New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: DC Comics – April 24 2024

It’s the 16th new comic book day of the new year! This post covers DC Comics April 24 2024 releases, which actually hit comic stores on Tuesday April 23 2024. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering DC Comics April 17 2024 new releases.

(DC is still releasing their comics on Tuesday until the start of July, but I think most folks think of Wednesday as release day, so that’s how I’m labelling my posts until then – which means this is the DC Comics April 24 2024 New Releases post… for releases on April 23 ? )

This week in DC Comics: a hunk of Booster Gold, evergreen Zatanna, Spurrier’s Flash gets weirder, Green Arrow strikes a deal with Amanda Waller, Harley becomes a villainous consultant, Power Girl in the House of Brainiac, and more!

These DC New Releases posts will be a work in progress. I’m slow catching up to present on my DC reading, and some of my DC Guides are twice that far behind on updates. I thought it might be a good idea to do all my reading and updating before beginning this series of posts, but there’s no better way to catch up on all of that than diving deep into New Releases! Sometimes you’ve got to build the plane while you are flying it!

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from DC this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. I recap and review every new single issue. Plus, for every new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

DC Comics April 24 2024 Collected Editions

Booster Gold: The Complete Series, Book One
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1779527233 / digital)
This collects more than a year of the 2007 Geoff Johns Booster Gold series. The series ran for #47 issues – right up until Flashpoint – so we’ll need two more volumes to complete it.

The Flash Vol. 20: Time Heist
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1779525017 / digital)
See Guide to Flash. DC loves to really make fans wait for their trade paperbacks, so this is the final collection of the 2016 Flash ongoing that concluded a full year ago! There’s no need to backtrack for this if you want to jump onto the current Flash run.

The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing Vol. 2
(2024 hardcover, ISBN 978-1779524928 / digital)
After bouncing around on a couple of DC properties, it seems that Matt Rosenberg has shown a real knack for the underbelly of Gotham. I haven’t caught up to this Joker series that concluded at the end of 2023 yet, but I absolutely loved Rosenberg’s back-ups in Detective Comics so I’m excited to catch up on this. If you prefer a paperback, DC releases a single paperback collection of this entire series in September.

Zatanna by Paul Dini TP 2024 Edition
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1779525833 / digital)
This Paul Dini Zatanna material is nearly evergreen – DC always brings it back to print. This includes her entire 2010 series, plus Dini’s famous Zatanna: Everyday Magic (2003) OGN.

Read on for a summary of all of the DC Comics April 24 2024 single issue and digital releases!

DC Comics April 24 2024 Physical Comic Releases

Batman: Dark Age (2024) #2 – An out-of-continuity origin retelling connected to real historic events by humorist Mark Russell with Mike & Laura Allred.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2023) #12 – A rotating-creator anthology series, taking the place of the previous Batman: Urban Legends. I need to update my Batman Index to include the past seven years of supporting titles… I’m sure that won’t be too hard ?

Detective Comics (1937) #1084 – See Guide to Detective Comics (Post-Crisis, 1987 – Present). Y’all, I am not going to binge through 20+ issues of Ram V’s Detective Comics just for my new releases post! I’ve been looking forward to reading it from the moment it was announced! I want to savour it!

So far I’ve just read the prologue and I love it – especially because the backup stories from Ram V’s colleagues directly relate to the main plot.

For me, Ram V’s comics are exciting because he always brings in some detail that is not something traditionally explored in this medium. These Savage Shores is an epistolary novel. The Many Deaths of Laila Starr is about philosophy and reincarnation. And, Rare Flavours is about food! In the opening issues of this run, Ram V plays with the idea of music and sound in ways that I am a very specific nerd about. Given that the entire run is called “Nocturne,” I’m interested to see how that unfolds. No Spoilers!

The Flash (2023) #8 – See Guide to Flash. I have mixed feelings about this Simon Spurrier & Mike Deodato run on the Flash family that focuses on Wally West and his children. The important thing to know is that as of last issue it finally has its hook in me.

