Welcome to Can’t Wait for Wednesday, your guide to what’s coming to your local comic shop this week. It’s a rare fifth week of comics, with five Wednesdays falling in July, which means a lot of specials and annuals are arriving.
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.
Queen in Black #1 (Marvel, $7.99): Al Ewing and Iban Coello launch the next Marvel event with a cosmic collision on the edges of the solar system: Knull building a new army, Hela arriving with a legion of symbiotes, and Eddie Brock’s son caught between two of the most powerful evils in the galaxy.
Queen in Black: Defenders of Light and Dark #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Along with the main miniseries comes, of course, the spinoffs and tie-ins. In this one, Tom Waltz and Ze Carlos assemble a team led by Beta Ray Bill to counter the Queen in Black while Tony Stark’s new Black Metal Armor takes aim at Knull.
Queen in Black: Hela #1 (Marvel, $4.99): The final Queen in Black tie-in this week is by Al Ewing and Carlos Magno, and they dig into the secrets behind the event: how Hela caged Knull, why she and Tyr were in Midgard when the Rainbow Bridge fell, and which Thor tried to stop her. Meanwhile, Balder seeks answers from Karnilla of the Norns.
Superman Annual: Year One Thousand #1 (DC, $5.99): This annual answers the question the end of DC K.O. left hanging: where did Superman go after becoming King Omega and rejecting the Heart of Apokolips? The answer is complicated, as it involves the far future, a Darkseid-infected timeline, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Time Trapper’s powers and Superman racing against his own fading godlike abilities to heal the damage done to history. Joshua Williamson, Eddy Barrows and Yasmine Putri set up the return of Superman just in time for Kingdom of Zod to get going.
![The Horror of Godzilla [Kai-Sei Era] #1](https://smashpages.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/82771403545200111.jpg)
The Horror of Godzilla #1 (IDW, $4.99): Griffin Sheridan and Ethan S. Parker team with Tristan Jones to take a trip to Tokyo in 1954 during the first Godzilla attack, told as pure horror with no heroes and no survivors.
Dirt Beneath the Devil #1 (Mad Cave, $4.99): Dan Panosian and David Ferracci launch a dark frontier Western about a woman, June Buckley, who is summoned along with a group of treacherous heirs to traverse the brutal path that built her monstrous father’s empire. At the center of it all is the Hendido, a creature bound to her father’s past, and perhaps to something far older and much more wicked.
Predator vs. The Planet of the Apes #1 (Marvel, $5.99): Greg Pak and Alan Robinson bring two iconic science fiction franchises together for the first time, as Predators arrive on the Planet of the Apes and begin hunting.
The Patron #1 (Ignition Press, $4.99): Christian Ward and John J. Pearson helm this darkly elegant thriller about Mr. Cherish, a patron of the arts who has discovered that nothing makes a work more valuable than the creator’s death, and has built an empire around orchestrating the spectacular tragic endings of his protégés. When his latest planned murder goes sideways, law enforcement and a ruthless third party close in simultaneously.
DC’s Hawk-Girl Summer #1 (DC, $9.99): A who’s who of creators delivers a fun summer beach read featuring Hawkgirl, Catwoman, Red Hood, Grace Choi, Thunder, Shining Knight and the Female Furies. Creators Meghan Fitzmartin, Andre R. Frattino, Josh Trujillo, Ramon Perez, Rafael Loureiro and more bring the heat in this 100-page special.
Nano #1 (Dark Horse, $8.99): This three-issue miniseries by Alexandra Grant, Matt Kindt and Natacha Bustos is about an operative of the underground organization known as The Order who is tasked with the one mission she’s never trained for: playing the dutiful wife of her comrade Lukas’s cover identity in a mega-city run on prison labor. While Lukas infiltrates a secretive research facility, Sana teaches 8th grade P.E. and waits for the moment she can stop waiting.
Rocket Raccoon: Rocket Rewind #1 (Marvel, $6.99): Marvel celebrate 50 years of Rocket Raccoon with a 48-page anniversary spectacular featuring the work of Christos Gage, MacKenzie Cadenhead, Enid Balam and Todd Nauck, along with a reprint of the first tale featuring Rocky Raccoon.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest 2026 Annual #1 (DC, $5.99): The oversized special is a little late for Father’s Day, but we’ll forgive it because the premise sounds like fun. Writers Mark Waid, Mark Russell and Tyrone Finch, along with artists Clayton Henry and Patrick Boutin, send our heroes out for a relaxing night with their father figures Jonathan Kent and Alfred. Things go sideways when Batman and Superman fall into a trap, leaving the father figures to jump into the fray. Plus Bruce Wayne goes undercover as Lois Lane’s date to protect her from Intergang.
