This Week's Picks: Gotham Takes Over, Plus a Ghost Machine Finale and Hello Kitty's Comics Debut

Gotham owns most of the wall this week, but Superman isn't ceding any ground. Between the endgame of the biggest superhero comic in the direct market, a new Bat-Family team-up book from a returning A-list duo, a prison drama built around Barbara Gordon, and a Hollywood horror-comedy starring the Batman family's strangest villain, four of today's picks orbit Gotham. Two more come from Metropolis, where the Superman line just launched its first line-wide crossover in years. The rest of the list is here for contrast: a shared-universe finale from the creative team behind Doomsday Clock and Green Lantern, and the single most anticipated all-ages debut of the year. It's a week that rewards walking the whole store.

Absolute Batman #23

Scott Snyder writes, Nick Dragotta draws, Frank Martin colors, and Tom Napolitano letters the issue that pushes DC's flagship reinvention toward its first real reckoning. Snyder has spent two decades building era-defining Batman stories — Black Mirror, Court of Owls, We Have Demons — and Absolute Batman has become the best evidence yet that he still has new angles on the character left to mine. Dragotta, fresh off the genre-scrambling Power Fantasy and East of West, draws a Bruce Wayne who looks and moves like nobody else's Batman: blunt, overbuilt, permanently mid-collision. This issue forces him into a fight he can't solve by hitting harder, as the Robins under his care become both casualties and accusations. Absolute Batman has been the loudest book in the line since launch, and this is the issue where the volume finally has consequences. If you've been waiting for the arc that justifies the hype, this is it.

Action Comics #1101 & Supergirl #16: Kingdom of Zod Begins

The Superman books just opened their biggest crossover in years, and it's worth a callout of its own. In Action Comics #1101, Mark Waid writes and Montos draws "Kingdom of Zod: Part Two" — the direct follow-up to last month's landmark #1100, which brought Superman crashing back into the present alongside stowaways from his own past, young Clark Kent among them. Waid knows this corner of the mythos better than almost anyone writing today, from Birthright to Kingdom Come, and he's using that history to stage a real invasion rather than a rehash: General Zod has already seized the Kryptonite Kingdom of El Caldero by the time this issue opens. Supergirl #16 picks up the other half of the assault, with Sophie Campbell writing and Joe Quinones and Paolo Villanelli on art, colors from Quinones and Arif Prianto, and letters by Josh Reed and Becca Carey. Campbell assembles an appropriately unruly strike team — Superboy-Prime, Conner Kent, Lois Lane, Steel, Lana Lang, Natasha Irons, Princess Shark among them — to infiltrate the Kingdom, and the issue ends by cracking open a genuine mystery in the mysterious "K-Zone." Quinones draws a cast this large with real clarity, which is exactly the skill a line-wide crossover needs from its connective tissue issue. Two different Superman books, one shared sense that this event has actual stakes.

Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos #1

Mark Waid writes and Chris Samnee draws, with colors from Mat Lopes and letters from Clayton Cowles, reuniting the team behind one of the most acclaimed Daredevil runs of the last fifteen years for a new maxiseries. Waid and Samnee know how to draw a partnership in motion — their storytelling has always favored clarity and momentum over decompression, which makes them the right pair for a book explicitly about what it looks like when Batman and Robin's teamwork finally clicks. The hook here is simple and effective: a gang of street kids starts causing trouble across Gotham, and the Dynamic Duo has to figure out who's really running them. It's a smaller, sharper premise than the company-wide event energy dominating so much of the Bat-line right now, and that restraint is exactly what makes it worth a look.

Barbara Gordon: Breakout #4

Mariko Tamaki writes, Amancay Nahuelpan draws, Tamra Bonvillain colors, and Ariana Maher letters this prison-set thriller that's quietly become one of the more interesting Batgirl-adjacent books DC has published in years. Tamaki, who's built a career finding the emotional pressure points inside genre premises — from Harley Quinn to Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow — took a genuinely bold structural swing here: strip Barbara Gordon of the Batgirl identity, the tech, and the Bat-Family safety net, and drop her into Supermax alone. Four issues in, that isolation has curdled into something closer to noir than superhero comic. This issue finally cracks open who's been protecting her from inside the walls, and whether that protection is a gift or a debt. Nahuelpan's grimy, close-quarters linework has made the prison feel like its own character.

Clayface: Celebrity Dirt #2

Jude Ellison S. Doyle writes, Fran Galán draws, Patricio Delpeche colors, and Tom Napolitano letters the second issue of DC's strangest ongoing bet of the year. Doyle has built a career writing sharp, unsentimental horror criticism as much as horror fiction, and that critical eye is all over this book's premise: Basil Karlo, riding the wave of Clayface's newfound cultural cachet, heads back to Hollywood to hunt down whoever's been stealing his identity — and finds a body-horror nightmare waiting underneath the studio lot, tied to a supplement causing grotesque transformations across Los Angeles. It's Clayface as tabloid satire and creature feature at once, using a villain built on identity theft to take a scalpel to celebrity culture itself. Galán's elastic, unstable figure work makes every transformation feel genuinely unpleasant in the best way.

