This Week's Picks: Batman and Absolute Superman Go to War, Plus Queen in Black's Second Front

This is a week where the flagship books do the heaviest lifting. Batman and Absolute Superman both push their leads into fights that will define the next several issues, a cosmic symbiote war escalates into a full assault on New York, and Marvel's Civil War anthology keeps finding fresh angles on a seventeen-year-old event. Add a sold-out reprint finally back on shelves and a facsimile of the single most important comic book ever printed, and you've got a week built for both the pull-list regular and the person who just wants a great single issue to walk out with.

Batman #12

Matt Fraction writes, Jorge Jimenez draws, Tomeu Morey colors, and Clayton Cowles letters the issue that finally answers what Alfred Pennyworth left behind. Fraction's run has spent its first year doing something trickier than it looks: introducing new fixtures into a mythology that's supposedly had every corner mapped for eighty-five years. Verity Pennyworth arrives here as Alfred's parting gift to a Bat-Family that needs one, and the fact that DC is already building a second ongoing Batman title around this creative team's momentum tells you how much confidence the publisher has in where Fraction is steering things. Jimenez's linework keeps finding new ways to make Gotham feel gothic and lived-in at once, which is exactly the register this issue needs as the Caped Crusader races to uncover who engineered the deadly plan still unspooling around him. New characters are a real risk this deep into a mythology. This one lands.

Absolute Superman #22

Jason Aaron writes and Juan Ferreyra returns as guest artist, with Becca Carey lettering, as the "Get Brainiac" arc kicks off on the road to a promised blockbuster issue #25. Aaron's take on this alternate-world Superman took a while to find its hooks, but the class-conscious, harder-edged Kal-El he's built has become one of the genuine highlights of DC's Absolute line — and with Aaron already tapped to write the line's first crossover event this November, this issue reads like the opening notes of a much longer symphony. Before Superman can get to Brainiac, he has to go through Metallo, a foe whose Kryptonite bloodstream makes him uniquely suited to grinding a Superman story to a halt. Ferreyra's guest art brings a jagged, high-contrast energy that suits a Superman who's never been allowed to feel invincible. This is a book earning its reputation issue by issue.

Queen in Black #2

Al Ewing writes, Paco Medina handles art on this chapter, and Ryan Stegman supplies the cover for Marvel's cosmic symbiote event. Ewing built his reputation finding the human wreckage inside god-scale conflict — Immortal Hulk and Mortal Thor both worked because the cosmic stakes never drowned out the people underneath them — and Queen in Black keeps that same structural trick running at a bigger scale. Tony Stark races to assemble twin strike teams, Defenders of Light and Defenders of Dark, to meet Hela and Knull in the void, but the war doesn't stay contained out there for long. Hela's assault reaches Earth this issue, the Symbiote Intelligence descends on New York, and Venom and the Fantastic Four get pulled into a street-level fight that's really just the visible edge of a much larger collision. Pitting two of the ugliest forces in the Marvel Universe against each other, with the heroes caught in the middle, remains a genuinely smart reset for symbiote stories that could otherwise be running on fumes by now.

Avengers: Armageddon #1 (Second Printing)

Chip Zdarsky writes, with Frank Alpizar and Delio Diaz on art, in a second-printing arrival for the issue that started Marvel's biggest shakeup in years. The premise turned heads for good reason: after Doctor Doom's downfall, Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross seizes Latveria, rebrands it New America, and launches a crusade that gets Captain America killed in the opening salvo. It takes a full mobilization of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and Wolverine just to slow him down. Zdarsky has made a career of writing heroes at their most institutionally compromised, and Armageddon is that instinct applied at maximum scale — a pre- and post-event Marvel Universe split cleanly down the middle. With the series wrapping this October and Zdarsky moving straight into a new Avengers ongoing after, this reprint is the cleanest on-ramp left for anyone who missed the issue that's been driving the conversation all summer.

Civil War: Unmasked #4

Christos Gage writes, Edgar Salazar draws, and Geoff Shaw provides the cover for the anthology mining the margins of Marvel's most divisive event for stories the original series never had room to tell. This issue belongs to Tigra, and it's a sharp piece of work: in the wake of Goliath's death, she's handed her first assignment as Iron Man's spy inside the anti-registration underground, and Gage uses the mission to show exactly how the lines between the two sides blurred for the people actually living the conflict rather than debating it from a distance. Gage has spent a career writing superhero politics without letting the politics flatten the characters into mouthpieces, and a story about a double agent discovering that a lie told for the greater good still costs something is precisely the kind of margin note that makes an anthology like this worth the shelf space nearly two decades after the event it's revisiting.

