Greg Capullo

New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: Marvel Comics – March 26 2025

March 20, 2025 by krisis

Next week is the 13th new comic book day of 2025! This post covers Marvel Comics March 26 2025 new releases. Missed this week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics March 19 2025 new releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: Godzilla invades the Marvel U, X-Manhunt is over (hooray!), Scarlet Witch gets Masterworked, Daredevil wraps his neverending deadly sins, Ultimate Gambit & Kitty Pryde, DWJ’s Beta Ray Bill back to print, Red Hulk breaks out, Old Republic Legends reprinted, whatever the Pooluminati are, and more!

The Krisis Pick of the Week: It’s is a very tight call to make this pick over two books resolving cliffhangers that have been on my mind all month, but I have to give it to Ultimate Wolverine (2025) #3 debuting Ultimate Gambit and Kitty Pryde! This book is becoming the de facto “Ultimate X-Men” since the actual Ultimate X-Men (2024) isn’t much of a traditional X-Men title. However, I very nearly picked Red Hulk (2025) #2 or Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) #15 given how both of their prior issues left off last month.

This post includes every comic out from Marvel Comics March 26 2025, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats.

This isn’t the typical comic releases post you can find on other sites. Why? I explain each collection and review every series with a new issue out this week. Plus, for every new release, I’ll point you to a personally-curated guide within the Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel 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 Marvel Comics March 26 2025 new releases! [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: Marvel Comics – March 26 2025

Spawn by Todd McFarlane – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Apr 18, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Spawn by Todd McFarlane in comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics Guide to Collecting Indie & Licensed Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through December 2025.

In 1992, Image Comics broke onto the American comic book market with a series of smash hit launches from six formerly famous Marvel artists.

Of those Image launch books (and with almost 30 years of hindsight), Todd McFarlane’s Spawn would go on to be the most commercially successful, enduring, and influential – as well as one of the highest profile black characters in the history of comics.

Part of Spawn’s longevity is the fact that the character comes with a unique mythology that doesn’t feel like a retread of any other existing comics character.

Al Simmons is a CIA operative who dies in the field and makes a deal with the devil so he can see his wife again. The deal leaves him with gaps in his memory and transforms him the newest unwitting pawn in the centuries-long battle between Heaven and Hell – and both sides have long since stopped playing by their own rules.

In addition to the tragic romance and epic religious plot threads, Spawn also squared off against street-level dirtbags and gang members, allowing McFarlane to draw more of the gritty version of New York’s streets and alleys from his run on Spider-Man. The early part of this run also included a timer counting down Spawn’s remaining “necroplasmic energy,” offering fans the tantalizing idea that the comic’s run was limited by how much power he used.

Over time, McFarlane considerably widened the scope of the series as it helped him launch a multimedia empire, including the founding of his still-successful high-end toy line.

Spawn is an impressively self-contained comic series. Though it has had many spinoffs, they are inessential to the core reading order that starts with issue #1 and continues past the record-breaking issue #301 – making it the longest-running creator-owned superhero comic. In that period, there is only a single one-shot – “Resurrection” – which must be integrated into the reading order to get the full story.

The popularity of McFarlane’s flagship title re-ignited with the press around his 300th issue in 2019. That set the Toddfather to plotting how he could expand the universe of his now record-setting, longest-running indie title. Those plans came to fruition in 2021 with the addition of three new ongoing titles to the line – King Spawn, Gunslinger Spawn, and a team-up book called The Scorched. Then, in 2022, McFarlane extended all of the major reprint lines past issue #125 for the first time – and they’ve continued to sprint forward, even as the line has expanded even further to include more ongoing books and mini-series.

DC New 52 Review: Batman #1

September 28, 2011 by krisis

In Marvel comics it has become an ongoing, in-universe joke that Wolverine appears in more titles each month than would seem to fit into the life of any person, super or not. You’d almost think he shares the super-power of duplication with Madrox, or at least occasionally borrows Hermoine’s time turner.

Batman shares a similar status (eight and counting this month), but his multitude of appearances typically occur in and around Gotham. It’s not much of a stretch to picture him swinging through Batwoman on his way from Detective Comics to Batman & Robin.

Super-scheduling aside, the challenge facing any over-saturated hero is differentiation – how are the appearances different, and appealing to different audiences? Wolverine has it in spades – some books with X-Men, others solo, more with Avengers. Spider-Man gave up on it, and now he’s down to one main title that comes out constantly. There’s a new issue, like, every other day.

Batman is presently supporting three solo titles (four, if you count Robin), and I honestly don’t see much point in that beyond Bat-saturation. Batsuration? I’m definitely Batsurated, and it’s only week three. Why not move to the Spider-Man model?

Batman #1

Written by Scott Snyder, art by Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion

Rating: 3.5 of 5 – Great

In a Line: “Are you asking me if you were convincing as a homicidal maniac?”

#140char Review: Batman #1 treads lightly between gory DC#1 & goofy B&R#1 w/a solid mystery & fuller cast. Capullo’s art is perfect. Expect more good things

CK Says: Buy it.

Batman #1 packs a fun meaningless brawl, a portentous business move, and a grim mystery into one tidy debut issue that wisely cedes the “thrill-a-minute” crown to other Batbook debuts in order to sketch a fuller picture of Bruce Wayne and his cast of characters. Scott Snyder hits all the right beats and keeps Bruce in costume for just enough pages.

I love the device Snyder uses to set the tone, with Batman distractingly narrating a relatively rote mission with an editorial about the Gotham Gazette. If it’s a little glib it can be excused for being such an effective device for setting the stage of Gotham, as well as Bruce Wayne’s intentions for it as both a philanthropist and a superhero.

Greg Capullo is absolutely perfect for Snyder’s grim Gotham with a sliver of hope. His textured work never gets too dark thanks to inker Jonathan Glapion and a subdued set of desaturated colors from FCO Plascencia. I might even prefer his monstrous, deranged Joker to the lithe asexual one in Detective.

While villains get tons of line-work and toothy grins, Batman is portrayed simply – black cowl, lantern jaw with a slash of a mouth and a tiny furrow for a chin. The rest of Capullo’s Bat family is all dashingly, boyishly handsome. His version of the cave is expansive, but still claustrophobically hemmed in by columns of rock. His brightly lit ballroom scenes aren’t as striking, but they shouldn’t be – and I got a visceral thrill from the first scene of Bruce back in costume.

It’s hard to make an always grim Batman anything but flat and predicable – the issue becomes about gadgets, villains, and violence. Snyder’s Batman has dimension and a sense of gallows humor. In Detective it was all gallows and no laughs, and in Batman & Robin the latter was all maniacal giggles all the time. Only here does the millionaire playboy turned city defender really come through in the personality of our hero. While he’s not a wise-cracking Spider-Man, that doesn’t mean he has to be a humorless soggy cape, either.

Should you buy Batman #1? I say yes. Detective Comics was more of a classic and Finch might be more of a scorcher on art this week, but Snyder and Capullo find a comforting middle ground that pays homage to all of the versions of Batman we’ve grown up with. Perhaps devout Morrison fanatics will find this too plain-jane in anticipation of the return of Batman Inc, but otherwise it’s sure to please.