New Comics For Week Of THURSDAY 4th May

This Saturday, is the first Saturday in May, making it FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

We'll have all the details for our event going up during the week.

We'll forgive you if it's all you can think about all week...

Actually, to hell with that.

There is some AWESOME comics out this week, that you WILL have to pay for BUT they are EXCELLENT!

Like Kyle Starks, Peacemaker Tries Hard #1.

THIS, among others on this list you SHOULD be thinking about too.

Now, go on about your day.

  If there is something extra you are after make sure to get your requests to us before 5pm Monday to give us the best chance to secure you what you are after as we'll have limited shelf stock available.

Until we next see or hear from you, stay safe, live life and read comics!

HIGHLIGHT LIST

SURVIVAL #1 (OF 5)

BATMAN #135 CVR A JORGE JIMENEZ (#900)

BATMAN #181 FACSIMILE EDITION

PEACEMAKER TRIES HARD #1 (OF 6)

SHAZAM #1

STARSIGNS #1 CVR A LEVENS & FITZPATRICK (MR)

CARNAGE REIGNS ALPHA #1

CULT OF CARNAGE MISERY #1 (OF 5)

DEMON WARS SCARLET SIN #1

EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #1 (OF 4)

GROOT #1 (OF 4)

SPIDER-MAN 2099 DARK GENESIS #1 (OF 5)

STAR WARS RETURN OF JEDI LANDO #1

X-MEN BEFORE THE FALL SONS OF X #1

BASIL AND OREGANO TP (C: 0-1-2)

CREEPY ARCHIVES TP VOL 01 (C: 0-1-2)

DARK WEB TP

DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH COMP CONSPIRACY DLX HC VOL 01 (MR)

HAUNTHOLOGY TP (MR)

JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021) HC VOL 03 LEAGUES OF CHAOS

LEAST WE CAN DO TP VOL 01

LOT 13 TP (C: 0-1-2)

MIGHTY MMW AVENGERS AMONG US WALKS A GOLIATH TP VOL 03

MURKY WORLD HC (C: 0-1-2)

SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE COMPENDIUM 01 TP (MR)

SPIDER-GWEN GHOST-SPIDER MODERN ERA EPIC COLL TP

SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY TP EXTRA

STAR WARS HIGH REPUBLIC SEASON TWO TP VOL 01 BALANCE OF FORC

STAR WARS TP MANDALORIAN VOL 02 SEASON ONE PART TWO

SUPERMAN SPACE AGE HC

VENOM BY AL EWING AND RAM V TP VOL 03 DARK WEB

WAKANDA TP

ANIMAL CASTLE VOL 2 #1

ASTROBOTS #1 (OF 5)

B&V FRIENDS FOREVER GAME ON ONESHOT

LAMENTATION #1

AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER I AM AANG LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK

BLOOD OF THE VIRGIN HC

BLOOD STAINED TEETH TP VOL 02 DRIP FEED (MR)

DAEMONS OF SHADOW REALM GN VOL 01

DARK SPACES TP WILDFIRE (MR)

EVERY DAY GN

HAWK THE SLAYER WARGHT FOR ME IN NIGHT TP

IRON MAIDEN WHERE IS EDDIE HC

SARA DLX HC (MR)

SENTIENT DLX HC (MR)

SHAMAN KING FLOWERS GN VOL 01

SPIRITED AWAY PICTURE BOOK HC GHIBLI

STAR TREK LOWER DECKS TP

STILLWATER BY ZDARSKY & PEREZ TP VOL 03 (MR)

SPIDER-MAN MILES MORALES SENTINEL SV-ACTION AF REISSUE

BOOM ENTERTAINMENT

BUFFY LAST VAMPIRE SLAYER LOST SUMMER #1

MMPR TMNT II #5 (OF 5)

 

DARK HORSE COMICS

HAIRBALL #2 (OF 4)

SKULL & BONES #3 (OF 3)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

SURVIVAL #1 (OF 5)

WHERE MONSTERS LIE #4 (OF 4)

 

DC COMICS

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN JON KENT #3 (OF 6)

BATMAN #135 CVR A JORGE JIMENEZ (#900)

BATMAN #181 FACSIMILE EDITION

BATMAN & THE JOKER THE DEADLY DUO #7 (OF 7)

BATMAN THE AUDIO ADVENTURES #6 (OF 7)

FLASH #796 (ONE-MINUTE WAR)

FLASH #798

JOKER THE MAN WHO STOPPED LAUGHING #8

PEACEMAKER TRIES HARD #1 (OF 6)

POISON IVY #12

SHAZAM #1

 

DYNAMIC FORCES

BARBARELLA CENTER CANNOT HOLD #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

DRACULINA BLOOD SIMPLE #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

 

IDW

BREATH OF SHADOWS #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

MY LITTLE PONY #12

STAR TREK DS9 DOG OF WAR #2

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

TMNT USAGI YOJIMBO WHEREWHEN #2

 

IMAGE COMICS

ALMIGHTY #4 (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

BLOOD TREE #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

HEY KIDS COMICS VOL 03 SCHLOCK OF THE NEW #2 (OF 6) (MR)

I HATE THIS PLACE #8

JUNK RABBIT #2 (OF 5)

LOVE EVERLASTING #7

RADIANT BLACK #24

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

STARSIGNS #1

WALKING DEAD DLX #62

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

 

MARVEL PRH

AVENGERS WAR ACROSS TIME #5

CARNAGE REIGNS ALPHA #1

CULT OF CARNAGE MISERY #1 (OF 5)

DEMON WARS SCARLET SIN #1

EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #1 (OF 4)

GROOT #1 (OF 4)

IMMORTAL X-MEN #11

JOE FIXIT #5 (OF 5)

MOON KNIGHT #23

SCARLET WITCH #5

SPIDER-MAN #8

SPIDER-MAN 2099 DARK GENESIS #1 (OF 5)

STAR WARS #34

STAR WARS DARTH VADER #33

STAR WARS DOCTOR APHRA #31

STAR WARS RETURN OF JEDI LANDO #1

STAR WARS YODA #7

X-MEN BEFORE THE FALL SONS OF X #1

 

MISC

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE #1

ANIMAL CASTLE VOL 2 #1

ASTROBOTS #1 (OF 5)

B&V FRIENDS FOREVER GAME ON ONESHOT

FRANK FRAZETTA DEATH DEALER #12

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

GODFELL #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

LAMENTATION #1

MONOMYTH #1 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

PARKER GIRLS #7

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

ROGUE STATE #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

ZILTOID OMNISCIENT #1

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

 

MAGAZINES

2022 PROG PACK ISSUE #2298

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #453

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

STAR WARS INSIDER #218 

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT REORDERS)

TRADES

AMAZING CAMEL TOE GN (MR)

ART OF HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST HC

AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER I AM AANG LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK

AVENGERS WEST COAST EPIC COLLECTION TP CALIFORNIA SCREAMING

BASIL AND OREGANO TP

BLOOD OF THE VIRGIN HC

BLOOD ON TRACKS GN VOL 13 (MR)

BLOOD STAINED TEETH TP VOL 02 DRIP FEED (MR)

CARDCAPTOR SAKURA CLEAR CARD GN VOL 13

CATWOMAN (2022) TP VOL 02 CAT INTERNATIONAL

CREEPY ARCHIVES TP VOL 01

DAEMONS OF SHADOW REALM GN VOL 01

DARK SPACES TP WILDFIRE (MR)

DARK WEB TP

DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH COMP CONSPIRACY DLX HC VOL 01 (MR)

DJELIYA GN

ELUSIVE SAMURAI GN VOL 06

EVERY DAY GN

HAUNTHOLOGY TP (MR)

HAWK THE SLAYER WARGHT FOR ME IN NIGHT TP

IM NOT MEAT GET YOUR FILTHY PAWS OFF ME GN VOL 03

IRON MAIDEN WHERE IS EDDIE HC

JONNA AND UNPOSSIBLE MONSTERS TP VOL 03

JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021) HC VOL 03 LEAGUES OF CHAOS

LEAST WE CAN DO TP VOL 01

LOT 13 TP

MIGHTY MMW AVENGERS AMONG US WALKS A GOLIATH TP VOL 03 

MOB PSYCHO 100 TP VOL 11

MURKY WORLD HC

RESIDENT ALIEN OMNIBUS TP VOL 02

RUN AWAY WITH ME GIRL GN VOL 03

SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE COMPENDIUM 01 TP (MR)

SARA DLX HC (MR)

SCALES & SCOUNDRELS BOOK 01 WHERE DRAGONS WANDER

SCALES & SCOUNDRELS BOOK 02 FESTIVAL OF LIFE

SENTIENT DLX HC (MR)

SHAMAN KING FLOWERS GN VOL 01

SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL HC

SHOW-HA SHOTEN GN VOL 02

SPIDER-GWEN GHOST-SPIDER MODERN ERA EPIC COLL TP

SPIDER-MAN LIFE STORY TP EXTRA

SPIRITED AWAY PICTURE BOOK HC GHIBLI

STAR TREK LOWER DECKS TP

STAR WARS HIGH REPUBLIC SEASON TWO TP VOL 01 BALANCE OF FORCE

STAR WARS TP MANDALORIAN VOL 02 SEASON ONE PART TWO

STILLWATER BY ZDARSKY & PEREZ TP VOL 03 (MR)

SUPERMAN SPACE AGE HC

SUPERMAN THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION TP

THREE GHOSTS OF TESLA HC

VENOM BY AL EWING AND RAM V TP VOL 03 DARK WEB

WAKANDA TP

 

MERCH

SPIDER-MAN MILES MORALES SENTINEL SV-ACTION AF REISSUE (NET)

New Comics For Week Of THURSDAY 27th April

  

Look, not gonna lie...pretty excited that there is a new issue of Peepee Poopoo out this week...it's like we've peaked twice only a month or so apart!

Oh, Worldtree is finally out AND haress the rage with Darth Vader Black White AND RED...as in his saber! SO good!

Oh, Free Comic Book Day is coming soon too...like in two weeks!

Are you READY!

If there is something extra you are after make sure to get your requests to us before 5pm Monday to give us the best chance to secure you what you are after as we'll have limited shelf stock available.

Until we next see or hear from you, stay safe, live life and read comics!

