Andrea’s Apocalypse of Picks for 11.19.2025
Hey there Comic Shop Friends! We’ve got a big week of comics (Batman Deadpool one-shot!) so let’s get to it!
Black Friday starts Wednesday the 26th! We’re running our Black Friday Weekend Sale that Wednesday through Sunday the 30th! All back issues will be 50% off! The foyer will be packed with one hundred long boxes of brand-new dollar stock! That’s 100 boxes you haven’t dug through yet!
We will be closed Thursday the 27th for Thanksgiving.
In conjunction with Genghis Con, we’re hosting indie comic creator Nate Powell for a free signing in the shop! Saturday November 29th from 6pm to 7pm, Nate will be here for an open signing. Haven’t read any of his work? Don’t worry! We’re stocked up on graphic novels!
We have a row on the Rec Wall featuring his books, and we’ll have extra on the table too!
Sunday the 30th is Cleveland’s small press and indie creator convention, Genghis Con! Ben will be there representing the shop, and getting artists to sign up for our Holiday Art Show. He’ll have some freebies too, so stop out and say hi!
Here’s the list of exhibitors!
Get some holiday shopping done while you support local and independent creators!
Want to do a cover for our Holiday Art Show? Stop in the shop and pick up a blank cover! This year’s theme is “Superheroes in Cleveland,” and you can interpret that however you like! Details are on our website here!
Art is due back in the shop by Sunday, December 14 at 5 pm, and we will have the foyer open and the art displayed starting Wednesday, December 14th, through Saturday, the 20th.
We do a basket raffle for the covers at our Holiday Party on Saturday, the 20th, and winners will be drawn that night. Once the Art Show display is open, you can purchase raffle tickets for $1, and every single dollar collected will be donated to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank! Now more than ever, food assistance is needed by our community, so even if you can only donate $1, know that the Cleveland Food Bank has the ability to turn that dollar into three full meals!
Every cover submitted creates more donations, so the more the merrier! Every style of art and skill level is appreciated! Can you only draw stick figures? Cool! We want to see it! Crayon drawings? Awesome! Can we beat last year’s record of covers submitted? Can we beat last year’s record of donations? I hope so!
MARVEL COMICS
Aunt May finally gets to take the cruise she always wanted to! On Christmas! That means your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is all alone for the holidays… Peter plans to visit Ben Grimm’s Hanukkah get together, but what will he do on Christmas Day? The Avengers invite him to their Holiday party at the Impossible City, where he gets multiple invites, but will he choose any? Daredevil brings Spider-Man along to play Santa in Hell’s Kitchen on Christmas Eve, and Christmas finds Peter deciding to partake in a good ol’ swamp Christmas with Logan, Rogue, Gambit and a bunch of young mutants. It’s a lovely holiday romp when everyone wants to spend their holidays with Peter in Rainbow Rowell’s story, with art by Luciano Vecchio, Paco Medina, Nathan Stockman, and Bob Quinn!
Another X-Men event? Yeah! The X-Men of Apocalypse vs. the Uncanny X-Men! The Alpha prelude a couple of months ago set up the crossover, and now the X-Men of Apocalypse are here in the Marvel Universe! But when? Believing their timeline, the Age of Apocalypse, is the correct one, a team of six X-Men travel to our Marvel Universe, the Age of Xavier, to end it! Forge and Blink use their abilities to jump into the Xavier timeline, where they come face-to-face with someone they thought was lost, Nate Grey. Displaced and alone, will Nate stay with the Uncanny X-Men, or join with his timeline’s team of Gambit, Forge, Sabretooth, Wild Child, Blink, and Morph? Do the Uncanny X-Men even know what they’re facing? Can they stop the total annihilation of their universe? Written by Jeph Loeb, with art by Simone Di Meo.
DC COMICS
You’ve been waiting for this one! DC’s Batman/Deadpool crossover is here! Like the Marvel one-shot, the main story is a Batman and Deadpool team-up! This not-so Dynamic Duo go on a mind-bending adventure when two lonely universes at Anthropomorpho’s “Big Bang-Bang” singularities bar bump into each other, and one thing leads to another… now Batman and Wade Wilson (Not Slade! W!) have to solve “The Cosmic Kiss Caper!” Written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Dan Moa, the three-chapter story takes Deadpool and Batman on a search for a MacGuffin that can rewrite both the DC AND Marvel universes! Then there are four more shorts!
