A kind of quiet week on the news front — it’s the calm before the final wave of New York Comic Con news storm, perhaps — means I get to focus on a personal favorite to start. So, let’s look at ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, led by a fine place to find great comics.

1. The ShortBox Comics Fair is Here

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, folks: The ShortBox Comics Fair is here! This event is a digital comics fair that allows you, a discerning comic reader, to buy new comics from an incredible array of creators throughout the month of October. And that’s it! Once October is over, there’s no more buying Fair books, at least digitally and through the Fair itself. But the good news is, you are a discerning comic reader and are likely overjoyed at the opportunity to peruse — and maybe even buy and then read — some of 116 new comics that are available throughout the month.

Of course, the problem for some becomes, “How do I know what to buy from this glorious event?” It’s a reasonable question. There are tons of options. Thankfully, there are some mechanics in place to help, like a way to filter by themes and a curated “You Might Also Like” guide at the bottom of most of the comics in the Fair. Personally, I make my decisions off two things in particular: If it’s a creator I know I already like and if the art stands out to me, it’s digitally coming home with me. Of course, even I have my limits. I ended up picking up 32 comics, and there were some I decided against because I realized just how hefty my shopping cart was getting. But if you want an idea of what appealed to me, here are all the ShortBox Comics Fair releases I’ve bought to date, led by the ones I’ve read.

• Felicity by Joyce Y. Ng: I was a fan of Ng after last year’s Fair release, Little Eternities, and this true story about a heartbreaking experiment and its impact on the goose that was its test subject — the titular Felicity — is tremendous comic booking, even though it’s a very hard read for the animal lovers out there.
• See You in Hell by Tan Juan Gee: A thoroughly explosive and engaging read from a heck of a cartoonist, one that’s comprised of an extended fight scene that’s a lot more than just violence of a physical variety. Tan Juan Gee crafted last year’s A Three Body Problem, and this year’s release finds the cartoonist having improved on those already great results.
• On Her Own by winchestermeg
• Death Fiddles and We Dance by Deb JJ Lee
• Freelance Arsonist by Sobsannix
• Appointment by Lauren Van Stone
• We Live Here Too by Kiku Hughes
• Rewired by Jona Li
• A Starladen Stroll by Apoorva Rege
• Here Be Monsters by Bowen McCurdy
• Claire de Lune by Xulia Vicente
• The Alleyway: A Story about Spaghetti by Jeffrey Kam
• Goodbye Apple Island by C.R. Chua
• Karma’s a Peach by Pearl Law
• Hypertrophy by Megan Llewellyn
• Dead Days by Alice Scarpa
• Iceland by Giulia Sagramola
• Songs for the Forgotten by Cloudy Magpie
• SACRED BODIES by VER
• BLEED ANY% by Blue Delliquanti
• FROGOCALYPSE by Matt Rockefeller
• The Fool, the Absolute Mad Woman by LAWEYD
• A Pretty Good Wizard by Claire Weber
• The View from Up There by Simone Stehouwer
• Aglæca by Mohnfisch
• Offering by Jocelin Kee
• A Place Like This by illuteridae
• Firsts by Nico
• Curtain Falling by Marty Tina G
• The Butterfly Effect by honeyteaboy
• Dog Days by Bianca Bagnarelli
• Story About a Duck by Boya Sun

That’s it! That doesn’t mean I’m done, though. If you buy and read something that’s not on my list, please let me know. I’m sure there are plenty of great comics I have not picked up yet, but I am only one human with normal human resource issues. But with the ShortBox Comics Fair being a pop up one, and one that’s loaded with great comics, I’m always eager to get what I can while the getting is good. I suggest you do the same. At least if you’re in the market for good comics, that is. Perhaps my list will offer you a starting point to build from.

2. Die, Reviving?

This is a funny item, as it’s a reference to something from one of my own interviews. But as writer Kieron Gillen pointed out in his latest newsletter, no one has really picked it up yet. So, I’ll do so myself.

Die, Gillen’s Image Comics series with artist Stephanie Hans, is returning in 2025. What format or capacity it’ll be in, when precisely it’ll show up, and what it’ll entail is unknown. But as the writer noted in my recent interview with him, “There’s a poster of Die they put out to advertise We Called Them Giants, and on the back is a Die backlist. At the bottom it says, ‘Die will return in 2025.'” So, there you have it, straight from the writer himself: this series about a group of friends trapped in a tabletop RPG world they’d once escaped as teens is going to be a thing once again, in some form or another. Get excited, Die fans! We’re returning to this wonderful, terrible land of fantasy next year.