HIGHLIGHT LIST

GREEN ARROW #1 (OF 6)

DEEP CUTS #1 (OF 6)

ADAM WARLOCK STRANGE TALES #178 FACSIMILE EDITION

ALIEN #1

MIRACLEMAN MARVEL TALES #1

SINS OF SINISTER DOMINION #1

STAR WARS DARTH VADER BLACK WHITE AND RED #1

3KEYS TP (MR)

ALL-OUT AVENGERS TP TEACHABLE MOMENTS

AUTHORITY TP BOOK 01 (2023 EDITION) (MR)

BATMAN AND ROBIN TP VOL 1 BATMAN REBORN (2023 EDITION)

BATMAN AND SON TP (2023 EDITION)

BLAB TP VOL 01 (C: 0-1-2)

BOOSTER GOLD 52 PICK UP TP (2023 EDITION)

COSMIC GHOST RIDER BY DONNY CATES TP

CREATURE COMMANDOS TP (2023 EDITION)

DUO HC

FANTASTIC FOUR BY MILLAR HITCH OMNIBUS HC HITCH CVR

MIDNIGHT SUNS TP

PEEPEE POOPOO #420 (ONE SHOT)

STRANGE TP VOL 02 DOCTOR STRANGE OF DEATH

SUCKER TP

X-TERMINATORS TP

TMNT LAST RONIN LOST YEARS DIRECTORS CUT #1

W0RLDTR33 #1

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY BANE OF BLASTAAR #1

CHILLING ADV CULT OF THAT WILKIN BOY ONESHOT

DARKSTALKERS FELICIA #1

MIGHTY BARBARIANS #1

MONEY SHOT COMES AGAIN #1

SILENCE #1

PREVIEWS #416 MAY 2023

BLACK CAT SOCIAL CLUB TP

BOYS ABYSS GN VOL 01 (MR)

DISNEY & PIXARS TURNING RED 4 TOWN 4 REAL MANGA GN

LAST COMICS ON EARTH GN

LAST COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO GN

SACRED LAMB GN

SAP HUNTERS HC (MR)

X-MEN LEG 60TH ANN GAMBIT/BANSHEE/PSYLOCKE 6IN AF 3PK CS

BOOM ENTERTAINMENT

BEHOLD BEHEMOTH #5 (OF 5)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

DUNE HOUSE HARKONNEN #4 (OF 12)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

GRIM #10

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

NEIGHBORS #2 (OF 5)

 

DARK HORSE COMICS

BLUE BOOK #3 (OF 5)

 

DC COMICS

ACTION COMICS #1054

BLUE BEETLE GRADUATION DAY #6 (OF 6)

DC RWBY #3 (OF 7)

DETECTIVE COMICS #1071

GREEN ARROW #1 (OF 6)

HARLEY QUINN #29

LAZARUS PLANET REVENGE OF THE GODS #4 (OF 4)

RIDDLER YEAR ONE #4 (OF 6)

SANDMAN UNIVERSE DEAD BOY DETECTIVES #5 (OF 6)

TIM DRAKE ROBIN #8

UNSTOPPABLE DOOM PATROL #2 (OF 6)

 

DYNAMITE

GARGOYLES #5

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

VAMPIRELLA STRIKES #12

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

IDW

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS SATURDAY MORNING ADV #2

STAR TREK #7

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

TMNT ARMAGEDDON GAME #7

TMNT LAST RONIN LOST YEARS #3

TMNT LAST RONIN LOST YEARS DIRECTORS CUT #1

TMNT ONGOING #139

 

IMAGE COMICS

AMBASSADORS #3 (OF 6)

DEAD ROMANS #2 (OF 6)

DEEP CUTS #1 (OF 6)

IMAGE 30TH ANNV ANTHOLOGY #12 (OF 12) (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

INDIGO CHILDREN #2

KAYA #7

KILLADELPHIA #30

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

LOCAL MAN #3

LOVESICK #7 (OF 7)

PLUSH #6 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

SPAWN SCORCHED #17

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

TORRENT #3

VANISH #6

W0RLDTR33 #1

WHATS THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE #12

 

MARVEL PRH

ADAM WARLOCK STRANGE TALES #178 FACSIMILE EDITION

ALIEN #1

AVENGERS BEYOND #2 (OF 5)

BETSY BRADDOCK CAPTAIN BRITAIN #3

CAPTAIN AMERICA SYMBOL OF TRUTH #12

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

CLOBBERIN TIME #2 (OF 5)

DAREDEVIL #10

DEADPOOL #6

DOCTOR STRANGE #2

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY BANE OF BLASTAAR #1

HULK #14

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #5

MARY JANE AND BLACK CAT #5 (OF 5)

MIRACLEMAN MARVEL TALES #1

MONICA RAMBEAU PHOTON #5 (OF 5)

ROCKET RACCOON MARVEL TALES #1

SINS OF SINISTER DOMINION #1

STAR WARS DARTH VADER BLACK WHITE AND RED #1

STRANGE ACADEMY FINALS #6

THOR #33

VENOM LETHAL PROTECTOR II #2 (OF 5)

WASP #4 (OF 4)

 

 

MISC

BILLIONAIRE ISLAND CULT OF DOGS #6 (OF 6) (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

BLADE RUNNER 2039 #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

CHILLING ADV CULT OF THAT WILKIN BOY ONESHOT

DARKSTALKERS FELICIA #1

DOOR TO DOOR NIGHT BY NIGHT #5

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

HORROR COMICS #22

LOVECRAFT UNKNOWN KADATH #8

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

MIGHTY BARBARIANS #1

MONEY SHOT COMES AGAIN #1

NEVERENDER FINAL DUELS #2 (OF 3)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

POPSCARS #2 (OF 6)

RED WINTER FALLOUT #4 (OF 4)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

SILENCE #1

TALES FROM NOTTINGHAM #3 (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

THE EXILED #3 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

TROJAN #4 (OF 4) (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

MAGAZINES

2000 AD NOVEMBER PROG PACK

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

DC CONNECT #36

DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE #587

JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #451

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

MARVEL PREVIEWS VOL 6 #20 MAY 2023

PREVIEWS #416 MAY 2023

 

 

 

TRADES

3KEYS TP (MR)

ALL-OUT AVENGERS TP TEACHABLE MOMENTS

ART OF DEMON SLAYER KIMETSU NO YAIBA HC

AUTHORITY TP BOOK 01 (2023 EDITION) (MR)

BATMAN AND ROBIN TP VOL 1 BATMAN REBORN (2023 EDITION)

BATMAN AND SON TP (2023 EDITION)

BLAB TP VOL 01

BLACK CAT SOCIAL CLUB TP

BOOSTER GOLD 52 PICK UP TP (2023 EDITION)

BOYS ABYSS GN VOL 01 (MR)

CHANGELING TP VOL 2

COSMIC GHOST RIDER BY DONNY CATES TP

CREATURE COMMANDOS TP (2023 EDITION)

DEADPOOL AND CABLE OMNIBUS HC NEW PTG

DISNEY & PIXARS TURNING RED 4 TOWN 4 REAL MANGA GN

EDENS ZERO GN VOL 22

FANTASTIC FOUR BY MILLAR HITCH OMNIBUS HC

GIRL FROM OTHER SIDE SIUIL RUN DLX ED OMNIBUS HC VOL 03

LAST COMICS ON EARTH GN

LAST COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO GN

LEGENDS OF THE DC UNIVERSE CARMINE INFANTINO HC

MIDNIGHT SUNS TP

PEEPEE POOPOO #420 (ONE SHOT)

SACRED LAMB GN

SAP HUNTERS HC (MR)

STRANGE TP VOL 02 DOCTOR STRANGE OF DEATH

SUCKER TP

SUNSHINE HC GN

THOR EPIC COLLECTION TP EVEN AN IMMORTAL CAN DIE

TMNT BEST OF TMNT COLLECTION TP VOL 03

UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS HC VOL 01 WATSON DM VAR NEW PTG

VAMPIRE SLAYER (BUFFY) TP VOL 02

WONDER WOMAN PARADISE FOUND TP  (2023 EDITION)

X-TERMINATORS TP

YEAR ZERO VOL 0 TP (MR)

 

MERCH

X-MEN LEG 60TH ANN GAMBIT/BANSHEE/PSYLOCKE 6IN AF 3PK CS

 

BACK IN STOCK

DANDADAN GN VOL 01 (MR)

DAREDEVIL TP BORN AGAIN

HAIKYU GN VOL 01

NIGHT EATERS GN VOL 01 SHE EATS AT NIGHT

PHENOMENA GN VOL 01 GOLDEN CITY OF EYES

TMNT THE LAST RONIN HC

New Comics For Week Of THURSDAY 20th April

This post is coming to you from the bus...that's right, THE BUS!

This list however, ain't no Venga Bus...it's the Comic Bus, baby!

C'mon and ride it!

  If there is something extra you are after make sure to get your requests to us before 5pm Monday to give us the best chance to secure you what you are after as we'll have limited shelf stock available.

Until we next see or hear from you, stay safe, live life and read comics!

HIGHLIGHT LIST

EXPANSE THE DRAGON TOOTH #1 (OF 12)

ALL EIGHT EYES #1 (OF 4)

DC SILENT TALES #1 (ONE SHOT)

SUPERBOY THE MAN OF TOMORROW #1 (OF 6)

TERRORWAR #1

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE OMEGA #1

CAPTAIN AMERICA UNFORGIVEN #1

WARLOCK REBIRTH #1 (OF 5)

SEVEN YEARS IN DARKNESS #1 (OF 4)

ASK FOR MERCY TP VOL 01

DEADLIEST BOUQUET TP (MR)

GIRL TAKING OVER A LOIS LANE STORY TP

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY BY AL EWING TP

JURASSIC LEAGUE HC

JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021) TP VOL 01 PRISMS

MARVEL-VERSE GN TPB ROCKET AND GROOT

MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS RECHARGED TP VOL 01

PLANET OF THE APES ADV ORIG MARVEL YEARS OMNIBUS

PREDATOR TP VOL 01 DAY OF THE HUNTER

SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER TP VOL 02

SWING HC VOL 01 (MR)

UNDER KINGDOM TP

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY TP VOL 04 (MR)

DR ATOMIC PIPE & DOPE BOOK (ONE-SHOT)

CRYPTIDNALS #1 (OF 7)

AGENCY HC

DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION GN VOL 12 (MR)

DOOMSDAY WITH MY DOG GN VOL 02

STARHENGE DLX ED HC VOL 01 (MR)

TATSUKI FUJIMOTO BEFORE CHAINSAW MAN GN 22-26 (MR)

THOR & LOKI MIDGARD FAMILY MAYHEM HC

USAGI YOJIMBO TP VOL 05 GREEN DRAGON 

BOOM ENTERTAINMENT

EXPANSE THE DRAGON TOOTH #1 (OF 12)

HARROWER #3 (OF 4)

HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER #14

MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS #107

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

VAMPIRE SLAYER (BUFFY) #13

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

DARK HORSE COMICS

ALL EIGHT EYES #1 (OF 4)

ORDER AND OUTRAGE #2 (OF 4)

 

DC COMICS

BATGIRLS #17

BATMAN SUPERMAN WORLDS FINEST #14

BLACK ADAM #10 (OF 12)

CATWOMAN #54

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

DC SILENT TALES #1 (ONE SHOT)

