This fall, Mad Cave Studios brings long-overdue focus to Ruth Roche, a defining voice of the Golden Age who helped shape comics from behind the scenes. Ruth Roche: The Phantom Hand of Comics, a graphic biography written by Eisner-nominated editor Joe Corallo and artist Meghan Hetrick, with colors by Dee Cunniffe, and letters by Morgan Martinez, brings a long-overlooked figure in comics history into view, told in the medium she helped shape.
Finally, a book that highlights the pioneering, yet too often overlooked, comics career of Ruth Roche using the medium she most closely worked in as a writer, editor, and business partner to the legendary Jerry Iger. Following Ruth’s journey from a young woman with a penchant for storytelling, through the Golden Age of comics, where Ruth worked in the midst of the action–until the fateful Wertham Trials brought all of it to an end.
A biography with historical reconstruction, Ruth Roche: The Phantom Hand of Comics restores a key creative force to the broader history of comics, aligning with titles like Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund by Caitlin McGurk and the influential historical work of Trina Robbins, underscoring a growing interest in biographical and archival comics scholarship.
Ruth Roche: The Phantom Hand of Comics goes on sale October 13, 2026, in paperback (ISBN: 9781545812624 | $19.99) and hardcover (ISBN: 9781545827376 | $29.99) formats. Final order cut-off is September 21, and it is now available for preorder at your favorite bookstore, comics shop, and directly from Mad Cave.
Three modern witches must parlay with ancient gods and battle supernatural forces to stop a biblical entity from ascending to godhood, unaware their resistance plays perfectly into their enemy’s plan.
Adriyel of the All-Seeing Eye, a pretentious oracle who speaks with the gods. Michele of Mother Earth’s Flesh, a nature wytch with a tender heart. Em of the Living Hellfire, an emo necromancer with a sharp tongue. These three friends are bound together through magick and blood as a queer coven in New York, each following their own magickal path under the watchful eye of their spectral coven matriarch, MTHR.
When the coven accidentally sends all of New York into a supernatural eclipse and sends the magick of the city into imbalance, their presence is revealed to a religious zealot and their angelic beast of retribution. Not only that, they soon discover they are at the center of an ancient prophecy, and all of wytchkind hangs in the balance! Now, each of them must face the secrets of the past, present, and future in order to save the magick.
Created by the late Aaron Reese, Bytchcraft is a love letter to queer friendship, Black Magick, and the found families that sustain us. Enter the magickal world of Bytchcraft and remember – God Save the Wytch.
MTHR has done all she can to prepare the coven to face unspeakable threats, and now they must do so…alone. Adri, Em, and Michele prepare for a final confrontation that holds not only wytchkind in the balance, but multiple planes of existence. They have each other, but will that be enough to take down Eve and stop the endless midnight?!
MTHR has transported Adri, Em, and Michele away from the sanctum, so she alone can face the threat that has been hunting and killing the wytches across the city. However, this threat and MTHR are connected by a fateful night years ago, and that connection could prove to be MTHR’s undoing. Will the coven be able to finally unlock the sight and save not only MTHR, but all of wytchkind?!
The coven, Adri, Em, and Michele, transported themselves to The Sacred Green…One of the many “God-Realms” on Earth! They might be able to find the key to combating the dark forces trying to eliminate all wytchkind in this realm…if they can survive the Sacred Green’s monstrous sentry and its master!
(W) Magdalene Visaggio (A) Victor Santos (C) Taki Soma (L) Morgan Martinez (CA) Michael Avon Oeming
The crew of the Verisimilitude is back and Vigil’s search for her lost parents continues…while following their footsteps in trying to unlock the secrets and strangeness of the universe! But will the team survive the madness of the galaxy?! Find out in the newest installment of this four-color fantasy!
The coven, Adriyel, Em, and Michele, need to end the ominous magickal eclipse they caused…however, the danger only continues to escalate as wytches throughout New York City are being massacred. Is the endless wytching hour connected to the sudden attacks? Will the wytches survive long enough to unravel the mystery and save all of wytchkind?!
