Hey, Carol and John’s Shoppers! It’s a huge week here at the shop for the final week of April. There’s a new Amazing Spider-Man #1, the death of the Justice League (no seriously), and plenty more. Also Previews too! Let’s see what’s good this week.

Marvel Comics

It’s a brand-new Amazing Spider-Man #1 and the return of John Romita Jr.! “WHAT DID SPIDER-MAN DO?! Peter’s on the outs with the FF. He’s on the outs with the Avengers. He’s on the outs with Aunt May! No one wants to see Spider-Man – except for Doctor Octopus. Ock’s on Spider-Man’s tail and the Master Planner has something truly terrible planned for when he gets his tentacles on Spidey. All that, and what does Tombstone have planned?” This year marks the 60th anniversary of the web-head also, and this new #1 is legacy issue #895, so BIG THINGS are coming this year for Spider-Man fans! We’ve got tons of variants too this week, so pick up your favorite, while we still have plenty to choose from.

While Spider-Man has a new beginning this week, there’s an end to things in Donny Cates’s Thor with the finale to the God of Hammers story arc and the funeral of Odin (spoilers, but it happened the last issue sooo). Another legacy issue, this week’s Thor #24 is also issue #750 overall, featuring stories from Walt Simonson, J. Michael Straczynski, Jason Aaron, and more. This issue is jam-packed with stories at $8.99, but it’s our last chance to catch our breath before the epic Hulk vs. Thor Banner of War crossover begins next month.

DC Comics

The cover says it all; this week in Justice League #75 it’s the DEATH OF THE JUSTICE LEAGUE. Written by Joshua Williamson, this is the first major prelude to this summer’s Dark Crisis event. The full might of the Justice League comes face-to-face with Pariah and his Dark Army in a battle that’ll leave only one survivor to warn everybody about what’s coming. This is a big, brutal finale to the current Justice League series and is a must-have for any DC fans eagerly awaiting Dark Crisis.

One of our favorite series at the shop is back with issue #6 of Dark Knights of Steel. Each issue has been ramping up the action and has had a lot of fun reveals for medieval versions of our favorite DC characters. This week sees the cold war between the Kingdom of Storms and the House of El heat up with the Amazons forced to pick sides. This series is awesome and is the first DC book we all read as soon as we get our weekly shipments in. You should be reading it!

Small Press

FINALLY! After plenty of delays across the whole series, we finally have the last issue in the TMNT Last Ronin miniseries. This final issue has the showdown between the last turtle and the Foot Clan with the fate of New York City in the balance. I’m way behind on this series, even after all the delays, but I’m curious to see how things finally wrapped up for this fan-favorite series.

Image has been putting out a lot of great new #1’s this year so far, and it seems like every week or so there’s another new hit. This week it’s Blood Stained Teeth #1. “Atticus Sloane- misanthrope, criminal, *sshole, and vampire -lives in a world where blood isn’t the only thing vamps crave. And for the right price, he’ll make you a vampire too. After all, immortality isn’t cheap.”  Written by Christian Ward (ODY-C) and drawn by Patric Reynolds (Hellboy & The B.P.R.D.), Blood Stained Teeth is an “a fast-paced 100 Bullets-style crime saga with fangs.” Nice!

Where Dark Knights of Steel is our first read when we get our DC books in (we get DC a few days early), Saga is our first read Tuesday morning when we receive Diamond. It’s all of our favorite series, and we all love watching and seeing everyone’s reactions while they read it. This week it’s issue #58; there are more mysteries about Bombazine, Hazel and Squire’s hidden talents, and some familiar faces (both good and bad).

There’s plenty more coming out this week, but those are just some of the bigger titles. We’re in the home stretch of our Free Comic Book Day prep. We’re bottling the beers we brewed this week, and we’ve got just about all of our free books in and accounted for. Don’t forget that Free Comic Book Day is next Saturday, May 7th and that it’ll be the perfect time to support local artists also as we’ll have 20 vendors set up for the day.

And I have big news to report, that we’ll be having a huge back issue sale that weekend also. We’ll be having 50% off back issues from Thursday, May 5th through Sunday, May 8th. Don’t try to sneak one by us, back issues aren’t free also, but they’ll certainly be heavily discounted for the weekend.

And that’s it for this week. Back to the grind. We’ll see you all around.