Detective Comics #27 Facsimile Edition

Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, and Jerry Siegel write, with Bob Kane, Joe Shuster, and Wayne Boring on art, in a facsimile reprint of the single most consequential comic book ever published. This is Batman's actual 1939 debut, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," reproduced cover to cover with its original backup strips — Speed Saunders, Buck Marshall, the Crimson Avenger, and Slam Bradley — and every period ad intact. Pairing this on the shelf with a brand-new issue of the main Batman title is the kind of coincidence a shop lives for: eighty-seven years separate Kane and Finger's four-color pulp detective from Fraction and Jimenez's prestige-format epic, and reading them back to back is the fastest way to understand exactly how far — and how little — the character has traveled since a chemist's lab first got wrecked in a six-page mystery strip. It's a five-minute read and a genuine piece of the medium's history for seven dollars.

This Week's Full Release List

Everything else shipping to shelves this Wednesday, condensed:

Single Issues of Note

• Dead Teenagers #5 (series finale)
• Fort Psycho #1
• Minor Arcana #17
• 100 Bullets: The US of Anger #2
• Endeavour #3
• Frankenstein: Speed of Darkness #4
• Iron Man #8
• JSA #22
• M.A.S.K. #3
• Neighborhood Watch #4
• Ripcord #5
• Royals #5

New #1s and One-Shots

• Accessories #1
• Chachu #1
• Death Vigil #1
• Fantastic Four: 65 Years of the World's Greatest Comics Covers #1 (one-shot)
• Jughead: Piemageddon #1 (one-shot)
• Marvel Tokon: First Strike #1 (one-shot)
• Mary Jane: Face It, Tiger #1 (one-shot)
• Masters of the Universe: Genesis #1
• Money Shot: The F*ck Offs #1
• Omega Book #1
• Origins of the Hood: Marvel Rivals #1 (one-shot)
• Power Rangers Green #1
• Queen in Black: Venom Unchained #1
• The Smart Division #1
• Tank Girl Summer Love Sensation 35th Anniversary Special #1 (one-shot)
• Vampirella vs. Red Sonja: Red City #1 (one-shot)
• What If Captain America Was Revived in 2099 #1 (one-shot)
• X-Men: Apocalypse Omega #1 (one-shot)

Graphic Novels & Trade Collections

• 13 Demons Dead TP
• Airwalker Original Graphic Novel TP
• Albion HC (Rebellion Edition)
• Aquaman Vol. 2: Justice League Blue TP
• Barbaric Vol. 5: The Long Death TP
• Batman: Arkham — Clayface TP
• Batman by Tom King Omnibus Vol. 2 HC
• Batman: Static Beyond TP
• Bimbo: Agitprop TP
• Birds of Prey by Gail Simone Omnibus Vol. 2 HC
• Catwoman Vol. 3: Court of Fools TP
• Conan the Adventurer: The Original Comics Omnibus HC
• Cooking With Monsters Vol. 3: Best Served Cold TP
• DC Finest: Justice League of America — Crisis on Earth X TP
• DC K.O. All Fight TP / Battle Royale TP / HC
• Defenders of the Earth: Dark Destiny TP
• Dungeons & Dragons: Animated Adventures Library Edition HC
• Flash Gordon Vol. 3: Savior of the Universe TP
• Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre TP
• Gotham City Year One Deluxe Edition HC
• Gunslinger Spawn Vol. 7 TP
• Islands in the Sky: A People's History of Hurricane Helene TP
• Jim Starlin's Dreadstar Omnibus Vol. 2 TP (Dark Horse Edition)
• John Carpenter's Cathedral TP
• Kamandi by Jack Kirby Omnibus HC
• Little Nightmares: Descent to Nowhere TP
• Lobster Johnson Omnibus Vol. 2 TP
• Lumberjanes Book 6 HC
• Power Girl: New Beginnings and Old Friends Omnibus HC
• Rom Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years Vol. 5 TP
• Suicide Squad by John Ostrander Omnibus Vol. 2 HC
• Teen Titans Go on Strike TP / Teen Titans Together TP
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder Vol. 1 TP
• Traveling to Mars HC
• Undiscovered Country Vol. 6: Victory TP
• Ultimate Black Panther by Bryan Hill Vol. 4: Destiny and Destruction TP
• Ultimate Spider-Man Omnibus Vol. 2 HC
• Ultimate X-Men Omnibus Vol. 4 HC

Whether you're here for the Bat-Family's newest member, a symbiote war that's finally spilling onto Earth, or an eighty-seven-year-old back issue that started all of this, this is a week that rewards walking the whole store rather than beelining for one shelf.

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