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 November 10th, 2025.
Comfortless
Fantagraphics, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)
“This book makes no claims to scientific validity and is in no way intended for informational purposes.” So declares Miguel Vila in the outset of his new graphic novel, Comfortless, a taxonomy of the masks with which we pretend to live, executed with the precision of a master sociologist.
A surreal series of pandemic short stories, Comfortless is a book made all the more powerful by artist Miguel Villa’s almost uncanny caricature. The book’s characters are depicted both overlarge and marked with very human flaws and boxed up in minuscule thumbnail-sized panels, where they still ooze personality and emotion. I’ve only read a fraction of the book so far, and already my head is swimming with the potential for these sorts of vignettes, which feel like post-modern literature in their narrative sparsity and emotional weight.
Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar Omnibus Volume 1
Dark Horse Comics, TPB – $39.99 (Buy Now)
The spiraled arms of the Milky Way embrace hundreds of billions of stars, planets, and Earth — the little blue dot we call home. But humans aren’t the only inhabitants of this swirling galactic disc, it’s also given rise to a number of beautiful and terrible alien species — one of which is so dangerous, so destructive, and so inevitable that the only way to save the universe is to DESTROY THE MILKY WAY.
Jim Starlin is a creator who has capital ‘B’ Big Ideas. One of the main architects for the 1980s and 1990s Marvel Cosmic stories, you would think he would have had plenty of outlets for those Big Ideas: those stories are wild and uninhibited. But Dreadstar, a creator-owned book first published in 1982, is a book with just as many Big Ideas that, quite honestly, could have fit right into the wider Silver Surfer universe Starlin was working on. It’s a big, zany space epic that I haven’t yet wrapped my head around, and this volume collects its first half, originally printed by Marvel’s Epic imprint. The perfect book to experience those Ideas for yourself.
Friday Deluxe Edition
Image Comics, HC – $49.99 (Buy Now)
Friday Fitzhugh spent her childhood solving crimes and digging up occult secrets with her best friend Lancelot Jones, the smartest boy in the world. But that was the past, now she’s in college, starting a new life on her own. Except when Friday comes home for the holidays, she’s immediately pulled back into Lance’s orbit and finds that something very strange and dangerous is happening in their little New England town…
A sort of Lovecraftian Encyclopedia Brown, Friday is Ed Brubaker and Marcos Martín’s ‘teen detective grows up’ adventure tale. Heavy with teen drama with an underlying occult flair, the series originally released back in 2020; I’ve only read the first issue and immediately put the rest off so I could read the complete series (only nine issues) in this edition instead of digitally. Dramatic coming-of-age + spooky scary = right up my alley.
The Goon: Them That Don’t Stay Dead
Dark Horse, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)
The return to Lonely Street hasn’t been easy for the Goon and Franky. And just as they’ve finally got the various gangs of blood suckers and night stalkers back in line, a new threat appears. Or is it an old one? Mysteries (and backstabbing) abound on the deadly streets of Nameless Town.
Eric Powell’s The Goon turns a quarter-century old! That’s 25 years of lushly illustrated weirdos and creeps, ham-fisted heroism, and off-color jokes. Them That Don’t Stay Dead collects last year’s four-issue miniseries in glorious black and white, which harkens back to the classic indie comics from which the character sprang. Eric Powell’s artwork has always managed to outshine any limitation put on it, making gray-tones feel like a verdant palette of color.
Micronauts Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years – This Battlefield, Earth
Marvel Comics, TPB – $54.99 (Buy Now)
In this volume, they return to Earth only to find themselves in the X-Men’s Danger Room with the killer metamorph Huntarr in hot pursuit. Their adventures on our world will take them to unexpected places, including a comic book store and into battle against Doctor Doom.
We’re hitting the midway point on Marvel’s reproduction of Bill Mantlo’s original Micronauts stories — this is the third of five Epic Collections, and one has to assume that it’s just as weird and wonderful as the first two. There’s really nothing like sitting down and reading a series like this one, crafted by a primary creator whose hand doesn’t leave the wheel for fifty-plus issues. Comics like that are living tapestries, and you can really see attentions and ideas shift and coalesce. The Epic Collection is an endless wellspring of those sorts of books.
You must be logged in to post a comment.