Next week is the 6th new comic book day of 2025! This post covers Image Comics February 5 2025 new releases. Missed this week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Image Comics January 29 2025 new releases.
This week in Image Comics: Rocketfellers continues to soar, Wes Craig and Rick Remender tell two very different kinds of fairytales, McFarlane’s ongoing war against grammar, second volumes of Geiger and Public Domain, and more!
The Krisis Pick of the Week: I am ready to blast off with Rocketfellers (2024) #3 from Peter J. Tomasi, Francis Manapul, John Kalisz, & Rob Leigh! The first two issues were so perfect that I’m expecting that this one might have to drop off a little, but that doesn’t dull my enthusiasm for more stories of this time-displaced family and their big secret.
This post includes every comic out from Image Comics this week on February 5, 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 5 2025 new releases!
Image Comics February 5 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 5 2025 books today from a traditional bookseller they will still be pre-orders and will arrive in a few weeks.
Geiger Vol. 2: The Nuclear Knight
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534380202 / digital)
It’s the flagship series of Geoff Johns’s Ghost Machine, where he and Gary Frank have a post-apocalyptic nuclear knight wander the landscape of the desolate United States trying to right a handful of wrongs.
This is actually the first full arc of the ongoing series, following up on a Volume 1 that collected just the original mini-series. It’s a bit dry and cynical for me, but the level of craft is high and people in the comments on my pull list streams seem to be loving it!
Public Domain Vol. 2: Build Something New
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534353770 / digital)
I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS COMIC BOOK, which was one of my top comics of 2024. Chip Zdarsky takes us through a second arc of fractured family trying to reassemble itself to manage a billion-dollar goldmine of comic book IP before it slips from their grasp.
Imagine if Bill Finger barged into DC Comics’ office to reclaim Batman in the early 90s (forget about how he had been dead for nearly two decades) and then recruited his pair of desultory sons to launch his own independent Batmen because he can do anything except reference Bruce Wayne on the page.
Oh and, meanwhile, in response DC asks Bob Kane to do something even bigger and more thrilling than ever after another billion-dollar Batman movie, and they foist an unhinged British Moore/Morrison/Gaiman mashup on him to make things edge.
With the world and stakes of the story clearly established in the first arc, Zdarsky maintains the same tragicomic tone he perfected with Matt Fraction on Sex Criminals while twisting the knife a little more in every issue when it comes to the relationships between the characters. These are people with decidedly normal, un-super problems, but if they could just solve them they could all be happy and rich.
They may not be able to solve them. And, I love reading about it.
What’s the Furthest Place From Here? Vol. 4
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1534339811 / digital)
Matt Rosenberg & Tyler Boss’s world where the children are feral … and that’s the only thing keeping them alive! Check this out if you enjoy the idea of a roving band of feral teenagers in a very grounded apocalypse who might have nothing worse to fear than growing up. Boss’s art is always a standout, but I never quite clicked with the characters in this one.
This trade collects four origins issues, some of which were released earlier in singles but were held back in collected editions until now. Seems like an odd choice to me – it creates a very different reading experience for trade readers, who didn’t get the know the characters for much longer than single issue readers.
Read on for summaries of Image Comics February 5 2025 single issue releases!
Image Comics February 5 2025 Physical Comic Releases
Gunslinger Spawn (2022) #40 (digital) – I want to love this comic about a Wild West gunslinging Spawn trapped in the modern day, but Mr. McFarlane can not get out of his own way long enough for his script to sing.
Not only was last issue a badly-paced mess of our protagonist walking around aimlessly in the snow, but every third caption box didn’t make a lick of grammatical sense.
TODD GET AN EDITOR I AM BEGGING YOU. No one else is doing the ideation that McFarlane is doing, but there’s also no other comics a Big Three or other major indies as riddled with glaring errors as books where he is the writer.
Juvenile (2024) #3 (digital) – After being obsessed with the first issue of this comic – written, drawn, colored, and lettered by Jesús Orellana – I wasn’t quite as hot on issue #2 – which was a “Krisis Pick of the Week” last month.
I think the problem is that this is such a huge concept to cram into a miniseries. It’s a world where every child will die as they reach adulthood unless they are institutionalized and controlled at every month… except, what if that’s all a lie. I want to sit with that for 12 issues, or 50 issues. Or, at least a few days of time passing for our characters.
Instead, everything has to happen right now. Last issue our protagonist skips ONE PILL and suddenly her whole world turns upside down. Has no one ever missed a dose before? And she convinces the boy they are allies who should share their big secrets within a day of him arriving at her institution?
I get that this is a five issue series, but when you compress your story into a matter of hours it just doesn’t work as well. It stops ringing as true as it needs to in order to make this concept sing.
Also, in both issues #1 and #2 there are a few moments where panels gets crowded and we lose the tracking of action. There was a page in issue #2 I re-read 10 times and it made less and less sense every time.
I love the art and I love this world, and I’m willing to accept this is a slightly messy, slightly rushed, but still altogether audacious comic from a singular mega-talent.
Kaya (2022) #25 (digital) – I know I swore I wouldn’t speed through catching up on this amazing Wes Craig fantastical comic just for the purposes of writing these posts, but when it’s so damn bingeable it’s hard to resist!
I’m now through two arcs of this delightful book and it’s a struggle to stop to take a breath after every issue. Maybe the year of issues I’ve yet to read get duller and will sour me to Craig’s world, but that’s hard to imagine.
