American comics aren’t dead yet. While sales are a fraction of what they were in the medium’s early ’90s heyday, there’s still a lot to read every week in your friendly local comics shop. Here are 10 of the potentially best and most promising comics to look forward to in July 2023, presented in alphabetical order.
The Best and Most Promising Comics to Watch in July 2023
Daredevil #13 – Marvel Comics, July 5
I’m going to be legitimately disappointed to see this run end. Daredevil, for some reason, has been one of the most reliably great books at Marvel for the last 25 years or so, and Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s run has largely continued that tradition.
Issue #13 is the penultimate issue of Zdarsky’s story, and I have no idea how it’s going to end. Where do you go once your mainstream superhero has faked his own death to start his own explicitly anti-capitalist, redemption-focused ninja clan? Is there somewhere else to go from there?
Zdarsky’s done some weird, worthwhile work here, and I’m sad to see it reach a conclusion. Saladin Ahmed’s supposed to pick up from here in September, and I don’t know how that’s going to work.
Fantastic Four #9 – Marvel Comics, July 5
This is, for whatever reason, one of Marvel’s best-kept secrets at the moment. Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) has run the latest volume of Fantastic Four as a back-to-basics series of one- and two-issue road stories. It’s a book full of strange mysteries in small towns, which works better than it has any right to.
FF #9 is the second part of a two-issue arc, which involves a good old-fashioned mind control fight. It’s not the best jumping-on point, but North’s FF deserves more attention than it’s getting. This is just nice, clean sci-fi comics, with minimal capes and costumes.
The Great British Bump-Off #4 – Dark Horse Comics, July 12
You might know John Allison from his webcomics like Bad Machinery or Scary Go Round, but he’s branched out into straight-up comics recently. Giant Days, a college-set comedy that ran from 2015 to 2019 at Boom! Studios (and is getting a second “Library Edition” hardcover in July), was a consistent highlight of my week.
As the title suggests, The Great British Bump-Off is half-parody of British cooking shows, half-murder mystery, all humor, which re-teams Allison with his Giant Days collaborator Max Sarin. Bad Machinery’s Shauna Wickle has gotten onto a cake-makers’ competition, but they’re barely past the cast photo when one of the other contestants gets poisoned. Naturally, “experienced mystery-solver” Shauna leaps into the breach.
Grim #11 – Boom! Studios, July 5
Stephanie Phillips and Flaviano Armentaro’s Grim went on hiatus back in April, and of course, it did so on a couple of different cliffhangers. It’s picking back up in July just in time for its whole story to go crazy.
This is one of those books that’s gotten far enough away from its starting point that it’s difficult to explain what happens here without spoilers. Grim is about the Reapers, a bureaucracy that picks up the souls of the dead and ferries them to their place of judgment, in a particularly mundane vision of the afterlife. Jessica Harrow, one of those Reapers, has ended up in a situation where she’s in a place to disrupt the entire system.
The big reason to pick up Grim at this point, and to get caught up with it, is Flaviano Armentaro’s artwork. He’s been circling around Marvel and DC B-tier books for a while, as well as one issue of Al Ewing’s We Only Find Them When They’re Dead, but Armentaro is styling all over Grim. It’s the kind of sequential art that people end up studying, from the mundane to the metaphorical.
Indigo Children #5 – Image Comics, July 26
I like weird heist/caper movies, and that’s what Indigo Children’s turned into. Five children from across the world claimed to be the reincarnations of dead Martians, with the supernatural powers to match, and the world reacted by brainwashing them into normalcy. Now that brainwashing’s been broken, and things are going spectacularly wrong.
Sure, you’ve probably heard stories like this before, but Indigo Children’s got some humor and heart to it, as well as solid pacing. It’s also a solid example of a modern comics story that isn’t content with the idea of superheroes as agents of the status quo; here, the “indigos” are actively engaged in that status quo’s destruction, but it’s fighting back as hard as it can.
Nocterra: Nemesis Special #1 – Image Comics, July 19
Tony Daniel’s made a name for himself with smooth, hyperkinetic action art for various DC books in the last decade. Nocterra saw him switch over to horror, illustrating a story by Scott Snyder.
Years after a strange event that covered Earth in permanent shadow, Valentina Riggs ekes out a living driving a transport truck through the darkness between settlements — and the monsters that live there. If it was about anything else, I’d call Nocterra up till now a hell of a ride, but that sort of pun is beneath me.
Nocterra is wrapping up its 16-issue run in early August, but between then and now, it’s getting a bonus chapter with Liam Sharp (2000 AD) stepping in for Daniel. The description’s typically vague, but this may be the book where Snyder actually explains what’s going on.
Superman: Lost #5 – DC Comics, July 11
Many of DC’s ongoing titles are switching over to one-shots in July and August as part of the Knight Terrors event. That gives some of DC’s most reliable books at the moment, like Nightwing and Action Comics, the summer off.
Christopher Priest’s Superman: Lost miniseries, on the other hand, will continue as per normal. If you’re a fan of stories where Superman can’t simply punch all his problems into submission, Lost is for you. It’s a fish-out-of-water story as Superman, marooned light years from Earth in the aftermath of a Justice League adventure gone wrong, deals with strange technology, space dolphins, and unhelpful aliens in an attempt to find his way home.
It’s got issues with Priest’s usual pacing (why tell a story in a straightforward way when it could involve six flashbacks and still get told out of order?), but if Priest sticks the landing, it could be one of the best Superman stories at a point in time that’s actually been pretty good for Superman.
Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1 – DC Comics, July 25
Most of my favorite books out of DC for the last couple of years have been on its relatively new Black Label imprint, which is continuity-light and not necessarily aimed at an all-ages audience. Now Mark Waid, one of the great living Superman writers, has a Black Label book.
He’s teaming up with Bryan Hitch to tell a story about an attempt by Superman to save Lex Luthor’s life. Why would Superman bother with that? Well, he’s Superman, so of course he would. But it’s likely going to be more complicated than that, and I trust Waid to make the answer interesting.
This Ends Tonight #1 – Image Comics, July 26
I’m throwing this on here out of pure curiosity. Announced back in April, this teams Gerry Duggan (the current writer on X-Men) with Jae Lee, one of the most evocative artists working right now, for “interconnected stories of violence and mayhem in Las Vegas.”
It’s probably going to be a three-issue fight scene, but it’ll be a beautiful three-issue fight scene — so it’s got my attention.
X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 – Marvel Comics, July 26
This is reportedly the focus point of the next big X-Men storyline, Fall of X, which could bring an end to this weird, expansive period in the series’s history. Previous issues of the Hellfire Gala one-shot have seen the announcement that mutants have colonized Mars, that Mary Jane Watson was being mind-controlled by a cyborg freak, new lineups for the core X-Men team, and other earth-shaking revelations.
This issue will start the story in earnest, which will lead to several new books’ launch, a sustained offensive by the antagonistic group Orchis, and a truly confusing period of time in which the best Spider-Man comic on the stands might be the one where Kurt Wagner is wearing his suit for no adequately explored reason. Sometimes I don’t understand Marvel.
More importantly, the Hellfire Gala is an excuse for Marvel’s costume designers to go hog wild for a few months, with new costumes that range from the ridiculous to sublime. I’m on the team that’s hoping that Fall of X isn’t a final end to the X-Men’s Krakoa era, which has seen some of the best X-Men comics in decades, but whether it is or not, the Hellfire Gala is a tradition that’s worth keeping. More superhero comics should be about putting the characters in really goofy suits for an issue.
Those are our picks for the potentially best and most promising comics of July 2023. Let us know what else you’re looking forward to.
