Popverse's top stories of the day

• Every new movie and TV series coming to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu in July 2024
• DC's Kingdom Come is getting the documentary movie treatment, with a big announcement coming in July 2024
• Marvel Studios unveils new Fantastic 4 artwork for San Diego Comic-Con

Following through on the most well-received announcement at February’s comics trade show ComicsPro, DC is moving back to Wednesdays as its comic book release day this July, with the first issue of event series Absolute Power being the first 'new' Wednesday comic from the publisher.

The return to Wednesdays brings DC back in rhythm with the rest of the comic book industry, which has kept the mid-week day as its primary release focus in the U.S. comic book market since the mid-1990s, when Diamond Comic Distributors became the de facto primary distribution agent of the industry after a number of exclusive deals with the major publishers at the time. One of those companies was DC, but in May 2020, DC broke with Diamond in a surprise move during the early days of COVID shutdown, forging a new relationship with Lunar Distribution (and, initially, a second company, UCS Comic Distributors) and shifting its release days to Tuesday in the process.

Related: DC makes another big comic store distribution move, and now has three Direct Market distributors

The Tuesday move made some sense from a publishing standpoint; outside of comics, the majority of bookstore on-sale dates are on Tuesdays, and moving comic and collected edition releases to Tuesday brought DC in line with the non-comics publishing industry. However, the discrepancy with the rest of the comics publishing industry proved to be a headache for comic retailers, who were suddenly faced with two separate on-sale days every week (and two different days to file final order numbers to distributors, as well), with many fans similarly upset at the concept of “New Comic Book Day” becoming two different “New Comic Book Days.”

As noted above, DC announced that it would be moving back to a Wednesday release day at ComicsPro this year; the cheer from the assembled audience of retailers was a loud, genuine sign of appreciation at the decision to undo what some had seen as an earlier mistake.

Absolute Power #1 will go on sale July 3, 2024… which is, of course, a Wednesday.

Get into the vibrant world of comics with our guide to buying digital comics, how to make the most out of comic shops, our comprehensive guide to the upcoming comics, manga, and graphic novels you should be looking for, and everything you need to know about Free Comic Book Day and Local Comic Shop Day.