The Scorched Archives

Next week is the 4th new comic book day of 2025! This post covers Image Comics January 2 2025 new releases. Missed this week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Image Comics January 15 2025 new releases.

This week in Image Comics: Astro City completed (for now), Criminal reprints, more of Gunslinger’s origins, Cobra Commander vs. Destro, Christmas comes to Hyde Street, a return to Oz, a Savage Dragon celebration, a new branch of Tynion’s W0rldtr33, 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: This was a close one for me with such a kick-ass issue of G.I. Joe out this week, but my pick goes to W0rldtr33 (2023) #12, kicking off a third arc of the James Tynion IV ongoing title that feels like a sequel to his indie “viral trilogy” that initially turned me on to his scary creator-owned work. More on this book 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 22 2025 new releases!

I’m back today to continue my Indie Comic Month run through the original titles from the 1992 launch of Image Comics. As it turns out, I already had a guide for this title, which I launched in 2019. However, a lot of things can change in just a few years, and this title’s 30th anniversary in 2022 opened up a whole new universe of comics and collections. It’s time for a major update to my Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane!

Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane

When I first created this Guide to Spawn back in October 2019, Spawn seemed like it was in “Legacy Mode” with no signs of change on the horizon. Little did I realize that had begun to change the very month I published the guide!

To me,”Legacy Mode” is when a longstanding comic is only publishing more issues because it has a core of fans that will keep buying them. There’s no extra effort being put into marketing it beyond that existing core of fans. The stories start to feel repetitive and insular. And, there’s no efforts being made to collect or re-collect older issues of the title – since the assumption is that all of the fans already own all of the collections!

That described Spawn as it existed prior to October 2019, but not after. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane