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 + 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.
Marvel Dimensions (Abrams, $29.99): Alex Ross follows Fantastic Four: Full Circle with another fuly painted original Marvel graphic novel. It begins with a tour through the origins of Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Wolverine and others, then shifts into something darker and stranger.
Bruce Wayne: Not Super — The Bat-Catastrophe (DC, $12.99): Stuart Gibbs and Berat Pekmezci continue the middle-grade Batman series about a 13-year-old Bruce Wayne. Exhausted from juggling vigilante duties and failing grades, Bruce’s life is made worse by the fact that Selina Kyle has a crush on Batman but not him. When Jack Napier, Bane and Hugo Strange team up for a heist at Gotham City Bank and Selina seems to be helping them, Bruce gets a crash course in the fact that everyone at his school is more complicated than they appear.
Kodi: A Place to Call Home (Top Shelf, $14.99): Jared Cullum returns to Katya and her enormous bear companion for a sequel to his award-winning graphic novel. With the two settling into city life together, Katya falls behind at school, while Kodi struggles to find a place in this noisy new world.
A Ghost Arm Made of Angry Ghosts (Oni Press, $29.99): Oliver Mertz and Alex Diotto team for this punk rock graphic novel set in 1990s Washington, D.C. Teenager Ari Ackerman can’t seem to avoid death — he may or may not have witnessed a murder, is processing his cancer-stricken father’s perpetual near-death experiences and is now entangled in an escalating series of unexplained deaths.
The Cutting Garden (Image, $22.99): Darcy Van Poelgeest and Erin Connally deliver this gorgeously rendered graphic novel set in 1930s New Orleans, where a florist works through the night on a funeral arrangement for a peculiar customer, an 11-year-old girl named Adeil who pays in stories. For every flower added to the bouquet, Adeil offers another dissonant detail, and as dawn approaches the florist must piece together the truth of what this child’s life has been.
On Their Frontlines: The Lives of Japanese War Brides (Fantagraphics, $22.99): Marina Lisa Komiya makes her debut with this post-World War II story of two Japanese women, best friends Haru and Yoriko, who are separated during the American air raids and each find their way to American soldiers in postwar Japan.
John of the Night (Avery Hill, $19.99): After years of making nonfiction graphic novels, Darryl Cunningham returns with a fictional cosmic superhero family drama that draws from Kirby and mythology. It’s a strong contender for one of this year’s best. Check out my interview with him here.
Grifters, Floaters, and Punks (Fantagraphics, $25.00): Keith Bendis reimagines John James Audubon’s Birds of America and the state birds it featured, including the Beach Stoners of North Carolina, the Impossible Screamers of Alaska (who lay eggs five times their body size) and the alluring Pink-Breasted Frogcatcher of the Louisiana bayou.
Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (DC, $3.99): A thousand years after Superman’s rocket landed on the Kent Farm, superheroes are outlawed, the Persuaders keep the United Planets in check, worlds are at war and R.J. Brande has been murdered. Brainiac 1 of 5 must solve the murder and assemble a legion of gifted rebels from across the cosmos. Joshua Williamson and Hayden Sherman relaunch the Legion for the DC Next Level era, with a new status quo.
Archie #1 (Oni Press, $4.99): Ben H. Winters and Fábio Moon get to go first in Oni’s launch of a new Archie line. In this first issue, a film festival in Riverdale turns everything upside down, and there’s a central enigmatic mystery that only Jughead can possibly unravel. Check out our interview with Winters and the other writers of this ambitious line.
No Gods, No Masters #1 (BOOM! Studios, $4.99): Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo reunite for a kaiju story that offers a more personal perspective. When a giant monster erupts out of the ground during afternoon detention, three New York City teenagers have to band together to rescue one of their moms from a wrecked subway station.
Spider-Woman 50th Anniversary Special #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Ann Nocenti, Dan Watters, Steffano Raffaele and more celebrate 50 years of Jessica Drew. Nocenti, who worked on the characters first ongoing, brings her back to Los Angeles for a detective story, while Watters teases what he has in store for her when her new solo series launches later this year.
Crowbound #1 (Image, $3.99): Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen re-team for another series. Rose, an unremarkable worker in a sprawling Factory that divides what’s left of the world, makes a dark pact with a terrifying figure called the Scarecrow Queen when her young daughter is violently taken.