DCEASED WAR OF THE UNDEAD GODS #8 (OF 8)

FLASH #797

NIGHTWING #103

STATIC SHADOWS OF DAKOTA #3 (OF 6)

SUPERBOY THE MAN OF TOMORROW #1 (OF 6)

SUPERMAN #3

WONDER WOMAN #798 (REVENGE OF THE GODS)

 

DYNAMITE

DARKWING DUCK #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

DEJAH THORIS (2023) #2

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

PURGATORI MUST DIE #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

IDW

MY LITTLE PONY BEST OF TWILIGHT SPARKLE

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #59

TMNT ARMAGEDDON GAME ALLIANCE #6

 

IMAGE COMICS

DR ATOMIC PIPE & DOPE BOOK (ONE-SHOT)

FORGED #2 (MR)

GUNSLINGER SPAWN #19

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

HITOMI #5 (OF 5)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

IMMORTAL SERGEANT #4 (OF 9)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

LAST BARBARIANS #3

MAGIC ORDER 4 #4 (OF 6)

NO ONE #2 (OF 10)

ORDINARY GODS #11

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

ROGUE SUN #12

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

TERRORWAR #1

TIME BEFORE TIME #22

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

VOYAGIS #5 (OF 5)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

WALKING DEAD DLX #61

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

MARVEL PRH

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #24

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE OMEGA #1

BISHOP WAR COLLEGE #3

CAPTAIN AMERICA UNFORGIVEN #1

HALLOWS EVE #2

HELLCAT #2 (OF 5)

MOON GIRL AND DEVIL DINOSAUR #5 (OF 5)

NEW MUTANTS LETHAL LEGION #2 (OF 5)

NIGHTCRAWLERS #3 (OF 3)

PUNISHER #11

RED GOBLIN #3

SHE-HULK #12

STAR WARS SANA STARROS #3

STAR WARS YODA #6

WARLOCK REBIRTH #1 (OF 5)

X-CELLENT #2 (OF 5)

X-FORCE #39

X-TREME X-MEN #5 (OF 5)

 

MISC

BLACK TAPE #3 (OF 4)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

CHICKEN DEVILS #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

CRYPTIDNALS #1 (OF 7)

FRANK MILLERS PANDORA #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

GANGSTER ASS BARISTA #2

KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #303

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

LIQUID KILL #3 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

LOVE & ROCKETS #13

MAD CAVE STUDIOS LEGACY BATTLECATS #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

MORIARTY CLOCKWORK EMPIRE #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

QUESTED #5

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

RICK AND MORTY #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

SEVEN YEARS IN DARKNESS #1 (OF 4)

STREET FIGHTER MASTERS CAMMY #1

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

VAMPIRESS CARMILLA MAGAZINE #15 (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

X-O MANOWAR UNCONQUERED #2

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

TRADES

AGENCY HC

ASK FOR MERCY TP VOL 01

BATMAN FEAR STATE SAGA TP

BLUE LOCK GN VOL 06

BPRD OMNIBUS TP VOL 05

DAREDEVIL EPIC COLLECTION TP WATCH OUT FOR BULLSEYE

DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION GN VOL 12 (MR)

DEADLIEST BOUQUET TP (MR)

DOOMSDAY WITH MY DOG GN VOL 02

GIRL TAKING OVER A LOIS LANE STORY TP

GO GO LOSER RANGER GN VOL 04 (MR)

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY BY AL EWING TP

HUNGRY GHOST GN

INCREDIBLE HULK EPIC COLLECTION TP LONE AND LEVEL SANDS

IRON MAN EPIC COLLECTION TP DOOM

JURASSIC LEAGUE HC

JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021) TP VOL 01 PRISMS

K ON SHUFFLE GN VOL 01 (MR)

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT JOSE LUIS GARCIA LOPEZ HC

LIGHT CARRIES ON HC

MARVEL 1602 TP

MARVEL-VERSE GN TPB ROCKET AND GROOT

MIERUKO-CHAN GN VOL 07

MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS RECHARGED TP VOL 01

MISSION YOZAKURA FAMILY GN VOL 04

ON OR OFF GN VOL 03 (A)

OUTPOST ZERO COMP COLL TP

PLANET OF THE APES ADV ORIG MARVEL YEARS OMNIBUS

POSTAL COMPENDIUM TP (MR)

PREDATOR TP VOL 01 DAY OF THE HUNTER

RECORD OF RAGNAROK GN VOL 06 (MR)

RICK & MORTY DLX DOUBLE FEATURE HC VOL 01 (MR)

RUN ON YOUR NEW LEGS GN VOL 04

SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER TP VOL 02

STARHENGE DLX ED HC VOL 01 (MR)

SWING HC VOL 01 (MR)

TATSUKI FUJIMOTO BEFORE CHAINSAW MAN GN 22-26 (MR)

THE BOXER GN VOL 02 (MR)

THOR & LOKI MIDGARD FAMILY MAYHEM HC

TOKYO REVENGERS OMNIBUS GN VOL 05 (9-10)

TRIALS OF X TP VOL 08

UNDEAD UNLUCK GN VOL 11 (MR)

UNDER KINGDOM TP

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY TP VOL 04 (MR)

USAGI YOJIMBO TP VOL 05 GREEN DRAGON 

WONDER WOMAN WHO IS WONDER WOMAN THE DELUXE EDITION HC

WORK LIFE BALANCE TP (MR)

BACK IN STOCK

SECRET INVASION TP

STAR WARS DARTH VADER BY PAK TP VOL 01 DARK HEART OF SITH

VISION COMPLETE COLLECTION TP

New Comics For Week Of THURSDAY 13th April

 

  

Argh....too much chocolate...Easter regret....why?!

Why didn't we stop eating the chocolate?!

One thing we don't regret is this new comic list...

LOOK! There's one about EWOKS!!!
AND A SKELETOR MASK?!!?!?!?

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!

If there is something extra you are after make sure to get your requests to us before 5pm Monday to give us the best chance to secure you what you are after as we'll have limited shelf stock available.

Until we next see or hear from you, stay safe, live life and read comics!

HIGHLIGHT LIST

SEASONS HAVE TEETH #1 (OF 4)

GREAT BRITISH BUMP OFF #1 (OF 4)

SANDMAN UNIVERSE NIGHTMARE COUNTRY THE GLASS HOUSE #1 (OF 6)

007 FOR KING COUNTRY #1

GIANT KOKJU #1 (OF 3)

W0RLDTR33 #1

CAPTAIN AMERICA COLD WAR ALPHA #1

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1

MARVELS VOICES SPIDER-VERSE #1

STAR WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI EWOKS #1

X-MEN 1963 #1 FACSIMILE EDITION NEW PTG

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE #1 (ONE SHOT)

BREAK OUT TP

ELIXIR TP

MIGHTY MMW MIGHTY THOR GN TP VOL 03 TRIAL OF THE GODS

NOVA GN TP SAM ALEXANDER

SHANG-CHI AND THE TEN RINGS TP

SHOCK SHOP TP

STUFF OF NIGHTMARES TP

VANISH TP VOL 01 (MR)

WE ONLY FIND THEM WHEN THEYRE DEAD TP VOL 03

TMNT USAGI YOJIMBO WHEREWHEN #1

EXORCISTS NEVER DIE #1 (OF 6)

FRANK FRAZETTA TALES OF SCIENCE FANTASY #1

GRYFFEN #1 (OF 3)

A TOWN CALLED TERROR TP (MR)

ATOM BEGINNING GN VOL 04 (MR)

BELIT & VALERIA TP VOL 01 SWORDS VS SORCERY (MR)

BROOKLYNS LAST SECRET TP (MR)

DANDADAN GN VOL 03 (MR)

FORTUNE & GLORY TP

FUTURE STATE GOTHAM TP VOL 03 BATMEN AT WAR

GHOST RIDER TP VOL 02 SHADOW COUNTY

GUN HONEY BLOOD FOR BLOOD TP VOL 01 (MR)

KAIJU NO 8 GN VOL 06

KOMI CANT COMMUNICATE GN VOL 24

LEGEND OF ZELDA TWILIGHT PRINCESS GN VOL 11

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE REPLICA SKELETOR MASK

MISSING YOU TP

NIGHT TERROR HC

PROMETHEE 13 13 TP (MR)

REYNARDS TALE STORY OF LOVE AND MISCHIEF HC

SAKAMOTO DAYS GN VOL 07

SENGOKU YOUKO GN VOL 01

TOMBS JUNJI ITO STORY COLLECTION HC

TOP 10 COMPENDIUM TP

WHEEL OF TIME EYE OF THE WORLD TP

BOOM ENTERTAINMENT

BRIAR #4 (OF 4)

KNOW YOUR STATION #5 (OF 5)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

SEASONS HAVE TEETH #1 (OF 4)

 

DARK HORSE COMICS

ASSASSINS APPRENTICE I #5 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

CLEAR #2 (OF 3)

GREAT BRITISH BUMP OFF #1 (OF 4)

MASTERS OF UNIVERSE MASTERVERSE #3 (OF 4)

WHITE SAVIOR #4 (OF 4)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

DC COMICS

BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES #7

BATMAN INCORPORATED #7

BATMAN THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE SEASON THREE #4 (OF 7)

DANGER STREET #5 (OF 12)

LAZARUS PLANET REVENGE OF THE GODS #3 (OF 4)

MAD MAGAZINE #31

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

MULTIVERSITY HARLEY SCREWS UP THE DCU #2 (OF 6)

SANDMAN UNIVERSE NIGHTMARE COUNTRY THE GLASS HOUSE #1 (OF 6)

SUPERMAN LOST #2 (OF 10)

WILDCATS #6

 

DYNAMITE

007 FOR KING COUNTRY #1

BARBARELLA CENTER CANNOT HOLD #2

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

MADBALLS VS GARBAGE PAIL KIDS SLIME AGAIN #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

IDW

STAR TREK #6

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

STAR TREK DEFIANT #2

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

TMNT USAGI YOJIMBO WHEREWHEN #1

 

IMAGE COMICS

ALL AGAINST ALL #5 (OF 5)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

AMBASSADORS #2 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

BLACK CLOAK #4

DARK RIDE #5

EIGHT BILLION GENIES #8 (OF 8)

GIANT KOKJU #1 (OF 3)

HEXWARE #5 (OF 6)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

KROMA BY DE FELICI #4 (OF 4)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

LITTLE MONSTERS #12

MONARCH #3

NEMESIS RELOADED #4 (OF 5)

NOCTERRA #13

PAKLIS #6 (MR)

PHANTOM ROAD #2

RADIANT BLACK #23

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

SPAWN #340

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

STONEHEART #2 (MR)

TWO GRAVES #6

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

W0RLDTR33 #1

 

