It’s the seventh new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics February 14 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics February 7 2024 new releases.
This week in Marvel Comics: a true Jessica Drew, lots more Gang War, the return of Night Thrasher, Pet Avengers for the win, and more!
This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!
Marvel Comics February 14 2024 Collected Editions
Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302951214 / digital)
See Guide to Captain Marvel – Carol Danvers. Ann Nocenti writes this bridging series between the concluded Kelly Thompson run and the impending Alyssa Wong run. I saw some internet fans come down hard on Carol being voiced badly, but I didn’t feel that way at all. This is a solid arc that makes good use of both Spider-Woman as a supporting player and various civilians to give Carol someone other than superheroes to bounce off of. I do think Nocenti tends to treat some groups of characters as a Greek Chorus rather than developing them individually, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not an all-time-best arc, but worth reading if you collect all of Captain marvel.
Edge of Spider-Verse: Across the Multiverse
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302957339 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018 – Present). This is an anthology of anthologies – collecting the three different “Edge of Spider-Verse” mini-series from 2014, 2022, and 2023. Each issue introduces new alternate-reality Spider-folks or revisits past one. The first series famously included the first appearance of Spider-Gwen. This isn’t a particularly satisfying read on its own, especially since most of the stories are written to subtly dovetail into the Spider-Verse events that followed. But, if you love Spider-Verse stuff in general and can’t get enough of alternate spiders, this one is for you!
Luke Cage Epic Collection Volume 2: The Fire This Time
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302955069 / digital)
See Guide to Luke Cage. This collects the second half of Luke’s original series from when it was titled “Power Man,” stopping prior to the first two issues he shares with Iron Fist before the indicia changes to “Power Man and Iron Fist” with issue #50. It’s really wild how we went from this series not being collected at all in color in 2014 to it being fully collected in Masterworks, Omnibus, and now Epic over the course of a decade. It’s one of the prime examples of how hard the Marvel Collected Editions department has worked to cover their 1970s series. (Of course, the Netflix shows helped!)
Marvel Unleashed
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302931124 / digital)
See Guide to… um… I’m not sure, honestly, because this delightful story primarily stars Redwing, Chewie, and Bats the Dog, among other Marvel super-pets. If that sounds like a dull kiddie book to you, boy have you got a surprise in store! I read this a few weeks ago and it is consistently hilarious, beautifully drawn, and made me cry at the end. If you want to read a great Avengers adventure without any human Avengers, this is the book for you.
Red Goblin Vol. 2: Nature / Nurture
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948641 / digital)
Carnage Guide coming soon, I promise! I found the first volume of this Alex Paknadel series delightful, but I think it slightly sputtered at the close. I know Donny Cates & Ryan Stegman invented a whole new world of symbiote drama with their 2018 Venom run, but I think whenever these symbiote books lean too far into symbiote drama and too far away from the characters at the center they lose their steam. This started out as a weird and delightful cross between Power Pack and Carnage, but it ended with the same old hunt-for-the-symbiote sort of plots that you can find in every book in this line.
Spider-Woman by Pacheco & Pérez [Complete Collection]
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302955748 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Woman. This collects the full run of Spider-Woman (2020) #1-21 and it comes with my strong recommendation! Karla Pacheco perfectly captured Jessica Drew’s combination of glib humor, constant anxiety, and righteous anger. I’d actually say this is now the strongest modern run on Jess – yeah, even better than the two halves of Dennis Hopeless’s ongoing on either side of Secret Wars. Pacheco kept this plot moving constantly forward and gave Jess a real rogue’s gallery to bounce off of. Plus. Pérez’s art was perfect for the tone of th ebook.
