Dark Horse Penguin Picks: April 2026
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Innocent: Rouge Omnibus vol. 2
I was legitimately glad to see the first “Innocent: Rouge” omnibus in these solicitations after the end of the original series. After reading it, I was successively thrilled, perplexed, and engaged at the further adventures of the Sanson family with Marie now centered as the protagonist, and Charles-Henri situated as an antagonistic force. They also represent the dueling sentiments of revolution and royalty swirling around pre-Revolution France and things are only going to get worse for the Monarchy as The Affair of the Necklace gets its due here. Oh, and Marie meets up with an old friend who wants to assassinate King Louis XVI.
That plot would have been a complete non-starter with Charles in the protagonist role, but with Marie? It’s possible she’ll agree just for shits and giggles. She’s all about freedom and breaking social norms to get it as her actions in the first omnibus made clear. Dazzlingly clear, in fact, with mangaka Shin’ichi Sakamoto’s art looking as incredible as it ever has, and certain to impress in this next omnibus. Will the story follow suit? As long as Sakamoto doesn’t take any further volume-length digressions from the main plot, I don’t see why we shouldn’t expect things to be even better this time around.
Frankenstein: New World – The Speed of Darkness #1 (of 4): New Mignolaverse miniseries from co-writers Christopher Golden and Thomas Sniegoski, and artist Peter Bergting. Frankenstein is being called to by Liz Sherman and now has the power of Vril to find her. Which he’ll hopefully be able to do before a parasitic entity plunges the world into an eternal darkness. I’ve been selective in determining what Mignolaverse miniseries I follow after they started putting all the new ones in hardcover collections. “Frankenstein” hasn’t made the cut, but this is the third such “New World” miniseries featuring the character. Which means that now there’s enough to fill an omnibus edition once this one is done. If the publisher was so inclined…
Groo: The Prophecy #1 (of 4): Groo and Rufferto have traveled across the ocean to find people who have never heard of him only to find that they’re actually journeying towards destruction. The oracle Sybilia has had visions of catastrophe visiting her village only for them to be thwarted by… Groo? That can’t be right, can it? It’d be a novel twist after all these decades for the title character to actually do some good for villagers, but my gut tells me that they’ll still wind up being worse off than before he came. Even with the approaching catastrophes that are not the Cheese Dip Wanderer. Mark Evanier writes and Sergio Aragones illustrates, as always.
Resident Alien vol. 10: One More For the Road (One-Shot): Seeing this almost gave me a heart attack. The final volume of “Resident Alien” will be a one-shot?! That doesn’t make any sense. How are they going to collect that? Fortunately a quick look at the Amazon listing for the next volume of the series “The Book of Changes” indicates that this issue will be collected there. Crisis averted. So all that’s left to see is if alien-in-hiding Harry Vanderspiegel’s time on Earth reaches a happy conclusion – or at least one more hopeful than the grim one this issue’s cover portends.
Devil On My Shoulder: She was tortured for forty days by five men and left for dead. Now she’s been empowered by a supernatural force and is out for revenge. This comes to us from the “Where Monsters Lie” creative team of writer Kyle Starks and artist Piotr Kowalski who delivered the horror/comedy goods with those two miniseries. Now it looks like they’re going to deliver something that’s more straight-up grindhouse horror, and… I’m honestly not sure. Starks’ last effort for the publisher, “Those Not Afraid,” didn’t work as a horror series or a dark comedy and I’m not sure if the answer to that was to go even darker. Maybe Kowalski’s influence will make this work, or I may wind up sticking to Funny Starks in the future.
The Last Voyage of Sinbad HC: The latest entry in the Richard Corben Library is the first to feature another creator’s name on the cover. Co-written with Jan Strnad, this has the title character drunkenly running afoul of an evil djinn and has him adventuring and battling against monsters and the living dead for his soul. A beautiful woman is also involved and it’s likely a safe bet that she’ll be mostly naked throughout. You’ll probably know what you’re getting into if you’ve been reading Dark Horse’s reprinting of Corben’s works up to this point. Of course, it’ll be interesting to see if Strnad’s influence as a writer makes the story more straightforward and involving, or conventionally bland.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken vol. 8: When we last saw the girls of Eizouken, they were in the middle of competing for a three million yen prize at an animation contest being judged by a group of industry veterans. The commentary from the veterans was… not exactly constructive, so now our heroines have to decide whether or not to stick to their guns or compromise in the hope of securing a huge windfall. I have a feeling we all know how this is going to turn out, but mangaka Sumito Oowara at least ended the previous volume with the indication that the judges have their own issues and aren’t going to remain hidebound traditionalists. That give me one more reason to look forward to vol. 8 when it arrives.