MARVEL PRH

CAPTAIN AMERICA COLD WAR ALPHA #1

CAPTAIN MARVEL #48

CARNAGE #12

FANTASTIC FOUR #6

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1

MARVELS VOICES SPIDER-VERSE #1 (O/A)

MILES MORALES SPIDER-MAN #5

MOON KNIGHT #22

PREDATOR #2

SILVER SURFER GHOST LIGHT #3

STAR WARS BOUNTY HUNTERS #33

STAR WARS DOCTOR APHRA #30

STAR WARS HIGH REPUBLIC #8

STAR WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI EWOKS #1

STORM AND BROTHERHOOD MUTANTS #3

X-23 DEADLY REGENESIS #2 (OF 5)

X-MEN #21

X-MEN 1963 #1 FACSIMILE EDITION NEW PTG

BLOODLINE DAUGHTER OF BLADE #3

 

 

MISC

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE #1 (ONE SHOT)

BARBARIC HELL TO PAY #3

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

CHILDREN O/T BLACK SUN #4

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

END AFTER END #6

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

EXORCISTS NEVER DIE #1 (OF 6)

FRANK FRAZETTA TALES OF SCIENCE FANTASY #1

GRYFFEN #1 (OF 3)

KITSUNE #2 (OF 6)

MANIAC OF NEW YORK DONT CALL IT A COMEBACK #2

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

MY BROTHERS BLOOD MACHINE #5 (OF 6) (MR)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

NEVERENDER FINAL DUEL #1 (OF 3)

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

RED ZONE #2 (OF 4)

TRAVELING TO MARS #5

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

WEST OF SUNDOWN #10

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

MAGAZINES

2000 AD PROG #2312 X-MAS SPECIAL

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

ALTER EGO #181 NEAL ADAMS TRIBUTE ISSUE

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

FANGORIA VOL 2 #19

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

HEAVY METAL #320

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

RETROFAN MAGAZINE #26

(PRE-ORDER ONLY. ASK ABOUT RE-ORDER)

 

TRADES

A TOWN CALLED TERROR TP (MR)

ABE SAPIEN DARK & TERRIBLE TP VOL 02

ATOM BEGINNING GN VOL 04 (MR)

BATMAN DETECTIVE COMICS (2021) HC VOL 04 RIDDLE ME THIS

BELIT & VALERIA TP VOL 01 SWORDS VS SORCERY (MR)

BREAK OUT TP

BROOKLYNS LAST SECRET TP (MR)

DANDADAN GN VOL 03 (MR)

ELIXIR TP

ESSENTIAL JUDGE DREDD JUDGEMENT DAY TP

FORTUNE & GLORY TP

FUTURE STATE GOTHAM TP VOL 03 BATMEN AT WAR

GHOST RIDER TP VOL 02 SHADOW COUNTY

GRENDEL OMNIBUS TP (2ND ED) VOL 04 PRIME

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY EPIC COLL TP EARTH SHALL OVERCOME

GUN HONEY BLOOD FOR BLOOD TP VOL 01 (MR)

HUNTERS GUILD RED HOOD GN VOL 03

KAIJU NO 8 GN VOL 06

KOMI CANT COMMUNICATE GN VOL 24

LEGEND OF ZELDA TWILIGHT PRINCESS GN VOL 11

MIGHTY MMW MIGHTY THOR GN TP VOL 03 TRIAL OF THE GODS DM VAR

MISSING YOU TP

MOMO BLOOD TAKER GN VOL 04

MYTHSPACE IGNITION TP (MR)

NIGHT TERROR HC

NITA HAWES NIGHTMARE BLOG TP VOL 02 (MR)

NOVA GN TP SAM ALEXANDER

ORIENT GN VOL 14

POKEMON SWORD & SHIELD GN VOL 06

PROMETHEE 13 13 TP (MR)

REYNARDS TALE STORY OF LOVE AND MISCHIEF HC

SAKAMOTO DAYS GN VOL 07

SENGOKU YOUKO GN VOL 01

SHANG-CHI AND THE TEN RINGS TP

SHOCK SHOP TP

STREET FIGHTER ORIGINS SAGAT HC

STUFF OF NIGHTMARES TP

SUPERMAN SON OF KAL-EL TP VOL 01 THE TRUTH

TOMBS JUNJI ITO STORY COLLECTION HC

TOP 10 COMPENDIUM TP

VANISH TP VOL 01 (MR)

WAR OF KINGS OMNIBUS HC PETERSON DM VAR NEW PTG

WE ONLY FIND THEM WHEN THEYRE DEAD TP VOL 03

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT GN TALENT SHOW TROUBLES

WHEEL OF TIME EYE OF THE WORLD TP

WORLD OF BLACK HAMMER LIBRARY ED HC VOL 05

X-MEN EPIC COLLECTION LEGACIES TP

MERCH

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE REPLICA SKELETOR MASK

ALL NEW ALL STAR RECOMMENDS #8 : THE BEST OF 2022 & 2023 COMICS FORECAST

THE BEST OF 2022 & 2023 COMICS FORECAST


By Cameron Ashley

What a year! Seriously, how good were comics in 2022?


I’m not entirely sure if confidence, in terms of consumer, retailer and publisher, returned to something approaching “normal” (whatever that means for the comics industry), but it felt like a lot of excellent comics perhaps stuck in the pipeline during the worst of the pandemic finally saw the light of day. Pure speculation on my part, and the fact that a number of smaller publishers either will not or might barely make it through 2023 undercuts the overall optimism of this opening.

Anyway, comics!

If this is this first time you’ve encountered one of these yearly wrap-ups of mine, I have a few rules (some of which I admittedly break on occasion):


All Best of titles are generally stand-alone. If not, they must at least begin in the relevant calendar year (which disqualifies something like, say, Catwoman: Lonely City).
They must have been printed; this is a column for a wonderful retail space after all.
I generally have an aversion to including mainstream titles as you don’t need someone like me to tell you about them.
The titles are listed in no particular order of my idea of “quality,” with the exception of the first book listed which I consider the best of the year.
Clearly this is just my dumb opinion and you may well hate this list. That’s cool with me – you’re encouraged to put your faves in the comments, I am aways looking for comics to discover.


I try to get to as much as I can (which is why this column runs so late every year). Notable 2022 exceptions I am aware of but did not get to read by deadline are: 2120 by George Wylesol (Avery Hill), Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano, translated by Daniel Komen with English adaptation by Dawn Davis (Seven Seas) and Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee by Regis Loisel and translated by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics). There will be dozens more, but those three are things I particularly wish to have read.


2022 was not just a year full of great comics, it was also a year full of great books about comics. From Matthew Klickstein’s flawed but still revealing oral history See You at San Diego, Shelley Bond and co.’s excellent comic-as-comics-how-to, Filth & Grammar and Brian Doherty’s colourful history of Underground Comix, Dirty Pictures, readers were spoiled. An additional note here – I also read 2021’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman, which I encourage all to read. It’s a vitally important and potentially shattering read for many. (NOTE: Wrestling fans should be on the lookout for Reisman’s follow-up biography, this time on Vince McMahon, due March).


Additionally, a flood of stand-out reissues hit the shelves – Home to Stay, Fantagraphics’ sumptuous, oversized collection of every Ray Bradbury story published by EC Comics, probably chief among them alongside Viz’s lovely new editions of Kazuo Umezz’ jaw-dropping Orochi classics and the budget-busting, painstakingly assembled, Love & Rockets: The First Fifty by Los Bros Hernandez, Fantagraphics’ 40th anniversary celebration of some of the greatest comics of all time.

Okay, here’s what I enjoyed the most in 2022, a year dominated by works years in the making. Don’t go anywhere, however, immediately below that is the 2023 Forecast (with titles arranged alphabetically in this section), our annual look ahead to Things We Know are coming in the year ahead, and in some cases already on the shelves, as well as some not-so educated guesses.

Here we go.


THE BEST COMICS OF 2022


ONE BEAUTIFUL SPRING DAY
Jim Woodring
Fantagraphics

Well, wow.

One Beautiful Spring Day is Jim Woodring’s attempt to create what he considers a terrible creative mistake. See, Jim listens to something called The Unifactor in making any and all creative decisions. Square types might just scoff and call The Unifactor Artistic Intuition or, with some generosity, his muse. Jim, however, and those of the more creatively romantic amongst us (hi, Team!) would believe that The Unifactor is the space made from Woodring’s intellect, unconscious wanderings and visions. It’s a living space. His character, Frank, is our guide through it.

Some time back, Woodring ignored a creative decision/Unifactor direction and kind of fucked things up a bit. Then he kept ignoring. Three complete comics are the resulting step-children of The Unifactor, Congress of the Animals (2011), Fran (2013) and Poochytown (2018). None of these books feel instinctively “bad,” but there is definitely something off with each of them, the kind of thing phrases like “I can’t quite put my finger on it” were invented for.

2018s corrective effort, Poochytown, even comes with a subtitle: “Discontinuing Congress of The Animals and Fran,” Woodring retconning Frank’s adventures like some sort of Big Two-character post whichever Crisis we are up to now. In listening to The Unifactor again though (and one presumes, begging absolute forgiveness in the process), a gift was bestowed upon Woodring. The Unifactor decided to adopt its stepchildren as its own by giving Woodring the answers to “fixing” the work.

The result is One Beautiful Spring Day, which compiles the three outcasts and connects them together with over 100 new pages. It may sound cynical to some, just another Fantagraphics ploy to wring more dollars out of its obsessive fanbase (hi again, Team!). That’s what I first thought. My next thought was to write about it right here, to pick it apart, see where the old stops and the new begins, dismantle it, reassemble it, reveal it. It was easily the most arrogant thought I’ve ever had about a comic.

There are times when every critic, even one as half-assed and amateurish as me, should read something that is so good that any desire to pick it apart evaporates. There should be times like this, anyway. I think if you’re a critic and you find everything fair game, you’ve lost some love.

All of this is to say that One Beautiful Spring Day is quite possibly one of the most perfect and beautiful comics reading experiences I’ve had since childhood. Additionally, the fact that I literally read it sitting in my backyard on probably the most perfect Spring day Melbourne had last year made it feel like The Unifactor was visiting me too. I chilled a four pack of very strong Hawkers IPA, sat on dandelion-covered grass in bad need of a mow and read. It was all so perfect.

The book is somehow completely whole, its previous segments absorbed into this new comics organism, and shockingly, is as coherent as Woodring’s Frank work has ever been while also being supremely psychedelic. Woodring’s wavy lines, like heat waves on a hot day distorting the background of what we see, are the key to his powers, there’s nothing else like them in comics and at this size, the pages almost overwhelm the reader just as the events overwhelm the characters.

One Beautiful Spring Day is likely Woodring’s masterpiece, which is saying something, and is undoubtedly shortlisted for comic of the decade. Find someplace comfortable, someplace quiet, and ensure you have at least two hours by yourself. I promise you will not regret it.


