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 20th, 2025.
Fun Home: The Deluxe Collector’s Edition: A Family Tragicomic
Mariner Books, HC – $32.50 (Buy Now)
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a confused legacy for his daughter to resolve.
Alison Bechdel is so famous that her name is synonymous with literary critical theory (see: the Bechdel test). That’s a pretty massive claim to fame for literally anyone, let alone a member of the oft-overlooked branch of artists known as autobiographical cartoonists. It’s a niche (if luminary) corner of highbrow comics borne out of the comix and indie traditions, and Bechdel’s Fun Home might very well be the prime example of the form. Here, it gets a lovely deluxe hardcover edition that has all the Book Tok bells and whistles: “featuring a cloth case with new art, a reversible jacket with new art on both sides enhanced with teal and silver foil, and sprayed edges.” It’s the sort of books-as-art-object edition for the lit kids in your life.
Giant
Faber and Faber, TPB – $22.95 (Buy Now)
Deeply moving and tender, with gorgeous illustrations, Mollie Ray’s debut graphic novel is a resonant story of empathy, healing and hope.
A silent graphic novel in which a boy wakes up as a giant. Giant is a series of nested metaphors about the author’s younger brother’s cancer diagnosis, cleverly drawn up in ballpoint as a sort of solemn storybook. With a quirky art style and a sense of foreboding, Giant looks to be the sort of book that lingers with the reader — or looms over them, as the case may be. This is a paperback edition, as the hardcover was released last year; after missing it the first time around, now might be the time to experience it.
The New Avengers Omnibus, Vol 2
Marvel Comics, HC – $125.00 (Buy Now)
The New Avengers are still rebels in a world reshaped by Civil War, but they’re about to uncover a huge clue to the threat that has faced them since the day they banded together! Will the truth destroy them from within? Or will that honor go to the Hood and his army of super villains? As a Secret Invasion by the Skrull Empire reveals shocking secrets, the aftermath leaves the team living in the shadows, wanted and hunted by the law — and the former Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, is the law!
Terms like ‘turn of the century’ seem undeniably hurtful for those of us who lived and read through the turn of the century; all the same, these issues of New Avengers came out almost twenty years ago. They belong to another time, and yet they feel so incredibly prescient about the superhero nerd culture that would evolve from them. Bendis writes these characters as if they are cemented in a very real world with very real interpersonal relationships, and though it can sometimes be a bit cringey — a lot of people would see these comics as “milennial writing”, a sort of hokey and quip-heavy style currently under fire on social media — it is nonetheless smart. It shows a Marvel Universe that is singular and whole, even under the burden of summer event after summer event.
The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus
DC Comics, HC – $125.00 (Buy Now)
When New York City cop Jim Corrigan was slain, he was denied entry into the afterlife and was chosen to be the embodiment of God’s wrath on Earth. As the Spectre, Corrigan metes out swift divine justice against evildoers dispassionately. But Corrigan’s humanity also anchors him to his former life and attachments, which can be a dangerous weakness against the forces of darkness.
Released during the early 1990s, this particular run of The Spectre eschewed most of the heavy-handed trends of the time and embraced a particularly looming view of horror. Ostrander and Mandrake may have been influenced by the then-stunning run of Ghost Rider going on over at Marvel, which was playing up the vengeance and brimstone. The Spectre was his own beast, of course, and one who far outdates that other Spirit of Vengeance. Almost as striking as the comics themselves are occasional covers by Charles Vess or Michael Wm. Kaluta, which distill the concept of this run into gruesome, single-image masterpieces.
Turn Loose Our Death Rays And Kill Them All!: The Complete Works Of Fletcher Hanks
Fantagraphics, TPB – $44.99 (Buy Now)
Between 1939 and 1941 he created nearly 50 comics stories, all unified by a uniquely artistic vision — primitive, bizarre, and singularly idiosyncratic. Whether it’s the superhero Stardust doling out ice cold slabs of poetic justice, or the jungle protectress Fantomah tearing evildoers from limb to ragged limb, contemporary readers will be stunned by the pop surrealism and unfiltered violent mayhem of Hanks’ work.
To be a singular voice during the Golden Age of comics wasn’t just unlikely, it was nearly impossible. The production of comic book stories was more akin to a production line than it was artform, each story often touched by an entire studio of artists, inkers, writers, letterers, and colorists. Fletcher Hanks, however, did all that himself, and at a time when comic stories were at their most disposable and unsure. Whether you’re taken with Hanks’s overbaked camp or you find it distasteful, the historic nature of his brief career is undeniable. This book thoughtfully archives a great deal of his work in the usual Fantagraphics quality, which opts for recapturing the original colors rather than recoloring, giving you the most Golden Age experience possible.
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