Happy Thanksgiving Comic Shop Friends! We have a packed week, so let’s dive in!

We will be closed on Thursday the 27th for Thanksgiving. I hope you all get to enjoy a day off work and a day of feasting and relaxation!

Our Black Friday Weekend Sale starts Wednesday! You get four days of dollar diving and back issue deals! Starting Wednesday the 26th and going through Sunday the 30th! We’ll have 50% off all back issues, including the wall! The foyer is open and there are one hundred brand new long boxes of dollar stock! You may find some great stuff in there that we don’t have room for in the back issues!

Saturday, the 29th, Nate Powell will be in the shop for a free signing!

Nate Powell is a National Book Award-winning cartoonist who began self-publishing comics as an Arkansas teenager in 1992.

His work includes the new graphic novel Fall Through and a comics adaptation of James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, as well as Save It For Later, civil rights icon John Lewis’ March trilogy and its follow-up Run, viral comics essay About Face, and graphic novels Come Again, Two Dead, Any Empire, and Swallow Me Whole.

Powell’s work has also received a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, multiple Eisner and Ignatz Awards, ALA and YALSA distinctions, the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award, and the CXC Transformative Work Award.

From 1992 to 2010, he performed and toured in multiple underground punk bands including Soophie Nun Squad and Universe, and managed DIY label Harlan Records.

Nate will be signing from 6pm to 7pm, and we are stocked on his graphic novels, so come pick one up! He’s also a featured guest the next day at Genghis Con!

Sunday the 30th at the Pivot Art Center is Cleveland’s small press and indie creator convention!

Here’s the list of exhibitors,

Ben will be there to sign up artists for our Holiday Art Show and represent the shop. Go out and say hi, and support our local comic scene!

And speaking of our annual Holiday Art Show: grab a blank comic and create a “Superheroes in Cleveland” cover! Art is due back by Sunday, December 14th at 5pm, and we will have the display up from Wednesday, the 17t,h through our Holiday Party on Saturday, the 20th! All styles and skill levels are encouraged!

We raffle off all the covers donated in a basket raffle, and once the display is up you can purchase tickets for $1 each, and EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR donated goes directly to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. They need our support more than ever with the increased need for food in our community, and every cover we receive means more donations for them! Help us beat last year’s record by turning in art and purchasing raffle tickets!

MARVEL COMICS

We’ve been telling you to read Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Incredible Hulk run from the beginning, and now’s your chance to get in on the new series! Continuing from Incredible, the evil entity known as Eldest has literally torn the Hulk apart and has taken his body as its own! The Infernal Hulk is a million times the monster that Hulk was always feared to be, infused with the primordial seed of corruption. The Age of Monsters has begun, as the Eldest plots to return the world to the ancient horrors buried deep deep within the Earth, and plans to turn our heroes into nightmares. Starting in Red Creek, Kentucky, it may fall on the powerless Bruce Banner to stop Eldest’s evil before it spreads farther and farther. Full of the body horror and gore we enjoyed in PKJ’s first series drawn by Nic Klein!

Once again, their rivalry finds Daredevil and Punisher at odds! This time not only with each other, but also with New York’s criminal element! Jimmy Palmiotti revisits the world that was, with artist Tommaso Bianchi. Matt Murdock is representing the Gnucci family in court, but when one of their sons is murdered, it leads Daredevil to the Punisher. Frank Castle presents Daredevil with a moral conundrum – when the criminals you thought you put away for life return, does the system really work? Do you have what it takes to pull the trigger? As the Punisher targets the Gnucci family, and minor crime bosses step up to fill the vacancy, the conflict threatens Hell’s Kitchen, and it falls to Daredevil to contain the chaos!

DC COMICS

Dang, what a week for DC! Along with DC K.O. #2 (Amazing!) they have three K.O. tie-ins, Flash #27, Justice League Unlimited #13, and Superman #32! Fill in your brackets at home after these issues! And get ready for All Fight Month in December, where the tie-ins will be head-to-head battles!

And there’s two excellent Absolute issues this week!

