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 September 22nd, 2025.
Guardians of the Galaxy Epic Collection – Homecoming
Marvel Comics, TPB $60.00 (Buy Now)
The original Guardians of the Galaxy land on the World of Mutants but soon wind up in the middle of a violent rebellion against Wolverine’s descendant Rancor! And to make matters worse, there’s a Dark Phoenix on the loose! Hope they survive the experience! Then it’s off to rescue Firelord, a cosmic clash with Ghost Rider and the debut of the mysterious Protégé – culminating in an epic battle with the Punisher of the 31st century.
Valentino’s run on Guardians of the Galaxy — part of an early-90s push for new #1s and new properties that gave us books like Ghost Rider and both the adjectiveless X-Men and Spider-Man — never left much of a lasting impression. Which is to say that even though this run was the longest-running and most explorative time with the original Guardians team, they remained disposable and were rarely touched again. That’s a shame because this book is wild: we learn about futuristic Punisher cults, later Phoenix hosts, and (the first) cosmic Ghost Rider. It’s the Marvel Universe pushed to the far-flung space-faring limits, and it’s a ton of fun.
Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale: Hulk
Marvel Comics, TPB $19.99 (Buy N0w)
The Eisner Award-winning team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale offers their ever-insightful look into the foundation of Marvel Comics’ most popular heroes, unraveling the Hulk’s origin – and uncovering a secret that will change the way we look at Bruce Banner forever!
For a window of time, having Jeph Loeb and the amazing, late Tim Sale on a book together meant that book would be treated like an instant classic. I don’t remember what happens in this Hulk story, but in my mind it stands as a sort of definitive story of the early Hulk era. Whether or not that’s true, I know for a fact that it’s gorgeous to look at.
Monstress Compendium One
Image Comics, TPB $59.99 (Buy N0w)
The richly imagined world of MONSTRESS is an alternate matriarchal 1900s Asia, with an art deco-infused steampunk aesthetic that’s brimming with arcane dangers. Within it, a teenage girl struggles to overcome the trauma of war, a task that’s made all the more difficult by her mysterious psychic link to an eldritch monster of tremendous power—a connection that will transform them both, and place them in the crosshairs of both human and otherworldly powers.
If you, like me, have sat on the sidelines of Monstress, deeply curious about the beatiful artwork and the endless rave reviews — it’s an Eisner winner, after all — but have always shied away from diving in because of the imposing length of the thing, this Compendium might just be the answer. It collects the first 48 issues of the series in one oversized trade paperback. Image recently released the whole of East of West as a similar paperback compendium, and if this book feels roughly like that then it will be hefty; a little uncomfortable to read without a sturdy desk in front of you, but an easier experience than a hardcover omnibus.
More Weight – A Salem Story
IDW, TPB $34.99 (Buy Now)
1692 is a year of terror. In Salem, Massachusetts, Giles and Martha Corey are forced to confront their troubled past when accusations of witchcraft plunge their community into a violent moral panic. Based upon true events, and set in three centuries, More Weight is a unique inquiry into the Salem witchcraft tragedy and the misunderstood city now synonymous with it.
What little I know of Ben Wickey’s work — largely gleaned from his Instagram — tells me that he’s perfectly suited to tell a weird-ol’ Salem witch story. There’s a bit of gloomy charicature to his style, and I can’t wait to delight in some real-world Puritanical dread. ‘Tis the season.
Rare Flavours Deluxe Edition
BOOM! Studios, HC $29.99 (Buy Now)
Discover the tantalizing tale of Rubin Baksh, a demonic Rakshasa with a down-to-earth dream of being the next Anthony Bourdain.
The team of Ram V and Filipe Andrade blew readers away with 2021’s The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, an incredible tale of death and culture. Their follow-up follows a demon obsessed with food, and it does some interesting things wherein it describes an Indian delicacy with mouth-watering detail, making you desperately hungry and envious, and then it adds cannibalism to the docket and you start feeling sick. This sounds like a bad thing, but it is, in fact, incredible. This deluxe hardcover collects the whole series, and it’ll look great on the shelf next to Laila.
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