Set against the backdrop of modern-day New York City during a seemingly permanent supernatural eclipse, Bytchcraft follows a queer coven bound by magic and blood, each bringing their own flair to the craft: a pretentious oracle who speaks with gods, an emo necromancer with a forked tongue, and a nature witch with the soul of a fairy tale princess. Under the guidance of their enigmatic guardian MTHR, the coven discovers they’re at the center of an ancient prophecy, and all wytchkind hangs in the balance!
To preface this review, I’d like to say that I used to hang out with Bytchcraft‘s writer Aaron Reese at various cons before the COVID pandemic, such as C2E2 and Brooklyn’s Flame Con. They were a beautiful, creative soul with an amazing sense of humor and the fiercest sense of fashion. Aaron’s work for Comics Alliance inspired me in my early days as a comic critic, and even though we lost touch in recent years, I loved seeing them share art and images from Bytchcraft on Instagram and was incredibly sad to hear about their passing earlier this year. Reading Bytchcraft #1 was like having one last conversation with Aaron, and I’m glad that the whole comic book reading public can experience their literal magical vision.
Like all good first issues, Bytchcraft #1 establishes its three key characters, chief conflict, and offers an initial look at a world full of danger, magic, and badass queer witches. Aaron Reese and Lema Carril go beyond a simple light/dark magic dichotomy and take a nuanced look at the occult through the perspectives of the series’ three leads, Adriyel, Michele, and Em. Reese gives each lead a completely unique personality and voice as well as a complex web of relationships that’s only hinted at in this first issue. “Emo boi” necromancer Em is my favorite character so far, and some of their dialogue makes me laugh out loud like a line where they mention their dancing style. Bytchcraft deals with apocalypses, creepy cults, and eclipses, but there is still time for fun like an extended night club sequence, which is an opportunity for Carril to show off their flair for fashion and reveal more about the protagonists through their clothing choices.
Speaking of Lema Carril, their line art and Bex Glendining’s majestic color palettes make Bytchcraft #1 a memorable first issue. Carril’s character designs are iconic, but they have storytelling chops as well. For example, they and Aaron Reese use a lot of three panel layouts to play off Wicca’s Rule of Three and reveal the separate, yet unified nature of the book’s main coven. Triangles, and sacred geometry in general, also play a key role in the world of Bytchcraft so this all connects to the creators’ triplicate approach to layouts. To top things off, Glendining adds an extra sheen to sequences with magical energy and a complexity to the dark background colors that play off the characters’ approach to magic. They also make sure the characters are well lit so Reese’s dialogue and Lema Carril’s facial expressions can stand out.
If you enjoyed Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Charmed, but wished that the cast didn’t resemble the contents of a Duke’s mayo bottle so much or had a more in-depth and respectful view of the occult, then Bytchcraft #1 is the comic for you. Aaron Reese and Carril take some massive worldbuilding swings in this first issue while not neglecting the best part of the book, the interactions between Adril, Michele, and Em as well as their guardian, the ethereal Mthr. I can’t to dive into this world that Aaron left behind for all us queer comics reading kids trying to find connection in an uncertain, oppressive world.
DC Pride 2025 #1 is a little different from the previous installments of DC Pride in that it’s not a collection of short stories featuring LGBTQ+ DC Comics characters, but is a single narrative centered around a gay bar that Alan Scott frequented in the 1930s and told predominantly from the POV of a new character named Ethan, who is a trans military veteran that ends up caught up a kind of multiversal/elemental saga. I applaud the scope of this comic book, which has big jam session energy as different characters end up in different pocket realities based on wishes they made at the gay bar or graffiti they scrawled. We get Apollo and Midnighter living in 1950s domestic bliss courtesy of Sam Maggs and Derek Charm, a single, psychiatric girl boss Harley Quinn from Maya Houston, Max Sarin, and Marissa Louise ; and a gorgeous sapphic romance between Jo Mullein and Nubia from Houston, Vita Ayala, and Vincent Cecil to name a few. The reading effect is like jumping from comic to comic and look at paths not trodden with some iconic queer characters and a few new or not so iconic ones.
