It’s the 16th new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics April 17 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics April 10 2024 new releases.
This week in Marvel Comics: the very complete Captain America, hell breaks loose for Daredevil, original Micronauts, Widow vs. Hawkeye, the real fake Thor, Ultimate Black Panther intensifies, an amazing Spider-Boy & Spider-Woman, and more!
This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel 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 Marvel 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!
Marvel Comics April 17 2024 Collected Editions
Captain America Epic Collection Vol. 6: The Man Who Sold The United States
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302955205 / digital)
See Guide to Captain America – Steve Rogers. This Epic picks up shortly after the original “Secret Empire” storyline and collects into the start of Jack Kirby’s solo run on the title. We’ve had this material collected several times over in other formats at this point, but the exciting part is that we are now just two Epic Collections away from complete coverage of Cap from 1963 to 1996!
Daredevil Vol. 1: Hell Breaks Loose
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302947729 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. I love love love this Saladin Ahmed take on Matt Murdock. It hasn’t been received with the rapturous response of the past two relaunches from Charles Soule and Chip Zdarsky, and that bugs me. I think there’s a long history of fans balking at supernatural elements in Daredevil – from Ann Nocenti to Diggle’s Shadowland – only for the runs to be reappraised and re-embraced later on.
Could we possibly just skip all of that nonsense and appreciate this run while it is happening? It’s so nuanced both in Murdock’s personal life and his heroic one. Top recommendation from me – and you can start cold with with collection edition.
Marvel Masterworks: Captain America Vol. 16
(2024 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302955212 / digital)
See Guide to Captain America – Steve Rogers. This collects a ten-issue run of J.M. DeMatteis’s Cap from the late 200s, which has already been hit in Epic Collections, and brings us within two years of the start of Mark Gruenwald’s Cap, which is about to be omnibused. It’s wild to see all of the gears of Marvel’s collected edition lines churning at once within a single 10-year range of a single run.
There’s a lot of coordination to appreciate here – how they just reprinted the Kirby Omnibus so they can leave those Epic Collections to last, and how they will have the first Gruenwald omnibus out far enough ahead of the Masterworks hitting in 2027 that they won’t completely cannibalize its sales.
Micronauts: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus Vol. 1
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302956769 / digital)
The first of three omnibuses completely collecting Marvel’s Micronauts, which was an in-continuity comic of the Hasbro toy property that interacted with Marvel characters (except the third omnibus won’t collect their iconic X-Men mini-series, for unspecified reasons).
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The New Republic Vol. 1
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302957841 / digital)
See Guide to Star Wars Legends – Old Expanded Universe comics. Now that Marvel has finally announced the last two remaining Star Wars Epics, they’re going back to the beginning to reprint many of their first volumes!
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters Vol. 7: Dark Droids TP
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948023 / digital)
See Guide to Star Wars Expanded Universe comics. Bounty Hunters ended with this tie-in to the Dark Droids event. I know Omar @ Near Mint Condition dug this Ethan Sacks series focused on a team of bounty hunter, but I never could figure out what it was about or why I should care. I guess that tells you that it’s not bad, it’s just up to your personal tastes in the Star Wars universe.
Read on for a summary of all of the Marvel Comics April 17 2024 single issue and digital releases!
Marvel Comics April 17 2024 Physical Comic Releases
Avengers: Twilight (2024) #5 – See Guide to Avengers flagship titles (2010 – Present). The penultimate issue of Chip Zdarsky’s look at a potential future end of the Avengers.
Beware the Planet of the Apes (2024) #4 – Marvel’s ape-tastic prelude to the first film continues. No one has commented yet that I need to create an Apes guide, so it’s sitting somewhere lower in priority than Predator and Indiana Jones at the moment.
Black Widow & Hawkeye (2024) #2 – See Guide to Black Widow or Guide to Hawkeye. I loved this first issue. Full stop, no caveats.
Stephanie Phillips made me actually appreciate Natasha as the Symbiote Widow (a heavy lift). She also perfected the tone for “competent screw-up Clint Barton,” which has felled many writers before her. It’s hard to write Clint as both talented and a total loser, but I think she threaded that needle perfectly. Then, at the end, when we were convinced the two characters were about to come together into a team-up, we got a very different plot beat.
