Tradewatch: exciting bookshelf editions for the week of 10/27/25

There is a veritable flood of new comics every week: new issues, variant covers, new #1s, and fresh-faced miniseries. Fewer – but still bountiful – are the dozens of bookshelf editions landing in your local comic shops (and attainable by your local indie bookshops, as well!). From fresh original graphic novels, long-awaited archive editions, and collections of recent comics for all you trade-waiters, there are plenty of trade paperbacks and hardcovers to fill your shelves.

After reviewing hundreds of these sorts of books for AIPT over the years, I’ve come to appreciate what makes a collection truly special. Here at Tradewatch, I pick five books releasing in the coming week that seem the most exciting to me. Here are my picks for the week of October 27th, 2025.

Akira Hardcover Collection, Vol 3

Kodansha, HC – $29.99

In the 21st century, the glittering Neo-Tokyo has risen from the rubble of a Tokyo destroyed by an apocalyptic telekinetic blast from a young boy called Akira—the subject of a covert government experiment gone wrong now imprisoned for three decades in frozen stasis. But Tetsuo, an unstable youth with immense paranormal abilities of his own, has done the unthinkable: He has released Akira and set into motion a chain of events that could once again destroy the city and drag the world to the brink of Armageddon. 

New editions of Akira are never a bad thing. Presumably, these hardcovers mirror the thirty-fifth anniversary box set that was released nearly a decade ago — a total of six volumes for the entire epic. If you’re a little squeamish about dropping two hundred bucks on that set, buying the series piecemeal isn’t too shabby an enterprise; they’re releasing the final few volumes at the rate of one volume a month. Treat yourself to a masterpiece.

The Complete Harrow County Compendium

Dark Horse Comics, TPB – $59.99 (Buy Now)

Emmy always knew that the woods surrounding her home crawled with ghosts and monsters. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she learns that she is connected to these creatures — and to the land itself — in a way she never imagined. Could Emmy be the reincarnation of an infamous witch? As supernatural forces that baffle the imagination align against her, Emmy must decide whether she will embrace or deny her destiny… with the fate of every soul — living or otherwise — hanging in the balance!

Harrow County is one of those books that feels almost perfect from the ground up. Idiosyncratic, beautifully rendered by Tyler Crook, and invested with so much home-spun horror mythology by Cullen Bunn, the book feels like a sort of dark, modern-day fable. Sitting down to read the series, you feel as if you’ve discovered a fairy tale classic before you even finish the first issue; to have all thirty-two issues in one place — no matter how unwieldy the paperback volume containing them — will feel to you as if you’ve somehow struck narrative gold. At least, that’s what I’ll be feeling, as someone who only read the series digitally.

Before Two-Fisted Tales burst onto the scene in 1950, war comics were largely unsophisticated, focusing only on action and adventure — wartime propaganda, essentially. But under the editorial direction of Harvey Kurtzman — who also penned the majority of the stories therein — Two-Fisted Tales dared to examine all the horror and madness to be found on the battlefield.

Even more EC Archives, this time landing us directly in the strange world of ‘war comics’. It’s a genre that might feel altogether gruesome for some people — the larger, more banal genre certainly feels as if it glorifies the most horrific of human tendencies — but EC Comics were doing something damned different from their peers regardless of the genre. Expect to find some of the best cartooning of the era, and ready yourself to be shocked and overwhelmed at the twists the company was so fond of (and so good at pulling off).

Fox Bunny Funny

Uncivilized Books, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)

The rules are simple: you’re either a fox or a bunny. Foxes oppress and devour, and bunnies suffer and die. Everyone knows their place. Everyone’s satisfied. So what happens when a secret desire puts you at odds with your society? Starting from a simple premise — and without using a single word — Fox Bunny Funny leads the reader on a zigzag chase in and out of rabbit holes and through increasingly strange landscapes where funny animals have serious identity problems. 

A sort of social fable, rendered wordlessly in stark black and white, Andy Hartzell’s book promises to provoke some empathetic thinking from its readers. This is a reprint of a book that was released some time ago, but this is the first I’ve heard about it, which is a shame because these sample pages look fantastic, and it very much speaks to the part of me that loves thought-provoking, anthropomorphic, funny animal books.

Jonah Hex: All-Star Western Omnibus

DC Comics, HC – $125 (Buy Now)

Even when Gotham City was just a one-horse town, crime was rampant — and things only get worse when bounty hunter Jonah Hex comes to town. Can Amadeus Arkham, a pioneer in criminal psychology, enlist Hex’s special brand of justice to help the Gotham Police Department track down the latest villains?

Collecting 2011’s All-Star Western by writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, this book offers up thirty-odd issues featuring a DC character I’ve always wanted to know more about but have somehow never done a deep dive into. It’s occasionally a relief to find a good chunk of modern comics featuring such a character to wet your toes before you commit to diving into the Silver Age madness from which they sprang. But who am I kidding? I’d get a few issues into this and then immediately go digging around for a reprint of 1971’s All-Star Western #10 because, frankly, I’m not a sane and reasonable reader of comic books.