“A Magician Walks Into a Universe” finds John Constantine and Doctor Strange trying to stop a mystical merging of their worlds, where two different kinds of magic are at odds with each other. Written by James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, and Scott Snyder, with art by Hayden Sherman.
Next, the best story of the bunch is the Nightwing and Laura Kinney Wolverine tale by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo, “Sticks & Snikts.” Searching for Laura’s sister, Gabby, in the Gotham sewers isn’t just a run-in with Killer Croc, it’s also a rumination on living in the shadow of, and living up to, a father’s legacy.
“Harley & Hulk’s Amazin’ Saturday!!!!” is full of Harley having fun, Hulk smashing, and toxic waste affected hot dogs! What a day! Written by Mariko Tamaki, with Amanda Conner art.
Static and Ms. Marvel find “New Friends in Old Places” as they both show up to stop a monster in the neighborhood in G. Willow Wilson and Denys Cowan’s story.
This is the book you should pick up this week! We couldn’t keep the reprints in stock, but now’s your chance to read Absolute Martian Manhunter! We have a restock of this trade on the way, because we all stand behind it and cannot wait to sell it as a holiday gift. Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez have done an excellent job on this first story arc, mixing the physical world of FBI agent John Jones and the alien consciousness of the Martian, and changing the perception of reality. The art is amazing and psychedelic and presents the new mind-bending life of Jones in an impactful way. The heatwave issue is the best presentation of extreme temperatures I’ve experienced in media. Read this book before the second story arc starts next year!
You know I had to do it, because it’s time for another issue of Wonder Woman! I read this issue right after discussing some current events and feeling a need to unleash the rage, and it is a wonder to see Diana stand up to oppressors and protect those that can’t. And her rage is so calm and measured, but it’s still rage. It’s still what runs inside every woman, whether or not they realize or admit it. It’s what makes us want to say, “No thank you.” Mouse Man knows? Mouse Man knows nothing. Mouse Man knows nothing about who Wonder Woman is. Mouse Man knows nothing about what Wonder Woman is capable of.
SMALL PRESS COMICS
Long out of print and very in demand, Robert Kirkman and Mark Englert’s Capes is back, remastered! As seen on the Invincible tv show, Capes is another corner of the expanded Invincible Universe, now in a new series! Kirkman says the first six issues will be the redrawn out of print issues and the back-up stories that ran in Invincible, but starting with issue #7, it will continue with all-new stories written by Benito Cereno. Capes Inc. is the corporation that employs tons of super heroes, like Bolt, Knock Out, Commander Capitalism, and new recruit, Kid Thor, to save the world. Only when they’re on the clock that is. It’s been business as usual for a while, but when the head of Capes is told funding is running out and something needs to be done to put the heroes back in public favor, Captain Cosmic, long thought dead, reappears, and there’s a massive prison break of villains. Could these be connected? Seems a little too timely to be a coincidence, doesn’t it?
Looking for more Invincible Universe and Kirkman collections? We have them! We just restocked Brit, Astounding Wolfman, and some other out of print Invincible Universe trades recently, so see if you can fill in your collection!
Fight, power-up, repeat. This new series from writer and artist Tyler Kirkham, along with artist David Miller, is a throwback to 90s Image comics and 80s action films like Bloodsport! Tommy Brazen makes a living doing freelance protection work and underground fights, and now has a shot for a big payday when he’s offered a chance to face an undefeated fighter. Plagued by nightmares of his grandfather’s stories of a mysterious island found during World War II, Tommy knows he needs to leave town and search for his missing father. His family’s ties to what was there are somehow responsible for what has made him stronger and faster, but he has no idea what is in store for him. If he can survive the fight against a 7-foot, 308-pound monstrosity of a man! It’s over the top video game bloody action within the foundation of a classic action story, as Brazen moves up to face the Final Boss!
