Hey all, October is upon us and we're here for it, leaves falling, cold rainy weather, and all. Because every new month means new comics. So read on and have a peak at some of our hand-picked highlights reel for this month, and see if there's anything there that needs to make its way into your collection.

Reviews and Recommendations

Before we get started on the actual review, a little apology. We aim to get these reviews out approximately a month ahead of time. This year, holding to these deadlines has been tough, and we slipped in September. So for those of you who were waiting on these to help you navigate the crazy world of comics, we’re really sorry. We’re working on getting back out and ahead of ourselves, and it’s my hope that we’ll have the next one of these guides up by October 20th or 21st.

For those of you just joining us, we hope that these highlights will give you something to search the shelves for during your next visit. Thank you so much for your patience this year. We really appreciate it and you.

Marvel Midnight

If there’s a silver lining to writing about this lineup late, it’s that all the first issue of all three of these books - Midnight X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man,have been out for just under a week as I write this. Which means I’ve got them sitting next to me to reference, and I can say with certainty that these are great first issues that fit perfectly with the dark and spooky season that we’re currently in.

Let’s start with the premise - the Marvel Midnight imprint professes to be a new universe, with new horrific twists on some of Marvel’s oldest stories. These books theoretically (maybe) exist within a shared world, though to what extent they’ll cross over remains to be seen.

Midnight Fantastic Four (Ben Percy / Kev Walker) takes all of the cosmic adventure of Marvel’s first family and trades it for some lovecraftian descent into madness. Reed is a tortured scientist, brilliant but tortured by visions (?) of crawling horrific creatures lurking just outside our reality. Sue is a driven scientist who’s just learned the truth of some of Reed’s visions and wants to open a door for them. Johnny is a shaken test pilot who’s lost his legs in some kind of accident (presumably while testing one of Sue’s rockets). Ben is Sue’s bodyguard and fixer, trading out that heart of gold for one of cold stone.

Midnight Spider-Man (Phillip Kennedy Johnson / Scietronc)reimagines Peter Parker as an amateur reporter and sleuth, speaking truth to power from behind a camera’s lens. But when one Megacorp makes him an offer, Peter’s life takes a turn for the creepy and horrifying body-horror after something hitches a ride home with him.

Midnight X-Men (Jonathan Hickman / Matteo Della Fonte) takes our merry band of mutants, fighting against a world that hates and fears them, and turns them (literally) against it. Of the three books, this is the one that feels closest to anything resembling a super-hero book. But really it’s more political intrigue and tension, punctuated by bouts of brutal fighting, with mutants fighting empyres (mutant vampires), fighting vampires and fighting humans.

I know that’s not a ton to go on, but trust me when I say you’ll want to swing by and pick yourself up a copy of any of them that sounded interesting. Having read them all, I'd say I'm eager to catch the second issues and see how far these new series will go.

- Ko

You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive

IDW (Dark)

By Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly (writer) and Heather Vaughan (artist)

I would be lying to say that IDW publishing this under their horror imprint (IDW Dark) is not what made me take a second look at it. IDW is a publisher I think of as mostly doing licensed books that I’m not super interested in like TMNT and Godzilla but the last couple years, with the success of Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, I feel like we’ve seen them make a push into the horror genre that really excites me.

This book follows a teenager, Phoebe, whose perfect life is turned upside down when one of her friends dies “under impossible circumstances”. Pheobe’s strange and isolated life in a secluded community started by hers and her friend’s parents is not what it has seemed for all these years and people who learn its secrets, don’t live to tell them. I’m not familiar with the work of anyone on this creative team but the preview images are exciting and creepy and the premise sounds like the kind of novels I loved as a teen. Part murder mystery, part something stranger. I’ll definitely be checking this one out just in time for spooky season.

