New Comics Reviews 7/16/25: Post Malone’s Big Rig, X-Men Age of Revelation, Star Trek Red Shirts & This Ends Tonight!
New Comics Reviews for Wednesday 7/16!
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Joe’s Reviews:
Cover by Lee & Chung
This Ends Tonight #1
Image Comics
Written by Gerry Duggan, Kelvin Mao, and Robert Windom
Art by Jae Lee
Colors by June Chung
Letters by Joe “Please Don’t Rat Me Out to VC” Sabino
40 pages for $4.99
Solicit: The pulse-pounding comic event of the summer aims for your jugular, courtesy of master artist JAE LEE (Inhumans, SEVEN SONS) and GERRY DUGGAN (X-Men, FALLING IN LOVE ON THE PATH TO HELL). THIS ENDS TONIGHT is the kick-off of three interconnected tales of bloody revenge in Las Vegas. The debut issue stars two sisters hunted by assassins for their shocking family secret. It’s an over-sized, action-packed romp, and every panel is crushed with love by JAE. The series is completed, and we’ve got some special guests, too. Stay tuned for a beautiful ADAM HUGHES variant, and a sketch edition, too… THIS ENDS TONIGHT!
Review: This project was first announced in April of 2023 and is finally seeing the light of day. Two sisters are attacked while visiting a Las Vegas strip club called “Steak & Beef,” seemingly at random. But the blonde, Anna, definitely knows what’s going on while the younger sister, Katie, is blissfully ignorant.
What follows is a blood-spattered murderfest as Anna gives an info dump about their family’s real history. Long story short, there’s a lot of D&D shit going on, with a dash of Jack Kirby’s “let’s swap kids to prevent a war between the New Gods.”
It’s entertaining, but very busy, since Duggan and Lee have this single issue to make us care about the sisters’ plight. You can see where the story intersects with the ones that will be presented in the next two issues, which is fun, so hopefully filling in the rest of the world around Anna and Katie will help make them more compelling. Things get really hard to follow for a while after the sisters are drugged (or something?) and they start to hallucinate. But it all made a bit more sense rereading it with a clearer head after a good night’s sleep.
Jae Lee’s art is sublime. It’s violent and gory as hell! More so than I’ve ever seen from Lee.The latest report is that Lee was working on the art for issue #2 in September of last year, so we should see all three issues before year’s end. We shall see.
This issue is a bit haphazard, but there’s a lot to like here. The overlapping stories idea is compelling, and I’m curious to see how they end up feeding off of and informing one another. Add in a completely unleashed Jae Lee on art and This Ends Tonight #1 is definitely worth a look.
Rating: BUY IT
Cover by Gooden & Helmer
Post Malone’s Big Rig #1
Vault Comics
Created by Post Malone
Written by Malone and Adrian Wassel
Art by Nathan Gooden
Colors by Der-Shing Helmer
Letters by Jim Campbell
48 pages for $6.99
Solicit: Double-length — collects chapters 1 & 2! Post Malone’s BIG RIG. THEY PRAYED FOR A MIRACLE. THEY GOT 25 TONS AND 18 WHEELS OF HOLY WEAPON. The Dark Ages…Demon hordes plague Europe as Hell invades Earth. The Six Petals, a secret sect of The Knights Templar, are in desperate need of a means to drive back the scourge and turn the tide of the onslaught. What crashes to earth is The Rig, a fully loaded tractor trailer. In the aftermath of its arrival, the only man left standing is an enigmatic former priest excommunicated from The Six Petals. He will become Trucker and lead the fight against Hell behind the wheel of a demon-slaying machine.
Review: Post Malone’s comic book debut is here and it fucking RULES. Of course, he has help from co-writer Adrian Wassel, and the two have woven an irresistible tale of bloody vengeance against the hordes of Hell. This issue gives off strong Army of Darkness vibes, with the twist that there’s no modern day protagonist, unless you count the 25-ton big rig literally called down from the sky, seemingly by the prayers of the faithful. John, or “Trucker” as he becomes known, seems to be just as much a tool of the Rig as the Rig is to him.
Malone and Wassel’s story is insane, showing Trucker and his new adventuring party tearing through hordes of the possessed. However, the story moves at breakneck pace, so get onboard or get out of the way.I loved the ever-changing backstory of Edda, the young Viking witch that recruits Trucker to her cause. Batu is a badass indigenous warrior that watches Edda’s back. We don’t get a ton of backstory for Trucker, except that he’s a disgraced former priest and his family has been killed in some horrific way. But there’s also a hint that Trucker was a participant in some pretty horrific violence of his own. I’m intrigued to learn more about Trucker’s past, and Malone and Wassel made me care about all three of our main characters in a relatively small span of pages.
