Image Advance Arrivals: January 2026
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Farmhand vol. 5: The End
It’ll have been three years since the previous volume was released by the time this one is scheduled to arrive. That’s a long time to be waiting for anything, but after how good vol. 4 was I’m just glad we’re getting this at all. While creator Rob Guillory’s series may not have gotten off to the strongest start, its most recent volume demonstrated it was a proper horror series while also serving up some quality family drama and the occasional worthy joke as well. All of which was delivered with the man’s creative art that thrives on weirdness. There’s not much to say about the setup for vol. 5: Villain Monica Thorne now holds all the cards and it’s up to what’s left of the Jenkins family to stop her from putting the entire world under her thumb. Yet my expectations are that Guillory will deliver a rousing finale that will have everyone talking.
Bug Wars: The Spyder Wytch Special: Writer Jason Aaron and artist Mahmud Asrar’s series about a kid who gets shrunk down and winds up embroiled in a conflict between factions in his backyard gets a one-shot. If nothing else, this is a good sign since it indicates that the creators are committed to this series, even if this winds up being a stopgap to tide readers over before they can get started on its next proper arc. Which will hopefully be coming soon as the longer it takes, the more “Bug Wars” will start feeling like another aborted Aaron project at Image. I’m still looking forward to reading vol. 1, as soon as the rest of the order it was a part of comes back in stock…
Malevolent #1: New from writer Justin Jordan and artist Josh Bivens. Thirty years ago, demons were unleashed on humanity. We adapted to dealing with them on a daily basis, but now a weapon has emerged that’s capable of killing them. Unfortunately the person wielding it might wind up destroying us first. Jordan is a writer who’s always come off as a style-over-substance type, best seen in the “Luther Strode” trilogy. This sounds like it could be more of the same, and it’s advertised as coming from the same team who brought you “Spread.” I didn’t read that, so it does nothing for me. I will say that I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Jordan’s “Reaver” at some point as I still think about what Essen Breaker is getting up to these days.
Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls #100: Another one-shot based on the comic-within-a-comic from Kevin Eastman’s “Drawing Blood.” The first was included in the first volume of that series, and I didn’t think it did much beyond pad out the page count. You’d think that this is being done for the same reason, to make the collection of the next four issues of “Drawing Blood” seem like a better value to the reader. However, Amazon has vol. 2 as collecting the final eight issues, with no mention of this issue. Which is a better deal as far as I’m concerned, even if it leaves this issue forever stranded in single-issue form.
Feral #20: The current arc wraps up and while it’s promised that nothing will be the same after it, the solicitation text makes it sound like a lot has changed since the end of vol. 3. I won’t spoil the specifics, but it appears that everyone’s survival hinges on Elsie’s escape plan. Which will certainly work, it’s just a question of how many other cats will wind up dead in the process. Sounds like a good time as things barrel on from bad to worse in this series.
The Cold Witch: A Tale of the Shrouded College: The latest in Charles Soule’s series of miniseries set in the same universe promises a riff on “John Wick” with a lot of zombies in Siberia. I won’t deny that it sounds like a good time, but the previous installments in the “Shrouded College” were deeply mixed bags at best. This will either convince me to stick around and see Soule’s master plan come to fruition, or put all three volumes into the To Sell pile and be done with it for good.
Criminal (vol. 10): Cruel Summer: When this was originally published, it was just a hardcover called “Cruel Summer.” You had to look inside to find out that it was another volume of “Criminal” if you weren’t already aware that it was collecting the bulk of the most recent series. What a difference the upcoming streaming series makes as this has been re-branded, and put in softcover, to make it more accessible for newcomers to the series. Who will be grateful when they get this far and wind up encountering one of the best volumes of the whole series. As I’ve said before, this would’ve been a great place to end the series as it makes it a perfect circle. But “The Knives” was good enough to make me look forward to whatever Brubaker and Phillps decide to do with it next.
The Seasons vol. 2: When we left off, Summer Seasons was succumbing to the spell under the big top, even as Spring tried to get to her. Rick Remender’s latest series, with Paul Azaceta providing the art, offered up a dazzling first issue with a chase sequence for the ages. Lots of comics advertise themselves as being inspired by Hayao Miyazaki – this is the first one I’d actually like to see him try and adapt. I’m hoping to see more of this in vol. 2, even as I’m still a little concerned about how the writer may be grinding down his protagonist, and maybe even setting up another dull cautionary tale about the evils of modern technology.
The Unchosen vol. 1: 13-year-old Aida wakes up in a devastated city only to find out that she was responsible for its devastation. While she’s wondering how she could’ve done this, a better question is whether or not David Marquez can write as well as he draws. Part of me would rather wait until “Sinister’s Six” is collected (since that does sound like a lot of fun) but this has the advantage of being written and illustrated by the man himself. So maybe I will pick this up when it comes out. Hope it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, though.