Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what’s coming to your local comic shop this week. This week includes a couple of tie-ins to upcoming big-movie blockbusters, a milestone issue for MAD and much more.
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.
Concrete: Stars Over Sand #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Paul Chadwick returns to his Eisner, Harvey and Reuben Award-winning creation for the first time since 2012. The story starts with Concrete disappearing in the desert, and his longtime friends Larry and Maureen begin searching for him. Reports says he’s roaming the arid mountains, covered in blood and attacking people, following a lightning strike that has left him with amnesia.
Spider-Man: Long Way Home #1 (Marvel, $5.99): Jonathan Hickman and Adam Kubert team up for this gritty thriller set early in the superhero careers of Peter Parker, Bruce Banner and Frank Castle. As they all converge on a Cosmic Cube that A.I.M. has just developed in the South American jungle, each tries to keep it out of the others’ hands.
MAD Magazine #600 (DC, $5.99): MAD hits its landmark 600th issue, offering new content and older stuff from “the Usual Gang of Idiots.” Sergio Aragonés provides the wraparound cover and a new MAD Look at…, Peter Kuper contributes a special 75th Anniversary Spy vs. Spy poster, Johnny Sampson handles a new Fold-In and comedian/comics writer Patton Oswalt’s offers a tribute to the magazine, among other features.
Trillion Dollar Kid #1 (Image, $3.99): Geoff Johns, Peter J. Tomasi and Stefano Simeone launch this central chapter to Ghost Machine Unbelievables crossover, which gives us a proper introduction to Tommy Townsend III, the world’s first 13-year-old trillionaire. He’s searching for other Unbelievables with his robot bodyguard Sterling by his side, learning fast that money doesn’t buy the kind of connection he’s really looking for.
The Phantom vs. The Red Dragons (Mad Cave, $6.99): Ray Fawkes and Lynne Yoshii send the Ghost Who Walks to the South China Sea, where someone wearing his cowl has been sinking the Red Dragons’ pirate operations, and Princess Sin is angry enough to declare open season on anything in a mask.
Hellboy in Love: Obsidian #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Alex Nieto send Anastasia to Crete, where an excavation team has unearthed a tomb with striking similarities to the engraved skull stolen from her by a witch in India. The trail for the mysterious Suaren Artea society may not be as cold as she feared, and danger follows close behind every discovery.
What If…? Thor #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Torunn Grønbekk and Sergio Dávila ask what happens when the alien symbiote Spider-Man found on the Secret Wars world bonds with Thor instead of Spider-Man, and what ancient shadows lurking in the Ten Realms would take notice of a symbiote-amplified God of Thunder.
Gun Honey: Doubles Down #1 (Titan, $4.99): Charles Ardai and Ang Hor Kheng bring Joanna Tan back for a new mission with a classic thriller setup: a botched assassination attempt on the Russian dictator has sent three identical-looking men fleeing in different directions, and Gun Honey has been offered $10 million to identify the real target and make sure he’s the one who doesn’t make it.
Dying Days #1 (Red 5 Comics, $4.95): Matt Kund and Bora Orcal launch a four-issue series built on an unsettling crisis: “The Aging” begins, accelerating the aging process across the population. As expected, chaos ensues. Some people choose anarchy, some surrender and some carry on as normal. One scientist refuses all of those options and instead races to find a cure before her son is lost.
Land of Never #1 (Mad Cave, $4.99): Steve Orlando and Miguel Mora team on the story of a retired pathologist whose daughter was taken six months earlier by something at her window that nobody believes he really saw. He descends into obsession and eventually discovers a whole community of people who’ve lost someone to the same cryptid: the Floating Man.
Lobo #4 (DC, $3.99): Skottie Young and Jorge Corona have been having a blast with Lobo, who is getting ready for his DCU cinematic debut in Supergirl later this month. Oh hey, is that Jason Momoa, the big-time movie star who plays Lobo, appearing on this variant cover by Dan Mora? Or is that Aquaman? You never can tell … Anyway, in this issue, Kara Zor-El and Lobo meet again, giving us one side of a story that will be mirrored in June 24’s Summer of Supergirl Special.
Pear Shape (Fantagraphics, $12.99): Musician and cartoonist Nick Thorburn of Islands and The Unicorns created these 64 pages of interconnected comic strips that channel underground comix tradition and turns them on their head.
Betas (Drawn & Quarterly, $22): Nick Maandag delivers a workplace comedy about three roommates navigating the modern dating scene, whose already-fraught social lives become even more complicated when a cascade of workplace incidents at the restaurant they all work at generates an avalanche of HR regulations, ever-expanding apologies and self-serving rules.
Finish Lines (First Second, $27.99): Sarah Broyles and Hanna Schroy send burned out overachiever Miranda into the Texas Water Safari, a grueling 260-mile canoe race, with her grandfather as her only crew. What starts as a scheme for college essay material becomes something transformative.
Transformers: Worst Bot Ever — Bot Swap (Image, $12.99): Brian “Smitty” Smith and Marz Jr. return with Ballpoint’s next adventure, a Freaky Friday-style body-swap mishap. When said event lands the self-described Worst Bot Ever in Megatron’s body and the Decepticon commander in Ballpoint’s tiny, humiliating frame, things get a little nuts.
Stitch Book: Top Secret Adventures (Dynamic Forces, $15.99): Jeff Parker delivers the first in a series of original graphic novels narrated by Lilo and illustrated by Stitch himself, which should be fun. When the Galactic Federation wants to document Experiment 626’s life story, Pleakley is tasked with the project but quickly discovers that neither he nor the Federation is really in charge of this one.
Memories of Giselle (Image, $14.99): Katia Vecchio delivers this haunting coming-of-age graphic novel about Giselle, who has been haunted since childhood by the memory of her grandmother and a recurring image of a boat that serves symbol of a buried trauma that begins to surface as adolescence brings new struggles with intimacy and vulnerability.
Haven and the Fallen Giants (First Second, $24.99): Jen Xu and Kate Rhodes deliver this debut graphic novel about Haven, an outcast living in the desert outside the city of Raqmu. That city is built on the remains of a fallen giant, and Haven discovers a mysterious relic that awakens the sleeping creature and changes everything.
Charity and Sylvia (Drawn & Quarterly, $30): Tillie Walden tells the true story of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, an openly lesbian couple who built a life together in 19th century Vermont. It’s based on extensive archives of their correspondence, spanning early American history from the railroad to riots across 14 presidents.
Nancy for All Seasons (Fantagraphics, $24.99): Hey, it’s Nancy! The pop culture icon who has experience a wave of popularity in recent years, but has been around since the 1930s. This collection puts the focus on strips from the mid-1950s, collecting more than 300 strips by the incomparable Ernie Bushmiller.