THE FOREST
Thomas Ott
Fantagraphics

The unfortunate thing about books that get released in the first quarter of any given year is that have the tendency to get buried under other excellent books as the year goes on, to the point that they are virtually forgotten by the time fools like me assemble Best of lists.

Such is the case with Thomas Ott’s remarkably beautiful The Forest, released last January.

Here’s some of what I wrote about The Forest in this space last March:

The Forest’s main character is a small boy who has just experienced the death of a loved one and wanders away, sadly, from the funeral, to travel through darkness, both literal and metaphorical to find light again. 

The plot of The Forest is as delicate as Ott’s artwork and, as result, I’m hesitant to say too much more about it. The Swiss artist (possibly most notable for his Cinema Panopticum, 2011 from Fantagraphics) works on black scratchboard, etching away at the surface with incredible care, to bring forth the white underneath. Every page is stunning in its own way, whether it’s the expression on the boy’s face, the alternating beauty and ominousness of the surrounding nature or the almost John Totleben-vibes of the folk horror nightmares living within the darkest parts of the forest (or the unconscious, if you dig Jung).

Death is omnipresent in this forest. seemingly with every twist and turn our boy makes, he’s upon another horror, another grim “version” of death: men swing from nooses, a pit of human bones is clambered over. Yet you might be surprised to hear that The Forest is, in my opinion, ultimately one of the warmest, most affecting and beautiful mediations on death and the process of grieving I’ve ever seen. Ott’s lovely, enveloping artwork is obviously a large reason as to why this is, but there’s a LOT going on here for such a slender book and I think perhaps its use of archetype during what’s, essentially, a rite of passage, strikes something at pretty primal within. 

A truly gorgeous and moving book worth poring over, The Forest is a stunner.

THE MAN WHO SHOT LUCKY LUKE

Matthieu Bonhomme (Translated by Jerome Saincantin)

Cinebook

Originally published in France back in 2016, Matthieu Bonhomme’s beautiful The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke finally arrived in English from Cinebook in 2022. I’ve been banging the Bonhomme drum since Cinebook’s release of The Marquis of Anoan series with writer Fabian Vehlmann and it’s a real shame we’ve had no translated Bonhomme since until the arrival of both The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke and Wanted: Lucky Luke last year.

Who could possibly shoot Lucky Luke, the man who can draw his pistol faster than his shadow? Bonhomme opens with a “dead” Lucky Luke before flashing back and fleshing out the first of his two tales of the cowboy gunslinger to date.

Bonhomme piles on the intrigue with Luke’s arrival in the rainy Froggy Town causing quite a stir, especially amongst the Bone brothers, a pair of corrupt authority figures. It’s the little moments here that really stand out, such as a lightning strike causing Luke to drop the cigarette he’s rolling with incredibly expensive Froggy Town tobacco into a puddle. Every page is evocative and cinematic, with Bonhomme’s colours retro-flat, his palette limited, echoing the look of the classic tales of Belgian cartoonist Morris’ character that stretch all the way back to 1946

I’d recommend grabbing both The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke and Wanted: Lucky Luke, but forced to put one volume in this list, I’ll take this one. Formatted in the original European album format, with crisp matte paper, this is the kind of comic I wish more aspired to be – colourful, intriguing, warm and constructed with absolute love and affection for both character and medium. A beautiful comic.

SENSEI’S PIOUS LIE
Akane Torikai
Kodansha

The best comic with the worst title in 2022 was for sure Akane Torikai’s four-volume gut punch, Sensei’s Pious Lie. A complex and disturbing psychodrama focussed squarely on power dynamics and abuse, Sensei’s Pious Lie originally ran from 2013-2017 in Japan and finally made its English debut last year.

Be warned – this is dark stuff, with a central protagonist, Misuzu Hara, in the midst of an extremely abusive relationship she cannot untangle herself from and whose increasing attraction to a brooding student she teaches (who has suffered abuse of his own) eventually leads to a horrifically violent climax.

It’s tough subject matter to read and even tougher to write about, so I’m going to let Kodansha’s PR person step in for a moment:

Torikai's work is a frank and nuanced examination of the emotional and practical effects of sexual violence, rendering the messy realities in gorgeously refined linework and dialogue far more naturalistic than most manga. The author veers away from blunt indictment to paint one of the most complex and fascinating psychological portraits of both rapist and victim in any medium.

Torikai subverts almost any kind of genre trope you might expect to find in Sensei’s Pious Lie. She even dangles a momentary Hollywood-style ending in front of readers only to smash that particular cliché to bits as well. Incredibly real, astonishingly absorbing, frequently devastating, occasionally terrifying and never anything less than compelling, the quality of Torikai’s art also does not waver across the four chunky volumes Kodansha gave us. She’s slick and expressive, with characters occasionally reminiscent of those of her husband and fellow mangaka, Inio Asano.

Every single relationship in Sensei’s Pious Lie, and there are many, is complicated at best and frequently motivated by some ugly but very recognisably human motivations. The totality of Torikai’s work is sharp and smart and unwilling to give most readers what they probably want because that’s just not how things work in the world. I do wonder about its relationship and potential commentary on shojo manga, but I don’t know enough about that to comment with any certainty. Surely the wish fulfilment common in many (particularly old) Japanese girls comics is in Torikai’s crosshairs – Prince Charmings and blissful marriages are nowhere to be found here. Torikai murders those aspirations and throws their corpses in the wood shredder.

Ultimately, Sensei’s Pious Lie is easily the bravest thing I read last year as well as being one of the best. Although I really do wish there had been a rethink on the title…

TIME ZONE J

Julie Doucet

D+Q

The justifiably maligned info-dump gets the most striking overhaul of any worn-out, aggravating narrative trope in the overwhelming pages of the legendary Julie Doucet’s Time Zone J.

Easily the most shockingly accurate depiction of unspooling memory that I’ve ever encountered, Doucet details the events of a love affair gone by with the manic rush experienced by anyone who encounters a past self via photos, letters, or in Julie’s case, diaries. The result is remarkable and baffling and deeply, personally odd.

Doucet herself advises that she started drawing the pages from the bottom up, but this is a pretty confusing instruction. I found that the pages worked best for me by reading in a circular way – from bottom of left page to up and over to the right. Honestly though, this should be read in whatever fashion you feel like reading it and its re-readability comes from the fact that a reader can construct the information is so many ways.

The pages of Time Zone J are uncut, meaning that the art never ceases, the memories flow on and on from page to page and Julie won’t even give us the edge of the page to remember that we are not Julie as her past selves and current selves suck readers in deeper and deeper. The overall effect is hypnotic; the immediacy of this gorgeously drawn memory dump is overwhelming at times.

I adored Time Zone J. It’s a triumphant return to comics for Doucet, who quit making them in the 90s, and as beautiful and unique a piece of art as you’ll find on the shelves. You may have to fight your way into this book and this may seem like a struggle at first – there is just so much information both art and text on every page – but its simulation of time and experience as things that can just collapse over us at any moment is as absorbing and artfully created as anything in 2022. An essential piece of comics from the year gone by.

PLAZA

Yuichi Yokoyama

Living The Line

The creator of the “noisiest” comics of all time got even louder in 2022, with Living The Line’s incredible, oversized release of Plaza. Yokoyama’s comics are always singular experiences, page after page of non-stop motion and sound effects – the lettering of which forms such an integral part of the work. I’ve not encountered his art at this size before and the overall effect is almost overwhelming

Plaza is Yokoyama’s attempt at bringing the full cacophony and frantic activity of the Brazilian Carnival to comics and the result is a triumph. Readers will feel dropped right into the raucously loud, vibrant and overwhelming carnival and by the end may feel as emotionally drained as if they attended the real thing. Yokoyama’s comics are all about the experience, often of travel and movement, so do not go in looking for plot, go in looking for an aesthetic overload of off-kilter art and endless happening.

Living The Line’s production is excellent – from the size of the book, to the paper stock, to the juiciness of Yokoyama’s black lines, as an art object, it’s a treat. A sumptuous, totally unique vacation to Brazil as filtered through Yokoyama’s own odd inner-landscape and aesthetic, Plaza is proof that with a good comic in hand, you don’t need to travel far to experience much. Wonderful.

DUCKS
Kate Beaton
D+Q

Quite probably the single most critically-lauded comic of 2022, Kate Beaton’s shattering memoir, Ducks, is also likely to be the most enduring. Another work on this list literally years in the making, Beaton’s examination of her time working the Albertan Oil Sands covers numerous thorny topics with thoughtfulness, narrative skill and beautiful cartooning.

Beaton herself is the perfect “everyman,” dropping readers right alongside in the Oil Mines of Alberta as she bravely attempts to pay off all her student debt in a two-year period in the early 2000s. Hailing from British Columbia, Beaton joined countless other Canadians of low-socioeconomic backgrounds and the otherwise desperately unemployed in this field, seen by many as their only hope of making good money. What she encounters over her time at work is an enormous gender disparity, endless misogyny, crippling loneliness, harassment and assault and, eventually, an escalating environmental catastrophe.

For Beaton to present all of this with as much objectivity as she has mustered shows an enormous level of skill alone, but to also make the comic as gripping and page-turning as it is and fill it with such beautifully constructed sequences of all kinds of human interaction throughout is pretty astonishing.

Ducks is an important and special book, deserving of all praise heaped upon it and more. It’s stunning.


KEEPING TWO
Jordan Crane
Fantagraphics

We’ve all had them. Moments when our loved ones are gone longer than they said they would be, messages to them gone unanswered, and we wonder if everything is okay? Are they safe? Will they return?

Jordan Crane’s Keeping Two, twenty years in the making, unfurls this dread to maximum uncomfortableness, with doom-ridden scenario after scenario playing out in an emotional whirlwind in the mind of a character who just wants his wife home and safe. Like Ultrasound, another title on this list, it takes events real and imagined and replays them. Yet where Ultrasound ultimately reveals itself to be a genre comic, Crane’s effort, equally imaginative and constructed with absolute care and delicacy, remains focussed on the bond between his characters

Sprinkled throughout are the events of another couple dealing with the loss of a child. Crane weaves these four lives together brilliantly across his hundreds of beautiful green-hued pages, the characters visually evolving over the years it took the author to complete his story. Crane’s pages are panel-packed, reality and imaginings colliding in dizzying sequence one after the other before opening up gloriously, allowing readers to breathe along with the characters during Crane’s resolution. Just beautiful.

PTSD RADIO Vol.1

Masaaki Nakayama

Kodansha

Where to start and what to say about Masaaki Nakayama’s incredible PTSD Radio? It’s a shot in the arm for J-horror? It’s the most structurally interesting genre comic I’ve read in ages? It’s legitimately creepy at peak moments?

