Happy Halfway to Halloween, Comic Shop Friends! If you feel like celebrating, we have tons of horror recommendations!  Including the new trade paperbacks of Creepshow and Shock Shop and the new series The Neighbors and The Seasons Have Teeth.

And What’s the Furthest Place From Here has a jack-o-lantern-filled cover this week!

In the spirit of the season, a friend of the shop Laura Wimbels (Lenora’s Midnight Rental) was recently a guest on the Found Footage Festival’s show, Saturday Morning Cartoons, with Caitlin McGurk of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and comic artist Stephen R. Bissette! They watched an episode of Monster Force, a cartoon Marv Wolfman worked on.

Check it out below:

Free Comic Book Day is in 11 days! John sent out an email this week with details, local artist/vendor listings, and the news that back issues will be 50% off Friday, May 5th, through Sunday, May 7th! So, stop in on Friday to get ahead of the crowd on Free Comic Book Day or on Sunday when it’s quieter, and you can also pick up any extra FCBD books.

Grab those back issues you’ve been eyeing before these bad boys get to ‘em.

We do have this year’s prints in, and they are free with any purchase, and we have extra posters if you’d like to hang them anywhere to help promote the event.

All the FCBD books are here and checked in, and if you come early enough, you should have no problem getting the twelve books that you’d like.

John is going to PA this week to pick up graphic novels for the event too! The first 500 people in line will get to pick one at the start of the free comic book pit.

And to continue the Sinister Six theme from this year’s print, the Rust Belt Monster Collective will do a live mural painting outside the shop.

Here’s an in-progress shot of last year’s FCBD black light mural.

Find time to stop in that weekend after you see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3! (Thanks for the birthday present, James Gunn!)

MARVEL COMICS

Part one of a four-issue mini-series, Darth Vader: Black, White & Red, features three tales from Jason Aaron and Leonard Kirk, Peach Momoko, Torunn Gronbekk, and Klaus Janson. The Momoko story is my favorite of the three, with some super creepy images. The Aaron and Kirk story about Vader tracking down Doctor Sendvall continues in the next issue. The third story, “Dissolution of Hope,” follows a group of saboteurs on an Empire base.

On the ice moon LV-695, scientist Batya Zahn and her family are conducting research on water reserves, but there is more hidden in the ice. When her daughter, Zasha, finds a specimen underground, their message to the home office about the find is intercepted by Weyland-Yutani. And now something bigger is thawing.

This issue of Marvel Tales features Rocket Raccoon! Just in time for the final Guardians of the Galaxy film, the first solo adventure of Rocket from 1985 by Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola is collected here. When Rocket’s girlfriend Lylla (also appearing in the film!) is kidnapped by Blackjack O’Hare and held captive by Lord Dyvyne, it’s up to the Guardian of the Keystone Quadrant to go in guns blazing!

DC COMICS

Spinning out of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, the new Dawn of DC Green Arrow series from writer Joshua Williamson and artist Sean Izaakse is a family reunion adventure that sets the stage for some major stories this year. Oliver Queen has woken up on a strange beach. Again. How did he get there? Where is there? It will take his whole family to find him, but forces are determined to keep them apart.

SMALL PRESS

The new series from James Tynion IV and artist Fernando Blanco, W0rldtr33, is a dark web murder story set in 2024, where an Undernet user called PH34R is spreading videos of violence and murder, and causing one user, Gibson Lane, to live stream a mass killing spree. Something similar happened in 1999 when a group of teens documented their exploration of the Undernet on a message board named W0rldtr33 and were forced to shut it down after someone broke in. Someone who enjoyed the hold the Undernet had on them. Now Gabriel Winter and his former friends must stop it from spreading again. A weird cyber-story with the best-written dial-up sounds.

Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark give us the Deep Cuts, stories of struggle, hope, and joy through the history of jazz. The six-issue mini-series features a different artist for each double-length issue, each a stand-alone story. This first issue is set in 1917 New Orleans, drawn by Danilo Beyruth, following “Ace” Charles Stewart, a young clarinet player trying to make a living playing music, but he’ll learn there’s more to the business than playing the perfect set.