Next week is the 2nd new comic book day of 2025! This post covers Image Comics January 8 2025 new releases. Missed this week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Image Comics January 1 2025 new releases.
This week in Image Comics: Copra dies, gunslingers & knights in the afterlife, the deadly secrets of becoming an adult, rebellious devils, seven minutes lost in space, rebel princess vs. robot warlord, the return of O’Malley’s Snotgirl, Autobots and Decepticons throw down, and more!
These posts will give me a chance to re-orient myself to what’s going on with Image after a few years away from reading any of their books!
The Krisis Pick of the Week: Juvenile (2024) #2! The first issue of this solo comic from Jesús Orellana really captured my imagination and I’m hungry to see where he’ll head with a second issue. More on why I loved it below.
This post includes every comic out from Image Comics this week, plus collected editions. This isn’t the typical comic releases post you can find on other sites. Why? I explain each collection and comment on every series with a new issue out this week to help you figure out if they’re for you. Plus, for some long-running series, I’ll point you to a personally-curated guide within the Crushing Comics Guide to Indie Comics to find out how to collect that title in full! There’s no other website on the internet that can claim that.
And now, onto Image Comics January 8 2025 new releases!
Image Comics January 8 2025 Collected Editions
Note: Image Comics collections hit the direct market 2-3 weeks prior to when they ship to the book market, so if you order these Image Comics January 8 2025 books today from a traditional bookseller they will still be pre-orders and will arrive in a few weeks.
Death Vigil Vol. 1
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534395138 / digital)
This is a brand new printing of Stjepan Šejić’s Death Vigil (2014) #1-8, a fantasy adventure series about undead knights fighting a good fight.
This is a complete chapter, but not a complete story. Šejić has hinted he will be making a return to fantasy comics in the near future, but it’s unclear if that means this or his Ravine (which I loved and was bummed ended after only two OGNs).
Falling in Love on the Path to Hell Vol. 1
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534328839 / digital TBA)
This collects the first four issues of Gerry Duggan’s 2024 series with artist Garry Brown about a pair of geographically separated soul-mates – a gunslinger and a samurai – who meet as they make their way through Purgatory.
The art here is a lot more detailed than I’ve seen from Brown’s art in the past (I loved him on Babyteeth!) – maybe his best ever. Chris O’Halloran’s colors are brilliant on this and really make Brown’s art pop by using fantastical hues in the background so the figure-work stands out.
This falls into a “not for me, maybe for you” category. I love heaven/hell stuff, but this is necessarily about the worst and most brutal natures of men. I’m generally looking for a book with more mythological lore to it, but after loving the first few issues the endless back and forth of our two heroes versus the rest of the people trapped in purgatory wore me out. However, if you are into the idea of a late-era Western with notes of Samurai action played out against the backdrop of Limbo (and all the brutality that comes with that), I think you’ll dig it.
Also, content warning for a very detailed depiction of male/male sexual assault in issue #3, as well as implied child abuse.
Read on for summaries of Image Comics January 8 2025 single issue releases!
Image Comics January 8 2025 Physical Comic Releases
Death of Copra (2025) #1 (digital) – Michael Fiffe’s Copra is so freaking cool, y’all, but you’ve gotta love indie comics. Like, not “Image is the 3rd biggest publisher” indie comics, but independent comic books. There was no big glossy pitch picked up by an Image or a Boom. It was a one-man show from the start.
I would go so far as to say that Copra is THE indie superhero team book – the idea of superhero team comics filtered through a truly independent comic sensibility. So many indie comics focus on one superhero, but Copra is in the vein of Suicide Squad right from the jump, and it quickly spirals to introduce an ever-growing cast of characters. It’s a comic about “a bunch of egomaniacs who think they’re too good for some grunt work … you can call them ‘underdogs’ but that has a romantic tone to it. They’re grimy, damaged, and they have nothing to lose. Well, most of them don’t.”
That’s from the opening pages of Copra (2012) #1. Copra began its life as a self-published book with Fiffe doing every single thing on his own. It’s rough-hewn with zero gloss. Like, stuff your friend drew in their school notebook with colored pencils and white out and showed you between classes (but so much better than anything your actual friends from school showed you, and evolving faster than any of your friends did).
What I will say is – based on my past Copra experience – you do NOT want to just pick up midway through this book as a starting point, which probably includes this new #1 – really just the beginning of a final arc over a decade in the making. You might pick it up and think that it’s COOL, but I doubt you’ll get the full impact. Copra has always been an ensemble title, so the characters and the complex web of their relationships matters a lot. Fiffe does terrific character introductions for everyone early on and then just expects you to keep up.
Fiffe has collected Copra (and Copra Vs (2016), a companion mini-series) in a run of sequential trades called “Copra Round #” that have the series in the order he wants it to be read in. A brief Image Comics run with a new #1 is converted to legacy numbers for this collection. There was a lovely hardcover of the first 12 issues in 2022, but a few months ago Fiffe said he plans to do the whole series in that format but “a second volume is being planned, but we’re concentrating on releasing the current arc at the moment.” We’d need another 2-3 of these to get caught up to present.
