The Comics of July 2025
The curse of Comic-Con strikes again, and then some — having a lack of wifi in my hotel room at SDCC this year (don’t ask; it was very frustrating) meant that I couldn’t read anything on Marvel Unlimited, DC Universe Infinite, or any other cloud-based reader for a full week, putting me slightly behind my reading totals of the past few months. Still, it’s not about how many comics, right? Right?
Anyway: I transitioned out of reading Fantastic Four before the movie came out — honestly, the movie hype might have overloaded me on the characters? — and opted in, instead, to revisiting some of Al Ewing’s Marvel stuff from the past few years and related stories, which is how I ended up both a Defenders and Guardians of the Galaxy rabbit hole at the end of the month… although what brought me to both Avengers vs. X-Men and Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus, I really couldn’t tell you.
Anyway: Here’s what I read comic-wise last month, delayed just a little because I wanted to complain about The Fantastic Four: First Steps first.
- Captain America (2025) #1
- All-New Venom #8
- Avengers (2023) #28
- The Immortal Thor #25
- Empyre #s 1-2
- Fantastic Four (2018) #21
- Iron Man (1968) #226
- Captain America (1998) #13
- Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes II #3
- Green Lantern Corps (2006) #2
- Iron Man (1968) #s 227-231
- Empyre #3
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #s 284-285
- Captain America (1998) #s 14-15
- Iron Man (1968) #232
- Empyre #s 4-5
- Fantastic Four (2018) #s 22-23
- Empyre #6
- Empyre Aftermath: Avengers #1
- Empyre Aftermath: Fantastic Four #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #286
- The Ultimates (2024) #13
- Fantastic Four (2018) #24
- Captain America (1998) #s 16-18
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #287
- Iron Man (1968) #233
- Avengers (1963) #120
- Captain America (1998) #19
- Defenders (1972) #13
- Green Lantern Corps (2006) #3
- Eternals (2006) #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #288
- Transformers (2023) #s 19-22
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #289
- Captain America (1998) #s 20-22
- Fantastic Four (2018) #25
- Iron Man (1968) #234
- Avengers (1963) #121
- 2000 AD Prog 2441
- Archie Meets Jay and Silent Bob #1
- The Power Fantasy #10
- X-Men (2024) #19
- X-Men: Hellfire Vigil #1
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #7
- Where Monsters Lie #1
- Blood Squad Seven #1
- DC All In Special #1
- Challengers of the Unknown (2024) #s 1-5
- The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1
- Lucas Wars OGN
- Drome OGN
- Fantastic Four (2018) #26
- Avengers (1963) #122
- Captain America (1998) #23
- Captain America (2017) #695
- The Question: All Along The Watchtower #s 2-3
- Marvel Fanfare #7
- Where Monsters Lie #s 2-3
- Local Man #1
- The Question: All Along The Watchtower #s 4-6
- Iron Man (1968) #s 235-236
- Defenders (1972) #13
- Avengers (1963) #123
- Where Monsters Lie #4
- Fantastic Four (2018) #s 27-28
- Captain America (2017) #696
- Justice League: The Atom Project #1
- Action Comics #1064
- Superman (2023) #13
- Void Rivals #s 7-12
- Star Trek (2022) #19
- Thundercats (2024) #1
- Avengers (1963) #124
- Captain Marvel (1968) #s 25-27
- Captain America (2017) #697
- Fantastic Four (2018) #s 29-30
- Fantastic Four: 4 Yancy Street #1
- Fantastic Four (2018) #31
- X-Men/Fantastic Four (2020) #s 1-2
- Fantastic Four: Prodigal Son #1
- Fantastic Four: Marvels Snapshots #1
- X-Men: Marvels Snapshots #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes Annual (1982) #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #290
- Fantastic Four (2025) #1
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps #1
- It’s Jeff: Infinity Paws #1
- X-Men/Fantastic Four (2020) #s 3-4
- Fantastic Four (2018) #32
- Captain America (2017) #698
- Superman: House of Brainiac Special #1
- Action Comics #1065
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #291
- Void Rivals #s 13-18
- Captain Marvel (1968) #s 28-33
- Avengers (1963) #125
- Captain America (2017) #s 699-700
- Iron Man (1968) #237
- Fantastic Four (2018) #33
- Defenders (1972) #14
- Marvel Legacy #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #s 292-293
- Superman (2023) #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #294
- Superman (2023) #2
- Fantastic Four (2018) #34
- Iron Man (1968) #238
- Superman (2023) #s 3-4
- Captain America (2017) #s 701-704
- Iron Man (1968) #s 239-240
- Steelworks #s 1-6
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #295
- Green Lantern Corps (2006) #s 4-6
- Avengers (1963) #126
- Defenders (1972) #15
- Avengers (2016) #675
- Uncanny Avengers (2015) #s 26-27
- The Spectre (1992) #54
- Final Crisis: Resist #1
- Avengers (1963) #127
- Fantastic Four (1961) #150
- Uncanny Avengers (2015) #s 28-30
- Avengers (2016) #676
- Iron Man (1968) #241
- Fantastic Four (2018) #35
- Avengers (2016) #677
- Iron Man (1968) #242
- Avengers (1963) #128
- Defenders (1972) #16
- Superman (2023) #5
- Superman Annual (2023) #1
- Iron Man (1968) #s 243-244
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #s 296-297
- Avengers (2016) #678
- Fantastic Four (2018) #36
- Avengers (1963) #129
- Iron Man (1968) #245
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #s 298-299
- Giant-Size Avengers #2
- Avengers (1963) #130
- Avengers (2016) #679
- Marvel Swimsuit Special: Friends, Foes & Rivals #1
- Fantastic Four (2018) #37
- Iron Man (1968) #246
- Fantastic Four (2018) #38
- Avengers (2016) #680
- Iron Man (1968) #s 247-248
- Avengers (1963) #131
- Void Rivals #19
- G.I. Joe (2024) #9
- Avengers (2016) #s 681-684
- Contagion (2019) #s 1-5
- Iron Man (1968) #s 249-250
- Fantastic Four (2018) #39
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #300
- Fantastic Four: Reckoning War Alpha #1
- Avengers (2016) #685
- Iron Man (1968) #s 251-253
- Avengers (2016) #686
- Superman (2023) #6
- Fantastic Four (2018) #40
- Iron Man (1968) #s 254-257
- Avengers (1963) #132
- Giant-Size Avengers #3
- Avengers (2016) #687
- Superman (2023) #7
- Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1
- Avengers (2016) #688
- Fantastic Four (2018) #41
- Fantastic Four: Trial of the Watcher #1
- Avengers (2016) #s 689-690
- Quicksilver: No Surrender #s 1-5
- Avengers: No Road Home #1
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #301
- Beyond! #1
- Fantastic Four (1998) #544
- Inhumans Prime #1
- Absolute Green Lantern #1
- Beyond! #s 2-6
- Fantastic Four (1998) #s 545-546
- Absolute Green Lantern #s 2-3
- Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #s 2-3
- Superman (2023) #s 8-9
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #302
- Fantastic Four (2018) #42
- Avengers: No Road Home #2
- Iron Man (1968) #s 258-260
- Superman (2023) #10
- Fantastic Four (2018) #s 43-46
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #303
- The Legion of Super-Heroes Annual (1982) #2
- Marvel Comics #1000
- Defenders (2021) #s 1-3
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #304
- Iron Man (1968) #261
- Fantastic Four (1998) #547
- Avengers: No Road Home #s 3-4
- Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #1
- Supergirl (2025) #3
- Batman & Robin: Year One #9
- Superman (2023) #28
- New History of the DC Universe #2
- Justice League Unlimited (2024) #9
- Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special #1
- JSA (2024) #s 9-10
- Batman (2025) #1
- Absolute Green Lantern #s 4-5
- Superman Unlimited #3
- Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #41
- Titans (2023) #25
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #s 305-306
- Imperial #2
- Metamorpho: The Element Man (2024) #s 1-2
- Superman (2023) #11
- The New Adventures of Superboy #50
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #307
- Iron Man (1968) #s 262-263
- Defenders (2021) #s 4-5
- Defenders (2011) #1
- Fantastic Four Fanfare #3
- The Insurgent Iron Man #10
- The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #308
- Defenders (2011) #s 2-3
- Iron Man (1968) #264
- Metamorpho: The Element Man (2024) #3
- Letter 44 #1
- Free Comic Book Day 2022: Avengers/X-Men #1
- Godzilla Destroys the Marvel Universe #1
- AXE: Judgement Day #s 1-6
- AXE: Avengers #1
- AXE: X-Men #1
- AXE: Eternals #1
- The Brave and the Bold #200
- Batman and the Outsiders (1982) #1
- Roxy: Romance Reborn #1
- Letter 44 #s 2-7
- Avengers (1963) #133
- Avengers: No Road Home #5
- Defenders (2011) #4
- Fantastic Four (1998) #548
- Royals #1
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2020) #1
- Annihilation: Scourge Alpha #1
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2019) #1
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #1
- Demon Knights #1
- Superman (2023) #12
- Action Comics #1065
- Superman (2023) #s 14-15
- Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Sixteen #1
- Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #8
- GODS: One World Under Doom #1
- Uncanny X-Men (2024) #18
- West Coast Avengers (2024) #9
- Assorted Crisis Events #5
- Ultimates (2024) #14
- Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) #19
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #2
- Royals #2
- Defenders (2011) #5
- Demon Knights #2
- Incredible Hulk vs. Quasimodo #1
- Secret Six (2025) #s 5-6
- Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #38
- Justice League Unlimited (2024) #6
- Royals #s 3-4
- Archie: The Decision #1
- Duke (2023) #s 1-4
- Royals #s 5-6
- Defenders (2011) #6
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #3
- Avengers vs. X-Men #0
- Batman (2025) #2
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #s 4-9
- Iron Man (2012) #1
- Avengers vs. X-Men #1
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #10
- Defenders (2011) #7
- Royals #7
- Fantastic Four (1998) #549
- Fear Itself #1
- Avengers vs. X-Men #1.5
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #11
- Royals #8
- Duke (2023) #5
- Cobra Commander #s 1-2
- Avengers vs. X-Men #2
- Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus #1
- Batman/Superman: World’s Finest Annual #1
- Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #39
- Justice League Unlimited (2024) #s 7-8
- Avengers vs. X-Men #s 3-4
- Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus #2
- Avengers vs. X-Men #5
- Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus #3
- Avengers vs. X-Men #6
- Superman (2023) #16
- Cobra Commander #s 3-4
- Defenders (2011) #8
- All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #12
- Avengers vs. X-Men #s 7-9
- Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus #s 4-5
- Avengers vs. X-Men #s 10-12
- Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus #6
Cynicism in the Face of Adversity
So, I finally saw The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a movie that might have done better in its opening weekend if Marvel hadn’t opened it at exactly the same time as San Diego Comic-Con, where roughly 160,000 of its target demographic were too busy to go find a movie theater anywhere closeby. I was at more than one Marvel panel that weekend where someone on stage would ask, “Hey, who’s seen Fantastic Four? Oh, huh, less than half the room,” as if it was a surprise. Sometimes, I think people forget that there’s a limit to pop culture obsession even for people spending thousands of dollars on a convention weekend away.
Anyway, First Steps was… fine, I guess? I couldn’t help but feel as if it had the bad luck to open two weeks after Superman, a movie that was far more charming, coherent, and successful at convincing the audience that it was hopeful and optimistic and sincere — in a world where this had been the first superhero movie anyone had seen after, say, Thunderbolts or Deadpool and Wolverine, I’m sure it would’ve played differently for a lot of people, me included.