It was a killer script and I am eager for more from Phillips and art team Paolo Villanelli & Mattia Iacono. (Plus, it just makes me even more excited for Phillips to write Phoenix (2024)!)
Captain Marvel (2023) #7 – See Guide to Captain Marvel. Somehow, Alyssa Wong’s initial “Nega Bands body swapping” arc is still ongoing with no end in sight. However, I think last month’s issue #6 was the strongest one in a while because it focused on a full extended family of cast members for Carol by bringing in Wiccan and Hulkling, among others.
I think Kelly Thompson quickly discovered that to be the way to write a great Carol: it’s not only about her being a fallible bad-ass, but because she cares too damn much about the people she loves. I’ve been less than lukewarm about Wong’s direction for this book, but I’ve seen them do good things in the past and this is the first tickler I’ve had that this won’t be a repeat of their 10-and-done one-year run on Deadpool.
Dead X-Men (2024) #4 – See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. Last issue really worked for me after I hated issue #2. I think that’s because it focused less on the “chasing bad Moira through an infinite universe of Moiras while she tries to ruin her own past” and more on “here is a finite history of Moira we are working backwards through to the beginning.”
That’s the perfect echo of Hickman’s original House of X / Powers of X, it’s in line with the promise of issue #1, and it forms a much more coherent story with what Gillen is doing in Rise of the Powers of X. Maybe the mess of issue #2 was a fluke? I hope Steve Foxe has a strong finale that will show us something that can only be uniquely accomplished with these particular characters.
Fall of the House of X (2024) #4 – See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. Two weeks ago, Duggan scored his first solid hit for me in quite a while with X-Men (2021) #33 – which focused tightly on Madripoor and Sebastian Shaw plots that have been lingering since the beginning of Marauders. It was obvious, fun, and let us settle down to focus on a few cast members in specific. Since all of these books are so tightly-coordinated (including the end of Resurrection of Magneto rolling directly into Invincible Iron Man (2022) #17 last week), I’m hoping the Feilong/Orchis things will begin to cohere in this penultimate issue.
Ghost Rider: Final Vengeance (2024) #2 – See Guide to Ghost Rider. Y’all… I caught up on the past three years of Ghost Rider to be able to talk about this comic to you.
Here’s my summary: Don’t read Ben Percy’s Ghost Rider.
At least, not while it features Johnny Blaze. I can’t tell if Percy has a bad concept or Blaze is an on-page charisma vacuum. Maybe a little bit of both, but Percy spent more than 20 issues studiously avoiding any good Ghost Rider content – instead focusing on Blaze monologuing about the rider while waking up naked on the side of the road or having sex with his Manic Pixie Goth Girl handler/sidekick who was promptly fridged after getting some character development and having a special abortion baby Blaze that had creepy moon powers in order to fight her ex-boyfriend.
Yes, that’s a real sentence about a real thing that happened in that comic book.
Now, this series has discarded Blaze to focus entirely on his Rider, but the first issue was literally a full-issue montage of the Rider being like “Blaze was SO BORING for the past two years, don’t you agree?” and then inhabiting a woman who was being framed for child abuse. I’m not sure what Ben Percy’s plan is for the rest of this series, but I feel confident in telling you it is probably bad.
Giant-Size Hulk (2024) #1 – See Guide to Hulk – Bruce Banner. This is a story by ongoing Incredible Hulk (2023) writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson that fits in continuity with his series. It’s just a “Giant-Size” one-shot without legacy numbering to confuse every single read from now until eternity.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2022) #19 – See Guide to Spider-Man – Miles Morales. Last month’s triple-sized 300th issue may have been the best comic so far in this run from Cody Ziglar.
It made me realize how much Ziglar’s voice for Miles and vibe for his supporting cast is hurt but needing to stick to the rising and falling action of a monthly 20-page issue. Ziglar pacing across 60 pages was perfect – he never hit a false note. That’s in part because he had room to play out casual scenes over 5-7 pages before getting back to action.
I don’t think that’s resolved by simply reading this in trade – I really think Ziglar just needs to compress stories more to do that same kind of thing in 20 pages.