The Trillion Dollar Kid #2

Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi co-write, with Stefano Simeone on art, closing out the two-issue "Who Are the Unbelievables?" arc that's served as the first real crossover test for Johns's Ghost Machine imprint at Image. Johns built his name on legacy-conscious superhero writing at DC — Green Lantern, Flash, the entire Rebirth architecture — and Tomasi has the same instinct for earnest, character-first spectacle from his own Green Lantern and Batman work. Together they're using this finale to bring the Rocketfellers, Hornsby & Halo, and Tommy Townsend's Trillion Dollar Kid into the same room to deal with a malfunctioning robot bodyguard, while quietly laying track for whatever comes next in the shared universe. The first issue sold out and went back to press within its release week; this is the payoff that determines whether Ghost Machine's shared-universe ambitions actually hold together.

Hello Kitty and Friends: Hello World! #1

Mariko Tamaki — doing double duty on this week's list — writes, with Cody Lemieux on art and colors and Becca Carey lettering, IDW's official launch into Sanrio's world. Retailers ordered 75,000 copies of this debut, an eye-popping number for a new all-ages license and a sign of just how much appetite there is for Hello Kitty done as a real ongoing comic rather than a licensing curiosity. Tamaki uses a deceptively simple mystery — My Melody's signature bow goes missing, and other characters' iconic accessories start vanishing right behind it — as a guided tour through Friend Town's entire cast, which is a smart structural choice for a book that has to work as both a first issue and a series bible. Lemieux's character work is warm and expressive without ever tipping into saccharine. This is the rare licensed comic built to actually last.

This Week's Full Release List

Everything else shipping to shelves this Wednesday, condensed:

Other Comics Worth a Look

• Beast of Boriken #2
• Bleeding Hearts #7
• DIE Loaded #8
• Fury of Firestorm #5
• Innards #3
• Shaolin Cowboy: Staying A.I. Live #2
• Twilight Zone #10
• Yumi 00-EX #1

New #1s and One-Shots

• Biker Mice From Mars – Scorch #1
• Cult-De-Sac #1
• The Foundry #1
• Gargoyles #1
• Gastronomique #1
• Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre Presents – Roar of the Worlds #1
• Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1
• Queen in Black – Thor #1 (one-shot)
• Regicide #1
• Star Wars – The Fall of Kylo Ren #1

Graphic Novels & Trade Collections

• Amazing Spider-Man by Zeb Wells Omnibus Vol. 2 HC
• Amelia Shadows Vol. 2: Amelia Shadows and the Monster in the Box HC/TP
• Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher: The Last Wish HC
• Batgirl Vol. 3: The War of Shadows TP
• Batman by Tom King Book 3 TP
• Batman – Detective Comics Vol. 3: The Courage That Kills HC/TP
• Crownsville TP
• Cult of the Lamb Vol. 2: Last Sacrament TP
• Death Fight Forever TP
• Elseworlds Justice League Omnibus Vol. 1 HC
• Essential Judge Dredd: Tour of Duty Book 3 TP
• Everglide TP
• Fantastic Four Epic Collection Vol. 26: Heroes Reborn TP
• The Forged Vol. 4: Galaxy's Most Wanted TP
• Freaks Squeele Vol. 3 HC
• Free Planet Vol. 2 TP
• Frostbite: Beware the Dead of Winter TP
• Hank Howard, Pizza Detective: A Slice of Life TP
• In the End We All Die HC
• John Carpenter Presents George A. Romero's The Amusement Park GN
• JSA Vol. 3: Year One HC/TP
• Judge Dredd Complete Case Files Vol. 24 TP
• Kick-Ass Compendium TP
• Last Human in a Crowded Galaxy TP
• Marvel Two-In-One Epic Collection Vol. 4: Project Pegasus TP
• Mary Sue TP
• Monster High: House Haunters TP
• Murder Podcast Vol. 1 TP
• New Avengers Vol. 2: The Other Woman TP
• Quacky TP
• Superman Vol. 6: DC K.O. TP
• Superman Unlimited Vol. 2: This Looks Like a Job HC/TP
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Battle Nexus TP
• Thor by Jason Aaron Omnibus Vol. 1 HC
• Transformers: The Movie Deluxe Edition HC
• Ultimates by Deniz Camp Vol. 4: Uprising TP
• Undertaker Vol. 2: The Gore of Camp Sutter & The Shadow of Hippocrates HC
• Warm Fusion HC
• You Can Never Die: A Graphic Memoir HC

Whether you're here for the Absolute Batman arc that's been building for two years, the opening salvo of Kingdom of Zod, a Batgirl story with the safety net removed, or a Hello Kitty comic good enough to outlast the hype, this is a week built for the whole store, not just one shelf. Come find us.

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