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 January 14th, 2026.
Absolute Death of Superman
DC Comics, HC – $125 (Buy Now)
Experience The Death of Superman like never before, in its largest format to date! Featuring an extensive gallery of over 200 pages of never-before-seen artwork, brand-new essays, scripts, retrospectives, a trading card gallery, and more!
Served up in a replica tombstone, this collection puts together the beginning of the massive mid-’90s Death of Superman crossover, leading us right up to Big Blue’s death. It doesn’t get into the sloppy but delightful Reign of the Supermen — there’s not nearly enough space for that — but I wouldn’t say that stuff is as essential a reading as Supes and Doomsday’s fatal battle. This also comes in a non-tombstone edition for those of us who can’t imagine where this fits on a shelf.
Barefoot Gen Vol. 1
Last Gasp, HC – $35 (Buy Now)
Barefoot Gen is the powerful, tragic, autobiographical story of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, seen through the eyes of the artist as a young boy growing up in Japan.Shielded by a stone wall, he miraculously survived the blast.
Part of the initial wave of Japanese manga to make it stateside in the 1980s, Barefoot Gen might also be one of the most moving of that wave. So much of the Japanese media that makes its way to the US is thematically haunted by the shadow of war — and some of it, the bomb itself — but this book tackles that horrible event directly. It’s a personal story, and one that I’m both excited and nervous to embark upon. It’ll be great to have such a definitive collection of the book’s first portion.
Cruel Kingdom Vol 1
Oni Press, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)
Enter Cruel Kingdom—EC’s first-ever dark-fantasy anthology conjuring tales of MAGIC, MYTH, and MURDER from forbidden realms long before our own!
Part of Oni Press’s indelible EC Comics reboot, Cruel Kingdom strayed from the standard horror or sci-fi tropes and strode into the new territory of dark fantasy. All that horror and sci-fi clearly makes it into the anthology — that’s a robot king on the cover — but the genre twist offers a unique sandbox for a bevvy of exciting creators to play in. These new EC books are beautiful to look at.
The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat
Fantagraphics, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)
Robert Crumb’s first great character ― in fact, his second-best-known character next to Mr. Natural ― was Fritz the Cat, the horny, hip-talking feline whose success caused Crumb to kill him off.
One of the most iconic underground Comix of the 1970s, by perhaps the most iconic underground Comix artist of all time, Fritz is a sort of sleazy take on the funny animal genre that has wide-ranging influences (not the least of which on my dear Howard the Duck). Fritz even spawned a couple of animated feature films, most notably Ralph Bakshi‘s directorial debut in 1972; it’s this Fritz that sticks in my mind, after having seen that first film at an age when I really shouldn’t have seen it. Being able to immerse myself in the perverse, goofy, and sometimes hilarious comic strips is sure to be eye-opening.
X-Men Epic Collection – Lifedeath
Marvel Comics, TPB – $54.99 (Buy Now)
Drama abounds as Cyclops heads off on his honeymoon with Madelyne Pryor, Wolverine’s relationship with Mariko takes a turn for the worse and Kitty Pryde is kidnapped and forced to marry the Morlock Caliban. Meanwhile, Rogue is public enemy number one and anti-mutant sentiment threatens the passage of a law that will strip every mutant in the United States of their rights.
I recommend these X-Men Epic Collections with such true exuberance. This collection, pairing Claremont’s hyperactive sense of worldbuilding with groundbreaking artists like John Romita, Jr and Barry Windsor-Smith (for the titular, legendary Lifedeath from Uncanny X-Men #186), showcases how widespread the X-Men were straying. Characters, each on their own individual trajectories, were finding themselves in more and more dire straits; this was the beginning of a sort of bummery period, leading to 1986’s brutal Mutant Massacre crossover. This is foundational X-Men, not at its best but certainly at its most iconic.
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