Salutations, Wednesday Warriors! It’s that time of the week again; time to storm the gates and bring home a fresh stack of new comics. Before you head to the shop, arm yourself with a few recommendations, and for you big spenders out there, we also have a complete list of this week’s releases. This time around, we have some dark selections like The Hangman and The Dark and Bloody, some all-ages fun with The Baker Street Peculiars, and the superhero constant know as Savage Dragon.

THE HANGMAN #3

The Hangman #3 from Dark Circle Comics

Written By: Frank Tieri
Art By: Felix Ruiz
Colors By: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Letters By: Rachel Deering

The Hangman is so mean. It’s filled with dark, ugly (on the inside), and violent characters who spend a lot of time torturing, murdering, and doing other evil things. It’s all about hell and death, and it relishes in that. This issue focuses on the newest soul to take up the Hangman mantle, and his struggles to understand the rules of this new role. He’s our gateway into this world, and we learn about all its bloody secrets and dark lore as he does. Frank Tieri is doing some superb world building, slowly pulling back the curtain and showing us the evils that hide behind it. The Hangman #3 looks amazing, too, because Felix Ruiz is the perfect artist for this series. His scratchy art gives a jagged, harmful-looking edge to every shadow; he makes blood look like shattered glass. If you can handle its ugliness, then you should be reading The Hangman.

THE DARK AND BLOODY #2

Written By: Shawn Aldridge
Art By: Scott Godlewski
Colors By: Patricia Mulvihill
Letters By: Clem Robins

In a good horror story the setting is just as important as all the scary bits. Of the modern horror comics that have tickled our fancy lately—and there are quite a few really great ones—none has nailed its world building as quickly and as well as The Dark and Bloody. The world these characters occupy is so vivid and big, despite the fact that it takes place in a small, backwoods sort of town. Aldridge and Godlewski do an incredible job of transporting you to a place and time so clear and real you’d swear evil bird monsters with powers of possession are an epidemic in Middle America. Grim, haunting, and mysterious, The Dark and Bloody is quite possibly our new favorite comic book series. It’s downright scary and we can’t help but love it.

THE BAKER STREET PECULIARS #1

The Baker Street Peculiars #1 from Boom! Studios

Written By: Roger Langridge
Art By: Andy Hirsch
Colors By: Fred Stresing
Letters By: Andy Hirsch

Roger Langridge always manages to make comic books fun. When his name graces the cover of a book you know you’re in for an exciting, usually all-ages, adventure. His latest series is The Baker Street Peculiars, and it’s absolutely fantastic. Landridge’s zippy wit combined with Andy Hirsch’s detailed and kinetic cartooning makes this a must-read comic for the young and old alike. It’s essentially a Sherlock Holmes story, although whether or not the famous detective turns out to really be a character in the series has yet to be seen. Nothing is what it seems and we don’t know who to trust.  What we do know is that there’s a mystery to be solved and four young kids and one smart dog are on the case. Funny, cute, inspired, and fresh, The Baker Street Peculiars is a winner.

SAVAGE DRAGON #212

Written By: Erik Larsen
Art By: Erik Larsen
Colors By: Nikos Koutsis
Letters By: Chris Eliopoulos

Nobody in the superhero biz draws a punch better than Erik Larsen. He brings an old school sensibility to his work, an enhanced perspective that makes every fist fly off the page. You feel every hit. While everyone else is rebooting, grounding everything in stark, boring reality, and switching creative teams, Savage Dragon has remained constant. Erik Larsen is still delivering the same exciting superhero action he was giving readers from the very beginning. Big, bold, and just a tad ridiculous, Savage Dragon is the sort of superhero comic they just don’t make anymore, and that’s a damn shame. Fortunately for us, Larsen doesn’t show any signs of stopping, so at least we can count on an issue of giant fisted monster men pummeling each other every once and a while. As long as Erik Larsen is making Savage Dragon, we’ll be buying it.

Okay, that’s it for us this week. Check out the complete list below and let us know what your pull list looks like in the comments!

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THE COMPLETE LIST

(via PreviewsWorld.com)