The battle we’ve all been waiting for! Batman Vs Bane! Action-packed, intense, and still giving us some wonderful character moments to build on who these people are at their core. I’m more excited for the upcoming Joker issue after the end of this one… You’ll see when you read it.

Wonder Woman must battle… the Earth itself? Diana must ask Gaia for her assistance in fighting the shadow-self supernatural being Diana alone cannot stop. This issue features the first appearance of the Absolute version of another woman well versed in magic, Zatanna! The end of this issue leads into the first Absolute Universe crossover, Batman and Wonder Woman!

A delightful holiday special! Eight short stories with all the highs and lows of the holidays, the joy and togetherness, the warmth, and also the drama and chaos, the darkness. Warm up your winter with these heartwarming tales!

• Red Tornado shows Cyclone the best Christmas in “On the Rooftops!” by Sebastian Bader and Scott Kolins.
• Billy Baston and Captain Marvel experience “Cuffing Season” in Ashley Allen and Bruno Abdias’s story.
• Dave Baker and Nicole Goux send Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy on “The Holiday Getaway” to a secluded cabin.
• Animal Man learns “It’s a Wonderful Life” as the Phantom Stranger shows him, poorly, how his life has affected those around him. From Marley Halpern-Graser and Jon Mikel.
• Dr. Light finds out how to “Shine in the Silence” with a little help from Atom, and none from Guy Gardner, in Nathan Cayanan and Michael Shelfer’s tale.
• Galaxy has told Kat “I’ll Be Home for Hanukkah” but her Justice League beeper won’t stop beeping. Will she be able to make any of the nights? By Jadzia Axelrod and Hannah Templer.
• Supergirl has some “Holiday Woes” when visiting Smallville and being set up on a blind date by Clark. Written by Ash Padilla with art by Anthony Marques.
• Then there’s “A Martian On 34th Street” when Martian Manhunter plays Santa and finds a town with no holiday spirit, from Steve Orlando and Riley Rossmo.

A throwback to the social thrillers of the 1980s, writer and artist Gabriel Hardman updates a hardboiled mystery with a modern twist. Hub City is a decaying husk of its former self, and the Question, Vic Sage, is still there to report on the truth. He uncovers a story that will take him deep undercover to the Arctic. Oliver Queen has been pushed out of his company, and is trying to rebuild his crumbling life. But after finding out about Queen Industries’ involvement with a project called Arcadia, Green Arrow decides to join the Question’s search for answers. Bruce Wayne looks into Wayne Industries’ ties to the Arcadia project, which puts Batman into the crossfire between those running the project and the militants targeting it. The trio of lone-wolf vigilantes are forced into a globe hopping mystery, dealing with class warfare and ecological collapse.

SMALL PRESS COMICS

This book opens with a content warning, and with the subject matter, it needs it. A revenge story of a woman who somehow survives an extremely disturbing abduction. For forty days a young woman was tortured by five men. Left for dead, she washes ashore, beaten, broken, and almost feral. But she will get her revenge. All five of those men will meet her vengeance. This is a four-issue dark horror story, that is Kyle Starks and Piotr Kowalski’s version of a woman’s revenge film, but with ex-hitmen, supernatural elements, sadistic art enthusiasts, and literal devils.

Ignition’s first twelve-issue series! The second book with Arcadia in the title this week! The Miranda Brothers present a story that explores what makes one human, in a future world where humanity has vanished. Humans no longer exist, but a new humanoid life form has risen from the ruins. The Serants are artificial beings born from technological chrysalises. Each one carries a core that holds their consciousness, called a pearl. They exist fully formed, never age, cannot reproduce, and do not know what existed before their time. Weedy is a scavenger who is searching for remnants of tech, and searching for meaning in his own existence. After rescuing a newborn, Halu, Weedy takes him in as his assistant and introduces Halu to Fix, a mechanic who can fix anything. Halu and Fix form a friendship, and together in a world of ruins and danger, they look for meaning, connection, and a reason to endure.  Inaki and Roy Miranda have crafted a sci-fi story delving into life, death, and what makes us human in the face of the end of existence.