While New York Comic Con is open Thursday through Sunday to the public, every year the Jacob Javits Convention Center hosts a retailer summit on Wednesday open only to comics industry professionals. Last year’s Retailer Day was electric. Todd McFarlane went through the crowd asking questions like he was comics’ Maury Povich. Jim Lee gave a firebrand speech promising that AI had no place at DC Comics.
This year felt much more subdued. Maybe it’s the economy causing tighter marketing budgets and less promos to give away. Maybe it was the minimal sound system ReedPop employed for Crystal Palace today. Every call and response from a presenter found their call out DOA. “Who’s excited about Midnight??” Cue one guy clapping and…crickets. Yikes.
That said, there was still some good info to be had.
Marvel took the stage early. Starting with the Midnight line of books, cover artist names will appear on the UPC box of Marvel comics. By November 18, all Marvel books will have cover artist credits on the UPC box of the issue.
The Star Wars/Marvel 616 crossover is coming! John Paretti, Marvel’s Director of Product and Sales Planning described it as, “It’s fun, it’s exciting. You guys are going to sell a lot of copies of this.” Kevin Smith is writing it! Or is it Kevin Sith for this series? Marvel is offering retailers extra tiered discounts similar to Midnight based on the number of copies a retailer order. Hope Assembles is going to have at least 7 covers per issues, including a sick Darth Vader wearing the Infinity Gauntlet cover by Rafael Albuquerque.
The new Avengers series by Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto is meant to bring the Avengers back to being the focal point of the Marvel Universe. Paretti said, “Anything that Chip touches is a must read.” He also praised the upcoming Spider-Woman series by Dan Watters and Andrea Broccardo. They’re looking for this “to be an ongoing book for a lot of years,” according to Jim.
X-Orcists will team up Magik, Juggernaut, Madelyne Pryor, and other mystic based X-Men characters. Ashley Allen is continuing the story set up in her best selling Magik series here.
Maximum X-Men spins out of Avengers Armageddon. It’s written by Christopher Yost, with Tony Daniel on art, doing “some of the best work of his career.”
Iron Man is splitting off into two different arcs, shifting focus each issue. Tony will be the focus of one issue, and War Machine will be the focus of the next. The series will continue with this flip flop in focus each issue.
Alias and Bendis are back! Marvel is excited for this series, both for the return of Jessica Jones, and for Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos, the original creators of Alias, reuniting to tell new stories about the character.
Marvel says they are committed to keeping the Infernal Hulk collected editions in print as they lead up to Infernal War next year.
Speaking of collections, Marvel will be releasing more compact editions. The next four will focus on Spider-Man characters. Year one and year two of the recently ended various Ultimate Universe series will soon follow.
Marvel is launching a new collection program, Marvel Renown, as an attempt to keep some of their best stories of all time in print, some of which have been out of print for a long time. You can find the first ones in the January 2027 Previews.
Marvel Brick is Marvel’s answer to the compendiums released by Skybound collecting G.I. Joe and Transformers. They will be big compendiums printed on newsprint-like paper, collecting classic runs like Chris Claremont’s X-Men and Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. These look to be huge, lightweight volumes packed with material.
Marvel’s announcements was outshined only by the lunch provided by Lunar. I never experienced pasta served to me from inside a wheel of Parmesan cheese before. This might be the highlight of my NYCC.
Other publishers also presented at Retailer Day.
REBELLION
Rebellion is celebrating 50 years of 2000AD next year. “Can I get a hell yeah?” cried the Rebellion rep. Unfortunately, his call and response did about as well as the Midnight one from earlier. I still blame the sound system. Rebellion is dialed into 2000AD‘s 50th anniversary next year and will be having a series of tent pole releases in celebration of it. One appealing one is 2000AD 50: A Visual History, which will collect promo art, original art and other artwork from the past 50 years of the series.
In February, Rebellion will release 50 Years of Judge Dredd in two giant omnibuses. Judge Dredd Megazine hits issue #500 next year. It will be guest edited by the band Anthrax! It introduces Judge Anthrax!
Judge Dredd is also joining the compact comics market. It will consist of 20 volumes of Judge Dredd’s earliest adventures.
ABRAMS
Abrams Comic Art will release a big, slipcased collection of The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror. The collection is three volumes and glows in the dark.
A new Diary of a Wimpy Kid is coming! As is Abrams’ first X-Men YA novel.
The wildly successful John Byrne’s X-Men Elsewhen Volume 1 is heading back to print, with a new printing hitting stores two weeks from now.
BAD IDEA
The big news from Bad Idea was the It Demands Sacrifice vinyl read along edition out soon on 10/21. The cast for it looks stellar. David Dastmalchian! Seth Green! Krysten Ritter! Danny Elfman!
Coming next year from Bad Idea is PvP, a new series written by Robert Vendetti with the highest of high concepts. “If every single person on earth fought one-on-one until only one person remained, the winner would only need to win 33 fights in a row!” Oh boy.
Soon after this point, the awful sound system in the room had in room chatter drowning out Retailer Day presenters. I get the need to cut costs, but maybe using a few wee speakers in the cavernous Crystal Palace isn’t the best place to pinch pennies.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more news from NYCC ’26.
