Next week is the 8th new comic book day of 2025! This post covers Image Comics February 19 2025 new releases. Missed this week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Image Comics February 12 2025 new releases.
This week in Image Comics: Power Fantasy returns, W0rldtr33 origins, slow Spawn collections, Busiek & Nicieza’s Free Agents, criminal bees, the bowling vigilante, Joes vs. Cobra for Energon secrets, and more!
The Krisis Pick of the Week: I’m so excited for The Power Fantasy (2024) #6 to return for it’s second arc! This Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, & Clayton Cowles comic is truly my ideal indie book, and it was in my Top 5 of 2024. Read more about why I love it so much in my full write-up, below.
This post includes every comic out from Image Comics this week on February 19 2025, 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 February 19 2025 new releases!
Image Comics February 19 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 February 19 2025 books today from a traditional bookseller they will still be pre-orders and will arrive in a few weeks.
Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and the Dying
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534341869)
This keeps up the reprints of the original thin trades of Brubaker & Phillips’ Criminal with new trade dress to mark the franchise becoming an Amazon TV show.
Remote Space
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534328686 / digital)
A mini-series from writer-author Cliff Rathburn about the remains of humanity on Earth in the year 2450.
Rogue Sun Vol. 4: Divinity
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534327535 / digital)
This Ryan Parrot book is part of the Massive-Verse alongside Kyle Higgins’ Radiant Black.
Spawn: Sinn’s War
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534376625 / digital)
See Guide to Spawn. Collected editions of Spawn (1992) always significantly lag behind the actual series. This trade paperback collects #331-337 when we’re up to issue #361!
I’m sure there’s some strategy there to make sure single issues sell through and accumulate value, but it’s frustrating for trade-waiting Spawn fans. Also, it’s kind of wild, because the 50-issue compendium editions are going to catch up with the current trade paperbacks by the end of this year!
Read on for summaries of Image Comics February 19 2025 single issue releases!
Image Comics February 19 2025 Physical Comic Releases
Deadly Tales of the Gunslinger Spawn (2024) #3 (digital) – See Guide to Spawn. I was expecting this series to dig deeper into the character of Gunslinger after a strong set-up of his origin in issue #1.
Instead, it seems like the entire book is going linger on brutal violence towards women, both as a motivator for Gunslinger and just because that’s the only kind of scary violence Jimmy Palmiotti can imagine. It doesn’t inspire much confidence that this book will anything other than a misogynistic torture porn comic.
Doll Parts: A Lovesick Tale (2024) #3 (digital) – This Doll Parts prequel story was so viscerally disturbing to me that I couldn’t even make it through issue #1! Yet, some folks on the Crushing Comics Live stream liked it… for exactly that reason!
Know that this book is absolutely chock full of triggering concepts like eating disorders and sexual assault… but, they are the origin story of a nifty BDSM serial killing lady, so at least there’s a happy ending.
Free Agents (2024) #7 (digital) – I’ve only had time to read the #1 of this Kurt Busiek & Fabian Nicieza superhero series. It was a very interesting read that’s up my alley.
A group of super heroes from outside of reality are shunted there, and they are trying to lay low while also feeling compelled to respond to extra-dimensional threats. That reality seems to be some version of Image’s ongoing shared continuity, because the issue references Cyber Force. But, that could just be a brief in-joke. Meanwhile, there’s a reason they all got shunted to Image Earth… and that reason may be haunting them.
I’m definitely curious to catch up on the rest of the series for my pull show this week. It’s wild to me a Busiek & Nicieza team-up book isn’t making a lot more noise, which makes me suspicious that it might not be as good as the opening concept suggests.
G.I. Joe (2024) #4 (digital) – This Joe reboot was teased for an entire year, but I didn’t really feel like the first two issues paid off all that anticipation. However, issue #3 absolutely did. It was a quick read (always is with Joshua Williamson), but I think I’m finally genuinely loving this series rather than just wishing i could find a way to love it.
After doing a lot of set-up and big, kinda-vapid action, last issue felt a lot like early issues of the original Real American Hero because it had a specific mission that was tied into government intelligence alongside some Cobra sci-fi nonsense. Part of that was an outstanding use of Cobra Commander being competent and scary for just a brief moment (as he ought to be) and layers-upon-layers of double-crossing between MARS, Cobra, and Cobra-La. (gWhat a nest of vipers they are as an alliance, literally and figuratively).
I think part of my initial standoffishness with this series is that we have so many of the most-toyetic elements of the Joe universe already in place, but the actual G.I. Joes are just being formed. That means that it always feels more thrilling when we spend time with the bad guys, but that the good side is slow going. The bad guys already feel like supervillains, but the good guys just feel like random dudes with guns.
