Titan Comics has sent over its full rundown of what's hitting shelves over the next two weeks (July 13th and July 24th), and it's stacked: a comedy Western inside a Conan magazine, the finale of a video game slasher mini, and the return of comics' deadliest weapons broker.
Seven books in all. These are the three that piqued my interest!
The Savage Sword Of Conan #15
Wednesday, July 15th: a 64-page, black-and-white magazine with covers from Alex Horley and Esad Ribic, priced at $6.99.
If that format sounds familiar, it should. The original Savage Sword of Conan launched in 1974 under Curtis, Marvel's magazine imprint, and because magazines fell outside the Comics Code, Roy Thomas and John Buscema got to tell Conan stories bloodier than anything the comics could touch. It ran all the way to issue #235 in 1995. When Titan revived it in 2024, they kept the oversized black-and-white magazine format intact.
The lead story comes from Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, the husband-and-wife team behind DC's Harley Quinn and Power Girl runs. They're joined by Southern Cross co-creator Andy Belanger for a tale of swapped assassination targets. That's the kind of trouble Conan usually cuts his way out of (literally).
The bigger deal for Robert E. Howard die-hards is the backup: the return of Breckenridge Elkins, courtesy of Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz. Elkins isn't from the Hyborian Age at all: he's Howard's comedy Western strongman, a hillbilly brawler who headlined 26 tall tales in the pulp magazine Action Stories from 1934 to 1937. Elkins was the longest-running and most commercially successful series Howard wrote in his lifetime, outpacing even Conan.
DeFalco and Frenz should ring a bell for Marvel fans. They're the Amazing Spider-Man team behind issue #252, the debut of Spider-Man's black costume. They went on to co-create Spider-Girl. Longtime Spider-Girl artist Pat Olliffe rounds out the issue's art team, and DeFalco spent 1987 to 1994 as Marvel's Editor-in-Chief, in case the resume needed more weight.
Elkins made his Titan debut in issue #8, and the magazine has made a habit of these deep cuts, running Solomon Kane in its very first issue and Dark Agnes in #6. The timing couldn't be better: between Genndy Tartakovsky's animated Conan the Barbarian series heading to Prime Video and Arnold Schwarzenegger's King Conan moving forward with Christopher McQuarrie, Howard's barbarian is suddenly everywhere.
Gun Honey: Doubles Down #2
Also arriving July 15th is Gun Honey: Doubles Down #2 ($4.99) from writer Charles Ardai and artist Ang Hor Kheng, and the setup is pure pulp.
After a botched attempt on a Russian dictator, three identical body doubles scatter to Siberia, Finland, and the Black Sea. Weapons broker Joanna Tan has a $10 million contract and one problem: figuring out which of the three is the real target.
"GUN HONEY has never faced higher stakes or a deadlier challenge," Ardai said in Titan's announcement. "Getting close to one of the best-protected men in the world not just once but four separate times? Even Joanna Tan is going to find it difficult to pull that off."
If you don't know Ardai's name, you know his shelf. He co-founded Hard Case Crime, the pulp paperback imprint that published Stephen King's The Colorado Kid and Joyland. He won an Edgar Award for his short fiction, and wrote and produced on Syfy's Haven.
Gun Honey was his first comics work back in 2021, and it's since grown into a full franchise: Blood for Blood, Collision Course, and three Heat Seeker spinoff minis, with Doubles Down marking the line's seventh series.
Dahlia Racers, the heroine of those spinoffs, is an anagram of Charles Ardai.
Kheng has drawn Joanna's adventures from the start, in a style Ardai described to CrimeReads as "a meticulous, detailed pen-and-ink look reminiscent of a young Frank Frazetta."
The franchise also pulls serious cover talent. The original 2021 mini sported Bill Sienkiewicz, Robert McGinnis, and Adam Hughes covers, and Doubles Down added Stanley "Artgerm" Lau to the rotation.
There's a Hollywood angle here too: a Gun Honey TV series went into development back in 2021 with Haven producers Piller/Segan attached, and there's been no public update since.
Dead By Daylight: The Hillbilly #4
A week later, on July 22nd, Titan wraps its latest video game horror mini with Dead by Daylight: The Hillbilly #4, the finale of the four-issue series from writer Derek Fridolfs and artist Dean Kotz, with colors by Allison Hu.
The solicit promises the killer "free from his shackles" and carving a violent path across Coldwind Farm, while rookie officer Darnell Hollis, whose drug bust dragged him onto the farm back in issue #1, looks for a reckoning of his own. And in classic Dead by Daylight fashion: "Death is not an escape."
That "Man called Boy" is pulled straight from the game's lore. Max Thompson Jr. was the unwanted, disfigured son of wealthy landowners who never gave him a real name, bricked him up inside a room on Coldwind Farm, and fed him through a hole in the wall. He eventually broke loose, and his parents' bodies were never found.
In the game, the Hillbilly was one of the three killers available when Dead by Daylight launched in 2016, which makes him a fitting spotlight for the franchise's anniversary year.
Behaviour Interactive celebrated ten years in June by announcing 70 million lifetime players, calling it "the most played horror game in history," and dropping a Jason Voorhees chapter. On top of that, the Blumhouse film adaptation found its director in June: Thordur Palsson, working from a script by Alexandre Aja and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick.
Fridolfs is best known for co-writing DC's charming Batman: Li'l Gotham with Dustin Nguyen, so a full-on slasher book is a fun pivot. Every physical issue also includes a code that unlocks an exclusive in-game charm, a nice little bridge between the comic and the game.
The Rest Of The Slate
Four more books round out the release window:
- Strange Pictures Vol. 1 (July 14th, $12.99): the manga adaptation of Uketsu's bestselling horror novel, where nine childlike sketches hide something sinister.
- Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor: The Prison Paradox Vol. 2 (July 21st, $17.99): Dan Watters and Sami Kivelä lock the Doctor and Belinda inside a maximum-security space prison.
- Solomon Kane: The Lion Errant #1 (July 22nd, $6.99): more Robert E. Howard! Watters and Dulce M. Montoya send the Puritan swordsman to India, caught between Queen Rani Durgavati and the Mughal Empire.
- Craniacs Vol. 1 (July 22nd, $17.99): Sholly Fisch and Joe Simko's all-ages romp collecting all four issues, where the Stone Age crashes into the far future.
It's a strong snapshot of what Titan does well: pulp revivals handled with reverence, licensed books that treat their source material seriously, and creator pedigrees you don't expect on a $4.99 floppy.
Are any of these on your pull list? Is anyone else curious to see how a comedy Western plays out in a Conan magazine?
Sound off in the comments below!
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