Thunderbolts: Red Omnibus
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302953058 / digital)
See Guide to Thunderbolts & Dark Avengers. This collects the entire Marvel Now run of Thunderbolts, which is being highlighted now not only due to their impending film but also because it was anchored by Deadpool and Red Hulk – both of whom also has an impending MCU appearance. As with most of Daniel Way’s writing at Marvel, I feel like this was hyper-popular with more casual fans of the characters and completely un-hyped by the hardcore. Way likes to take all of the toys out of the toybox and mash them together with glee (and blood!), and a lot of “serious” Marvel fans never clicked with that approach. I like-but-not-loved it, but I find it hard to hate any book with Phil Noto artwork!
X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302952259 / digital)
Wild horses could not drag me into reading an alternate reality prelude to Claremont’s Days of Future Past written by the destroyer of good X-Men comics, Marc Guggenheim. I actually heard some hype about this from folks I trust on Twitter, but alt-reality + Gugg is a one-two punch that would cause me to fly into a Hulk Rage. (Furthermore, we don’t need this because Piskor’s Grand Design already exists.)
Read on for a summary of all of the Marvel Comics February 14 2024 single issue and digital releases!
Marvel Comics February 14 2024 Physical Comic Releases
The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #43 – See Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018 – Present). I’m a few months behind on this Gang War story, but I’m on the record as loving this Zeb Wells ASM run. Haters gonna hate.
Beware the Planet of the Apes (2024) #2 – Nope, still no apes guide! This series is a prequel to the original film written by Marc Guggenheim.
Black Panther (2023) #9 – See Guide to Black Panther. This series was one of my two big catch-up reads of the week, and I am here to do a minor mea culpa. I talked some shit on this Eve Ewing series after a painfully-slow trio of initial issues, but with the first arc wrapped and the second one ongoing I can see what Ewing is doing here and I like it. I still think the start was far too info-dump-y about this previously unseen Wakandan city, but now that the city is established and we’ve introduced several new antagonists for T’Challa I’m really enjoying this run. It does the thing I ask for every Black Panther run to do, which is to find plots that are uniquely his to resolve. I still think it’s a bit ponderous on pacing, but I’m definitely hooked on the story – and the new major villain, who I love!
Blade (2023) #8 – See Guide to Blade – The Daywalker. I really wanted to catch up on this series for this week, but it will have to be my mission for next month! Know that it physically pains me to be missing out on new Elena Casagrande art every month.
Daredevil: Black Armor (2023) #4 – See Guide to Daredevil. The final issue of this D.G. Chichester throwback series. It’s wild to me that was have nostalgia for this period now. I swear it was the most-hated bit of Daredevil for the better part of of three decades.
Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu: Gang War (2023) #3 – See Guide to Shang-Chi. I felt like the first issue of this Greg Pak “Shang-Chi as a crime lord with a heart of gold” series was a little too explain-y, which I don’t think you have room to do in a 3-issue mini for a character who might disappear for a while afterwards. It’s wild to me that Marvel can’t sustain Shang-Chi in an ongoing.
Fall of the House of X (2024) #2 – See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. I read the first issue of this last month, and the team-up of Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler to save Cyclops had major wannabe Uncanny X-Men energy circa issue #194. Personally, I’m kinda over the idea of the “classic” X-Men lineup of 50-year-old characters going on adventures together… which does not bode well for my enjoyment of X-Men comics in the next decade.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2022) #16 – See Guide to Spider-Man – Miles Morales. This is a Gang War tie-in. I don’t know how this title already got to issue #16 – I am so behind! I loved Cody Ziglar’s voice for Miles in the first year of this book and I’m eager to get back to it.
Night Thrasher (2024) #1 – See Guide to New Warriors. Yes, it’s really a brand new Night Thrasher comic book! My enthusiasm is slightly cooled by the fact that it is written by J. Holtham, who turned in the pretty awful Bishop: War College (2023), but I’m always willing to grant a second chance to a new Marvel author (and, in the case of our next author, a decade full of dozens of chances).
Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver (2024) #1 – See Guide to Scarlet Witch. This is a direct continuation of Steve Orlando’s Scarlet Witch (2023) after the finale of its second arc. I think he floundered a little once he abandoned his one-shot tales and switched over to writing an ongoing story, but I’ve thought that about Orlando for over a decade now. I’m hoping dealing with a pair of co-leads doesn’t lead to the mess of most of his team books, because despite my pacing quibbles he’s still been doing well with giving Wanda her own life away from the Avengers.