Batman/Superman/Weird Al: World’s Weirdest #1 (DC, $5.99): Mark Waid teams with Weird Al Yankovic (for real) and Dan Schoening on this oversized comedy one-shot. The fifth dimension and Earth have both been hit by an affliction that makes everything dull and ordinary, and Mr. Mxyzptlk has only one person to call — and it’s not Superman or Batman.
Project Perseus #1 (Vault, $3.99): Jack Mulqueen and Edison Neo launch a stylish adventure comedy about a disgraced cryptid hunter who sobers up after a decade-long bender to track down a former friend who’s stolen a time-traveling apparatus.
Marvel Zombies: War Zone #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Tom Waltz and Jaime Infante drop the Marvel Zombies into Manhattan, with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes quickly succumbing one by one, with Marvel’s street-level heroes, led by the Punisher, left to face them.
Superman: The Stranger #1 (DC, $4.99): Wes Craig heads back to the Golden Age for this Black Label series about a Superman based on those original issues. Clark Kent struggles to make ends meet in Metropolis, putting on the cape at night to protect the streets, and finding that however many criminals he stops, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep struggling.
Supernatural: Wayward Special #1 (Dynamite, $5.99): Paulina Ganucheau and John Amor set the stage for the upcoming Supernatural event that’ll feature Sam and Dean Winchester heading down separate roads. This one-shot reveals the hellish forces that will drive them apart.
Tales of Wonder #1 (Image, $3.99): Steve Skroce debuts a new series about two legendary comic book creators, Stu and Jake, whose World War II friendship was destroyed by the comic book industry. Now reunited to launch a cinematic universe based on their creations, they discover the superheroes and monsters from their stories are completely real.
Black Panther/Namor: Doomed #1 (Marvel, $4.99): Ethan S. Parker, Griffin Sheridan and Stefano Nesi team for a new miniseries featuring Black Panther and Namor. The two rival kings will descend into Hell when Wakanda and Atlantis are attacked by demons, only to discover another of Hell’s denizens, Doctor Doom.
Doom Patrol #1 (DC, $3.99): The world’s strangest heroes return as part of the DC Next Level initiative in a new series by Darcy Van Poelgeest and Niko Henrichon. The Doom Patrol is broke so they adopt a heroes-for-hire model, and a simple missing cat case turns out to be anything but. Meanwhile, something from the team’s past prepares to cross back into their world.
EC Cruel Kingdom 2 #1 (Oni Press, $4.99): The blood-drenched medieval EC Comics anthology returns with stories by David M. Booher, Matt Bors, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Ryan Kelly, Lukas Ketner, David Lapham and more.
Marvel Mangaverse: Web of Blood #1 (Marvel, $5.99): Writer Joe Kelly teams with his son, Jack Kelly, and artist Kenny Ruiz to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Marvel Mangaverse. This is the first of several one-shots that’ll come out in September.
The Perfectly Monstrous Life of Adam Frankenstein (Dark Horse, $7.99): Tate Brombal and Soo Lee tell the origin story of the character from The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos, revealing what happened under Victor Frankenstein’s knives, how Adam became a protector for all Monsterkind and the early life that shaped Christopher Chaos’s most important mentor. The flip-book features a Monsters in Love short story by Bradley Clayton.
Teen Titans #1 (DC, $3.99): In the third DC Next Level title to launch this week, Kyle Higgins and Daniele Di Nicuolo bring together a new generation of Titans. Fairplay, Cheshire Cat, Proxy and Wildcard go looking for a missing teammate who attended a rally for Ascend, a fast-growing youth movement training kids to survive in a world of superhuman conflict, and end up in an uneasy team-up with Red Hood.
Warbird #1 (Bad Idea, $5.99): Derek Kolstad, creator of John Wick, teams with Robert Venditti, Alex Maleev and Esad Ribić to launch a globe-spanning action thriller. Cole is a repo man of extraordinary skill who can steal anything with an engine from anyone with an army. His latest job: steal one of three Russian next-gen fighter jets Frankensteined from stolen military secrets from five nations.
X-Men: Omega Red Dawn #1 (Marvel, $6.99): Marvel collects the X-Men Infinity Comic arc by Steve Orlando and Alan Robinson that features Omega Red abducting Professor X.
Prima Apparata #1 (Ignition Press, $4.99): In a future where Earth has been shattered into surviving pockets across the galaxy, young women train at a celestial conservatory not as soldiers but as ballerinas, piloting performance mechs in a life-or-death annual recital of humanity’s only unifying story. Olivia Dufault and Rebekah Isaacs are the creative team behind this Pacific Rim meets Black Swan mash-up.