Dark Horse Penguin Picks: July 2026
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Resident Alien vol. 9: The Book of Changes
Alien Harry Vanderspiegel has been through a lot since settling in the town of Patience and assuming the identity of its resident doctor. Now he’s retired, in a relationship with a human woman, who he has had a hybrid child with. It’s that last bit that has caused him to contact his people to ask for some assistance and vol. 8 ended with them arriving on Earth.
While I’d be fine with writer Peter Hogan and artist Steve Parkhouse continuing to tell stories about Harry’s Earthbound life and the various crimes he winds up solving along the way, this is going to be the final volume of the series. Which is good because it means they’re getting to end this series on their own terms. I’m also happy to report that this volume collects the one-shot “One More For The Road” which serves as the series’ ending because for a minute it didn’t look like that was going to happen. So expect me to wax poetic about “Resident Alien’s” low-key charms in a forthcoming podcast where I also express my (expected) satisfaction with how they managed to stick the landing at the end.
(By the way, see if you can guess which entry below I was going to put in this slot before I remembered that this volume was being solicited here.)
Giant Robot Hellboy Returns #1 (of 2): I would think this is pretty self-explanatory. Anyway, I’m glad writer Mike Mignola and artist Duncan Fegredo are delivering this two-issue follow up. That will put the “Giant Robot Hellboy” sub-series at five issues total, which is an acceptable length for a collected edition.
Three Worlds Three Moons: Foundations #1: A war has been fought in a distant solar system between the forces of science and magic, one which astronaut Tajo Vallar winds up reigniting when he travels to an ancient moon. This one-shot is the introduction to the shared universe from creators Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer, Mike Del Mundo, and Mike Huddleston (and a lot of their friends) and is preceding the sourcebooks that Dark Horse will be publishing later this year. Longtime readers will know that I’m absolutely in the tank for anything Hickman does. This may be where I draw the line because I’m not sure I want to pay $7 for a 32-page issue, even if it is magazine-sized. Still, I might bite the bullet at some point if it becomes clear that this is the ONLY format this one-shot will be issued in.
Dungeons & Dragons: Total Party Killers #1 (of 4): A werewolf, gelatinous cube, mind flayer, death knight, and baby beholder were beholden to the wizard Custos while he was alive. Unfortunately for them, they find out that’s still true after his death when they’re forced to protect his lair from any adventuring party that would raid it. Which is why they’re teaming up to find a way to get some unsuspecting adventurer to release them from their curse. It’s a nice setup, but what caught my eye is that this being written by Christopher Hastings of “The Adventures of Doctor McNinja” fame. So the hope is that this setup will be as nutty as anything seen in that series. Which will also lead to Dark Horse publishing the final collection of online “Doctor McNinja” strips, right?
Witness Point #1 (of 4): Barbaroo, Wisconsin, may be the home to the Ringling Brothers Circus, but it’s just your average midwestern city aside from that. Until it’s revealed that the town is also the Witness Protection Program’s city of choice for putting former criminals into a new life. Now everyone in town is wondering what kind of person their neighbor is – and that’s BEFORE a federal marshal turns up with his head cut off. This comes to us from co-writers Heath Corson and Nathan Fillion, and artist Soo Lee. Corson and Lee are both veterans of “Minor Threats” with the latter having illustrated the Bendis-written issue of “Welcome to Twilight” and the former having written “The Brood,” which was only undone by being a five-issue miniseries that had to cram itself into four issues. As for Fillion, I shouldn’t need to explain who he is, but I hope his name gets a few more people to check out what sounds like a fun and twisted crime story.
Kingdom of Earth #1 (of 4): In 2034, monsters rose from the sea and devoured most of mankind before they realized that some humans were still needed. Two years later and now the only future for humans is one where they either serve the monsters, or are slaughtered by them. Sounds grim. This comes from co-writers David Dastmalchian and Leah Kilpatrick, and the suddenly prolific Soo Lee. I don’t think this sounds bad, but the only thing I’ve genuinely enjoyed from Dastmalchian has been “Count Crowley” as his “Creature Commandos” and “Knights Versus Samurai” both disappointed. Maybe I’ll pick this up when it’s collected, or more likely I’ll keep waiting for him to do another volume of “Count Crowley” and deal with the cliffhanger he left us.
Grendel: Devil’s Crucible – Sedition #1 (of 4): The second of three planned miniseries for this cycle of “Grendel” stories. The first saw Grendel Prime return to Earth after the events of “Devil’s Odyssey” only to find that the Earth had been overrun by (wait for it) vampires! After joining up with the resistance, Prime has a chance to bring back one of the vampires greatest foes: Former Grendel Christine Spar. I found that there was a lot of “WHY?” in the previous miniseries as creator Matt Wagner seemed more content to look back than forward with his signature series. Maybe this second volume will show that he’s going to take this storyline somewhere unexpected. Or maybe he’ll just have Christine slaughter a lot of vampires because he thinks it’ll be cool.
Miss Truesdale and the Rise of Man: Secretary Miss Truesdale turned barbarian warrior Anum Yassa in a land before time seeks to learn more about her past lives. This is the second Mike Mignola-written and Jesse Longergan-illustrated miniseries to feature the character. I skipped the first one after it got the hardcover-first treatment, as this volume is also getting. As I do like Mignola’s writing, I checked to see if the first volume had gone down in price at all on Amazon. To my surprise, it hadn’t at all in the two years since it was published. Oh well. Guess I’ll wait and see if Mignola and Lonergan do a third miniseries and if that gets an omnibus collection in a few years time.
The Goon: Bunch of Old Crap Omnibus vol. 6: Collecting a chunk of “The Goon” comics published after I decided to stop reading the series. Which means that if I wanted to see if Eric Powell’s signature title got its groove back once I stopped looking, this would be the place to start. Hmmmmm… watch this space, I guess.
Minor Threats vol. 3: The Last Devil Left Alive: Frankie “Playtime” Follis has hit rock bottom after the events of vol. 2. Her mom is dead. She’s estranged from the rest of her family. The secret deal she cut with the Continuum has been exposed. And her former comrades now want her dead. It’s because of these that she’s been off of Twilight City’s grid for the past few years. Until now. Frankie has found out about a secret that’s threatening the entire city and she’s recruiting as many old friends and foes in order to deal with it. The problem is that she has way more of the latter than the former these days, which means there’s a not insignificant chance she won’t have to worry about this threat because she’ll already be dead.
Vol. 1 was great, vol. 2 was something of a letdown, and the spinoff miniseries were definitely a mixed bag. I don’t know if vol. 3 represents the end of co-writers/creators Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum and artist Scott Hepburn’s superhero pastiche universe, but the solicitation certainly sounds final. If nothing else, “The Last Devil Left Alive” represents a chance to send the series out on a high note by getting back to its D-list superheroes working together to solve a problem origin. Could it even wind up being good enough to leave me wanting more? We shall see.
Appleseed Omnibus HC: Collecting the four volumes of Masamune Shirow’s other sci-fi opus, a series he described as his life’s work before “Ghost in the Shell” became an all-encompassing multimedia phenomenon. I know this series has its fans, and Shirow’s art and design sense are always impressive to behold, but it’s also a very dense, complicated series that doesn’t care about leaving the reader behind as it tries to determine why humanity still matters in its post-cataclysm setting. I own the unflipped second editions that Dark Horse published a while back and while I’m sure this is going to be a handsome hardcover, it’s also going to be incomplete as it leaves out the “Hypernotes” volume that was published at a later date. Still, if you’re a fan of the creator who has never read this, you should check it out even at the $70 for 848-page price point to experience what Shirow has called his (unfinished) life’s work.