Marvel Penguin Picks: April 2025
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku
If I’m being honest, this collection deserves this spot simply for being a collection of all three “Battle of Jakku” miniseries. Though this was clearly meant to be a twelve-issue maxiseries, Marvel published it weekly as three four-part miniseries: “Insurgency Rising,” “Republic Under Siege,” and “Last Stand.” This gave me the impression that Marvel was going to try to sell all of them as individual collections and I’m really glad that didn’t happen here. Better still is the fact that its cover price of $35 for 296 pages is quite reasonable in this day and age.
As for the content of these miniseries themselves, they’re obviously meant to chronicle the last major battle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire that was alluded to in the sequel trilogy. It sounds like a perfectly fine setup and it can even serve as a jumping-on point for the next round of “Star Wars” comics from Marvel. It’s written by Alex Segura with art from Leonard Kirk, Stefano Raffaele, Jethro Morales, and Luke Ross. Most of the artists are “Star Wars” veterans, but this will be Segura’s first major work in a galaxy far, far away and a likely bellwether for what to expect when he takes over “Star Wars” for the post-”Jedi” era later this year. So cross your fingers and let’s hope he force chokes a win out of this!
…yeah, that was bad. Let’s move on.
Godzilla vs. Hulk #1 & Godzilla vs. Spider-Man #1: The King of All Monsters’ invasion of the Marvel Universe(‘s past) continues in these one-shots. They also show that Marvel is taking this crossover seriously by throwing some of their biggest talent at it. Gerry Duggan writes and Guiseppe Camuncoli illustrates the “Hulk” issue while Joe Kelly writes and Nick Bradshaw illustrates the “Spider-Man” one. While it seems like bets are being hedged in the “Spider-Man” issue by setting it just after he acquired his alien suit, that’s easily forgiven. Why? Because we’ve got an issue where Nick Bradshaw is illustrating a fight between Spider-Man and Godzilla and there’s no way that won’t look AMAZING! Speaking of “Amazing” things…
Amazing Spider-Man #1: Joe Kelly takes over for Zeb Wells and starts things off with an unemployed Peter Parker taking on the Rhino. That’s only the tip of the iceberg as we’re told this is part of a secret spider-villain’s plan to weaponize others of his kind. Kelly’s contributed some solid spider-tales over the years, so we’ll see how this goes. Regular artist John Romita Jr. is sticking around for this issue, but we’re getting a new “Amazing” artist in the form of top-flight talent Pepe Larraz.
Daredevil: A Cold Day in Hell #1 (of 3): It’s a very “Daredevil”-ish title for sure, and a better one than calling it “Old Man Murdock.” Which is basically what this series is. The world has gone to hell in the future and while Matt Murdock is still around, his powers have mostly left him. Yet when Hell’s Kitchen is hit by a mysterious gas attack, the hero formerly known as Daredevil is compelled to leap into action again. This is coming to us from former “Daredevil” writer Charles Soule and artist Steve McNiven, who are both co-plotting it as well. They previously worked together to give us “The Death of Wolverine,” which was better than you’d expect, and part of “The Return of Wolverine,” which was not. Still, the idea of seeing these two do their spin on the old hero’s redemption in a world gone wrong trope sounds like it’d be fun since it only has to beat the low bar established by the “Daredevil: End of Days” miniseries for stories like this.
Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe One Last Time #1 (of 5): Does what it says on the tin, I would imagine. Original writer Cullen Bunn and artist Dalibor Talajic return for what is sure to be the finally final installment of this series-of-miniseries.
Predator vs. Spider-Man #1 (of 4): Ongoing “Predator vs.” writer Benjamin Percy returns for this latest miniseries that pits a Yautja against one of Marvel’s most beloved heroes. This time the Ol’ Wall-Crawler finds himself dealing with the chaos from a heat wave that has sent New York City into a blackout, only there’s a particularly vicious and honor-less killer out to take his head for a trophy here. “Predator vs. Wolverine” was fine and I have yet to get around to reading “Predator vs. Black Panther” but this sounds perfectly fine and I’m at least curious to see how the Predator’s hard-edged sensibilities will mix with Spidey’s penchant for lighter fun. Marcelo Ferreria illustrates.
Wolverine #8: Celebrating 400 issues of Wolverine’s solo adventures. While the main story promises action involving new villain the Adamantine, old villain the Wendigo, and the start of the “Wolverine” story you never thought you’d see, the real attraction for me here is the creator doing the bonus story here. Though he’s a very busy man these days, writing “Transformers” and writing and co-illustrating “The Moon is Watching Us” over at Image, Daniel Warren Johnson found the time to write and illustrate a “Wolverine” story for this anniversary issue. It should look great, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading it when it comes to Marvel Unlimited sometime in July.
The ‘Nam: 1966-1969 Omnibus HC: Believe it or not, Marvel published a comic series about the Vietnam War in the 1980’s that was written by veteran Doug Murray, illustrated by the great Michael Golden, was grounded in its approach to the war, didn’t involve any superheroes, and actually sold really well for the time. Naturally, this didn’t last and the changes being imposed by editorial caused Murray to eventually quit before Frank Castle showed up in the series. This collects everything written before then and it’s tempting to pick this up. Both to see how Marvel attempted something like this back in the day, and to see what a good Vietnam War comic that isn’t written by Garth Ennis looks like.
Alien: Galaxy of Nightmares: I said back on the podcast episode about “Alien” at Marvel that the stuff written by Philip Kennedy Johnson was the best of it. I doubt Marvel was listening when I said that, but you’ll soon be able to buy all of it in one convenient volume. This collects “Alien” vol. 1 1-12, “Alien Annual,” and “Alien” vol. 2 1-6. So you can marvel at how much the writer and artists Salvador Larroca and Julius Ohta got right with their approach to the franchise, and be disappointed in seeing how what the writer was setting up wasn’t properly followed-up on by its end.
Ultimate X-Men by Peach Momoko vol. 2: Children of the Atom: Believe it or not, I was also considering this volume for the top spot this month. Yes, I know that the first volume was a real letdown in terms of being an “Ultimate” comic as well as a proper “X-Men” one, but where do you go next after failing that hard? Part of me is at least morbidly curious to see where that is, along with what becomes of new “Ultimate” characters like Psylocke. It’s like a train wreck, but I can’t bring myself to look away. Yet.