Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what’s coming to your local comic shop this week. With San Diego Comic-Con upon us, this week sees a whole bunch of major releases, including milestone issues of Action Comics and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the annual Hellfire Gala special and two specials that tie into the con itself.
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 + Neon Ichiban (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.
Action Comics #1100 (DC, $5.99): DC celebrates a big milestone as one of its flagship titles reaches issue #1100, following several months behind Detective Comics, which hit issue #1100 last year. This oversized issue features stories from creators from across the Superman titles, including Mark Waid, Skylar Patridge, Sophie Campbell, Joshua Williamson, Dan Mora, Dan Slott and more.
X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 (Marvel, $7.99): Saladin Ahmed, Erica Schultz, Tony Daniel, Luciano Vecchio and more deliver 56 pages of a locked-room mystery set at Sebastian Shaw’s Hellfire Gala. An iconic mutant power player has been murdered, everyone is a suspect, and it falls to Wolverine and Jubilee to solve it before the consequences unravel all of mutantkind.
Terminal #1 (Image/Skybound, $4.99): Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, Andy Kubert, David Finch and Arthur Adams assemble for a new superhero comic from Skybound. The plot involves a secret war being fought between two rival groups of superhumans, and Marilyn Howe, a woman searching for her missing sister, stumbles in between them. Like with many first issues these days, there will be a blind bag program, and it’s probably worth calling out that Skybound has said there could be some surprises in them — and we know Skybound has had some pretty interesting surprises in recent blind bags.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #20: 300th Issue Special (IDW, $6.99): More than 40 years and 300 issues have led up to this — the beginning of The City That Never Dies, described as one of the biggest TMNT stories ever told and featuring a threat capable of destroying both the worlds of the living and the dead. This one includes contributions by Gene Luen Yang, Freddie Williams II, Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Sophie Campbell, Jim Lawson, Eric Talbot and more.
Giant Robot Hellboy Returns #1 (Dark Horse, $3.99): Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo reunite for a two-part follow-up to Giant Robot Hellboy, picking up after the robot’s disappearance as scientists combing the deep sea discover an interdimensional portal that threatens to pull them in or let something out.
Gambit: Wanted #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Gambit co-creator Chris Claremont teams with artist Robert Gill for an adventure set during the era when Gambit returned Storm to the remnants of the X-Men, revealing the full story of how he came to join the team for the first time.
Godzilla vs. America: San Diego (IDW, $7.99): Godzilla crashes the San Diego Comic-Con in this perfectly timed anthology, as the King of Monsters decides he doesn’t want to wait in line for Hall H, and a roster of San Diego-connected comic creators, including Stan Sakai, document the glorious destruction. Can you blame him? That line can be monstrous …
Dread the Hall H 2026 (Image, $6.99): It’s nice to see comics’ big annual event getting not one, but two specials this week, just like other holidays do. This anthology features 48 pages of convention horror stories from Chris Ryall, Jordan Hart, Luana Vecchio and others, covering the variant craze gone amok and other con-related terrors.
Giant Size Youngblood (Image, $6.99): Rob Liefeld expands the Youngblood universe by introducing five new characters who will make up the core of the new team lineup ahead of Youngblood #101. In addition, the New Men are reintroduced, prior to their first issue being reprinted by 247 Comics.
Solomon Kane: The Lion Errant #1 (Titan, $4.99): Writer/artist Patch Zircher brings Robert E. Howard’s grim Puritan avenger to India, guided by a mysterious black-maned lion toward a confrontation between the warrior queen Rani Durgavati and the Mughal Empire — a clash where Kane’s Atlantean staff may be the key to everything.
Sicko #1 (Ignition Press, $4.99): Tini Howard and Amilcar Pinna introduce Valentine Virago, a woman whose rare autoimmune disorder has mutated into the ability to weaponize her immune system, turning a sneeze into a projectile of bloody miasma. Fed up with being a test subject, Valentine goes on the run, but the interested parties pursuing her include her one-time nurse and potential love interest.
Godzilla Conquers the Multiverse #1 (Marvel, $4.99): With the 616 conquered by Godzilla and Knull, Gerry Duggan and Javier Garron unleash the duo on the Marvel multiverse. Doctor Doom assembles a team that travels across dimensions to find a kaiju capable of stopping the King of the Monsters, encountering all sorts of new and fun threats along the way.
Dungeons & Dragons: Total Party Killers #1 (Dark Horse, $4.99): Christopher Hastings and Denis Medri flip the script on the classic D&D adventure in this miniseries. With their evil wizard master dead and his lair being looted by adventurers, the monsters he’d enslaved in life must protect his domain or trick someone into freeing them. So a lycanthrope, a gelatinous cube, a mind flayer, a death knight and a baby beholder form their own adventuring party.
