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 July 22nd, 2026.
Deadman by Kelley Jones: The Complete Collection
DC Comics, TPB – $34.99 (Buy Now)
He has gone from supernatural hero to insane spirit of evil. In this collection, Deadman faces a slew of malicious spirits and the damned humans attacked by these paranormal entities. He must save the souls of murdered carnival performers trapped in the abandoned remnants of a defunct circus train, rescue kidnapped children, and battle a tide of demons. Great power lies within Deadman, but it can only be unlocked if he faces the secrets within himself—secrets that have driven him mad. Can he save the souls of the living and the dead when he cannot save himself?
I’ve always been drawn to Deadman when he’s less a superhero and more a ghoulish little weirdo, which makes the Kelley Jones version of the character incredibly appealing to me. These stories, written by Mike Baron and Tim Seeley, take Deadman more directly into the supernatural than even his earliest approaches, which very much lingered in the tights-and-capes corner of the DC Universe (he teamed up with Batman like, a lot). That darker side of the DC Universe is always a compelling, strange place to be, and this book is the perfect excuse to sink into it.
D’Orc Vol. 1: The Book of Certain Doom
Image Comics, TPB – $9.99 (Buy Now)
D’orc, the half dwarf/ half orc is fated to end the world because of some inconvenient doomsday prophecy from the Book of Certain Doom. Armed with nothing but a magical yet ambitiously violent shield and a chicken with its head cut off, D’orc is caught dead center into Sunderaine’s never-ending war between the Light and Dark. Elves vs. Orcs. Wizards vs. Common Sense. Dragons vs. Literally Everyone.
D’Orc has been getting a lot of bold comparisons to books like Bone and movies like The Dark Crystal, and that’s a heady pedigree for a new fantasy to endure. Those comparisons could make or break a book, depending on how much a reader believes in them. Luckily, creator Brett Bean has been raking up fairy tale experience from working on I Hate Fairyland, which means he’s just the sort of creator to create just the sort of book that invites those comparisons.
Megahex Perfect Edition
Fantagraphics, TPB – $29.99 (Buy Now)
Megahex Perfect Edition is the first book in a new series presenting all of Simon Hanselmann’s acclaimed Megg, Mogg & Owl stories as they’ve never been presented before: fully remixed by the author to present the entire MMO universe timeline in chronological order, from the characters’ earliest adventures and beyond. Complete with new covers and other artwork, as well as all-new “color commentary” in the form of end notes to the entire series.
Megahex is one of those comics that’s for a very specific niche of comics fans, one decidedly younger and hipper than your broad-appeal superhero fans. It’s ridiculous, crude, and in general poor taste, and that’s what makes it so damn appealing and lovable. It’s hard not to be rocketed back to your twenties as you experience the turbulent messiness of these characters’ lives, no matter the fact that one of them is a witch and one of them is a werewolf. You might not have been exactly like them, but you certainly have to like them.
Powers 25 Vol. 1
Dark Horse Comics, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)
A fun, dangerous, adult look at a world of heroes through the eyes of special homicide officer Detective Kutter and her brand-new partner, and the first power to ever make powers division, Moebius Moon. Under the watchful eyes of legendary Captains Deena Pilgrim and Enki Sunrise, the new detectives are running through a minefield of all new dangers. A new unsolvable powers murder has Kutter and Moon questioning EVERYTHING about the world and their place in it.
For a series that’s 25 years old, Powers remains oddly fresh and inventive. It’s a sort of love letter to the medium of comics, and to genre: superheroes and detective stories, as told by two very, very dedicated creators who have loved and nurtured this world the whole way. This is a franchise that has had many homes at many publishers, and it’s come through unscathed no matter how strange the transition.
X-Men: The Messiah Trilogy Omnibus
Marvel Comics, HC – $125 (Buy Now)
With no more mutants being born, the future of Homo superior has never looked bleaker. At the seeming end of their evolutionary cycle, a miracle arrives — in the form of the first child born with the X-gene since the tragic events of M-Day! But this sudden source of hope spawns a bloody, violent and tragic conflict for control over the baby girl’s fate. To safeguard this infant, Cable takes her into the future but soon finds himself trapped there — with the relentless Bishop in hot pursuit, intent on killing the child! When Cyclops sends the black-ops squad X-Force forward in time to help, the battle is on! But when Cable finally returns to the present, will the girl he has raised, Hope Summers, prove to be mutantkind’s savior — or its damnation?
I’m of the opinion that the X-Men are at their best at their most convoluted, messy, and confusing, and boy oh boy does The Messiah Trilogy fit the bill. Spinning out of the “no more mutants” of it all, the Messiah stories relate to Hope Summers, the youngest of the most convoluted Marvel family that exists, whose prophetic savior complex arrives on her doorstep at birth in the form of the time-jumping adoptive father, Cable; what follows is a lot of time-jumping, high stakes, and missed connections. It’s a little sloppy, and it’s a lot of doom and gloom, but it’s very X-Men.
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