Image Advance Arrivals: March 2026
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Escape
Another round of solicits, another new Rick Remender-written collection to talk about. This one is notable for a couple reasons, and the fact that it’s a war story featuring talking animals actually isn’t one of them. Milton Shaw is a bomber pilot who gets shot down behind enemy lines just as his side is preparing to drop the big one to end the war. Now he has to escape the smoldering ruins of a city that he helped to destroy. Sounds like the kind of humanitarian grimness that has characterized a lot of the writer’s work, right? Well, what sets this apart from the writer’s recent work is that there’s no “vol. 1” in these solicitations. “Escape” appears to be a self-contained miniseries which is unusual for the writer’s general output and a potential relief considering its subject matter. There’s also the fact that it’s being illustrated by the artist of much of his “Uncanny Avengers” run, Daniel Acuna, someone whose art I’ve always appreciated whenever I saw it at Marvel. To see him turned loose on a creator-owned title should really be something to see.
Tigress Island #1 (of 5): “Golden Rage” not doing it for you? How about this new miniseries about five down-on-their-luck actresses who are kidnapped and taken to a prison island run by a sadistic female warden. Their only chance of escape is to work together, but that would require them to actually trust each other first. Billed as a throwback to classic exploitation films (of the women-in-prison variety, I can only assume) this comes to us from writer Patrick Kindlon and artist EPHK. Two names that do nothing for me, but who are at least delivering a setup that sounds like it could be trashy fun.
Narco #1 (of 5): Writer Doug Wagner and artist Daniel Hillyard are at it again, and leaving serial killers behind (for now). It’s not about drug-running, but a housebound narcoleptic who witnesses his neighbor’s murder and becomes the prime suspect. In order to clear his name he’ll have to leave his house and stay awake long enough to catch the real killer. While I’ve generally liked Wagner and Hillyard’s output, there’s been an unevenness to it where certain projects are clearly better than others. This is different from the kinds of titles they’ve done in the past, so I’m hopeful that this will be one of their “better” titles.
Super Creepshow #1 (of 5): The “Creepshow” series of horror comic anthologies gets super-powered with its latest installment. Not only is this latest installment going to focus on superhero horror, but this first issue is being written by a couple of supremely talented guys: Kieron Gillen and Ryan North. Gillen’s story, with artist Rossi Gifford promises to set our spider-senses tingling (no points for guessing what they’re riffing on) while North, with artist Derek Charm, looks to be doing a story that he wouldn’t be allowed to do in his upcoming “Flash” run as he sets out to prove that super speed is the most horrific power of all.
Invincible Universe: Battle Beast #7: Returning for its second arc as the title character (Battle Beast, not Invincible) continues his interstellar quest for a foe strong enough to end his life in battle. While we all know how that’s going to end, the first volume implied that he’ll be throwing down with Conquest at some point before that. Speaking of that first volume (review forthcoming) it was more notable for its violent spectacle than its storytelling. However, it was nice to see Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley bantering together again in the backmatter.
Marvel Team-Up #14: What’s this? A Marvel reprint in Image solicitations? Back before “The Walking Dead” TV series supercharged Robert Kirkman’s career he was writing two well-liked creator-owned titles that he was able to leverage into writing some comics for The House of Ideas. “Marvel Zombies” was his biggest success there, but he also did a new “Marvel Team-Up” series that came and went with one notable exception. As Kirkman owned Invincible, he was able to put him into one issue of that series illustrated by his original artist Cory Walker. Now that issue is being reprinted for anyone who’s seen the animated series to buy themselves. While I haven’t read it, part of me wonders if the story of how this issue came about in the first place, and the legal wrangling necessary to reprint it is more interesting than anything inside the issue.
The Sacrificers #21: It turns out that the extended nature of this current storyline and its increasingly apocalyptic tone were heralding the end of the series. Pigeon’s quest for justice in his world comes to an end with rainbows, puppy dogs, and sunshine for everyone. Well, obviously not. This is a Rick Remender-written comic after all. But it’d sure be a surprise if it did.
Feral vol. 4: Vol. 3 ended with the revelation that the cats in Pet City had been cannibalizing their young in order to stay alive, and weren’t above murdering anyone who steps out of line. Which Elsie certainly had been doing before the final page. Now she’s in a desperate struggle to survive and isn’t sure who she can trust anymore. So it could be just a coincidence that Feral #21, also solicited this month, is a solo spotlight on mute kitty Ghost as he searches for Moosh the Pitbull. It’s also a silent issue, which means one of the issue’s variant covers is a reference to the classic “G.I. Joe #21” that did the same thing. “Feral” stands a better chance of living up to the legacy of that issue than the recent “Silent Mission” one-shots as this issue is a part of the ongoing story and promises a tie-in to “Stray Dogs” at its end.
Good as Dead: When someone sets themselves on fire on the only bridge leading into the town of Port Lindon, Sheriff David Calhoun finds himself having to dig up the town’s and his family’s secrets in order to find out why. This sounds like the kind of messed-up crime story that “Stray Bullets” creator David Lapham, co-writing here with his wife Maria, specializes in. Let’s hope it stays as grounded as the best stories in that series are and doesn’t fly off into nonsensically surreal craziness like some of his other projects have *glares in the direction of “Young Liars”*.
News From the Fallout: The year is 1962 and a nuclear test in Nevada has gone horribly wrong and released a contaminant into the air that turns people “rotten.” Private Otis Fallows is the only survivor at the base where the test was conducted and now has to find safe haven from the fallout. Assuming such a place even exists. This comes to us from writer Chris Condon and artist Jeffrey Alan Love and the solicitation name-checks a lot of well-liked series (“The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits”) and writers (Richard Matheson and Stephen King) that served to inspire it. The problem is that I haven’t read anything yet from Condon that suggests he’s in spitting distance of anything achieved by either the shows or people mentioned here. This could be the miniseries to change that, but I’m just not sure…
The Power Fantasy vol. 3: The End of History: This is a series about superpowered individuals maintaining an uneasy peace between them because if they ever did fight, the resultant clash of powers would end the world. At the end of vol. 2, two of those powers made an attempt to wipe out one that they considered to be a major problem. They don’t know it yet, but they failed and the only thing that is likely going to save them is whether or not their target considers revenge an ethical course of action. This series hasn’t clicked with me in the way that some of Kieron Gillen’s other titles have, but I won’t deny that what’s coming here doesn’t sound entertaining after the setup from the previous two volumes.
The Voice Said Kill: Writer Simon Spurrier and artist Vanessa Del Rey give us this miniseries about the kind of craziness that infests the Louisiana bayou. Like a crazy bastard who’s out of his mind on shrooms deciding to start hunting humans, forcing a very pregnant park ranger and a criminal matriarch to team up in order to take him down. After four volumes of mind-bending sci-fi craziness on “The Flash,” I find myself looking forward to what sounds like a pretty straightforward crime story from Spurrier. It probably won’t be, but at least I won’t have to worry about how this story comports with being part of a larger superhero universe.