Jason's Picks: Absolute Green Arrow and Avengers: Armageddon, Plus a Wave of Fresh #1s

This week runs on two tracks. Up top, a pair of heavyweight arcs hit their biggest beats yet — the Absolute line's reinvented Green Arrow and Marvel's line-wide Armageddon event. Underneath, five publishers roll out a stack of fresh #1s and one-shots built as clean jumping-on points, plus one long-gestating creator-owned universe finally reaching print. Whether you want to go deeper on a story already in motion or start something brand new, the racks are unusually generous today.

Absolute Green Arrow #3

Pornsak Pichetshote writes, Rafael Albuquerque draws, Marcelo Maiolo colors, and Jeff Powell letters DC's Absolute-line take on the Emerald Archer. This is an inspired pairing: Pichetshote built his name on horror and social-tinged crime (Infidel, The Good Asian), and Albuquerque is the American Vampire artist — so it is no surprise the book plays less like a superhero title and more like a serial-killer thriller. The Absolute conceit strips its heroes down to something harsher and less certain, and here that means Black Canary, not Oliver Queen, carries the story. Dinah is hunting the so-called Green Arrow Killer, and issue #3 lands her on the trail of Ollie's protege Roy Harper while the killings warp Star City itself. It is a mystery that keeps darkening, capped by a reveal that reframes what the arc is really about. Of everything shipping this week, this is the one making the boldest case for what the Absolute imprint can be.

Avengers: Armageddon #2

Chip Zdarsky writes with art by Delio Diaz and Frank Alpizar and colors by Sonia Oback, as Marvel's Armageddon event picks up speed. Zdarsky is one of the most dependable event architects working — his Daredevil and Batman runs prove he can carry big, load-bearing superhero drama without losing the human thread — and that instinct matters in a crossover this size. With a Red Hulk-driven global catastrophe escalating, issue #2 turns on the arrival of a mysterious new hero with the power to shift the board, threads that spill into Captain America #13 and a looming Doom team-up. Diaz and Alpizar bring the scale a Marvel event demands while keeping the character acting legible in the chaos. If you have been waiting to see where this summer's Marvel status quo is heading, this is the chapter where the stakes snap into focus.

Punisher vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1

Dan Abnett writes, Matteo Della Fonte draws, and Jonas Scharf handles covers on this five-issue Marvel mini. Abnett is one of the most reliable structural writers the company has — his and Andy Lanning's cosmic architecture (Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy) is the blueprint a decade of Marvel space stories was built on — and that discipline is exactly what a two-hander like this needs. The premise is a period piece, revisiting one of Frank Castle and Peter Parker's earliest encounters, and it runs on the cleanest moral engine in the Marvel playbook: the man who kills versus the man who has sworn never to. Forced together by a figure from Frank's past, the book gets to litigate the argument in the field rather than in speech balloons. Della Fonte's grounded, street-level linework keeps it in the register these two share best — grimy New York rooftops, not cosmic spectacle. A smart, contained thriller with a built-in reason to exist.

Dark Knights of Steel II #1

Tom Taylor returns with artist Otto Schmidt, colorist Arif Prianto, and letterer Wes Abbott for a twelve-issue sequel to DC's 2021 fantasy hit. Taylor is the rare writer who leads with the emotional hook first and the plot second — DCeased, Injustice, and his Nightwing run all live or die on a gut-punch — and a high-fantasy Elseworlds gives him a wide canvas for it. This chapter opens on a rising war, an emerging king, and a traitor hidden inside the League, with the truth waiting "beneath the waves" set up as the thing that changes everything. The real draw is Schmidt, who typically paints his own pages and brings a loose, storybook quality that sets this apart from house-style DC. Swords, storms, and superpowers is a gimmick on paper; what made the first series work was treating the Kingdom Come-style cast as a genuine dynasty saga. Book two is betting you still care about the bloodline.

Rob Liefeld's Badrock #1

Rob Liefeld writes and Seth Damoose draws this Youngblood spinoff, part of Image's "Summer of Youngblood" push toward the franchise's 100th issue. Say what you will about Liefeld — Image co-founder, defining (and endlessly debated) 90s stylist, Deadpool co-creator — he understands exactly what Badrock is: a teenage rock-monster with a big heart and a bigger swing. The hook here is refreshingly small in scale for a Liefeld book, a personal quest to save the character's mother, and Damoose is the smart pairing. His cleaner, more animated cartooning smooths the excesses the property is known for while keeping the energy. This is nostalgia as a business plan, but it is honest about it, and Image leaning back into its own foundational IP rather than chasing the next prestige launch is its own kind of statement.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin – Training Day #1

This IDW one-shot reunites the original Last Ronin team: co-creator Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz writing, the Escorza Brothers and Ben Bishop on art, and Luis Antonio Delgado on colors. The Last Ronin was a genuine phenomenon — a grim, elegiac future where a single surviving Turtle takes his final revenge — and its power came from restraint and grief. Training Day slots into a twenty-four-hour window inside that story, revealing how Michelangelo forged young Casey Marie Jones into a fighter before their showdown with Oroku Hiroto. Prequels to beloved endings are a risk; they can sap the mystery. But the "training mission you didn't see" framing is the right instinct, giving Eastman room to write the mentor-and-student warmth that makes the eventual tragedy land harder. As a self-contained entry point, it is also the easiest on-ramp of the week for a lapsed Turtles reader.

