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 1st, 2026.
Captain America Vol. 1: Our Secret Wars
Marvel Comics, TPB – $17.99 (Buy Now)
While Captain America slumbered in ice, the world changed — for better and for worse. Steve Rogers awakens to a reality where battles are fought in the shadows through secrets and subterfuge, and villains aren’t so easy to identify. And when a fledgling dictator named Victor Von Doom conquers Latveria, Steve faces a critical decision: adapt to a new kind of warfare, or forge his own path? What will the choice he makes in the past mean for his future?
Zdarsky’s slow takeover of the Marvel Universe doesn’t exactly begin here, but the roots of this summer’s big event, Armageddon, does — and that event leads to an upcoming Avengers title. This is your chance to get in on Chip’s big swings from the beginning; the book is incredibly solid, and sees Cap struggling with the gray areas of wartime morality in unique, Latverian ways. It’s very good, and it’s a relief that the character is in such capable hands.
The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 30 – Uncle Scrooge: Lost Beneath the Sea
Fantagraphics, HC – $39.99 (Buy Now)
It’s a catastrophe when an ocean liner with Scrooge’s Old Number One Dime on board sinks in a raging storm at sea. Donald and Scrooge go after it, only to discover that the vessel has been taken to an undersea ship graveyard where four-armed Martians are salvaging the metal from the sunken ships for their own planet.
We stan ducks in this column (some might say too much so). Be it Howard or Scrooge, my money always seems to be thrown at stories about talking ducks. Uncle Scrooge was the more action-oriented of Carl Barks’ vast Disney Duck output, and Lost Beneath the Sea sees him literally diving into said adventure. The title story features subaquatic martians, for god’s sake — you can’t get more cartoonishly action-packed as that.
Get Jiro! The Complete Collection
DC Comics, TPB – $29.99 (Buy Now)
From New York Times bestselling author Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose, Langdon Foss, and Ale Garza comes this violent and hilarious satire about the obsessiveness of food culture in a near-future Los Angeles where rival culinary gangs vie for the skills of Jiro, a master sushi chef with no equal.
Anthony Bourdain would be the first to tell you that he was a complicated person. Hell, he did tell you that in his culture-defining book, Kitchen Confidential. He may have been the most culturally in-tune celebrity chef of all time; he certainly had an incredible taste in music, and his world-spanning television shows had him deep in niche world cuisines. That he wrote a comic book seems somehow natural; that it’s a book about sci-fi sushi is perfect.
Robin: Year One
DC Comics, TPB – $19.99 (Buy Now)
Tale of young Dick Grayson’s baptism by fire as he dons the costume of Robin for the first time! Becoming a hero is anything but easy! After a young Dick Grayson’s parents were murdered, millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne took the youth in as his ward and changed his life forever. Using his days in the circus as a trapeze artist as a basis for his education, Batman spent months training Dick in the ways of combat and crime fighting. This book presents Dick’s baptism by fire as he dons the costume of Robin, the Boy Wonder for the first time and patrols the night by Batman’s side. In his earliest adventures, Robin learns very quickly that what he thought would be fun is actually a matter of life and death.
Batgirl: Year One is a book that I absolutely loved when I finally read the most recent pressing of the story; I can only assume that the other Scott Beatty/Chuck Dixon-helmed “Year One” stories carry some of that caliber of stylistic and bombastic storytelling. Add to the fact that this book is illustrated by Javier Pulido, whose work always has a sense of the iconic to it, and this Robin story is easy enough to recommend, sight unseen.
Ultimate Fantastic Four Epic Collection: Frightful
Marvel Comics, TPB – $49.99 (Buy Now)
. . . when Reed uses his scientific genius to contact an Earth in a surprisingly familiar parallel dimension, the team is not ready for the frightful version of the FF they are soon to meet!
This volume of the Ultimate Fantastic Four Epic Collection collects one of the book’s most influential early stories, “Crossover”, which introduced the concept of the undead to the Marvel Universe(s). It was, at the time, the only story arc of the series I read — the hype was such that I was willing to dive into a book without reading everything up to that point first. I can confirm, having read the entire series since, that the story — and the series — is an outright banger. Out of all the original run of Ultimate books, FF felt the most self-assured, less about the novelty of its new universe and more about telling great Fantastic Four stories. It’s a very solid series.
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