All of the above is true and all the above is why I’m going to be really careful here because readers should be as utterly disarmed as possible by this thick omnibus volume (the first of three in total comprising the original six Japanese volumes), collecting material originally published in Japan between 2012-2014.

Nakayama seems determined as possible to keep his readers wrong footed and off balance throughout PTSD Radio. It opens as a series of creepy little stories that seem like they are vignettes, but they are not – they are each part of a wider story and each continues in its own way to build up the legend of Ogushi-sama.

Echoes of the horror masters are here, Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu, and Nakayama’s skill at keeping things as unpredictable as possible has also clearly come from poring over Umezu’s work. His art is utterly unlike both of those manga legends, however, modern and clean and appealing – almost like a manga Darick Robertson who knows how to keep faces consistent from panel to panel.

The body horror is off the charts weird and imaginative, the atmosphere drips dread, and the twists and turns in plot are, already in this first volume, inspired.

That’s it, I’m out. I’ll say no more except that volume two landed in January (I can’t wait to crack it open), with the concluding volume three to follow shortly. PTSD Radio is the most impressive “new” horror comic I’ve come across in a long, long time – don’t sleep on it.

DETENTION #2

Tim Hensley

Fantagraphics

“I’m fine as silk wid my dukes and I wanna drink damn quick!”

Tim Hensley’s bouncy, effervescent adaptation of Stephen Crane’s 1893 novella, Maggie: A Girl of The Streets, is a total riot. Arriving under the title, Detention #2 for hilarious reasons (Fantagraphics tells us Hensley created this “as a study aide à la Classics Illustrated, created for those being punished by remedial instruction”), Hensley’s hugely oversized pages are filled with cartooning winks and nods to E.C Segar, Don Martin and Dan DeCarlo. The dialogue, peppered with lines such as the above and other gems like, “She was wicked teh deh heart, an’ we never knowed it,” is a total crack up from start to finish.

Poor, beautiful, “bowery waif” Maggie falls for the dashing barkeep Pete, who is unfortunately a scoundrel to the core and Hensley charts Maggie’s tragic slide with wit and, damn, can he draw. His panels pop off these huge pages, roughly Treasury Edition-sized, with a show-stopping, double page bar donnybrook that is an absolute hoot. Moral decrepitude has never looked so much fun.

Complete with a short and hilarious comics biography of Stephen Crane at the rear and loads of other Easter eggs, Detention #2 has a pretty small print run, so grab this before it’s gone. As an 1896 critic wrote of Crane’s work, “I can recall no title that approaches Maggie in the illustration of drunkenness, promiscuous pugilism, joyless and repellent dialogue, and noise.” Never has a greater recommendation been penned. Awesome stuff, by Gawd!

Mycelium Wassonii

Brian Blomerth

Anthology Editions

Richard Metzger once described Grant Morrison’s comics as “candy-coated bullets.” I wonder what he’d say about Brian Blomerth? Candy-coated anti-aircraft missile perhaps…

Blomerth blew my socks off with 2019s Bicycle Day, “A Visual History of the World’s First Acid Trip,” and he did so again last year with Mycelium Wassonii, an astonishing retelling of the adventures and research of R. Gordon and Valentina Wasson, “the pioneering scientist couple responsible for popularizing the use of psychedelic mushrooms.”

If anything, Blomerth actually outdid himself, with his incredible layouts, intricate fungi and beautifully-realised psychedelic trips. As with Bicycle Day, Blomerth recasts his psychedelic pioneers as anthropomorphic dog people, all lolling tongues and floppy eyes. Delightfully influenced by the classics of the Underground, his comics are nonetheless so rich in detail and craft.

Printed on gorgeous toothy matte paper, publisher Anthology Editions puts the nail in the coffin of any argument suggesting that colour pops more attractively of glossy paper than matte. Mycelium Wassonii explodes in a riot of bright and stimulating mixed media colours, saturating the world in which Gordon and Wasson live and the realms which they travel to with the aid of their mushrooms and the end result is both informative and supremely attractive.

The only comic in 2022 to feature both the CIA and Buddha, Mycelium Wassonii is so accomplished, I have to wonder where on earth, or beyond, Blomerth can possibly take his readers next.

OROCHI

Kazuo Umezu

Viz

We were spoiled with three beautifully designed hardcover editions of Kazuo Umezu’s Orochi in 2022, a classic of horror manga most of which has never appeared in English before. I last wrote about it in October’s Halloween column, so forgive me while I plagiarise myself below.

Created between 1969 and 1970, Orochi by Japanese horror manga legend, Kazuo Umezu (Umezz) should come with a warning for potentially causing some slight psychic trauma. Almost all of Umezz’s work features bubbly, cherubic youths doing awful things to each other or, even worse, having awful things done to them by adults. If Umezz himself didn’t embody such a childlike joy for life or his youthful protagonists weren’t so frequently capable of handling themselves, you’d think the guy utterly hated kids. At the very least, in Umezz’s world, families are demented and people in them are, at best, secretive and at worst, violently disturbed. It’s quite a worldview. Somehow despite the grimness, more often than not, his manga somehow also manages to be fun.

The blurb for Orochi is slightly misleading: “A mysterious young woman slithers her way into the lives of unsuspecting people like the legendary multitailed serpent for which she is named – Orochi.” However, Orochi is frequently a compassionate, helpful figure. Armed with her undefined powers, Orochi frequently turns from onlooker to tragic events to participant in the unfolding violence and tragedy.

You can’t go wrong with any of these stories, but volume 2 contains the especially memorable Orochi tale, “Prodigy,” about a family (the Tachibanas) destroyed by the arrival of a violent intruder one dark night. The intruder’s break-in leaves young Yu Tachibana with a scar on his neck and his father an alcoholic wreck. Yu’s mother transforms into a nightmarishly overbearing and abusive figure, desperately pushing Yu to achieve the academic brilliance that is his birthright – there is horrible scolding, far worse physical abuse. Orochi befriends the boy and is witness to his attempts at desperate revenge against the man who left the mark on his neck that symbolises so much of the ruin in his family.

Umezz’s art is just glorious throughout – beautifully-detailed backgrounds, lovingly-rendered characters, incredible visual storytelling throughout. Family squabbles are gut-wrenching even if the melodrama is fever pitched. Snow falls against jet-black night in winter scenes, checkerboard tiles under the feet of characters provide mild disorientation, adding to the total oddness unfolding in the narrative – this is a brilliantly constructed comic.

The twist is tremendous, and I’ll not spoil it here. Perfect for horror readers looking for something a little different and who aren’t afraid to feel a tad uncomfortable, “Prodigy” is a psychodrama that still somehow maintains a visceral punch despite being over 50 years old. Seek this one out. Hell, seek the whole series out.

With further volumes to come in 2023, it’s a wonderful time to be an Umezz fan.

ACTING CLASS

Nick Drnaso

D+Q

Nick Drnaso’s Acting Class further proves he’s one of comics most uniquely gifted creators. I have no idea how long it takes him to complete his long-form works but Acting Class, clocking in at over 260 dense pages, is so disquieting I don’t know how he lives with these things in his head for as long as he must – his books have a tendency to make me feel queasy, and I mean that as the highest of compliments.

Acting Class features an ensemble cast of various social misfits who each decide to take acting lessons at a community centre. Their teacher, John, odd from the start, becomes increasingly demanding, his lessons more and more strange, and his ultimate motives ever slipperier. The “real” people, their invented class personas and the world in which they all inhabit all begin to shift and readers may well begin to feel that everything is askew, the world slowly, gradually tilting as the story unfolds.

Drnaso’s glassy-eyed characters, almost mannequin-like in their features and mannerisms, seem emotionless even as they force themselves to emote in class. His figures are frozen in snapshots, posed uncomfortably, always “human” and yet somehow also not. Drnaso is tapping into some kind of Uncanny Valley vibe – the discomfort we experience at seeing something presented to us human that is not quite right.

We are used to comics artists pulling us in with their work, but Drnaso creates characters and settings with the stripped back sterility of a combined Ikea catalogue and flight safety instruction sheet. It’s like J.G Ballard’s Death of Affect (the inability to authentically emote resulting from years of sensory overstimulation) on a planetary scale. The result is, artistically, fascinating. Add to this some of the frankly bizarre acting scenarios that begin to play out amongst the ten students of John’s class, and the astonishing cracked-reality sequence that leads to the book’s final, troubling moments, and Acting Class stands tall as the most unnerving reading experience of 2022.

I’m never going to an in-person short course on anything ever, ever again.

ULTRASOUND

Conor Stechschulte

Fantagraphics

One of those comics that’s ripe for multiple re-readings is Conor Stechschulte’s Ultrasound, a chunky, hardbound head-trip that’s best gone into by readers as cold as possible to maximise its swerves in plot.

Glen drives home on an extremely rainy night and has a tire blow out. Knocking on the door of a nearby house, he’s soon welcomed inside to meet Arthur and his wife, Cyndi. Glen’s attraction to Cyndi is apparent quickly and Arthur encourages an awkward, drunken tryst. From here, nothing is the same again and Stechschulte’s brilliant, decade-in-the-making comic, switches colour palettes through a dizzying journey of unreliable narrators, uncertain events, surveillance and mind control experiments. It’s all grounded by Stechschulte’s realistic dialogue, gifts for depicting physical expression and scratchy lo-fi artwork.

These poor, poor characters, ploughing forward towards “the truth” as their own pasts shift behind them like quicksand are the bedrock of Ultrasound, stripping its SF trappings back to absolute believability. The craft is off the charts good, with events replaying on top of each other, recontextualised each time with each new plot reveal.

Ultrasound feels endlessly re-readable, perfectly paced and exquisitely executed. An incredible addition to a year stacked to the brim with absolutely excellent comics, Ultrasound is also now a movie (with a screenplay by Stechschulte). I’ve not watched it yet, but it would be fun to see with the book in your lap, as further divergences in events are sure to occur. Let’s hope its not another ten years before Stechschulte follows this up.

FORECAST

BLOOD OF THE VIRGIN
Sammy Harkham
Pantheon
Due May

Finally finished, finally collected, international fans of Sammy Harkham’s work can finally stop trying to hunt down various issues of the artist’s Crickets anthology which serialised his epic Blood of The Virgin.

Coming in May from Pantheon, Harkham’s gorgeously cartooned story of a struggling immigrant filmmaker in early 70s LA has been in the making for roughly a decade spanning (I believe) at least four different publishers in the process. I’ve got most of it and it’s wonderful. To have it all together under a single cover is sure to be one of the comics treats of 2023.

