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 December 24th, 2025.
Green Lantern Compendium One: Rebirth
DC Comics, TPB – $59.99 (Buy Now)
Hal Jordan’s return from exile reignites the Corps, sets the universe ablaze with conflict, and launches an era of unforgettable battles and cosmic drama. Witness the Rann- Thanagar War, a deep conspiracy within the Corps, and Kyle Rayner’s ascension as Ion. One of the greatest comic book epics of all time starts now!
What may very well be the most famous modern Green Lantern story of all is being presented in some oversized trade paperbacks, which makes what is a massive epic into a moderately affordable investment. I remember reading the very beginning of this run and being blown away even though I wasn’t an active DC fan at the time. Green Lantern was always my favorite character from a distance, and while that might not be true now that I’m more entrenched in that universe, there’s still a warm green spot in my heart.
Madman Omnibus Vol. 2
Dark Horse Comics, TPB – $49.99 (Buy Now)
Volume two collects many of Mike Allred’s popular Madman Comics stories including numerous Madman spinoffs and crossovers featuring the Superman/Madman crossover and the Powers/Madman one-shot written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Michel Avon Oeming.
The Allred’s Madman is one of the premiere indie luminaries of the 1990s (if you believed any given issue of Wizard Magazine from back then). Even if you’re not fully in the know on the character and his abstract, zany world, Michael Allred’s consistently perfect pop-art draftsmanship is enough to pull even the most uncertain potential fan into the fold. These books do the hard work of arranging decades of disparate stories into one handy place, and they’re certain to be a wealth of beautiful artwork.
Pale Knight
Mad Cave Studios, TPB – $17.99 (Buy Now)
England, 1349. Sir Hugh de Grey, the Pale Knight, returns from war to find a land ravaged by the Black Death, and his son dying of the plague. When he prays to God to save his son’s life, it is not God who answers—but Death himself. And Death is willing to cut a deal.
Never has a single image sold me so hard on the mysterious contents within. That looming specter of death, the downtrodden knight, the whole thing just screams that this is a book worth trying — and yet, I still haven’t cracked into it, and having missed the boat on that initial cover the trade is the obvious place to start.
Rom Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years Vol. 3
Marvel Comics, TPB – $49.99 (Buy Now)
Rom’s solemn quest to eradicate the Dire Wraiths from Earth brings him face-to-face with more of Marvel’s greatest heroes! A journey to Namor’s underwater realm leads Rom to an epic battle with monsters of the deep! Shang-Chi lends his deadly hands to thwart the Wraiths’ black magic! Rom joins Doctor Strange in a mind-bending confrontation with the Living Tribunal!
Rom is weird, and weird is good. Writer Bill Mantlo took the assignment — to provide world-building for a one-off action figure — and ran with it, and by this point in the series (some 30 issues in), the comic had already outlasted the commercial relevancy of its toy inspiration. Rom gets epic, indeed, and these Epic Collections are the prime way to experience not only the epic, but to understand just how firmly entwined with the Marvel Universe the character truly was. For this brief window in time we can believe that he’s still part of that storied continuity.
The Warlord by Mike Grell Omnibus Vol. 1
DC Comics, HC – $100 (Buy Now)
In 1975, DC made one of its most notable expansions beyond the world of superheroes with the introduction of the Warlord—a new fantasy hero created by writer and artist Mike Grell, later distinguished for his character-redefining work Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters.
Speaking of weird, Warlord seems weird. One of the big fantasy-type swings of the DCU, Warlord adds a hollow-Earth element to the DC Universe. It set up a modern man for a sword and sorcery adventure. Most recently, the book’s protagonist could be seen as a supporting character in Danger Street, which featured a bunch of characters from DC’s 1st Issue Special, a sort of launching ground for IP. You know it’s a good, interesting book if it was spawned from such a niche and wonderful book.
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