIA+ creator lineup, as Meghan Fitzmartin, Ben Kahn, Jamila Rowser and more deliver stories of love and triumph featuring Sulu and Ben on a botanical adventure, Mariner and Jennifer in a bar brawl, and Seven and Raffi on a holodeck date gone wrong.
Wiccan & Hulkling: Raid of Ultron #1 (Marvel, $5.99): The Marvel’s Voices line deliver a 48-page Pride Month celebration, as Wiccan and Hulkling’s anniversary party is crashed by Ultron, who wants Vision and Viv back. The anthology format brings in Tegan Quin of the band Tegan and Sara co-writing a Wiccan and Speed team-up with Luciano Vecchio, Zoe Tunnell and Rachael Stott on a Hulkling and Phyla-Vell story, Josh Trujillo on a Vision and Viv story and more.
Superman: Father of Tomorrow #1 (DC, $4.99): Kenny Porter and Danny Earls launch a new Elseworlds miniseries that shows us what might have happened if it was Jor-El, not his infant son, who survived Krypton’s destruction and landed on a Kansas farm.
Rick and Morty Forever #0 (Oni Press, $8.99): Oni Press is calling this the “final final” issue of their Rick and Morty run, with Rick trapped in cosmic impotence, forced to observe everything he’s ever wanted without the power to act, and realizing that the same fate awaits the only being who ever truly stood by him. It’s by Daniel Kibblesmith and Troy Little.
Hornsby & Halo #0 (Image, $3.99): This prelude chapter to Ghost Machine’s “Who Are the Unbelievables?” crossover by Peter J. Tomasi and Peter Snejbjerg finds Rose and Zach, the spawns of heaven and hell now living under the same roof, meeting the Trillion Dollar Kid. He has a mission only they can help with.
Ultimates #24 (Marvel, $4.99): Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri bring the Ultimates to its finale, as She-Hulk and her remaining teammates engage in an all-or-nothing battle against the villainous Hulk on Gamma Island.
Did You Hear About Mimi Green? #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Connor Goldsmith, host of the Cerebro podcast, makes his comics-writing debut alongside artist Josh Cornillon in a surreal horror series that skewers the wellness industry and celebrity culture in equal measure. Mimi Green is a popular essayist with a perfectly curated public image who checks into an isolated mental health facility to weather a viral scandal, and finds herself pulled into another version of the building where the vainglorious are punished again and again.
Matron #1 (IPI Comics, $4.99): David Bowles, Drew Edwards and Monica Gallagher team for this folk horror slasher series in Texas Hill Country. Set during the Great Texas Freeze of February 2021, the daughter and granddaughter of a legendary cannibal serial killer called the Matron must live under the shadow of legacy that threatens to resurrect itself.
Infernal Hulk #7 (Marvel, $4.99): With the Infernal Hulk exerting mysterious control over mutants, drawing them to his growing Living City army, the X-Men arrive to fight both the call and the monster himself in a story by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Adam Gorham.
Universal Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives! Black & White Special #1 (Image/Skybound, $6.99): The first two issues of Ram V, Dan Watters and Matthew Roberts’ Universal Monsters series are presented in black and white, restoring that classic silver-screen aesthetic to the story.
JLA/Avengers #1 Facsimile Edition (Marvel/DC, $5.99): The biggest, grandest and arguably best Marvel/DC crossover ever made gets a facsimile reprint. If you’ve never gotten to read the long out-of-print landmark series by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez, here’s your chance. Marvel is publishing issues #1 and #3, while DC will handle #2 and #4.
The Life and Death of Lucas Dreamwalker #1 (BOOM! Studios, $5.99): Horror author R.L. Stine and artist Francesco Francavilla teamed up for this pulpy noir somnambulist adventure that originally appeared in BOOM!’s Hello Darkness anthology. Follow Lucas through a world where dying in a dream has real consequences and the mystery of his third death is already foretold.
Pink Monsters (Oni Press, $29.99): German creator Claus Daniel Herrmann makes his American debut with a quiet coming-of-age story about Frank, a 14-year-old whose talent for drawing monsters makes him popular at school even as he’s slowly realizing he’s gay. When a charismatic esoteric healer begins blaming his drawings for his father’s depression and later makes him feel guilty about his sexuality, Frank has to decide what’s more important: peace in his family or his own truth.
The Final Architecture: Salvation’s Child (ComiXology Originals, $6.99): Adrian Tchaikovsky adapts his acclaimed science fiction universe into comics form, with Paul Cornell editing and Mike Collins on art, as part of their Cosmic Lighthouse publishing house. It’s the story of the Architects, planet-sized aliens that cannot be negotiated with that have destroyed Earth, and a woman named Marta is desperately protecting her daughter, convinced the girl holds the key to humanity’s survival.
Spectors (Titan Comics, $17.99): Shannon Eric Denton and David Hartman jump between the 1930s and the modern day to tell the story of supernatural investigators Reginald and Debby, who work across generations to stop a cult from resurrecting ancient evils. When they discover the cult’s experiments date back to Reginald’s own father, a decades-long personal mystery comes into focus.
Iron Man: Super Smash (Abrams, $12.99): Dean Hale and Douglas Holgate send Tony Stark into monster mayhem territory alongside the Hulk. Iron Man builds a new suit big enough to keep up with Hulk’s smashing instincts, only to discover that all that destruction may be making things worse.
Halloween Boy Vol. 1: Last of the Halloween Boys (Oni Press, $29.99): This collects Eisner Award-nominated writer/artist Dave Baker’s self-published series in a premium hardcover. Halloween Boy, an archaeologist-for-hire and supernatural combatant with no past, takes on artifact rescues gone wrong, cosmic funeral dirges and the ever-looming secrets of the Demon Who Lives.
DC Pride: The Heart Wants (DC, $24.99): DC collects last year’s DC Pride special, along with additional stories, into this hardcover. It features stories by Tim Sheridan, Vita Ayala, Josh Trujillo, Sam Maggs, Maya Houston, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Jenny Blake, Emilio Pilliu, Skylar Patridge, A.L. Kaplan, Max Sarin, Vincent Cecil and more, plus a letter’s column.