Pantheon says:

Set in and around 1971 in Los Angeles, Blood of the Virgin follows an immigrant film editor named Seymour who is desperate to make his own movies. Without money or clout, he has no choice but to spend his days slumming it for the worst and most exploitative production company in town. When Seymour is given the chance to make a film of his own, his unbending principles and relentless drive violently clash with an industry that rewards everything but these traits. As Seymour’s blind ambition pushes the movie along, his home life grows increasingly fraught. Using the film’s production as a means to spiral out into time and space, Harkham creates an epic novel that explores the intersection of parenthood, 20th-century America, sex, the immigrant experience, and the era of grindhouse movies. Like a kaleidoscope, Blood of the Virgin shifts and evolves with each frame, allowing the reader to zoom out and see that at its core, this book is about the making of a man.

DOCTOR STRANGE: FALL SUNRISE TREASURY EDITION

Tradd Moore & Heather Moore

Marvel

Due August

Yes, I realise that Tradd Moore’s Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise mini-series is currently underway in single issues but, come on, the man was made for the oversized Treasury Edition. Personally, I find Moore to be the most interesting artist working in the comics mainstream – he quit drawing straight lines years ago and his flowing, curved and organic work is just stuffed with detail.

Moore was not only made for the Treasury Edition format, he was also made for Doctor Strange. If there’s ever been a run on the character that’s topped the pop-psychedelia of the original Steve Ditko/Stan Lee run or the trippy existential prog rock weirdness of the Steve Englehart/Frank Brunner and friends run of the ‘70s, I’ve never seen it but surely, with Fall Sunrise, we have a contender.

Marvel of course brings the hype:

Doctor Strange awakens alone in a distant world not his own. Lost of purpose and surrounded by danger, the wandering sorcerer must explore this land of blades and mystery to unravel arcane secrets and escape the deadly horrors that lie in wait! Strange is pulled in every direction by powerful figures while millions of lives rest in the balance - including his own! Who can he trust? Can this world's deadly ritual be stopped? Or is the answer simply blood? Heaven help us, it must be blood! 

2023s ultimate read-this-with-headphones-in-front-of-your-turntable book, Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise surely marks the latest phase in Tadd Moore’s fascinating evolution as an artist. These are the kind of things I wish Marvel would do much more of. The ongoing focus on super-tight continuity and the lack of truly great stand-alone material is why, for me, DC is the much more interesting choice currently. Marvel has the characters, they have the creators – let more of them off the chain. Hopefully, Fall Sunrise is a sign of similar material to come. It’s sure to be one of the year’s most striking oversized books.


GOODBYE, ERI
Tatsuki Fujimoto
Viz
Due June

Famed for the wild just-concluded series, Chainsaw Man, Tatsuki Fujimoto seems like a restless creator, having also put together several one-shots of interesting variance. I’ve not read much Chainsaw Man, but I like what I’ve seen. Goodbye, Eri, Fujimoto’s forthcoming one-shot may well have slipped past my notice had it not been for this review at The Comics Journal’s website which I encourage anyone interested in comics, comics craft, or just Fujimoto’s work to check out.

What makes a comic a comic is always intriguing to me, particularly in an age where so many comics seem to be merely Hollywood pitching vehicles. With Goodbye, Eri, Fujimoto largely presents his comic in the form of a fixed four panel grid from the perspective of a phone camera belonging to a boy named Yuta. Yuta spends much of his time filming his dying mother but then encounters, as the TCJ.com review says, “the movie-obsessed Eri.” Yuta and Eri begin to make a film together. Then things, from the sound of it, begin to blur; film and character, script and reality.

Viz says:

From the mad genius behind Chainsaw Man and Look Back comes a new story about coping with loss. Yuta’s moviemaking career started with the request from his mother to record her final moments. But after her death, Yuta meets a mysterious girl named Eri who takes his life in new directions. The two begin creating a movie together, but Eri harbors an explosive secret.

If you’re still not convinced, I really recommend reading Masha Zhdanova’s TCJ review. A deep dive into the structural choices Fujimoto employs in Goodbye, Eri as well as an examination on why a story about making a movie works better as a manga rather than it would as a film (and, by extension, just why comics are so awesome), it’s the kind of analysis I wish we had more of and wish I myself had time to write. Anyway, bring on Goodbye, Eri, we need more quality shortform manga.

LISTEN, BEAUTIFUL MARCIA

Marcelo Quintanilha

Fantagraphics

Due May

Winner of the Fauve d’Or at Angloume 2022 is Marcel Quintanilha’s Listen, Beautiful Marcia. A luminously coloured, tightly wound drama, Listen, Beautiful Marcia concerns a struggling nurse who lives in a favela near Rio with her partner and a daughter becoming increasingly rebellious under the influence of a local gang to the point of peril.

Quintanilha is apparently known for straight-ahead thrillers but here fuses this propulsive sensibility to a family drama. It looks absolutely gorgeous too – with a reliance on blues and pinks and purples it’s a depiction of the favelas unlike any we’ve seen before. With the strong backbone of a strained mother-daughter relationship stitched together with a suspenseful plot and unique, beautiful artwork, Listen, Beautiful Marcia seems poised to be one of 2023’s best. They don’t hand out Fauve d’Ors for nothing.

NIGHT FEVER

Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

Image

Due June

Spoiler alert – I’ve actually read Night Fever and it’s really good. I’m aware that it has been massively pre-ordered by All Star customers, so I’m not sure how much is needed from me here. I will say that Night Fever is, in my opinion, a huge return to form for the stellar team of Brubaker and Phillips, after some patchy work across five Reckless graphic novels. I imagine the pace of creating such a large amount of Reckless material in a two-year period is one of the problems with that series, but those books never quite clicked for me despite great moments across all.

Sean Phillips seems particularly re-energised in Night Fever and this is the best art he has produced in quite a long time. Brubaker’s afterword indicates Phillips was not only asking for a story to be set in Europe for years and finally obliged, but that the artist also drew Night Fever at the size of the old EC pages of Wally Wood and Johnny Craig – that’s twice the size of regular comics artboard. Sean’s son Jacob is back on colours and turns in easily his best colouring over his dad’s work to date – there are some wonderful colour choices here.

Image comics says:

A gripping new original graphic novel from ED BRUBAKER & SEAN PHILLIPS, the bestselling creators of PULP, RECKLESS, CRIMINAL, and KILL OR BE KILLED.

Who are you, really? Are you the things you do, or are you the person inside your mind? In Europe on a business trip, Jonathan Webb can’t sleep. Instead, he finds himself wandering the night in a strange foreign city with his new friend, the mysterious and violent Rainer, as his guide. Rainer shows Jonathan the hidden world of the night, a world without rules or limits. But when the fun turns dangerous, Jonathan may find himself trapped in the dark—the question is, what will he do to get home?

NIGHT FEVER is a pulse-pounding Jekyll-and-Hyde noir thriller about a man facing the darkness inside himself. This riveting tour of the night is a must-have for all BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS fans!

Brubaker’s going full Jim Thompson with Night Fever’s script, plunging readers into a very dark, very weird piece of neo-noir and giving the Phillips’ some really amazing hallucinogenic sequences to play with in amongst the grit of late 70s Paris. You are probably getting this anyway, but if not, you really should.

THE RICHARD CORBEN LIBRARY

Richard Corben

Dark Horse & Fantagor Press

Due April & July

Colourist extraordinaire, Jose Villarrubia has recently been showing off some of his restoration work on the late, great Richard Corben’s Den: Neverwhere. Corben’s use of colour was astonishing at times and many of his comics still look like lurid fever dreams from some great comics future.

Villarrubia’s teases show us new scans of Corben’s work that look incredible, with hidden detail previously obscured by printing processes brought to light. Thankfully, we’ll all get to see the end result when some of Corben’s long out of print works re-debut from Dark Horse, teaming with Corben’s own Fantagor Press this year in at least two must-have editions.

Murky World is the first volume in the forthcoming Richard Corben Library, with the classic Den: Neverwhere (with Den celebrating his 50th anniversary) to follow in July. Corben is a top tier favourite of mine and, odds are, if you went back through all the columns I’ve written in this space over the years, his name would crop up the most. These new volumes can’t come quickly enough for my tastes, and with Dark Horse promising this Library will be a “series,” hopefully we see even more of Corben’s early work unearthed.

Here's Dark Horse on Murky World:

In Murky World, Tugat the warrior wakes from a strange dream only to find himself in a bizarre land populated by hungry deadlings, cruel necromancers, a buxom cyclops, evil cults, and more as he sets off on a dangerous journey with his beloved horse Frix.  

This is the first in a series of deluxe graphic novels from renowned creator Richard Corben's library to be published by Dark Horse Comics. This special edition collects the entire Murky World series in print for the first time, and also features never-before-seen sketch material, the Dark Horse Presents one-shot, and a foreword by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, all presented in a gorgeous hardcover with a dust jacket.

A fitting tribute to an absolute titan of comics, The Richard Corben Library should be considered indispensable.

ROAMING

Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki

D&Q

Due September

The hotly anticipated reunion of cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki arrives this September. Roaming is the third book the pair has created together having piled up award after award for previous efforts Skim and This One Summer, Jillian becoming ever-sought after as an illustrator and Mariko becoming perhaps an unlikely but successful writer on DCs Bat-titles.

Drawn & Quarterly says:

Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term friendship off-balance. Emotional tensions vibrate wildly against the resplendently illustrated backdrop of the city, capturing a spontaneous queer romance in all of its fledgling glory. Slick attention to the details of a bustling, intimidating metropolis are softened with a palette of muted pastels, as though seen through the eyes of first-time travelers. The awe, wonder, and occasional stumble along the way all come to life with stunning accuracy in this sumptuous softcover with gorgeous jacket.

Jillian’s art is as sumptuous as ever from the preview pages and the duo’s engrossing, character-driven story sensibilities appear to remain intact. Really, enough said from me here. It’s the Tamakis. Together. What more could I possibly have to add?

ROGUE TROOPER

Garth Ennis & Patrick Goddard

2000 AD/Rebellion

Serialisation beginning April

Beginning in April in the pages of 2000AD is the triumphant return of the beloved Rogue Trooper, this time scripted by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Patrick Goddard.

Rogue Trooper is one of 2000AD’s flagships – he’s obviously not Judge Dredd, but he’s certainly not too far down the pecking order. Created by Gerry Finlay-Day and none other than Dave Gibbons, Rogue Trooper follows the adventures of a lone “genetic infantryman” created to survive a ruined Nu-Earth and hunting for his enemy, Traitor General. Rogue Trooper doesn’t undertake these missions alone – the personalities of his fallen comrades are embedded in chips housed inside his equipment.

Ennis’ story, “Blighty Valley,” marks his debut on the character and given the combat-influenced nature of much of the writer’s prior SF work (think Bloody Mary) as well as the amount of other material he’s written for Britain’s flagship comic, you have to wonder why it has taken so long. Goddard is a solid choice for the art chores, with a realistic and detailed style well suited to the material and very much in synch with the great Rogue Trooper artists past like Dave Gibbons and Cam Kennedy.

