It was looking like a slow week for Comics Disassembled, but then it closed like a freight train and I had too much for my ten spots. So, let’s see what made the cut as I look at ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, led by a couple new(er) entities making their presences felt.

1. Goats Flying Press, Dropping the Hammer

Sebastian Girner is on the shortlist of my favorite people in comics. He’s just a good dude with a strong sense of what he wants. So, it makes sense that he’d do something unique with Goats Flying Press, the publisher that he launched last year (and I talked with him about at great length when it debuted) with the goal of doing right by creators and comics at the same time. And it continues to expand. While the first comics from this house were all Girner joints, the publisher announced its 2025 slate of releases, and each is pretty dang appealing — and it’s more than just the publisher’s head honcho this time.

I mean, any time you can bring back one of my pet comics in Scales & Scoundrels (Girner’s fantasy series with artist Galaad), roll out a new Juni Ba graphic novel he’s doing with letterer Aditya Bidikar in The Fables of Erkling Wood, launch a slasher story in Lake Yellowwood Slaughter that’s an oversized one-shot form from Alejandro Arbona, Gavin Guidry, Chris O’Halloran, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and debut a wild sci-fi/horror/comedy from Girner and artist Jack Mandrake in The Consumption, you’re going to get my attention. That’s a heck of a slate with a lot of creators that are high on my “They should really be stars” list. It’s also one that reflects Goats Flying Press’ ethos of comics without the restrictions creators find themselves running up against far too often. So, it’s going to be a heck of a thing.

I also enjoy the diversity in the formats they’re publishing. That quartet includes a hardcover graphic novel, an oversized one-shot, a graphic novella that’s the first in a series of three, and a 48-page comic that’s the first in a miniseries of oversized releases. That’s cool as heck! That means what Goats Flying Press is format plan is, in effect, whatever is right for each release. I love to see it, and I’m excited to read all four of these comics.

2. The Ninth Circle, Intriguing

Speaking of interesting…well, not comic publishers — sorry, Deadline! — but imprints, more details arrived this week on Ninth Circle, a new line over at Image Comics that was previously revealed through its first release in Freddie the Fix, Garth Ennis and Mike Perkins’ upcoming horror one-shot. Ninth Circle is an imprint that features a truly wild group of creators as co-founders, including Ennis, Adam Glass, Marguerite Bennett, Ram V, and Joe Pruett, and an eclectic group of leaders and investors behind it.

Ninth Circle is, as you may have guessed, a play on the varying circles of Hell from Dante’s Inferno, and its attention will be centered on horror stories at a time that a) they’re popular in comics and b) they’re quite abundant as well. The squad there has an interesting angle on the whole plan, though, as it seems the plan is they’ll release a double-shot comic each month (presumably meaning twice as big as a one-shot) telling a standalone horror story from different creators. Whether it’s the Horizon Experiment-like plan I hypothesized last week, where these comics could graduate to series if the debut story does well enough, is uncertain. But even if it isn’t, I like the idea of done-in-one horror stories from top creators.

That’s especially true considering the fact that each story will be released in an oversized, magazine style format, one that will be perfect bound and 8.5″ x 10.875″ in size (which, yes, is the same size as DC Black Label’s larger releases and DSTLRY’s everything). I believed that to be true last week when I saw the initial images of Freddie the Fix but I didn’t have confirmation in time, but my suspicions proved to be true. To be honest, I have no idea if magazine style one-shot stories will work, whether they’re horror or not. But I know a lot of formats and genres have been a struggle of late, so I’m a fan of experimentation and seeing what works as you take those paths. Consider me intrigued by Ninth Circle, even if it reads as a bit funky to me that its investors (a production company, so think adaptations) were such an emphasis in the announcement.