This is somehow the first edition of Comics Disassembled, my Friday column where I look at ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, in a month. How?! I know how, actually — The SKTCHD AWRDS plus the holidays eat up a lot of time — but that’s still wild to me. But you’ve waited long enough, folks. We’re so back, so we’re going to celebrate by highlighting ten things in comics that have stood out to me of late, even if they aren’t exclusively from the past week like they usually are.

1. Zoe Thorogood, In the Lab Again

I typically try to start this column off with the subject that I have the most thoughts on, but this week’s edition sort of goes in the opposite route. I have very little to say about this item, if only because there isn’t much known about it quite yet. It’s that Zoe Thorogood’s next book is officially Head Trauma, a comic/graphic novel/something that the cartoonist has been picking at for a while. I believe her first post about it was back in ye olden days of February of 2023, in which she revealed a piece of art and the gist of the idea behind it, which was:

“(Head Trauma) follows a guy named Damien whose intrusive thoughts start manifesting themselves into reality- largely in the form of accidentally exploding people’s heads.. the story is narrated by his 7 year old half sister Ellie- she’s autistic, loves bugs, and aspires to be Elton John when she grows up. The chaos brings the two on an explosive road trip in an attempt to find answers and escape the bloody trail they’re leaving behind.”

I’m already in on that alone. But a recent post from Thorogood hooked me even more. It recalled John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke’s Major Bummer for me, as sthe main cast of Head Trauma — “The Problem Children” — is “a group of young adults with pointless superpowers and no will to do good.” Incredible. I love atypical tales of people with superpowers. Even better is the fact that this was all revealed with art featuring that group of characters, and as is often the case when it’s Thorogood doing it, it’s looks good. So, folks, I’m all about this. A road trip story featuring a bunch of bums of characters with pointless superpowers is my idea of a good time, particularly when it’s all crafted by Zoe Thorogood. Now, we don’t know anything concrete besides that. We don’t know when it’s coming out, who will be publishing it, or what format it will be in. But it’s Zoe Thorogood doing Zoe Thorogood things.

That’s all that matters.

2. Diamond Comic Distributors, Fixin’ to be Friendly

For those who have been distressed by Diamond Comic Distributors and its inability to get product to comic shops in a timely manner of late — something that has been happening for over a month at this point thanks to the unfortunately rapid closure of Diamond’s second warehouse, amongst other things — the veteran distributor had good-ish news this week. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and the belief is that they will soon be delivering their weekly shipments in something that resembles “on time” at some point in the future. More specifically, Diamond’s Chief Sales & Service Officer Chris Powell said, “the shipments leaving our warehouse were on a better pace than they had been in December.” That’s great.

Does that sound ideal? No. Does it sound vague to the point of not being that useful? Absolutely. But it’s what we’ve got. The linked to article above by Heidi MacDonald at The Beat has more from Powell, who explained at greater detail what was going on and why these delays have been happening. What he didn’t offer was a concrete explanation of when shipments would return to a typical schedule and how consistent that might prove to be. But reading between the lines leaves me a little skeptical that he’d have a good answer even if he did have one. That might be okay. As retailer Patrick Brower noted on Off Panel this week, the pain of Diamond’s recent struggles has been mitigated for comic shops to some degree by the fact that everyone’s been in the same boat and no one is really gaining much of an advantage from these problems. That may be true, but still, it’d be pretty great if comics would get back to a regular schedule sooner rather than later.

Fittingly, about an hour after reading MacDonald’s article, I discovered that my shop once again would not have comics from Diamond on time. DC’s new releases were there, but everything else was delayed. That’s fine by me. I’ll just stop by when everything actually hits, as I did this Thursday. But let me tell you: the locals are getting restless. They want their comics, and they want them on Wednesday!