2000 AD and Ennis say:

In this new tale, Night’s Horizon is the period two weeks out of every year when Nu Earth’s orbit carries it closest to the black hole. The Norts call it Zvartchvintern; the first settlers knew it as Lightfall. Things have a reputation for going a little… screwy around this time. Now, Rogue Trooper is about to experience those effects first-hand…

Garth Ennis said: ‘For me Rogue Trooper is as vital a part of classic 2000 AD as Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter, Nemesis the Warlock, or Sláine, and I well remember wandering the wastes of Nu Earth with Rogue and the bio-chips on their hunt for the Traitor General. The stories that instantly come to mind are ‘All Hell on the Dix-I Front’, ‘Fort Neuro’, ‘Eye of the Traitor’, ‘You Only Die Twice’ and ‘To The Ends Of Nu Earth’ – I hope ‘Blighty Valley’ will prove a worthy successor to such unadulterated gems.’

Whether you get this as part of the weekly progs or wait for the inevitable collection, Ennis and Goddard’s thirteen-part Rogue Trooper will be one to look out for.

SOCIAL FICTION
Chantal Montellier
NYRC
Due June

FINALLY! It’s real! Coming from stellar publishers, New York Review Comics comes this massively overdue, first-time-ever English translation of Chantal Montellier’s beautiful and scathing Social Fiction.

Collecting three of Montellier’s works, Wonder City, Shelter and 1996, Social Fiction’s arrival complete in English is sure to be one of the comics achievements of the year. To the best of my knowledge, only 1996 has been translated before and that was in the early days of Heavy Metal 40 years ago.

NYRC says:

“An anonymous official chides a man under surveillance for stepping out of view of a security camera; visitors to an underground mall are forced to form a new society when a nuclear strike may (or may not) have left them as the sole survivors on Earth; newlyweds living in an authoritarian New York City attempt to navigate the insidious hurdles of being permitted to have a child; and a Puerto Rican boxer discovers that segregation continues in America long after death.

 

These are the visions of Chantal Montellier, a contributor to the legendary Métal Hurlant, and the creator of some of the most striking and stirring science fiction comics of the 1970s and 1980s…Montellier’s blend of dark humor, gripping storytelling, and consistent focus on the perils of totalitarianism, shows her to be a master of both comics and science fiction.”

I adore Montellier’s work so much that a 2003 French edition of Social Fiction from Vertige Graphic sits on my shelf and another quick flip through reveals Social Fiction to be as striking, confronting and beautifully drawn as ever. NYRC always go the extra mile with their presentation and there is no doubt that this classic material is in safe hands. In particular, I really look forward to finally reading Shelter in full, which has always seemed to me to be the most “New Wave of SF” comic that I’ve ever seen – like an adaptation of a JG Ballard story that never existed.

Trust me – this is utterly unmissable and hopefully is just the start of more of Montellier’s astonishing work getting long-overdue translations.

THE SOLITARY GOURMET

Jiro Taniguchi & Masayuki Kusumi

Ponent Mon/Fanfare

Due July (??)

One of the great comics mysteries of 2022, at least for this dork, was where the hell was The Solitary Gourmet? Rumoured to have been arriving since 2020, the book was even solicited last year but….still has not arrived.

Functioning as something of a spiritual follow-up to his The Walking Man, the late, great Jiro Taniguchi invites us to spend 340 pages with Mister Inogashira, “a sole, independent trader importing household and fashion goods from France,” as he…eats.

This (hopefully) forthcoming edition from Ponent Mon collects all 32 chapters of The Solitary Gourmet, created over a 20-year period, a different meal and setting in each. It may all sound pretty pointless to many who aren’t foodies, and possibly some who are, but Taniguchi was not just an astonishing craftsman capable of varied comics across all manner of genre, but his best work is arguably The Walking Man – a comic in which literally nothing happens except for a man going on walks. I think about The Walking Man in terms of ambient music – it encourages the reader to slow down, soak in the detail, experience the peace that the character feels. The Walking Man is the anti-shonen, not a speed line in sight, a deliberate and beautiful attempt by Taniguchi at imbuing calm in his readers. It’s a comic I treasure.

We all feel that everything is speeding up. 2022 went by frighteningly quickly and we’re staring down the barrel at March 2023 already. If you need to take a moment, to calm down, to experience some peace and quiet, to get away from things but are stuck at your desk – you need a copy of The Walking Man and I dare say, you’ll need a copy of The Solitary Gourmet. Mindfulness will never look as delicious as this.

SPA

Erik Svetoft

Fantagraphics

Due February

“Wellness” has never looked quite so unwell as it does in Spa, the debut book by Stockholm-based artist Erik Svetoft. Described as being perfect for fans of the offbeat horror of auteurs Junji Ito, David Lynch and Lars Von Trier, Spa does seem to recall Von Trier’s The Kingdom, but moves the offbeat horror from a hospital to a five-star spa and conference hotel catering to anyone that can afford to stay there.

Publisher Fantagraphics says:

“A demanding VIP client disappears without a trace. A business seminar is cut short. A young official gets lost looking for his room. A socially outcast masseuse struggles to find acceptance. Two lovers struggle to escape the horror of everyday life — which includes horrific apparitions routinely haunting them. An egocentric manager doubts himself. Abused employees accept their sad fate. Curious inspectors come to settle their accounts.

Meanwhile, mysterious moisture damage is spreading. Amidst the extravagant decor, black and viscous liquid flows slowly in the labyrinthine alleys of the resort and trickles down the walls. Hot and humid, the dampness is suffocating. Mold sets in and with it skin diseases, hallucinations, ghosts, malevolent spirits, hybrid creatures, and other monsters both dead and alive. Spa is a horrific graphic novel debut marked by grotesque and whimsical humor.”

Svetoft’s art is scratchy and detailed and perfectly strange, promising escalating strangeness over the course of over 300 pages. Hopefully the year’s most perfectly offbeat horror hit!

STARSEEDS BOOK 3

Charles Glaubitz

Fantagraphics

Due August

It’s been a long time coming, but 2023 finally sees the release of the third book in Tijuana-based artist Charles Glaubitz’s Starseeds and it promises to be the kind of Kirby meets Campbell meets shamanism meets conspiracy meets alchemy meets archetype meets psychedelia mash-up fans of mind-melting comics dream of.

Volume Two showed Glaubitz stretching both artistic and narrative potential and honestly I cannot wait to see how much further this can be pushed. Glaubitz made a striking return to pen and ink during the production of volume three, and the images he’s trickled out as the process continued have been striking and organic.

An incredible marriage between beauty and bombast, philosophy and fisticuffs, delirium and design, it's high time the series received more love, acclaim and, probably most importantly, publicity.

Fantagraphics says:

In Starseeds 3, Renató joins the Starseeds, Crystal and Jaguar, to save their friend, Indigo. As Renató dives deep into Indigo’s soul, Crystal defends and protects their helpless bodies from the Illuminati while Jaguar must purify his soul and energy using ancient medicine to tap into the cosmic axis tree that will save their friend. When Renato meets their mortal enemy, the Lizard King, the truth about reality is revealed, altering the course of the Starseeds’ lives as they face their greatest challenge.

Meanwhile, the Beautiful Dreamers — Arco, Iris, and Hadron —travel inside the Black Women Mountain to traverse a new dimension of human thought: the Noosphere!

Kirby and conspiratorial influences aside, Starseeds is the heir to all the great '70s Marvel cosmic comics; Englehart, Starlin, and it outdoes all those dudes. Let's hope 2023 is the breakthrough year for this astonishingly talented artist and his menagerie of cosmic creations. Seriously, if you’ve not read Starseeds yet and enjoy your concepts high as Terence McKenna on weekends and your art ever-evolving and always eye-popping, this is the series for you.

TITS & CLITS

Various

Fantagraphics

Due March

Another long-overdue compilation, Fantagraphics gives the deluxe treatment to the legendary Tits & Clits, the long-running underground anthology created by female cartoonists. Created as an answer to the perceived misogyny of Zap!, the godfather of comix by Crumb, Spain, Wilson and others, Tits & Clits debuted from editors Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli in 1972 and ran sporadically right through until 1987. Now finally collected in a massive 368 page edition, the complete Tits & Clits is poised to be one of the year’s most important archival comics projects.

Fantagraphics says:

A feminist answer to Zap, Tits & Clits quickly became an anthology showcase for other women cartoonists, featuring the work of Mary Fleener, Roberta Gregory, Krystine Kryttre, Lee Marrs, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Trina Robbins, Dori Seda, among others. Like other underground comix, Tits & Clits leaned into being lewd in order to satirize women’s experiences with so-called sexual liberation. Featuring stories about birth control, abortion, menstruation, masturbation, and more, Tits & Clits featured intimate politics which occasionally clashed with contemporaneous feminist concepts about sex and sexuality. As Chevli put it: their work had something to offend everyone. (In 1973, conservative legal authorities in Orange County deemed their work pornographic and even threatened the two editors with arrest on obscenity charges.) `

Now, for the first time in half a century, a new generation of readers will be shocked, entertained, enlightened, and scandalized by the bold satirical cartoonists that comprised the band of sisters in Tits & Clits. In addition to reprinting the seven-issue run of the Tits & Clits series, this collection also includes in their entirety two classic solo comics from 1972 written and drawn by Farmer and Chevli — Abortion Eve and Pandora’s Box. Also included is an introductory essay providing context to Tits & Clits’ place in the history of women’s cartooning by the book’s editor, Samantha Meier.

Unmissable.

A VERY BRITISH AFFAIR

By Various

Rebellion

Due February

Lock up your hearts! A Very British Affair arrives in February, collecting over 50 classic British romance comics.

You really have to admire the lengths publisher Rebellion goes to in order preserve the often-obscure corners of British comics history. I myself had no idea that England had a thriving romance comics scene in the 50s, particularly romance comics as well drawn as so many of these appear to be from the preview images.

Rebellion says:

Curated by Eisner-nominated historian and artist David Roach, A Very British Affair charts the stratospheric rise of romance comics in postwar Britain with a selection of the greatest romance comics ever printed in the UK. Featuring an eclectic mix of artists from Spain, Italy, and the UK, this collection unearths the sensual art and emotional writing which delighted generations of comics readers.

…this lavish book is a stunning tribute to the often uncredited creators who crafted an industry of love. Roach shines a spotlight on the Spanish and Italian artists who dominated romance, as well as the genre’s forgotten female contributors, like Jenny Butterworth, Pat Tourett and Diane Gabbott.

This volume should not go under the radar of any comics fan – it looks strikingly designed and presented and not only shines the spotlight on so many hidden gems, the art within hits all those retro photorealist illustrative sweet spots we find re-emerging in comics today. Can’t wait for this one. Bring your tissues, heartbreak will surely abound.