By Zack Quaintance — Happy holidays and Merry Christmas, everyone! And an early Happy New Year! This is a weird week for new comics. Diamond, the sole direct market comic book distributor, kindly gave employees a week off for the holidays. DC Comics isn’t releasing any titles (instead spreading its output across the five Wednesdays in January), and the offerings from other publishers are relatively sparse.

So, what does that mean for our beloved Top Comics to Buy for December 26 feature? What does that mean for commerce!? What does that mean for America??!? Relax. We’re still going to get it done (you are, after all, reading this right now...aren’t you?), but we’re going to do it a bit differently. Instead of our usual three sections, we’re just going to have one, and as you’re about to see, while there aren’t a ton of new books out today, there are still a few that very much demand some attention.

Let’s check them out!

Top Comics to Buy for December 26, 2018

*PICK OF THE WEEK*
X-Force #1
Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Dylan Burnett
Colorist: N/A
Letterer: N/A
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $4.99
FROM THE ASHES OF EXTERMINATION!
Cable is dead...and now, the original X-Force team of Domino, Cannonball, Shatterstar, Boom Boom and Warpath. must hunt down the murderer of their former leader! The mutant militia are hot for blood...but when their target is the time-traveling younger version of their fallen mentor, is there a line they absolutely cannot cross? And what does Deathlok have to do with all of it? From Ed Brisson (EXTERMINATION, OLD MAN LOGAN) and Dylan Burnett (COSMIC GHOST RIDER), comes an all-new, high-octane mutant adventure! A reckoning will come!
Parental Advisory
Why It’s Cool: The Extermination mini-series was also from new X-Force writer Ed Brisson, and—X-Men: Red aside—that was one of our favorite X-stories all year. Not to go into spoiler territory, but this book seems to be growing from the ashes of what all happened in Extermination, which is exciting indeed. Brisson, for our money, also tells some of the cleanest stories in the X-offices these days, providing a nice counterbalance to the ongoing continuity chaos that drives the rest of the frenetic work being done by the new generation of X-writers.

Bone Parish #5
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colorist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Price: $3.99
The war between the Winters and the Cartel continues its bloody rampage. With the terrible power of the Ash behind them, the Winters stand a decent chance. But Ash is not without its dangers, and some of them are already falling to Ash Madness…
Why It’s Cool: We’ve been digging this comic since Bone Parish #1, which caught us somewhat off-guard with its combination of creepy artwork, New Orleans setting, and drug trafficking drama. The plot has really accelerated as of late (which is saying something seeing as this is a comic that started with a woman using drugs that made her commune with the dead), and the preview for this issue makes it seem like all kinds of post-Christmas fireworks are in store. It is not to be missed!

Die! Die! Die! #6
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Co-Plotter: Scott M. Gimple
Artist: Chris Burnham
Colorist: Nathan Fairbairn
Letterer: Rus Wooton
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3.99
Wow! I can't believe that happens in this issue! Or that! Or that, that and that!!!
Why It’s Cool: While Die! Die! Die! may be one heck of a logistical headache for our retailer friends out there—it never gets solicited, but instead just arrives each month unbidden—we’ve been liking the story and the artwork in this comic quite a bit. We’re not the biggest fans of gratuitous violence (which this book deploys liberally), but writer Robert Kirkman and co-plotter Scott M. Gimple strike just the right kind of over-the-top satirical tone as they go about the ample bloodshed. The entanglement of political power structures seems to hint at this book’s larger satirical ambitions, but for now we’re still largely content to sit back and take in all of Chris Burnham’s wonderfully-rendered absurd action sequences.

Go-Bots #2
Writer, Artist, & Letterer: Tom Scioli
Publisher: IDW
Price: $3.99
Cy-Kill and his Renegades declare war on human civilization... and they're winning. Go-Botics freshman A.J. Foster and cynical Go-Bot race car driver, Matt Hunter, along with their friendly Go-Bots Scooter and Turbo, flee for their lives as they desperately search for some way to stop the extinction of mankind and the dawn of the planet of the Go-Bots!
From the creative mind that brought you IDW's Transformers vs. G.I. Joe!
Visionary creator Tom Scioli unleashes his imagination on the bizarre, absurd, and wonderful world of GO-BOTS!
Why It’s Cool: Go-Bots #1 headlined our Comic of the Week feature when it made its debut last month, and with good cause: that debut was an expertly-rendered and whip smart comic that reeled readers in with nostalgia and then hit them with a story about subjugation and rebellion...rebellion by Go-Bots. It was an enticing hook, to say the least, and we’re really excited now to see where writer/artist Tom Scioli will take it from here.

Mars Attacks #3
Writer: Kyle Starks
Artist: Chris Schweizer
Colorist: Liz Trice Schweizer
Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Price: $3.99
The Carbutt boys continue their trek to safety, this time with the help of the U.S. military, who plan on swatting the Martians like flies...until they see how big the Martian flies are, and, oh boy, there is gonna be a whole mess of trouble!
Why It’s Cool: Speaking of wonderful surprises, it’s only been two issues but writer Kyle Starks and artist Chris Schweizer are also doing fantastic work with Mars Attacks. This is one funny comic, first and foremost, but like Go-Bots and some of the other titles on our list this week, it also has ambitions that go beyond that, with Mars Attacks #2 hilariously painting a picture of the futility of untrained civilian gun enthusiasts crumpling in the face of a real oppressor. The preview for this next issue seems to promise more of the same, and, as such, this comic is not to be missed.

Other Comics Out This Week

Fantastic Four #6
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. 1956 #2
Man-Eaters #4
Marvel Action: Avengers #1
Superior Spider-Man #1
Uncanny X-Men #7

(This is literally it.)

See our past top comics to buy here, and check our our reviews archive here.

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as BatmansBookcase.