SPELUNKING THE SOLICITS June 2025

Doug Wood
2 minutes ago
4 min read

Spelunking the Solicits for Seven Books You Should Be Reading!

New month, new comics! Come with along with us as we do our best to find the most exciting titles being offered in your local comic shops. We hope these will excite you enough to search out further books being offered and most of all encourage you to consider pre-ordering.

You see, the reader can pop into any shop and pick up a comic book, no fuss no muss. But for maximum impact of the series health and for the benefit of the creators, pre-ordering the books would be the best. To best help creators, we will bring to you our individual top 5--top 10-- NO, our TOP 7 list of favorite announced books for the month. In hopes you too will join us in pre-ordering from your Local Comic Shop! (LCS)

Things are a little disjointed in comics ordering right now. There are three places one can order from: Lunar, Diamond Preview or Random Penguin. We include the catalog and the order codes to help you out. If any of these catches your fancy take the codes to your LCS and they will make sure you get set up!

DOUG's TOP 7 PICKS

Finally we are starting with the juice man, baby! I can't wait to gush all about these neat new stories coming our way!!!

Drome TPB (23rd St.) Order Code: JUN251471
a. Jesse Lonergan is one of the most exciting singular creators in comics to me. His story vision and the incredible way he plans with page layouts/design work is the stuff that gets me pumped about the medium. Cannot highly recommend his work enough.
Hulk Teach TPB (Marvel) Order Code: JUN251265

a. A few months ago I posted that Marvel needed to do something with Hulk for kids ala Dog Man. I even jokingly drew up a few pages of him as a student who gets angry. But Marvel had already figured it all out. Hulk Teach is exactly the book I am excited to give to my kids who want Hulk, but are not old enough for the Peter David run. I think this will be a big winner at school scholastic fairs.

Cemetery Kids Don't Run: Rabid #1 (Oni Press) Order Code: JUN251351
a. I really enjoyed the first run of Cemetery Kids Don't Die and I am ready for the DLC.
Graveyard Club TPB (Boom Studios/PRH) Order Code: JUN250803
a. I was a huge Goosebump fan as a kid, to the point that I was bribed to do well at sports or school or whatever with books from the series. I am really pumped RL Stine has been doing a bunch in the comics space the past few years and I am excited to give this a go.
A Quick & Easy Guide To Healthy Relationships TPB (Oni Press) Order Code: JUN251380
a. Sometimes you can benefit from learning how to make friends. It's never too late.
Venom Black and White and Blood #1 (Marvel) Order Code: JUN250340
a. Is this a reprint? If it is I am sorry the catalog was really strange with a ton of reprints. Was hard to parse at times. (if reprint please consider the new Ghost Spider for this slot) I just really like Venom and he was the first character that got me into a comic shop as a kid. Cool to see an anthology of all creators getting to do something fun with him.
Dusk #1 (Amp) Order Code: JUN251036
a. This is a wild card for me. I was drawn in by the cover which is really cool and the solicit has me just intrigued enough to knock some other titles off the list. I want to give this a shot! Hope you will too.

LUIS' TOP 7 PICKS

August is going to be a huge month for comics. While writing this, I initially had 25 different books including Immortal Legend Batman, Ghost Pepper, Speed Racer, Eat Your Young, and Cruel Universe 2 but I had to cut this down to just seven. It was so tough. Here’s a list of my Top 7 picks I’m excited for in no particular order.

Powers 25 #1 (Dark Horse) Order Code: 7615680144570011
a. The legendary team of Bendis and Oeming return to their fan-favorite comic. I never read the original run but I really loved the show. So I plan on picking this up.
Star Trek: Voyager-Homecoming #1 (IDW) Order Code: 82771403455400111
b. My favorite Star Trek series continues where the show left off. I’ve been hesitant to step in to Start Trek comics but this one will probably pull me in.
Valiant Beyond: Tales of the Shadowman #1 (Valiant/Alien Books) Order Code: 73238818124700111
c. A new jumping on point for the Valiant universe, based on the solicit copy Shadowman is a woman. I’m a huge Shadowman fan, my favorite run was the short lived Bunn/Davis-Hunt which was cut way too short.
Blink and You’ll Miss it #1 (Boom Studios) Order Code: 84428401280501011
d. From the writers of Kill Your Darlings and artist Keith Browning. This team of Griffin and Sheridan did an amazing book together. I’m hoping for an even more emotional comics journey.
Escape #1 (IMAGE) Order Code: 0625IM257
e. Remender and Acuña reunite after their Uncanny Avengers run for an Espionage tale with ~~furries~~ anthropomorphic animals.Remender is my all-time favorite comic writer and I loved the Uncanny Avengers run with Acuña so I’m guaranteed to add this to my pull list.
Ancestral Recall #1 (AHOY Comics) Order Code: 0625AH442
f. From Milestone Initiative Members Jordan Clark and Atagun Ilhan, come a story of getting powers from the most important Black figures of all-time as a superpower. I’ve heard this in media for a long time and now someone brought it to comics. “I call on the power of the ancestors.”
T.A.M.A. #1 (Panick Entertainment) Order Code: 0625MP562
g. A horror inspired by Tamogochis, NeoPets and Digimon. How many of us had one of these that we left to…run out of batteries. What if that pet came back for revenge. That’s the paraphrased plot of this comic from a publisher I’m not very familiar with.