This week’s edition of Comics Disassembled is brought to you by Tylenol Cold + Flu Severe, as all things I’ve been doing this week have been. But with that knowledge now in hand, let’s get straight into the things I liked or didn’t like from this NYCC (and Tylenol) fueled edition of Comics Disassembled, with it all starting with the next book from a great creative team.

BKV and Cliff Chiang, Roaming

It was easy to pick my favorite news from New York Comic Con, because the Paper Girls team of Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson, and Jared K. Fletcher are reuniting for Roam at Image Comics. When something like that happens, it’s a lock for the top spot. Paper Girls is an all-time enjoyable comic for me, so that quartet could have teamed up for a story about anything and I would have been onboard.

But it isn’t about just anything. It’s about a future where everyone gets to be a superhero, but only when they’re young (as the announcement says, effectively), resulting in a “timeless adventure about the quest we each take in life to finally find our team.” It looks like a group of Super Sentai-like heroes punching and kicking their way to their own found families, and I love that. It’s reminiscent of Mathieu Bablet and Guillaume Singelin’s series Shin Zero in that regard, but I suspect that’s where the similarities end, because BKV and Cliff Chiang cannot help but do their own thing 100% of the time.

That’s why all the hook I really need is knowing who is behind Roam. You put Vaughan, Chiang, Wilson, and Fletcher back together again, and I’m going to be there. What’s it about? Who cares. It’s 2027’s most anticipated comic for yours truly, and I’m not even going to have to wait that long as its first, 50-page (!!) issue arrives on February 24th. Even more encouraging? Vaughan says Chiang has already drawn the first “several” issues of the series, so you know this series is going be on a consistent schedule. So we’re not just going to get some sweet, sweet Roam action to start. We’re going to get it for a good while, and that rules.

Absolute Justice, Uniting

As revealed at a NYCC panel and in a trailer (one that already has over two million views on YouTube, incredibly) at said panel, the much discussed but never officially revealed first Absolute DC event is coming in the form of Absolute Justice from writer Jason Aaron and artist Juan Ferreyra. It’s a five-issue event that starts in April 2027, and we don’t really know what it’s about, to be honest. Basically, all that was revealed was that this is coming and that it — mercifully — will not interrupt any active Absolute titles nor will it result in tie-ins (that is very smart). It’s just a standalone story where the Absolute Justice League gets together because, of all people, Absolute Martian Manhunter gathers them for reasons currently unknown.

The trailer definitely implies that it will feature many of these characters’ opposite numbers — there’s an awful lot of Absolute Veronica Cale, or at least someone who looks an awful lot like her, in there — and that these “true rulers of the world” will cause these heroes to “abandon all hope.” But that makes sense, right? Big events always have big villains, and this will have that. If I was a betting man, though, I’d wager this will be less of a traditional event than an organizational one, one that finds the powers of good and bad uniting for something bigger that hits later on. I’m sure there will be big action as well, but my read on this is it’s the move before the move. But we’ll see.

One way or another, I’m pretty pumped about Aaron and Ferreyra being the team behind this. While some may have been disappointed to not see Scott Snyder or Deniz Camp writing this, Aaron and Ferreyra’s work together on Absolute Superman has helped that book have the biggest second year leap of the entire line. They have the juice as a creative team, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they cook up here.