Every week, Comics! The Blog goes through the list of new releases and we tell you which comics to plug into your mindhole. Your mileage may vary.

ADVENTURE TIME: 2013 SPOOKTACULAR #1 (kaboom!)

True fact: I am going to buy this immediately after I leave the office today, and then I am going to go to my friends’ house to babysit their little five year-old girl. I am going to read it with her, because we both love Adventure Time and comics, and that is maybe the greatest thing.

This is the joy of living in a time where there is a glut of great all-ages media, and even though I would never read most current superhero comics with my friends’ little girl due to content, it’s really wonderful that Pendleton Ward, Cartoon Network and Boom!/kaboom! are producing a bunch of great comics that anyone can read, with really cool talent like Frazer Irving,Kevin Church and Jen Vaughn involved.

Plus, it’s the week of Halloween, and I’m a sucker for holiday specials. This comic is essentially a bunch of Halloween specials, like a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode. I hope Lucy will love it!

AVENGERS: AI #5 (Marvel)

Probably my favourite Avengers book out right now - and for the record, I’m a big fan of what Hickman is doing - Avengers AI is also the most unique. Through its first four issues, it’s been consistently upping the threat of its main villain, asking big questions that should ripple through how you read the rest of the Marvel Universe and been visually remarkable the whole while. I love it a whole lot.

This issue takes all that and adds Valerio Schiti, of the deeply mourned Journey Into Mystery, to its repertoire, as he gives a André Araújo a quick breather. Schiti‘s art blew me away on JiM in how it had this really bold, unique energy to it with some really gorgeous, thick inks, and after drawing a space station intersection between sci fi and fantasy, he’s definitely a good choice to take on the world of the Diamond, the AI homeland where things don’t have to look “how they should.” Humphries has an almost preternatural luck for the artists he works with, and with this series’ humourous bent, imaging his dialogue with Schiti‘s work with faces (my favourite artist to go to for “hilarious mild disgust”) is making me very, very happy.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS (TPB) (Image)

This miniseries flew under the radar when it was first published, but it was consistently one of my favourite books on the shelf. Anthology series can often be a bit hit or miss, but almost always benefit from either a really solid unifying theme or creative voice, and Dia De Los Muertos has both in spades, being a spooky Halloween-adjacent-themed collection of short comics all drawn by Riley Rossmo. Rossmo is an artist who’s done horror extremely well (Green Wake, Rebel Blood, Bedlam), but working with all the different writers gives each story a different feel so that the book has a great multi-textured feel.

And man, those writers. Kurtis J. Wiebe, Alex Link, Ed Brisson, Joshua Williamson and Joe Keatinge just to start. The book reads like a “Who To Watch” special, and there’s rarely an off moment. Between the different writer’s approaches, you get straight-up horror stories, wistful ghost stories and even outright comedy. It’s a shame it didn’t get more attention when first published, and hopefully it’ll get it now.

THE FOX #1 (Archie)

Archie, as a publisher, has spent the last several years taking strong, industry-leading approaches to things like LGBTQ advocacy and digital publishing (both day-and-date sales and subscription access models). In the same time period, Mark Waid has been an advocate for digital comics while also writing some of the best comics around (read Daredevil, already!) This is an Archie comic written by Waid and so when I found out it existed I basically started making it rain small bills at my computer screen, before I even found out that Dean Haspiel is drawing it.

Even if you’re not a big fan of Evil Teen Archie Andrews and his group of much more wonderful friends (and Veronica and Reggie), don’t worry (except for your immortal soul, which has been condemned to Hell for its lack of joy): this isn’t an Archie Archie comic. It’s set in the publisher’s Red Circle world of superheroes, which the company has spent a year quietly telling really great, all-ages stories in it. So to recap: a surging company with a creative streak is letting two supremely talented, well-known creators build up one of their best kept secrets. This is wonderful news.

SANDMAN: OVERTURE #1 (Vertigo)

It really doesn’t need to be said more bluntly than this, I hope: The Sandman, one of comics’ most revolutionary and influential works, is back, with its primogenitor Neil Gaiman back writing it and the always astounding J.H. Williams III drawing it. Both are masters of capturing pure imagination on the page, so this has been a personal must buy since the very second it was announced.

Of course, it can be really daunting to jump into one of the most iconic comics of the past several decades, with such a ravenous fanbase as that of The Sandman. Don’t worry; the series picks up on aspects of the original, including how the opening events of the first #1 came to be, but the series was always one to tell great isolated stories and this has been designed to reward new and old readers alike. Buy it, and if you like what you see, well, the entire original series and its tie-ins are on sale on Comixology for six more days. The whole thing is an ode to the power of dreams and stories. It’s wonderful.

These are some of the many great books being released this week! You can find the full list of comics being released here. If you have any other recommendations, let us know in the comments below.