Dark Horse Penguin Picks: January 2026
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
The Witcher: The Bear and the Butterfly
Billed as vol. 10 in Dark Horse’s series of comics based on “The Witcher” games – vol. 3 of the omnibus collecting the previous ones is also solicited here – it’s also the first one I’m planning to buy. Not because these have a bad reputation attached to them, just that while I enjoyed “The Witcher 3” as much as the next person I never felt the need for more of it in comics form. At least until a writer I liked decided to take a crack at it. Enter Simon Spurrier who has Geralt of Rivia becoming involved in what appears to be a vampire preying on a small town. The town has offered a reward for anyone who slays the vampire, which has attracted all kinds of monster hunters, including a Witcher from the School of the Bear.
What to expect? My money is on the townspeople being the real monsters here, Geralt coming off like something of a dumbass at first before asserting his actual intelligence (if not his badass credentials) at the end, and a story that leads you around by the nose for a bit before delivering the goods. Such is the convention-defying approach that Spurrier traffics in to results that are sometimes fantastic (“The Dreaming”) and other times not so much (“John Constantine: Hellblazer vol. 2”). The man’s hit ratio is still pretty good after all these years so I’m expecting this to be similarly satisfying in the end, with quality art from “Sea of Stars’” Stephen Green.
The Crown: A Tale of Hell #1 (of 2): Do you remember when “Hellboy in Hell” introduced us to Hellboy’s brothers? Ever wonder what they got up to before their younger brother came around? Well wonder no more as Mike Mignola and his co-writer brother Todd Mignola write this miniseries to detail the family feud to determine who controlled Pandemonium, with their mother also getting involved as well. Even if the main “Hellboy”/”B.P.R.D.” story has been done for a while now, this comes off like a fairly significant chunk of the mythos to explore. I’m keen to see what the Mignolas have in store for this, particularly with Warwick Johnson-Caldwell making his proper debut in the Mignolaverse.
Knight City #1 (of 3): Another round of solicitations, another new miniseries written by Matt Kindt. So far, so standard, right? Well, you likely won’t be seeing any more of these in the future as the creator has taken his Flux House imprint and his library over to Oni Press. As for why this happened? Who knows, but you don’t jump ship like this if you’re happy where you were. While Kindt has already announced two new miniseries for that publisher, “Knight City” teams him with “Stray Bullets’” David Lapham on art for a story about a superhero whose world-saving efforts are starting to wear him down. So when he starts falling asleep and waking up as an office drone, the change is actually more of a relief than anything else.
Archie vs. Minor Threats: Archie and friends go on a field trip to Twilight City only for Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s magic to send them to its seediest part: Redport. It’s there that they meet Frankie “Playtime” Follis and the rest of the gang and proceed to… do stuff relating to comics-related deconstructionism? “Archie” is no stranger to oddball team-ups, having mixed it up with “The Punisher” and “Predator” before this, so this isn’t really as nuts as it seems. It remains to be seen as to whether we’ll finally get a “Minor Threats” miniseries that’s as good as the first one, “The Alternates,” or just another mixed bag like “Barfly” and “The Brood.” That means the pressure’s on for writer Timmy Heague, but at least he’s got the homage-tastic art of Scott Koblish (who did the era-specific issues of “Deadpool” from the Posehn/Duggan run) to back him up.
Quick Stops vol. 3 HC: Kevin Smith’s anthology series about the “View Askewniverse” gets its third volume. Being a fan of his shared universe, I’ve always been interested in these miniseries – just not $25 hardcover collections for four-issue miniseries interested. Now that they’re up to the third volume of these, there’s the chance that we’ll see these reissued in an omnibus form at a (cumulatively) cheaper price point. There’s no word on that happening yet, but I’m a patient man (in the right situation).
The Credits Roll Into the Sea vol. 1: Umiko Chino is a 65-year-old retiree and recent widow. So when she wanders into a movie theater for the first time in years and meets a young, passionate film student, something awakens in her. A desire… to be a filmmaker! This is an unusual manga for Dark Horse to publish in that it has no other media tie-in and doesn’t have the obvious seinen style of the titles they’re best known for – this round of solicitations also sees new definitive editions for “Lone Wolf & Cub” and “Oldboy” as well as new omnibi for “Blood Blockade Battlefront” and, uh… “Gunsmith Cats: Burst.” I’m not complaining as if they think a manga about a 65-year-old woman becoming a filmmaker is good enough for them to publish, I feel like I’m obligated to give it a shot. Let’s just hope that they’re committed to it as this is a nine-volume series they’re publishing one volume at a time.