- Elise

Wolverine Paradise

Marvel Comics

By Dan Panosian (writer and artist)

Y’know, this is one of those books where the more I learn about it, the more bat@#$% weird it sounds. Billed as “Wolverine’s Miami vice vacation,” Wolverine Paradise doesn’t give us a lot to go on. I’ve been able to find out a scant little bit about the book beyond various comparisons to 80’s action adventure movies set in Florida, and the few preview pages that made it into Bleeding Cool seem to confirm it. And I think I’m kinda here for it. I’m here for Wolverine trying his best to have a vacation and everyone under the sun coming for him. And there’s Dazzler, in her serious 70’s / 80’s disco glory.

This is the book for those of you who read Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre and thought, “this book would be cooler with Wolverine in it.” Heck I’d read that.

- Ko

One-Shots & Graphic Novels

DC All In Saga: Darkseid vs. the World

DC Comics

By Scott Snyder (Writer), Joshua Williamson (Writer), Sanford Greene (Artist), Yasme Putri (Artist)

If you’re reading basically anything that’s currently ongoing over at DC Comics right now, Darkseid is tied into the plot somehow. He sits at the heart of the Absolute Universe behind the scenes pulling the strings, he orchestrated last year’s big DC K.O. crossover event in the main universe, and he’s kind of just looming in the background of the entire DC multiverse while his mysterious plans move slowly toward fruition.

- Sloane

Legends and Lattes: The Graphic Novel

Ten Speed Graphic

By Travis Baldree (writer) Samuel Sattin (adaptation) Shanti Rittgers and Sarah Webb (artist)

Travis Baldree is an ex-Seattleite (he lives in Spokane now) so I have to shout out this adorable upcoming sapphic fantasy graphic novel. I bought the original novel of Legends and Lattes years ago when it was still being self published so this is a very fun crossover of my interests! Legend and Lattes has been described as “high fantasy, low stakes” and is a cozy fantasy story about a retired adventurer running a coffee shop.

As someone who loves magic and fantasy elements in world building and has been playing Dungeons and Dragons since college but struggles to read epic fantasy this is a story that is so up my alley. A sweet sapphic romance combined with the everyday mundane reality of living in a fantastical world. The art for this graphic novel is also sweet and pastoral and colorful and seems like the perfect fit for this story.

- Elise

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Horses and Sex

Drawn and Quarterly

By Lisa Hanawalt

Lisa Hanawalt rules. If you don’t know her, she’s been drawing cartoons for almost twenty years, she’s the creator of the animated TV shows Bojack Horseman and Tuca and Bertie, and she tells very real and personal stories couched in the framework of weird little anthropomorphic animal people. She’s also been drawing comics for almost twenty years, and though her output has slowed down since she’s gotten into television, she’s back with her first book since 2020 and as a longtime fan (I literally have her art hanging on the wall behind my bed), this new release looks like it’s going to be everything I could hope it would be.

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Horses and Sex is an autobiographical comic about how Hanawalt, well… can’t stop thinking about horses and sex. Her two main hyperfixations frame a series of autobiographical vignettes and weird fables about life and aging and desire and being a weird horse girl who’s in her 40s now. It’s all based on Hanawalt’s own experiences, but at least some of what she’s talking about in the book mirrors my own experience as a woman in ways that are frankly kind of healing. It’s nice not to feel alone in this stuff, to hear someone else talking about it, and it certainly helps that Hanawalt is as funny and charming in her storytelling here as she’s always been.

In short, I’m super excited for this book and you should be too. If anything that I’ve said sounds even remotely appealing, the publisher Drawn and Quarterly has preview pages available here that you should take a look at.

- Sloane

Upcoming Comic Catalogs

Wondering where we find all of these books? We go through a number of upcoming comic book catalogs, which you can find below. If you want to do some digging for something we might have missed, please have a look! If you find anything you want, just head over to our subscription page to place a preorder or update your subscription.

(Quick word of caution - the Next Phase catalogs are very large and may take a while to download!)

August Comic Catalogs (October Releases)

September Comic Catalogs (November Releases)

October Comic Catalogs (December Releases)

And that’s a wrap for October! Thank you for reading, and we hope that a couple of these books piqued your interest. We'll have November and December up shortly, but in the meantime If you see something you want please reach out to us and ask us about ordering it or setting it aside for you!

October Highlights