The art by Barbaric’s Nathan Gooden is incredible. Absolutely disgusting guts and gore combined with absolutely gorgeous character work and intricate backgrounds. Der-Shing Helmer’s colors punctuate the greyscale art with intense bursts of red. I don’t know if Helmer or Gooden is responsible for the greyscale work, but it combines with the minimal color to create a violently beautiful book.
I picked this book because I could not fathom what kind of comic book project was springing from the mind of Post Malone and I just had to know. I was so completely and pleasantly surprised to discover that Post Malone’s Big Rig is a goddamn delight. A brutal grindhouse sci-fi/fantasy fever dream of a delight, but a delight nonetheless.
Rating: BUY IT
Matt’s Reviews:
Cover by Chris Shehan
Star Trek: Red Shirts #1
IDW
Written by Christopher Cantwell
Art by Megan Levens
Colors by Charlie Kirchoff
Letters by Jodie Troutman
32 pages for $3.99
Solicit: The start of an all-new heartrending Star Trek five-issue miniseries by writer Christopher Cantwell (Star Trek: Defiant) and artist Megan Levens (Star Trek), featuring Starfleet’s most intrepid and doomed crewmembers: red shirts. Now, finally, they get their own story. Led by an experienced officer embedded on the snow-ridden planet Arkonia 89, the crew of the U.S.S. Warren has a small window in which to pin down spies seeking to steal classified secrets and keep Starfleet data out of their nefarious hands. They face threats not only from their faceless enemies but from the brutalizing elements and wildlife of a planet far from home. The red shirts’ lives and Starfleet’s sanctity are on the line… and no one is safe.
Review: Any Trekkie worth their rank knows the old Red Shirt cliché. Typically, we never learned the names of the red-shirted security officers on the show because they were destined to die, used to raise the stakes and tension of the away mission. Cantwell has decided to give the Red Shirts their due in this story about the ugly side of Starfleet security’s job.
All the hallmarks of a great Trek story are here, but instead of the typical good-looking, clean-cut, confident, and capable officers, the narrative follows a hardened, disgruntled security veteran who’s been on assignment far too long, and a traumatized new Red Shirt sent on yet another mission neither of them may survive.
Levens’s art is strongest in her character work. She brings real emotion and depth to characters who all wear the same uniform, and she sells their mortal terror in a great nine-panel page that showcases all the ways a security officer can die on a mission.
The story is packed with gutsy characters, all painfully aware of their mortality rate but still willing to do the job, because that’s what Starfleet security does. It’s a fresh take on a Trek tale that, as a long-time fan, I don’t recall ever seeing. And it’s about time these poor, doomed bastards got the spotlight they deserve.
Rating: BUY IT
Cover by Ryan Stegman and Martia Gracia
X-Men: Age of Revelation #0
Marvel Comics
Written by Jed MacKay
Art by Humberto Ramos
Inks by Victor Olazaba
Colors by Edgar Delgado
32 pages for $4.99
Solicit: X years from today: welcome to the AGE OF REVELATION! The Revelation Territories stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, a mutant land ruled over by the Heir of Apocalypse. While on the surface a kind of mutant utopia, the cracks are beginning to show- and the lie that this land was built upon stirs the flames of rebellion. Learn how this terrible future came to pass and what it means for the X-Men and the rest of the Marvel Universe in this kickoff special by Jed MacKay and Humberto Ramos! Plus a glimpse at the many titles where the events of the Age of Revelation will play out in the months to come!
Review: This issue could be tough to find because retailers were given just one week to order the #0 issue—after receiving a single free “Shadow Drop” variant last week (which is now selling for ridiculous prices on eBay). Surprise! The Age of Revelation is here, and all your X-books (plus Spider-Man and probably others) are getting rebranded tie-ins to this event. It harkens back to Age of Apocalypse with a sprinkle of Krakoa 2.0 on top.
Unlike AoA, this isn’t an alternate universe. MacKay uses Xorn (don’t ask about his history—trust me) to bring readers up to speed on what’s happened over the last ten years, leading to Doug Ramsey—now Revelation, the Heir to Apocalypse—taking control of the entire Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.
The story does an excellent job establishing the future status quo and putting the remaining, desperate X-Men in an impossible situation, while some of their former teammates now serve in Revelation’s cabinet.
Ramos is on art for this one-shot, with inks by Olazaba, who also teamed with him on last week’s Fantastic Four #1. I’m happy to see Ramos back at Marvel, but I felt the art shined a bit more in FF than it does here. The book doesn’t look bad—it’s just not Ramos’s best. Keep in mind, X-editor Tom Brevoort recently admitted on his Substack that this project was rushed, so I’ll forgive some of the looser visuals.
Is Age of Revelation a gimmick to sell more X-books that’s also putting stress on retailers? Yes, of course it is. But it looks like a fun shake-up for the X-Men, who could really use a shot in the arm to make their current status quo more interesting.
Rating: BUY IT – If you can find it.
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