I’ve realized that’s why it’s so important that Williamson has picked one fan-favorite bad guy to be a reluctant protagonist alongside the Joes. I was wary of the revisionist history at first, but now it’s really working for me.
Also, I fucking love the implication that Joe/Cobra hi-tech laser weapons (pew pew pew) COULD ONLY EXIST thanks to the secret Energon power everyone is gleaning from the Transformers, who also exist in this universe.
The Hive (2025) #1 (digital) – This was originally solicited for last week, but delayed to this week – though some shops got their physical copies.
A comic from A. J. Lieberman and Nailbiter artist Mike Henderson about crime and… bees? Lieberman has been around for decades, but I’m not familiar with their work and the solicit for this issue doesn’t give much to go one, so this is a blind read for me!
The Holy Roller (2023) #9 (digital) – This is a comic from Rick Remender’s Giant Generator imprint co-written with SNL and Brooklyn 99 vet Andy Sandberg with Fall Out Boy lead guitarist Joe Trohman.
Random!
Even more random, it’s about an anti-hero who returns to his run-down red state home after 20 years abroad and immediately starts busting people up with a bowling ball in a story that combines vigilante justice with bracingly real American prejudice.
I think this has all of the pros and cons that you’d expect from a TV Star and a Rock Star getting together with the most brutally cynical man in comics to launch a book. The dialog has a real flow and swagger, but sometimes the lines have a certain goofiness to them that needs the charm factor of someone like Sandberg reading them to land.
That said, if the wild-but-grounded concept plus the famous-people pedigree sounds attractive to you, this book delivers on exactly those two things.
King Spawn (2021) #42 (digital) – See Guide to Spawn. This comic is “King Spawn” AKA “Good Spawn” AKA “King Shit” because this is EXACTLY what should be going on in the main Spawn comic instead of whatever unparseable bullshit is happening there.
Why? Because there’s the sense that even though this story has massive heaven-and-hell stakes like all of the Spawn books, it also is a conflict that’s specific to Spawn himself. It’s also happening at a smaller scale. There are still demons at war, but we’re seeing the fight on the level of individuals being corrupted and specific demons being hunted down.
That’s how Spawn began as a character, and in a way I think that’s what his main book has been missing for years now. He has been a humorless and often ineffectual general in a biblical war he seems barely involved in. Meanwhile, here he’s chasing down double-crossing devils whose longtime Earthly cover got blown.
It’s the more interesting story and it’s a lot easier to pick up. I’m still several arcs behind in my sequential read from the start, but I jumped in a few issues ago and everything made perfect sense to me!
Nullhunter (2024) #5 (digital) – I sampled this Michael Walsh series that recasts the story of Hercules as a space-faring cyberpunk dystopia. That was just a few too many concepts stacked atop each other for me, but maybe it’ll click for you!
The Power Fantasy (2024) #6 (digital) – My favorite indie comic book returns for a second arc!!!
This comic from Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, & Clayton Cowles is basically “What if there were Omega Mutants and a Quiet Council, but they never fought?” That doesn’t mean these impossibly powerful beings never cause pain, horror, or genocide. They just don’t do much punching.
If you always wanted a book about Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, Exodus, Sinister, and more playing political games that usually end in a detente but could also wipe out an entire country, this is for you. Gillen’s writing is snappy but full of unanswered questions, Wijngaard’s art is boldly-lined and easy to follow, and Cowles makes the book incredibly readable (and contributes some Hickman-style data pages along with (I think) designer Rian Hughes).
Highest possible recommendation from me!
Rat City (2024) #11 (digital) – See Guide to Spawn. This series is essentially Spawn 2099, which makes it a perfect Spawn symbiote series if you like the character concept but have no interest in wading into 350+ issues of established continuity.
Note: Violator: Origin (2024) #6 was solicited for this week, but got pushed back to March 12.
W0rldtr33 (2023) #13 (digital) – I’m obsessed with this creepy techno horror from James Tynion IV about a demonic undernet lurking beneath our own internet.
Last issue wasn’t about that at all. Instead, it was the origin of the main antagonist of this book, who started out as just an innocent kid sister. Tynion is one of the best in the biz at these slice of life issues, especially ones set in past decades or with a hint of youthful sexuality. He just picks the right slices to focus on.
I think from that perspective this was strong, but it really slows down this narrative just when it feels like it’s time to speed up. However, as this origin story speeds along I have a feeling it will give us some satisfying and illuminating answers that will help reframe the narrative so far.
The Walking Dead Deluxe (2020) #107 (digital) – This is the penultimate issue of the “What Comes After” arc, presented here in color for the first time. Remember: this color series is not collected – but it is available digitally!
That’s for Image Comics February 19 2025 new releases! What were you already pulling? And, did I convince you to check out anything new? Sound off in the comments below.