Roxxon Presents: Thor (2024) #1 – See Guide to Thor – Odinson. Last week’s Immortal Thor (2023) #9 set up this one-shot, an in-universe comic telling (and corrupting) the story of Thor. That issue was an absolutely perfect comic book – great script, big ideas boiled down to a comprehensible conflict, and breathtaking art from Ibrain Roberson and Matt Wilson.
Truly, the past two issues of Thor from Roberson have been some of the most gorgeous Thor comics of all time – which is saying a lot for a book that has been recently drawn by the likes of Esad Ribic, Russell Dauterman, and Nic Klein.
This issue is a sort of one-shot “Heroes Reborn” commenting on the state of modern comics in a way that feels very Alan Moore. I think you will be able to read it as a standalone if you love that sort of thing, but the best part of it will be that it has immediate ramifications for our in-continuity Thor.
The Spectacular Spider-Men (2024) #2 – See Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018 – Present). I absolutely adored issue #1 of this Peter/Miles team-up book by Gargoyles creator Greg Weisman. I actually went back and re-read it, which I only do with 1 out of 100 brand new comics. It was just that charming – packed with action and jokes that felt perfectly in-voice for both characters. I always wait three issues before I declare that I am truly ride-or-die for a new series, but I’m really rooting for this one!
Spider-Boy (2023) #6 – See Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018 – Present). I’m really growing to love this comic, y’all. Dan Slott has centered perfectly on the youthful energy of this character (even if he has an old man voice for his young characters) and he quickly built and paid off the mystery of his origins in the first five issues.
Suddenly I find myself deeply engaged with a whole new cast of heroes, allies, and villains in a book I had no reason to pick up in the first place. Say what you will about Slott, but he has a special magic when it comes to this sort of thing.
Spider-Woman (2023) #6 – See Guide to Spider-Woman. You heard me be SO SKEPTICAL of Steve Foxe’s direction for this book last month after the intense revelation in issue #4. I think issue #5 won me over completely. Not only did Foxe get Jessica Drew’s voice entirely right in a less decompressed issue, but he nailed her relationship with Carol Danvers.
Plus, he wisely added Spider-Boy as a plot surrogate for other emotions Jess wanted to express and it worked perfectly – with a few deeply affecting moments. I always get my hackles up when Marvel makes a character a parent and then tries to tinker with that, but right now it feels like Foxe has a long-term plan and I’m in for the ride that Jess will be taking in this issue.
Star Wars: Mace Windu (2024) #3 – See Guide to Star Wars Expanded Universe comics. This Mace Windu book is a mild success. I don’t think Marc Bernadin especially capture’s Mace’s voice or Georges Jeanty nails his likeness, but together they’ve created a compelling adventure for a Jedi that combines physical challenges, personal trust, and interstellar intrigue. Even if Mace Windu feels like he has been randomly placed into the plot, it’s a fun read.
Ultimate Black Panther (2024) #3 – See Guide to Ultimate Marvel. I was skeptical of the first issue of Bryan Hill & Stefan Caselli’s Black Panther, which had an uneven pace and felt like a script in search of actors rather than a strong comic book. He definitely turned me around with issue #2.
What was the difference? Issue #2 settled down to focus primarily on T’Challa, only cutting away if a scene directly emerged from his conflicts. Also, it introduced two key plot hooks: an obvious prophecy that readers already understand but T’Challa does not and a solid mystery of a traitor that already has several likely suspects. Both of those hooks take advantage of Ultimate Marvel’s power to remix continuity in unexpected ways. I’m always rooting for every book, and in this case it looks like Hill & Caselli might succeed!
What If…?: Venom (2024) #3 – See Guide to Venom. This issue: What if the symbiote bonded with Doctor Strange!
Marvel Comics April 17 2024 Digital-First Comic Releases
This is a list of projected Marvel Comics April 17 2024 Digital-First releases based on the recent digital release schedule. Actual releases are not confirmed until they show up on the Marvel Unlimited app.
These releases have not been quick to be released in print, though we’ve now see print versions of a few of these series trickle out a year or more after they were released.
- Avengers United Infinity Comic (2023) #28 – See Guide to Avengers (2010-Present).
- Infinity Paws Infinity Comic (2024) #3
- Spider-Man Unlimited Infinity Comic (2023) #33 – Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018-Present)
- X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic (2021) #135– See Guide to X-Men, The Age of Krakoa
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