I think what works so well for me about Kaya is that it is a perfect marriage of elements.
Craig is drawing simple, elemental figures with hints of Mike Mignola. That could fall short on a more complex book or a book with a bigger cast. But, Craig is essentially telling an unabridged version of his own original folklore tale. It’s complex in its simplicity. And, it means he has stocked it with all manner of creatures, so his art doesn’t have to worry about differentiating the likenesses of a huge cast. They’re all obviously different – differently shaped and differently colored. And, that allows Craig to go wild when it comes to action and settings, because the characters are all so fundamentally simple to track.
Also, Craig’s script balances the brutality of this fantastical world against hope – which I think is key to a book like this one, especially one with such storybook-esque artwork. This isn’t a simple journey of Point A to Point B. There’s sibling rivalry, unrequited love, warring factions, cowardice teetering on the edge of evil, and harmful superstition versus practical magic,
I’ll continue to consume and arc or two each month until I’m caught up to present. Who knows, maybe this will fall off somewhere… but that still won’t change how compelling and heartfelt I found the initial year of issues.
The Rocketfellers (2024) #3 (digital) – I was hard on Hornsby & Halo (2024) last week, Peter Tomasi’s other comic for Geoff Johns’s Ghost Machine imprint, so I am very happy to be here telling you THIS COMIC IS AMAZING AND YOU MUST READ IT NOW.
The first two issues of this comic were a pitch perfect introduction for an all-ages family adventure with enough intrigue to keep readers of any age hooked. Big stakes. An early sacrifice. Distinct characters. Serious sci-fi elements. A tantalizing hint of connection to a whole multiverse of Ghost Machine stories. And, totally gorgeous artwork from Francis Manapul at the absolute peak of his abilities.
The pitch? A family in the 25th century is on the run because they’ve discovered something that could change the world and time itself. We don’t know what it is, but it’s enough that they’re willing to take a blind trip back through time to 2024 to try to evade the forces hunting them down. But… they had no way of knowing they’d be in 2024. They have no knowledge of our customs… our cell phones and BBQs and Christmas trees. They have to figure it out as they go along, wondering if they will ever get to return to a future they once called home.
Imagine the Richards family from Fantastic Four traveling backwards to have to live in the 1600s while keeping their powers and smarts under wraps. That’s the vibe here.
What I love most about it is that between the alluring big concept and the compelling individual characters, there’s a lot of plot to enjoy. I love the mystery of why they had to flee their timeline. I love how they try to fix every problem in our present day with mad future tech but it just makes things worse. I love the subtle cracks in the family’s facade as they each subtly pursue their own interests in a way that could affect their safety in the modern day. And I love the design of their sinister antagonist back in the future they abandoned.
I love this book, and I’m hoping it’s not just a honeymoon period that will die off once we get deeper into the series. This could have the kind of legs that Saga or Birthright had.
The Sacrificers (2023) #14 (digital) – It is firmly established that I have gone from “Remender Skeptic” to “Remender Disliker” over the course of the past decade, as none of his independent series have worked for me. Yet, I still check out every #1 in the hopes that something about the viewpoint he showed off on Uncanny X-Force (2010) will click for me again.
The Sacrificers clicked for me… in its first arc. I thought Remender had finally found the right world to frame his intense and repetitive cynicism about human nature. A compelling but harsh world where gods exist a hair’s breadth away from their constituents, who are a blend of humans and animal folk. While the gods have supernatural powers to set them apart, the real difference comes in how the gods prey upon their people – demanding sacrifices and keeping them fearful until their joy can be harvested and consumed (in a typically brutal Remender fashion).
What starts out as an abstract creation myth gets increasingly real as Remender makes clear the links between the gods and mortals of this world. But, it also loses what little joy it began with. Little moments of irony amongst the brutality. Joy isn’t a pre-requisite for a good story, but it’s what Remender’s books so often lack. He doesn’t have the ability to keep a flickering flame of hope lit like Jason Aaron has learned to do.
By the end of the second arc and the start of the third, I had grown to hate this book. What was once an abused and forgotten boy who might challenge the supremacy of the gods has become just another generic “big guy with an axe.” The intrigue and thrill that he might be able to commit deicide has turned into heartless super-fights full of destruction. Remender’s abstract parable that he promised in the first issue he would never explain has become punishingly literal, devoting all of last issue into talk of the “proletariat” – a word there is no reason for our former protagonist to have ever heard.
For me, there’s no one left to root for in this comic save for Max Fiumara’s absolutely stunning artwork. Visuals aside, there are no more satisfying moments – nothing I care to see. It’s not that our protagonist is flawed, it’s that this world and everyone in it is utterly broken, just like their writer.
But… some readers are into that? This book is gorgeous and the world is cool as fuck. If you want something that feels as brutal a Daniel Warren Johnson comic without that flicker of hope he always keeps lit at the center of his work (think Extremity), then you will eat this comic up and beg for more just like I was doing in the first arc.
Snotgirl (2016) #18 (digital) – Brandon O’Malley’s continuing series following a fashion influencer through her life of romance with a side of murder.
The Walking Dead Deluxe (2020) #106 (digital) – This issue of the colorized, singles-only reprint of Walking Dead is smack in the middle of the “What Comes After” arc of the survivors living under Negan.
That’s for Image Comics February 5 2025 new releases! What were you already pulling? And, did I convince you to check out anything new? Sound off in the comments below.
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