There’s one line in the movie that hit such a sour note that it’s still in my head days later: Reed Richards explaining how hard it is to be him by saying that his genius allows him to identify threats and work out “ways to hurt them before they hurt us.” I heard that and I just thought, nope, that’s not a hero, that’s the entire basis of this being a more optimistic story/world down the drain. It was one line that immediately made everything surrounding it feel more cynical and cold, and also made me feel somewhat sad about the movie and everyone involved in its creation: This is what a selfless, old-school hero looks like to you? This is what you got from all the Reed Richards in all the comics? Really?
What I love about the best Fantastic Four comics is the sense of adventure, discovery, and potential that’s on display — and, honestly, there’s little of that on display in the actual movie, with what’s there basically being a surface-level step back from outright cynicism and a muddy aesthetic. Superman made me believe in Superman; The Fantastic Four: First Steps made me believe that Marvel Studios is going to work out how to keep being Marvel Studios no matter the project.
You Know You’re Gonna Lose More Than You Found
Situation: Tired, Probably
I didn’t get to do my traditional, “by the time you’re reading this, I’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con” post this year, mostly because I was busy writing other things and then suddenly it was San Diego Comic-Con and what can be done? I’m still writing this before the show, but literally, just before the show; I got too distracted with work and life to properly plan out blog posts ahead of time for most of July because… well, San Diego Comic-Con requires a lot of planning ahead of time. It’ll just run as I’m traveling back this year, is all.
My relationship with the show changes every year; the longer I’m in the job I’m in, the bigger SDCC becomes in terms of time real estate. By the time the show actually started (starts; I’m writing early, remember?), I’ll have been working on it for weeks, thinking about not just my schedule but all the Popverse writers attending, and sending out emails and messages about whether or not we can get into this panel or that press room, or if embargo X is really intended for time Y, or if we can go with it as soon as it’s mentioned in the room, or some such. What was once just “a convention” becomes a game of intellectual Tetris, trying to make all the pieces fit together without losing sight of the bigger picture.
I also find that the show itself becomes less and less… not important, per se, but central, if that makes sense…? My memories are of the friends I see every year, and of the surrounding areas of the show — the spaces you walk through to get there and back each day. I could walk you through the San Diego Convention Center blindfolded by this point — I’ve been going to SDCC for something like 20 years! — but the actual convention feels like an afterthought more and more with every year. It’s just a job, in a different place, and at a different pace from the rest of the year.
If you’d told me that back when I first attended and felt overwhelmed by it all — even the idea of it all — I wouldn’t have believed you. But then, if you’d told me that I’d have done San Diego Comic-Con for twenty years, I wouldn’t have believed that, either.
Looks Like We’ve Made It To The
Watching Blur: To The End the other day — a documentary about the last reunion of the band, which is ostensibly about their recording the Ballad of Darren album and then playing Wembley Stadium, but is really a messy, half-formed movie about the band’s relationship with each other now that they’re actually feeling older — I was struck by Damon Albarn saying something along the lines of, there was a point where I realized I don’t have that long left before I die, and pinning that to being 55 years old. I had this immediate bifurcated response of, wait, is Damon Albarn only five years older than me? and I don’t feel like that at all, even though I feel old.
Thinking about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever really had a sense of my own mortality, really. That’s not to say that I think I’m invincible or irrationally immortal, simply that I don’t really think about death so much. When I cast my mind back to my childhood and think about my parents, I realize the same was true about them, at least from my point of view — they didn’t act as if they were especially concerned about death being around the corner, at least to a point of wanting to actually do something about it. (Not only were their diets terrible, but both were heavy smokers and my father a functional alcoholic.) My grandmother, too, the one that lived with us when I was a kid, she did seem immortal to me as grandparents do when you’re a child. There was a sense that she’d live forever, in large part because that was how she acted, even after she had a stroke.