Star Trek: Red Shirts — Ghost of the 21st Century #1 (IDW, $4.99): Gerry Duggan teams with Scott Buoncristiano for a second Red Shirts miniseries. Conscripted security grunt Harry Deubert uncovers something called Section Null, a secret Starfleet directorate exploiting disposable red shirts in a criminal conspiracy. Paired with an Andorian officer with her own hidden agenda, Deubert discovers what red shirts are really for, making him a target.
Dark Knights of Steel: Heir to the Sea #1 (DC, $5.99): This 48-page one-shot collects the Aquaman origin story first serialized in Dark Knights of Steel: Allwinter by Tom Taylor and Riccardo Federici.
Good Devils Don’t Play Fair With Evil second printing (Image, $5.99): Nick Dragotta and David Brothers’ acclaimed one-shot, which features three stories they created between 2021 and 2023, returns with a second printing. “Little did I know this would be the perfect warm up to Absolute Batman,” Dragotta said about the project.
Marvel Zero 2026 #1 (Marvel, $6.99): This comic collects Marvel’s Comics Giveaway Day issues for this year, which featured previews of Amazing Spider-Man #1000, the Armageddon buildup with Red Hulk, the X-Men’s summer event and, of course, Doom. If you missed the free versions, here’s your chance to check them out.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu — Danger in the Dark (Papercutz, $6.99): Delilah S. Dawson, Arianna Florean, Mario del Pennino and Gaia De Bernardini send Din Djarin and Grogu into the lava tubes beneath Nevarro to defuse a crashed pirate ship, joined by a brave crew of Anzellan friends in this original graphic novel featuring the popular Mandalorian and his little green buddy.
Salvage (Ten Speed Graphic, $25.99): Renée Nault writes and draws her first original graphic novel, following her work on the Handmaid’s Tale adaptation. Paolo lives in the Flats, a water-logged community where he survives by salvaging submerged skyscrapers in a world of risen sea levels. His one night in the privileged Uplands leads to a double life and an impossible romance with Jules.
Penelope’s Escape from the Platypusary (Papercutz, $17.99): The solicit refers to this one as “historical fiction,” which I initially scoffed at until a quick Google search revealed that, yes indeed, there was a platypus named Penelope who escaped the Bronx Zoo in an attempt to get away from her “destined” mate, Cecil. Arianna Irwin and Prenzy give this story the dramatic flair that it deserves.
Pia in the Forest (Holiday House/Candlewick, $14.99): David Bruggink introduces Pia, a girl who gets lost while recording sounds in the forest with her dad. During her adventure, she finds a new friend named Quinn, builds fairy houses and plays games, and eventually finds her way back using the forest’s own sounds as her guide.
World Enders (Mad Cave, $10.99): James Patrick and Nicola Izzo present a brutal, manga-influenced anti-hero epic where four mercenaries are tasked with euthanizing the last survivors of humanity and detonating a doomsday bomb after eight apocalypses have left the Earth barely standing.
Bitchy: The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken (Fantagraphics, $39.99): The definitive collection of Roberta Gregory’s landmark Naughty Bits series featuring Midge McCracken, the abrasive, unfiltered office pessimist who comes by her bitterness honestly, rendered across four decades with Gregory’s unflinching humor. Gregory published Dynamite Damsels in 1976, the first underground solo comic self-published by a woman, and Naughty Bits became the longest-running solo alternative comic by a female cartoonist.
Apocalyptic Horseplay (Rocketship Entertainment, $24.99): In this print collection of the Webtoon comic, writer/artist Eliott Boredman imagines the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse reformed and retired, living quietly in a small English town, until a nosy student journalist and a child who could end the world threaten their hard-won anonymity.
Nothing Can Stop the Ape (Papercutz, $17.99): Tom Sniegoski, Jeannine Acheson and Craig Rousseau send 12-year-old Maxwell Morgan to save his mother, who has been possessed by an ancient goddess. His only option to help her is to free the volatile Gorilla God of Chaos named Ghraagg’endah. Joined by his French bulldog and four elemental-powered cave people, Maxwell has to convince a very large, very unpredictable ape to be a hero.
D’Orc Vol. 1 (Image, $9.99): Writer/artist Brett Bean’s megapopular Image series gets collected. The first five issues of his gleefully chaotic high-fantasy comedy introduced us to D’Orc, a half-dwarf/half-orc fated to end the world. Armed with a violently ambitious magical shield and a headless chicken, D’Orc is drawn into the war between Light and Dark whether he likes it or not.
Grit (Mad Cave, $17.99): Originally published by Scout Comics, Brian Wickman and Kevin Castaniero’s southern-fried sword and sorcery book returns in this collection by Mad Cave Studios. Old Man Barrow is accustomed to solving problems with his axe, but when he stumbles into a doomsday cult conspiracy during what should have been a routine troll hunt, he must work with a sharp-tempered witch named Ari if they both want to survive.