Conan the Barbarian #33 (Titan, $4.99): Jim Zub continues his long-running stint on Conan, kicking off a new arc this issue with artist Fernando Dagnino. And in this issue, Conan gets to not only be a barbarian, but also a pirate! He and Valeria head to the seas with the Red Brotherhood, living the lawless life until occult forces from Conan’s past lock onto him again.
Feral #25 (Image, $4.99): It’s the crossover you’ve been waiting for, if you’re a fan of both Stary Dogs and Feral. Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez bring all the animals together in a story involving the CDC, a serial killer and a whole lot of fire.
What If…? Spider-Man #1 (Marvel, $4.99): J.M. DeMatteis, writer of the original Kraven’s Last Hunt, returns to reimagine its aftermath: what if Kraven survived? With Peter Parker broken and vulnerable, Kraven fills the void left by the spider.
Detective Comics 2026 Annual #1 (DC, $5.99): The Australian powerhouse team of Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott team up for a fun premise: Batman has been falsely accused of a political assassination on a distant planet, and the person sent to haul him across the cosmos for judgment is Lobo. It’s a road trip across the stars, and I’m sure Batman is not amused.
The Greatest American Hero #1 (AMP Comics, $4.99): Believe it or not, the Greatest American Hero is back in a five-issue series by Don Handfield and Alper Gecgel. The bumbling hero from the beloved 1980s TV show tries to reconnect with the son who only knows him as the crazy man in the red pajamas.
Speed Racer: Tales from the Road — The Rook (Mad Cave, $6.99): This quarterly one-shot series that ties into Speed Racer goes deep into the lore, and this issue is no exception. Jim McCann, Jordan Morris and Alessio Zonno tell the story of a rookie cop who goes undercover inside Palm City’s deadly Car Acrobatic Team, climbing the ranks of Formula X racing to take down the villainous Dante Ferno.
Justice League: Knight Vision Special #1 (DC, $5.99): Mark Waid, Joshua Williamson and Miguel Mendonca team up for this tie-in to the current Justice League Unlimited story where Batman and other members of the Justice League elected to give membership status to several of their foes, including Lex Luthor. But with Lex and company on the side of the angels, someone else decides to fill the void on the villains side, bringing an all-new foe with some sort of super-weapon for this unlikely duo to deal with.
Laser Quest (Floating World Comics, $6.99): If you ever played Laser Tag, or “Photon” as they called in my town, this one might hit home. Writer/artist Harry Nordlinger’s liminal space horror one-shot drops readers into a “Laser Quest” birthday party in the year 2000 where little Johnny gets lost in the maze and discovers a tribe of children who have been trapped in the twisting hallways for years.
Toxic Avenger Comics #10 (Ahoy Comics, $4.99): Matt Bors and Fred Harper bring the politically charged Toxie Goes to Washington to its conclusion, as Toxie and the Planet Teens take on the Radiation Rangers on the streets of Washington, plus the president is … really an alien? That would explain a lot. Check out our preview here.
Dare You to Dance (Random House Graphic, $14.99): ebecca Mock delivers a middle-grade graphic novel about Gracie, a small-town ballerina attending a prestigious New York summer workshop who picks the star of the class as her rival, only to discover that what Sariah really needs is a friend.
The Girl Who Loved Monsters (Viking Books for Young Readers, $23.99): When Charlotte Bissett reads aloud from the mysterious Liber de Monstrum, she wakes up the next morning to snow, a missing teacher and a substitute who might be a werewolf. With her friends Molly and Griffin, Charlotte has to fix what she accidentally unleashed in this creepy but warmhearted middle-grade horror debut by Insha Fitzpatrick and Ashley Robin Franklin.
Mad Dog Morgan (The Lab Press, $49.99): Originally crowdfunded last year, this graphic novel mashes up indie wrestling and supernatural horror in a story by Adam Lawson, Brian Christgau and Maxi Dall’o. Mitchell “Mad Dog” Morgan is a failed wrestler who wanders into a crumbling haunted house that feeds on the hopeless, where he discovers that every failure in his career prepared him to fight something ancient and far worse than any opponent he faced in the ring.
Star Wars Legends: The Newspaper Strips Omnibus (Marvel, $125): This omnibus collects more than 1,000 pages of the classic Star Wars newspaper strips by Russ Manning, Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson, which mostly were set between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. They’ve been collected before by Dark Horse and IDW, but I don’t know if they’ve ever been collected in a single volume. So if you’re looking to get all the daily doses of the galaxy far, far away that appeared in newspapers from 1979 to the mid 1980s in between two covers, look no further.