(You might see some “Compendiums” out there, but these were basically just jumbo three-issue reprints from early in the indie run – not a modern Image compendium.)
Geiger (2024) #10 (digital) – This is Geoff Johns’s flagship indie book, paired with longtime collaborator Gary Frank.
I read the original 2021 mini-series in full. After liking the set-up of this irradiated combination of “Old-Man Daredevil Hulk” in a post-nuclear wasteland I wound up desperately hating the story that ensued… but that’s just me and every Geoff Johns comic in general. My note on the last issue of the mini-series was “Geiger blows up enough shit that we don’t have to read any more arcs of this comic.”
Yet, here we are with an ongoing series!
One of the first lines of dialog in this relaunched ongoing is “Show them there’s no line we won’t cross. Hurt the weak.” I feel like that comes from Johns’s mouth as much as the characters. He’s an author who has never been afraid to go for the low blow, but at DC there were boundaries around that. In creator-owned comics, he’s unleashed to make the world as dark an cynical as he can imagine.
I wouldn’t say that means anything happens in this series that’s in truly bad taste – this isn’t Erik Larsen! But, it’s very much “Geoff Johns for people who always wanted more Geoff Johns from their Geoff Johns.” I think because this is now ongoing rather than a mini-series with a bloody finale, Johns has toned down the cynicism dial by several notches. Despite me not vibing with the original mini-series, I’m happy it came back as an ongoing as part of a broader line of “Ghost Machine” books, because I like imprints (even if they are not a shared universe).
If you liked Johns on Green Lantern and Doomsday Clock, and if Johns doing Old-Man Daredevil/Hulk sounds like it is up your alley, I guarantee you will dig this series.
Juvenile (2024) #2 (digital) – I am absolutely in love with this new solo effort from Jesús Orellana on everything – script, art, letters, and design.
The concept? After a major terrorist attack using chemical weapons, all of the children of the world are at risk. As they mature, they’re beset by physical and mental illness that leaves them dead by the time they turn eighteen. There’s no surefire cure, but keeping teens locked down in institutions where they can be regularly monitored, medicated, and eventually operated on might be the key to there being a next generation on Earth.
I think last month’s issue #1 was close to perfect, with just a few moments of discontinuity or confusion of characters tracking through space. It kept a tight focus on one ward of a particular institution for slightly hard-to-handle teens, following them through a day that saw a new patient arrive. That let us really understand their routines and how each day feels low stakes but the higher stakes of their surviving to adulthood is not guaranteed.
There’s also a hint that (a) there’s more to story of the terrorist attacks than meets the eye and (b) there’s more to what’s happening to these teens than simply dying. Maybe something… powerful? If you’ve ever read Nick Spencer’s long-languishing Morning Glories, there’s a similar vibe here.
Like I said, I’m in love with this book! It’s exactly the sort of comic I like, and I think it’s stylish and beautifully made.
Kaya (2022) #24 (digital) – I’m only a quarter of the way caught up on this Wes Craig fantasy and I am utterly addicted. There will be no rushing through this in a binge for me and no spoilers!
A huge part of that love is Jason Wordie’s expressive color work on Craig’s bold, elemental pencils. I find the pair of them to be stunning. I could study every panel.
We’ve seen a few of these sorts of “complex fantasy with a YA sheen” sorts of indie books from big names over the past few years. This one absolutely hits the best for me. I think it comes down to my preference for books that have a bold mission statement out of the gate. This book tells you in a matter of pages that we’re following a pair of orphans who used to be in line for a throne as they make their way through the world, but it hints at a terrible purpose in their future.
That’s the exact sort of opening device that made Saga (2012) #1 hit so hard and I’m a damn sucker for it. I much prefer a book to make me a bold promise right at the start than string me along wondering if we’re ever going anyway big or portentous. I think knowing that promise exists gives me more patience for smaller stories at the start of a series.
Maybe this crashes and burns hard by issue #23, but I strongly recommend the first trade.
The Lucky Devils (2025) #1 (digital) – Collaborators Charles Soule & Ryan Browne are back with a devilish new book that sounds hilarious! A pair of demons who want to shake things up in hell settle on a pair of hapless humans as their tools of destruction.
I am an easy mark for any kind of “revolution in heaven/hell” story and I love devils as main characters, so this is a must-buy for me. I love that Soule always swings for audacious, ridiculous concepts on his indie books. Sometimes they’re a little too silly for me, but I still appreciate that he wants to explore a huge world of stories outside of the realm of superheroes.
Moon Man (2024) #6 (digital) – Kyle Higgins co-writes with musician Kid Cudi, who I once saw open for Lady Gaga! This book only came out quarterly for the first four issues, but now it’s in a hurry to release four issues in three months. Part of that is due to the fact that this issue and the next are due to reveal the big secret driving the plot.
I’m not a particular fan of Kid Cudi’s music nor have any of Kyle Higgins’s comics ever hit for me, so I was going to skip this. But, who knows – maybe Kid Cudi’s true calling is comics! So, I read the #1.