Sonic the Hedgehog X Godzilla #1

Nick Marino writes, longtime Sonic artist Jack Lawrence draws, and Reggie Graham colors this five-issue IDW crossover — the first time these two pop-culture giants have shared a comics page. The setup is exactly as fun as it sounds: kaiju mysteriously arrive in Sonic's world, Dr. Eggman tries to weaponize them, and Sonic, Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow have to send the monsters home. Lawrence is the ideal choice, and not just for pedigree. His art already balances speed and scale beautifully, which is the whole tonal problem a Sonic-meets-Godzilla book has to solve — one franchise is about momentum, the other about mass. Marino, who cut his teeth on Godzilla Rivals, knows how to keep a kaiju threat feeling enormous without slowing the story to a crawl. All-ages crossovers can coast on novelty; this one has a creative team that respects both sandboxes.

Three Worlds / Three Moons: Foundations #1

Jonathan Hickman and Nick Spencer co-write, with a murderer's row of artists — Mike del Mundo, Mike Huddleston, and Jerome Opeña — plus colorist Matt Hollingsworth and letterer Rus Wooton, published by Dark Horse. This is the print debut of the sprawling science-fantasy universe Hickman and company have been building on Substack, and it arrives as a deliberate event. Hickman is the definitive systems writer of his generation (East of West, The Manhattan Projects, the House of X blueprint), and Three Worlds / Three Moons is his kind of premise: a solar system locked in an ancient war between magic and science, order and chaos, reignited when an explorer stumbles onto a dormant moon full of secrets. The three-artist structure is a feature, not a scheduling accident, letting different corners of the cosmology carry different visual languages. As a one-shot foundation, it is designed to hand you the whole mythology and dare you to keep reading. Given the talent, that is an easy dare to take.

This Week's Full Release List

Everything else shipping to shelves this Wednesday, at a glance:

More Single Issues of Note

• Absolute Flash #17
• Batman Green Arrow The Question: Arcadia #6
• Batwoman #5
• Deathstroke the Terminator #5
• Department of Truth #38
• End of Life #6
• Infernal Hulk #9
• Murder Podcast #8 (series finale)
• Nightwing #140
• Of the Earth #3
• The Ring – The Man Who Beat the Man #2
• Superman Unlimited #15

Other New #1s and One-Shots

• A Mischief of Magpies #1 (Simon Spurrier & Matias Bergara, DSTLRY)
• Grendel – Devil's Crucible: Sedition #1
• Kingdom of Earth #1
• Minotaur #1
• Mister Nemo #1
• Space Ghost Annual #1 (one-shot)
• Super Mondo Mega Mutts #1
• What If The Radioactive Spider Bit Jessica Jones? #1 (one-shot)

Graphic Novels & Trade Collections

• Across the Widest Sea TP
• Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 4: Broken TP
• American Caper Vol. 1: Red-Pilled Blues TP
• Batman: White Knight Absolute Edition HC
• Conan the Adventurer: The Original Comics Omnibus HC
• DC Finest: Batman – Blind Justice TP
• Devil on My Shoulder TP
• Dune: Edge of a Crysknife HC
• The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec Vol. 1 HC
• Fantastic Four by Dan Slott Omnibus Vol. 1 HC
• Ghost Pepper Vol. 2: Taste of Cinders TP
• Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1955–1957 TP
• Hello Darkness Vol. 5 TP
• High Strangeness Deluxe Edition HC
• Honor and Curse: Eternal Vol. 1 TP
• Hunger and the Dusk Vol. 2 TP
• I Hate Fairyland Vol. 10: Monsters Gonna Monster TP
• Infamous Iron Man: The Rise of Doom TP
• Iron Man Modern Era Epic Collection Vol. 6: The Future TP
• Moomin: Summer Madness HC
• Phantom Vol. 1 TP
• Planetary Compendium TP
• Poison Ivy Vol. 7: Amuse-Bouche HC/TP
• Savage Dragon: Welcome to San Francisco TP
• Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures – The Complete Phase III Part 2 TP
• Superman: Brainiac Reborn Omnibus HC
• Surfside Girls: The Box Set
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Journeys Vol. 1 TP
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ongoing Compendium Vol. 2 TP
• Whatever Happened to the Crimson Justice TP
• Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa TP
• Venom: Black, White & Blood Treasury Edition TP

Two franchise-defining arcs and a stack of first issues from five publishers is a rare kind of week — there is a door here whether you want to walk into a story mid-stride or start one from page one. Whether your taste runs to horror-tinged DC, a line-wide Marvel event, 90s Image nostalgia, all-ages kaiju chaos, or Hickman's cosmic worldbuilding, come find the one you want.

The Multiverse Comics Podcast — with Stephen, Jason, and Scott — is available wherever you get your podcasts.