It was a wild week of comics news, with some things hitting that you just never expect to write about. Let’s dig into all of it in another edition of Comics Disassembled, as I take a look at ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, with it all led by…SPAWN???

Matthew Rosenberg, Going to Hell (and Back Again)

Evidently the Spawn office is starting anew, as Todd McFarlane and Brett Booth are no longer working on Spawn #376, as was previously announced. Instead, writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Stephen Segovia are taking over the title, and it’s part of a larger change that includes Rosenberg also writing King Spawn with artist Thomas Nachlik, writer Erica Schultz and artist Carlo Barberi stepping in on Gunslinger Spawn, and the line’s editor in chief in Thomas Healy and the underrated Alessandro Vitti moving into The Scorched. Evidently the goal is to attract new readers as the main title builds up to the release of issue #400 in 2028, but that’s about all that was revealed in this drop beyond the fact that it’s all happening in June.

That said, having spent quite a bit of time talking with Rosenberg about his plans for both Spawn and King Spawn at ComicsPRO, I can honestly say something I haven’t said since I was a kid: I am actually really interested about what’s going to happen in these books! Rosenberg has enormous plans for these titles, and while I don’t want to spoil any of them, much of it involves the interplay of his two series and a new, unexpected direction for its leads and his world. It sounds very character driven in a way I don’t typically expect from these titles, but it also seems like something that will fit the universe and Rosenberg himself. So, yeah, big changes over in Spawn Town, but very promising ones. I’ll be keeping an eye on this as it approaches, which is a very unexpected place for me to be as an extremely, extremely lapsed Spawn reader.

Fantagraphics, Caught Up in Some Nonsense

In what might prove to be the most deeply strange and most 2026 story of the year, it seems as if…well, I’ll let the words of Fantagraphics editor Mike Catron explain this one.

“Fantagraphics Books learned today that a cargo vessel carrying the full print runs of two of our books was struck by an Iranian missile in or near the Strait of Hormuz. The report we have is that the ship has limped to a safe port, where we await further news. Our thoughts are with the crew, and we hope and pray for their safety. The two books, The Atlas Comics Library No. 9: Adventures Into Weird Worlds Vol. 1 by Russ Heath, Bernard Krigstein, Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, Carmine Infantino, et al. and Bitchy! The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken by Roberta Gregory and Helen Chazan, were printed in India and were bound for the Port of New York.”

I didn’t include the part where Catron notes that it seems that this will likely affect the on-sale date for both books because, you know, it feels pretty obvious that the ship they were on being hit by a missile could act as a monkey wrench in that timeline. There’s little known about the condition of the books — it’s possible they weren’t hit at all — but given the complexity of the current geopolitical climate, the rather dangerous journeys awaiting any ship attempting to travel through the Strait of Hormuz during this conflict in Iran, and the 2026 of it all, I would believe literally any fate that awaits these books.

My hope, and I’m sure everyone’s hope, is that the books were undamaged, the crew of the ship is okay, and that everything gets back on track so these comics can reach the shops and readers who are eagerly anticipating them. But it’s very much a TBD, as is everything related to this world right now. I especially feel bad for someone like Gregory, who looked at this turn of events as a reflection of her own existence, which I totally get, even if rationally I understand it isn’t. Here’s hoping for a swift resolution to this extraordinarily weird situation.