I’m tempted to say Kid Cudi must’ve been the good part of this, since I liked it so much more than I usually like Higgins! But, I know that Higgins is actually good at setting up relatable, grounded characters dealt fantastical hands, and that’s very much on display here. I’m very much interested in the story of a private space exploration that missed its moon shot and came back having lost seven key minutes of their mission. That’s giving me shades of the delightfully fucked-up Event Horizon, which is my kind of cosmic horror.
I’m less sure what to think or feel about artist Marco Locati. When things get psychedelic he really delivers, but his character work can be incredibly vague. That can make it hard to place his characters in space and track them through action. And, his facial acting is almost nonexistent. It almost feels like he needs an inker.
I don’t hate this book, but the art makes it a bit of a slog for me and after two issues I wasn’t inspired to keep reading. However, all of the character voicing and pacing is great. If you like the idea of the book I think this could really hit for you if you can vibe with looser pencils on interior art and don’t mind implying some of the action that isn’t explicitly shown.
Also, the temptation to keep reading to this issue to get the reveal of what happened in those seven minutes is strong! Maybe I’ll return to it next month.
Napalm Lullaby (2024) #8 (digital) – I have never once vibed with Rick Remender outside of his Uncanny X-Force (2010). It’s wild how he wrote one of my favorite X-Men stories of all time and then just makes me snarl in disgust on every other comic he’s ever written (yes, even Fear Agent!)
But… I do like Bengal’s art, so I gave this a try! And… I still have never once vibed with Rick Remender outside of his Uncanny X-Force (2010).
I couldn’t even begin to tell you what this comic is about because issue #1 spends a few pages on a Superman origin riff and then the rest of the issue is about this terrible person who wants to enjoy some VR sex work. We spend five long pages of him treating his digital(/AI?) sex worker horribly before the reveal that is VR, so at that point I was actively rooting for this guy to die. Then it turned out he wasn’t the protagonist, so… bonus! But, why did we need those five pages? We meet our actual protagonist in a long sequence of unclear action I could not parse.
Maybe I don’t like Bengal’s art as much as I thought I did?
I was definitely interested in where the Superman riff was going, but the rest of the issue was so aggressively bad that I would never dream of giving this another chance. I think if you have an endless appetite for Remender’s signature cynicism there’s a chance this could work for you, but I’ve even seen some Remender fans saying this is a weak effort from him.
Snotgirl (2016) #17 (digital) – It’s absolutely wild this 2016 series from Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley is only on issue #17! Issues appeared sporadically in 2018 to 2020 and then the series declared a hiatus (from their existing semi-hiatus) until a new issue appeared last month!
I actually have the first trade of this sitting untouched from my pre-NZ life. It’s very “slice of life-y story with one unusual twist” in a similar way to Pilgrim, which isn’t my particular cup of tea (AKA it bored me to tears). It follows a fashion influencer with a mucous problem. It’s not as fantastical as Pilgrim, but if you liked the more grounded band parts of that and didn’t care much for the fantastical fight sequences then this is for you.
Transformers (2023) #16 (digital) – Yeah, yeah, I need several Transformers Guides, I know.
The truth is, I was never a Transformers kid – I was all about GI Joes. So, I have zero nostalgia for these robots and their internecine machine drama, so this isn’t a pull for me, but I do love how they’ve cleverly integrated it with GI Joe from the ground up.
Daniel Warren Johnson’s rough-hewn art style (which current artist Jorge Corona sticks to closely) brings a surprisingly organic feeling to a book about massive metal figures.
This is DWJ’s penultimate arc writing the book, which I believe he’s tipped to exit with issue #24. That makes it his longest run on anything as a writer to date, ending at twice the length of his outstanding Extremity. From the parts I’ve read, I’ve loved him getting to play out plot beats on a longer scale than his typical 8 issues. Strong chance I’ll binge this when it’s all done.
What’s the Furthest Place From Here? (2021) #21 (digital) – This series is Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, the creative team of one of my favorite comics of the past decade, 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank (2016). To say I went into it HYPED is an understatement! However, it didn’t really land for me at the start and I dropped it early on.
This is a story of a post-apocalyptic version of a world pretty close to our own, where the only inhabitants left are gangs of feral kids and teens. I think at this point we’ve seen the apocalypse done so many times and in so many ways that it is really important to come with a hook for what the apocalypse creates in the story. Who cares if it’s zombies or everyone losing their mind when they turn 18 years old? What matters is what that creates for the characters and their conflicts.
For me, this one never crossed over that specific “make me care” threshold in its early issues. It played things too oblique with its characters and set-up and I never wound up rooting for any of them. In fact, I found I was kinda rooting against them so we could get to the likable characters, but it turns out that was all we got 😂
That said, it really could be a “me problem” that won’t hurt you as a reader, especially if you are a fan of ensemble apocalypse comics like Walking Dead. This is told with a clever, quick-cutting story cadence and I love Tyler Boss’s artwork. However, I checked in on it recently and it’s more or less doing the same thing – a gang of unlikeable kids making their way through the post-apocalyptic world.
That’s for Image Comics January 8 2025 new releases! What were you already pulling? And, did I convince you to check out anything new? Sound off in the comments below.
Leave a Reply