In short, this run is about how the Speed Force has infected and corrupted both reality and the perspectives of all of all speedy characters. Wally West is addicted to speed but doesn’t want to engage with the slow moments of his family life now that he has it back. His daughter Iris wants to grow up fast and make decisions at high speed. His son Jai doesn’t have conventional super speed and struggles with anxiety about keeping up with his dad. Impulse thinks speed is life and can’t manage without it, but it could be tearing up the timestream. And, Barry Allen treats his speedy heroism as just one more chore to efficiently sweet up while he maps the multiverse and deals with a chronic headache.

Oh, and on top of that, extra-dimensional creatures want them all to stop using the Spped Force (or use it more) so they can commune with Arch Angles (yes, angles). Plus, Wally keeps falling through the Speed Force into some kind of slow-motion world of frozen moments of his present day.

Yep, that’s a Simon Spurrier comic book! It’s deeply weird and maybe not the Flash comic you all want, but it also feels like a Flash comic we’ve never had before – which is delightful. And, on top of that, Mike Deodato is drawing stuff I’ve never seen him draw before in my 30 years (!!!) of fandom. Even if this book is a little weird, I’m definitely in for the long hayl.

Green Arrow (2023) #11 – See Guide to Green Arrow. I only intended to catch up on an issue or two of this Joshua Williamson “Arrow Family” book, but I wound up devouring the entire thing over the course of a day.

I’m not sure I’d say it’s the best run of Green Arrow I’ve read (there’s a lot of good Green Arrow!), but Ollie is an easy character to love and this has three book positives going for it.

First, it has an outstanding supporting cast that includes both Arsenal (AKA Speedy) and Connor Hawke, plus several other supporting Arrow sidekicks of the past.

Second, it feels pretty important to the DC Universe because it is focusing on what Amanda Waller’s goal is after returning from the evil Earth-3.

And, finally: artist Sean Izaakse with colors from Romulo Fajardo Jr. I’ve enjoyed Izaakse’s art in the past, but I’ve never seen him draw quite as spectacularly as he does in this comic. He truly had me gawking at and examining every panel, and Fajardo Jr’s saturated colors really make the details pop while keeping the focus on the action.

Truly, I’d recommend reading this book for the art alone – but it has the first two reasons, too!

Harley Quinn (2021) #39 – See Guide to Harley Quinn. I’m more than 30 issues behind on this one, so I simply caught up on the prior issue – a one-shot reestablishing the status quo of the series.

Tini Howard wrote a very mild birthday celebration for Harley that hardly took advantage of the concept or the cast, aside from a winking cameo from Howard’s Catwoman in disguise. Instead, it set up a new arc for Harley where she’ll play an on-the-job villain evaluator, helping many fearsome foes of the DC Universe examine their flaws – both in their personality and in their plans.

The Penguin (2023) #9 – A Tom King series.

Power Girl (2023) #8 – Hmm, no Power Girl Guide yet – and, giving her history, I’m wondering if it might be necessary to do Supergirl first?

I’m not sure I had ever read Power Girl in a comic before starting this series. I think that was both a plus and a minus. Plus: No pre-conceived expectations! Minus: No existing affinity.

I think Leah Williams started with an incredibly set-up of who Power Girl is and why we should care about her as a unique member of the Super Family. I was immediately in love after the first issue.

Then, a first arc chased its own tail, giving PG very little agency over her plot. It was followed by a mostly-silent issue about Power Girl’s cat. Then, a two-issue second arc was poorly-assembled fairy tale nonsense.

That was a weird choice for this early in a character comeback run, since it meant two issues without powers). I don’t think it’s a good sign that we’re at issue #8 and I’m still waiting for the comic to pay off the promise of why I liked the character so much in issue #1.

I have no idea how this series is being received by fans, but I think it needs to find a reason to exist pretty soon – which should be obvious: focus on your awesome heroine! This issue is going to be part of a big “House of Brainiac” story crossing all of the Super-Books, and it guest-stars Crush – who I adore.

Primer (2024) #2 – This is a single-issue release of an existing YA superhero OGN, which was very well-received!