I turned 50 years old last year and felt immediately weighed down by the prospect of being old, but that was an abstract concern of “Now I will ache and be brittle more” than any true thoughts of my time on this earth being slipping away with every breath. Perhaps it’s a problem with my (admittedly flawed) sense of forward planning; I simply can’t imagine the idea of getting so old and then dying. That feels impossible to me, for some inexplicable reason; my brain short-circuits: Do people still do that? it asks, and then moves on to another subject.
Objectively, I know that the odds of me living to be 100 years old are, shall we say, unlikely, and yet… I still feel as mortal as I did at 30, if not younger. Maybe that’ll change in the next handful of years. Perhaps by the time I’m 55.
Albarn is actually seven years older than me, but given the production schedule of the movie, it makes sense he would’ve been around 55 or 56 when it was being shot. Just in case you’re wondering. Yes, I looked it up after.
Keep Me Moving, Take Me Somewhere
There Are No
There are some sensations that escape language entirely, which is both a welcome and frustrating realization for a professional writer to come to.
Case in point: I’m sitting here with the window open behind me, listening to the sound of the wind as it comes through the trees, hearing it come in waves towards the house from the furthest trees to the ones right immediately behind, and then the wind pushes through the open window and I feel it surround me. Everything goes cool for an instant, and feels at once entirely still and in motion, and then falls away again.
But that’s just a description of the cause and effect, of the facts of the matter; it’s not a description of how it feels physically, or the feelings it evokes internally; I can’t come to anything approaching a way to helping myself share that in any kind of meaningful way without hand gestures, hyperbole and metaphor, and saying things like, you know what I mean, right? on a worryingly regular basis. The experience above is something that can’t be summed up in words, when it’s happening. You had to be there, as the saying goes.
I’m coming to appreciate that a lot more lately. Not just the experience that has to be experienced, although that ideally goes without saying; I mean the shortcoming of language, though, the sense of coming up against a brick wall in my own abilities to write it down and make it understandable to other people in any meaningful way. I read Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living when I was on my trip to the Bay Area, and couldn’t escape the feeling that she’d written an entire book trying to say things that couldn’t be put into words and failing in the most successful, most beautiful way possible.
It’s good that we can’t translate everything into easily digestible language. It’s good that more talented people than I keep trying, anyway.
I’ve Read It In Books
I realized, upon seeing the little kid looking around with no small sense of wonder in the bookstore at the SFMOMA, that bookshops have always been oddly safe spaces for me.
I’m not sure that I could claim that I’ve always been a reader, per se; I can remember a teacher at high school pulling me aside at the end of a class to tell me, essentially, that I was too smart for the books I was choosing to read in class and that I needed to challenge myself or else I’d lose the joy of reading for good. But despite that, I always found myself drawn to bookshops at whatever age. There was something comforting about being surrounded by so many books no matter the size of the store, and I’d always go in with the hope of finding something that appealed to my tastes, whatever they may have been in the moment.
More than that, I have always found myself drawn to bookstores as places to kill time, to hang out and just… be. I can remember hours spent in bookshops when I was a teenager, just aimlessly pushing around books on the shelves, hoping to uncover a new favorite based on title, cover, or back blurb alone. (Ideally all three; it’s how I found Jonathan Carroll’s After Silence, which sported a great Dave McKean cover back in… 1991? Something like that, the era when a Dave McKean cover felt like a statement.) Bookshops felt like spaces where you weren’t just invited in, you were invited in to stay awhile. It felt like part of an unspoken, implicit promise from their very existence.
When I first moved to the States, finding a good bookstore was on top of my to-do list, only to discover I lived just a couple minutes walk from a truly great one, Green Apple. (Maybe the first time I’d gotten to visit a genuinely amazing bookshop.) The same when I moved to Portland, and again, there was a Powell’s branch within walking distance from my house. Sometimes I wonder if I’d have been so happy, so ready to settle, if that hadn’t been the case.
All of this came to mind as I watched this small kid navigate the shelves of the SFMOMA store, his eyes wide as he reached for countless books. He gets it, I thought to myself with something approaching pride. He’ll have a life of bookshops if he’s lucky.
