Happy June Comic Shop Friends! Summer is here, and we are ready to recommend some perfect porch reads to you! Check out our rec wall, or ask us about our favorites. You can’t go wrong with any of the DC Absolute titles either!

Want to fill in your collections? Come out on Thursday June 18th for Late Nite Comics! 8pm to 11pm! Dollar stock, dollar stock, and more dollar stock! 50% off back issues!

MARVEL COMICS

It’s Jeff! We love a new Jeff book! This one-shot collects the Jeff Week story from Kelly Thompson, Gurihiru and Goodman Yamada, along with material from Marvel Comics #1000 by Thompson and Pepe Larraz, and Deadpool (2019) from Thompson and Chris Bachalo. Besides Jeff’s encounters with Deadpool and Elsa Bloodstone, this time he’s made a new friend! Or frenemy? The Kraken awakes, and an adorable clingy septapus named Ken becomes Jeff’s companion for a day at the pier. Jeff can’t shake him, but after they’re both trapped, it may lead to the start of a beautiful friendship between the cutest sea creatures on land!

The first in the new series of What If…? one-shots! Gerry Duggan and Jan Bazaldua ask, “What if Cyclops has stayed with Madelyne Pryor?” In this timeline Madelyne was saved by X-Factor, and Scott Summers decides to raise their son, Nathan, with her. Hiding their abilities, the couple raise Nathan with no knowledge of their past. Until his own mutant powers manifest! What does a world with a mutant family trio of heroes, accepted by humans, look like? Why would that be the darkest and most terrible thing to happen to both mutants, and Earth itself? Uatu the Watcher will tell the tale of what might have been!

Leading directly from the end of season one of the X-Men ’97 animated series into the start of the upcoming season two! After E-Day, the X-Men are missing, with most presumed dead. Bishop and Forge have a plan to find them, feeling that it’s not where they are, it’s when. Lost in time, and separated, can the surviving X-Men make it back to their own timeline? Things in the here and now aren’t great for mutants, with Val Cooper’s X-Factor rounding up any mutants deemed dangerous, and human hatred rising. Jubilee and Sunspot are trying to help young mutants, but with multiple mutant factions snatching them up, it looks like it may be the end of this X-Men team as we know them! Written by Steve Foxe, with art by Salva Espin.

DC COMICS

The creators behind Superman: Kryptonite Spectrum return to DC to lift your spirits with a new Deadman series! W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo bring Deadman to the Next Level, and if you enjoy their other work, you’ll enjoy this first issue that’s packed with everything you need to know about Boston Brand! After his death, Brand is given a sacred spectral assignment from the goddess Rama Kushna, and becomes the Guardian of spirits, souls, and other stuff like that, travelling the purgatory called Earth. The non-corporeal superhero helps the souls of the deceased move to where they belong in the afterlife, but he’s stuck in Robertsville, along with about four dozen other ghosts, specters, and entities, living in loops until it’s time for work again. Things have been pretty steady lately, until the newest soul Custodian Brand is sent to meet is attacked by a winged creature! A tale of life, death, and everything in between, with a creepy, youth obsessed rich old guy as our death-defying former circus aerialist’s new death defying (literally!) antagonist! Wonderful weirdness!

DC is doing something a little different for their Pride book this year, with an all-new weekly format for this four-issue mini! Following the Justice League Intergalactic Special, Dreamer and Galaxy find themselves in Themyscira, living their lives as an Amazon princess and a warrior. But when a man washes up on shore, asking Dreamer to come with him, and Galaxy starts to know things she wouldn’t know, it becomes clear that something is not right. Try again. Dreamer is the protector of Gotham, stopping a man from breaking into a library. Galaxy shows up from Metropolis knowing she was in the middle of telling Dreamer something important. But what was it? Why are her powers different? What is going on here? As their origins and landscapes shift into both familiar and wrong, they’ll learn that they hold the Key to the DCU! Presented with three different styles from writers Jadzia Axelrod and Nicole Maines, and artists Nicola Scott, J. Bone, and Brandt & Stein, with a Batwoman back up story by Greg Rucka and Claire Roe. Kate meets someone special in Greece, but Batwoman isn’t the only one who has a secret.

It’s the Summer of Supergirl, and she has a new Elseworlds series! Kara Zor-El is a teenager with a crush, a bossy best friend, and a new baby cousin. Her father and uncle argue about the current state of Krypton, her parents worry about the future, but Kara’s biggest worry is passing finals while classes are interrupted by Atom Attack drills. The rants of militaristic dictator Zod are background noise to Kara, but as Zod crushes dissent, he threatens to unleash the planet’s most dangerous weapon, leading to an actual attack. Now the prototype ship her family has built is the only chance to save both Kara and Kal, and Kara’s vow to protect baby Kal has become real. Writers Ethan Parker and Griffin Sheridan and artist Rod Reis send the super cousins into space, and into survival mode, as their journey begins together! As long as Kara can keep them alive!

SMALL PRESS COMICS

Quickly spreading across the world, a strange new virus transforms those infected into violent monsters after only three days. A cure is found, but that may have doomed humanity more than the virus. The only way to stop a transformation is to breathe in the smoke from the burning remains of the deceased infected. The mask of a civilized society is thrown off, as it becomes clear most would rather kill than be turned. Five years later, Ryder, his mother, and a community of people have hidden themselves away to survive. Their lives are close to what they were before the virus, but when Ryder’s high school love and her father show up asking for help, his life is about to change. He’s thrown into a quest for survival as he leaves the settlement and faces the corrupted world for the first time. Writer Zack Kaplan and artist Stefano Raffaele present a post-apocalyptic action-adventure in this five-issue mini-series bringing out the darkest aspects of humanity.

Produced in conjunction with the historic boxing magazine The Ring, Gail Simone and Elisa Romboli’s eight-issue mini-series uses the history and lore of boxing to tell the tale of a group of boxers working their way to the Ring Belt, and a chance to beat the champ and become “The Man Who Beat the Man.” Leading us through the story is sports writer Cameron Duggan, who is now forced to work with a partner, Lisa Wolfe, social media superstar. Lisa doesn’t know a thing about boxing, and Cameron is used to the old ways of print media, but his bosses want the duo to interview the boxers vying for a chance at the belt, and push the sport to a new audience. They’ll dig into the mindsets of those stepping into the ring, like Marcus “Mercury” King, who is trying to make a comeback, and “The Bear”, Ivan Valkov, the current top contender, and Lisa knows just what buttons to push to get great content. Will this work out well for Cameron’s interviews? Check out the blow by blow, as the challengers move closer to their shot at being the Man who beat the Man!