Spider-Gwen: Smash (2023) #3 – See Guide to Spider-Gwen. Gwen continues her alternate reality concert tour in this Melissa Flores series.
Star Wars: Darth Vader (2020) #43 – See Guide to Star Wars Expanded Universe Comics. This was my other big catch-up read of the week, and while I’m not quite up to present day I did read more than 20 issues to get deep into the 30s of this Greg Pak run. I’m of two minds about this book. First, I love it because it gives Vader a fully-developed solo story between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that goes toward giving his heroic turn at the end of Jedi more context. Pak does that by deeply mining Anakin’s pre-Empire life in the prequels, and that pays off hugely for me. However, I sometimes lose my way (and my interest) in reading this series because of how Pak keeps the betrayals of Vader’s co-conspirators rubber-banding back and forth in seemingly every issue. It got to a point in the middle of my binge read where I truly could not remember who was on whose side. However, I’m willing to forgive a lot of character motivation messiness when I’m getting a story this dense (and with unfailingly strong artwork).
Superior Spider-Man (2023) #4 – See Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018-Present). I haven’t yet had a chance to pick up this Dan Slott & Mark Bagley Superior redux, but I almost always love Otto-as-Spidey stories. FYI, this appears to be a rare six-issue mini-series, as there was no seventh issue in the May solicits.
Thunderbolts (2023) #3 – See Guide to Thunderbolts. I only had a chance to page through the first issue of this book for a recent Near Mint Condition stream. The art looks great! Just know that this is a very MCU-driven Thunderbolts outing anchored by Winter Soldier, not the late-90s iteration of the team.
Vengeance of the Moon Knight (2024) #2 – See Guide to Moon Knight. I’m so excited to dig into this Jed MacKay follow-up to his blockbuster Moon Knight run! A bit of publishing intrigue on this one: everyone assumed it would be a brief wrap-up to MacKay’s time on Moon Knight, but it is conspicuously absent from a recently announced Moon Knight by Jed MacKay omnibus. That suggests there’s still a significant hunk of Moon Knight still to come from MacKay – and that’s exciting!
Wolverine (2020) #43 – See Guide to Wolverine – Logan. The Sabretooth War presses on to a third of ten chapters, as written by Benjamin Percy & Victor LaValle. I caught up the prior two chapters this week. You can absolutely tell Percy isn’t going this alone. It’s as grim as Percy’s norm, but in a much more terse and bracingly violent way thanks to LaValle (who isn’t known for pulling punches). Except… that sucks. It’s using the lack of resurrections to kill every good X-Force supporting character all in the name of making Wolverine feel something. If you’re into alternate reality Sabretooths and major bloodbaths, you’ll dig this. But, when it comes to fucked up, hyper-violent Wolverine stories, I’d suggest 2011’s “The Best There is” by Charlie Huston and Juan Jose Ryp.
Marvel Comics February 14 2024 Digital-First Comic Releases
This is a list of projected Marvel Comics February 14 2024 Digital-First releases based on the recent digital release schedule. Actual releases are not confirmed until they show up on the Marvel Unlimited app.
These releases have not been quick to be released in print, though we’ve now see print versions of a few of these series trickle out a year or more after they were released.
- Alligator Loki Infinity Comic (2022) #36 – See Guide to Loki
- Avengers United Infinity Comic (2023) #19 – See Guide to Avengers (2010-Present). This is part of one mega initial arc (which isn’t quite so mega when you realize each of these digital issues is only a quarter of a print issue)
- Marvel’s Voices Infinity Comic (2022) #90 – Starring Black Widow
- Spider-Man Unlimited Infinity Comic (2023) #24 – Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018-Present)
- X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic (2021) #126 – See Guide to X-Men, The Age of Krakoa