As Tim Sheridan, Giulio Macaione, and Emilio Pilliu Alan Scott-centric frame story shows, fighting supervillains and having superpowers is a metaphor for being queer in DC Pride 2025. It might be tempting to give up and lie low, especially with the United States’ hard turn to fascism, and homophobia and transphobia promoted by folks in power, but Alan Scott, Ethan, and their companions’ actions in the comic act as a clarion call to resistance. The stuff with the Crimson Flame and Scott having his own Red Lantern is a little Geoff Johnsian for my taste, but it’s so cool to watch Alan Scott have a Sailor Moon type transformation sequence and return into action to help save the next generation of queer heroes symbolized by Ethan. I love Macaione’s use of greens to show a possible, idyllic future for Scott and a non-Red Lantern/Russian spy Johnny Ladd, but it’s a happiness based on a lie like the other possible futures in the book.
However, DC Pride 2025 isn’t all serious action and has a lot of humor and playfulness. Jude Ellison S. Doyle and Alex Moore recontextualize Golden Age Z-list Wonder Woman villain Blue Snowman coming to terms with their gender fluidity alongside nonbinary superhero Envoy in one vignette. I love how they poke fun at the restrictions of the gender binary using the classic tropes of a superhero brawl, and how even well meaning cisgender people can be just plain annoying at times. It’s so cool seeing this kind of story and voice in a mainstream, corporate comic showing that nonbinary characters don’t just have to be righteous heroes, but can be kind of messy too. DC Pride 2025 really hits the spectrum of queer identities, including asexuality with Connor Hawke getting a short story where he resists his father’s reputation as a womanizer and just wants to live his own life. I have to give a special shout out to Philip Sevy’s art in this short sequence, which seems like it’s right out of the late 1990s period where he was member of the JLA. Both the visual and character variety of DC Pride 2025 makes it an engaging read, and the book is a testament to the active work that DC Comics has done to cultivate LGBTQ+ characters in the past decade or so. (I need a monthly Midnighter and/or Apollo book though.)
After a wild and wacky cosmic adventure set in the DC Multiverse, DC Pride 2025 wraps up with a beautiful nonfiction storyfrom Jenny Blake and Sara Soler about Blake coming out as a transgender woman earlier this year. It has gorgeous soft lines and a refreshing color palette to go with Jenny Blake’s honest and humorous script about how old comics about Clark Kent switching genders had an influence on her own gender identity journey. I love how Soler inserts different DC characters into the panel to blur the line between fantasy and non-fiction with Blake’s most famous co-creation Black Lightning making an appearance as well as transgender superheroine Dreamer, who shares coffee with Blake. The story shows that you’re never too old to be your authentic self and hints at a longer graphic memoir, which I hope Jenny Blake gets to realize at DC or elsewhere.
DC Pride 2025 is an ambitious comic with summer crossover energy that tells an epic story with DC’s LGBTQ+ characters while still taking time to dig into their individual hopes, fears, and dreams. It’s a showcase of queer representation on the page and on the issue’s creative teams, and Blake and Sara Soler’s memoir is a beautiful coda and rallying cry to continue to be queer and fearless in an increasingly dark and hateful world.
Story: Vita Ayala, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Maya Houston Story: Sam Maggs, Tim Sheridan, Josh Trujillo, Jenny Blake Art: Don Aguillo, Vincent Cecil, Derek Charm, A.L. Kaplan, Giulio Macaione Art: Emilio Pilliu, Max Sarin, Philip Sevy, Sara Soler, Alex Moore, Skyler Patridge Colors: Eren Angiolini, Jordie Bellaire, Triona Farrell, Marissa Louise Letters: Aditya Bidikar, Frank Cvetkovic, Lucas Gattoni, Ariana Maher, Morgan Martinez, Jodie Troutman Story: 8.9 Art: 9.3 Overall: 9.1 Recommendation: Buy
DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
