Hi Comic Shop Friends! It’s another small-ish week, so we’re having a quiet start to the year at the shop, which is a nice break after a busy December.

A couple of things coming up:

Late Nite Comics is back! Thursday, January 18th from 8pm to midnight we’ll be pulling out dollar boxes, and those books will only be 50 cents each! Grab some deals and fill up your collection! You can’t beat 50 cent books!e

We have a temporary setup until the new back issue bins are built, but dollar books are out in their new home!

There are still a few action figures left, but that’s it, since we won’t be carrying action figures anymore. We will still carry statues, and Ben just did a reorder on those to fill the case back up!

Ben is also co-hosting with Lenora at the Midnight Rental Secret Screening at the Grog Shop on Wednesday January 10th! Doors at 7 for an hour of vintage trailers and commercials, then the secret film starts at 8pm. Lenora finally got me with one I hadn’t seen last month with Santa’s Slay starring Goldberg! Can she do it again? Can I resist the urge to buy more stuff from her merch table? (Spoiler alert, probably not.)

MARVEL COMICS

The first of Marvel’s Giant-Size one-shots releasing through the first half of the year, writer Cody Ziglar and artist Iban Coello team-up Miles Morales and Venom in Giant-Size Spider-Man! Or is it Venom versus Spider-Man? While doing some detective work with Misty Knight, Miles runs into Venom, who also wants to stop Black Obsidian from using Rabble’s weapons. Setting up some things to come in Gang War and Miles Morales: Spider-Man, and leading into legacy #300! Plus, this issue features a reprint of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #22 with the conclusion of Miles’ first battle with Ultimate Venom from Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli.

And after that, here’s the new Ultimate Spider-Man! The world needs a hero after the events of Ultimate Invasion, and Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s debut title of the new line of Ultimate Comics gives us a redefined Spider-Man! Peter Parker was supposed to be bitten by a radioactive spider twenty years ago, but The Maker prevented the event from happening. Peter married Mary Jane, had two kids, and a job at the Bugle, but he has always felt like he needed something else in his life. Now an opportunity has been given to him to change who he is, and to become the hero he was always meant to be.

DC COMICS

Jason Aaron! John Timms! Superman! Bizarro! Action Comics #1061 is Jason Aaron’s first-time writing Superman, and Aaron is presenting a new vision of Superman’s bizarrest foe. Bizarro doesn’t know why he’s on the planet of sorcerers, Zerox. He doesn’t remember why “He am so very happy!” But something is about to change, and Bizarro is about to become the most dangerous version of himself that Superman and the world has ever seen. And things in Metropolis are about to become pretty bizarre because of him.

SMALL PRESS COMICS

TRANSFORMERS #4! Ben and I read the pdf preview of issue #4 immediately after reading issue #3 last month, because we could! And we could not wait! Now you can all read it! It’s an Autobot and Decepticon showdown at the place “where they fix the squishy ones,” with casualties on all sides, and Optimus Prime has to make some difficult decisions.

The only thing that could make this comic better, would be this.

Matt Fraction and Terry and Rachel Dodson have a new two issue mini-series with the new Adventureman, Claire, and the new Crossdraw Kid, Chris, who have to defend their city from a phantom empire of crime! They’ll have some help from Claire’s sisters, but can they stop the literal underworld from crashing into theirs?