Skybound's Tomb Raider reprint is confirmed for 2 December, and its own cover still says November

Annie Wu’s cover for the second printing of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero/Tomb Raider #1 arrived this afternoon with the wrong month on it. Image’s release confirms what the cover is for: the issue has sold out at the distributor level, it is going back to press, and the reprint reaches shops on 2 December. Kyle Higgins, Elena Casagrande, Alex Guimaraes and Pat Brosseau are all credited again, and the price holds at $4.99 [1].

Alex Antone, Skybound’s editorial director, put it in the release like this: “Annie Wu always delivers the goods, and we’re thrilled she’s a part of this historic success!”

Nobody had 2 December. Our 16 October piece on the first look at issue two carried the reprint as Skybound’s claim and said it could not be stood up: the only line anywhere put it on 4 November with a Wu cover, and there was no distributor record, no shop listing and no second outlet behind it. This afternoon’s release confirms Wu as the artist and puts the book four weeks later than the date it first gave.

The corner box on Wu’s art reads 1, NOV, $4.99, with SECOND PRINTING set under the Skybound logo in the top left. November is the date the reprint was announced for, not the date it is now coming. Covers get drawn and lettered against a schedule, the schedule moved, and nobody goes back to relabel a corner box! On 2 December a reader looking at a stack in a shop will find two issues of the same comic with two different months printed on them.

Elena Casagrande and Alex Guimaraes' cover A for the first printing: Lara Croft in the foreground with twin pistols and a long braid, Shipwreck in his white cap and two more Joes behind her, Snake-Eyes in his visor at lower right, palm fronds across the frame and a sunset sky over water

Cover A of the first printing, in stock tonight at cover price. Its corner box reads OCT. Cover art: Skybound and Image Comics.

The sellout is at the distributor, not at retail

Selling out at the distributor level means the warehouses that shops order from have run out, and that says nothing about what is on the shelf a reader walks up to. Issue one has not been difficult to find at any point in the three weeks it has been out. MyComicShop had Casagrande and Guimaraes’ cover A, Stjepan Sejic’s cover B and Sejic’s foil cover C all listed new and in stock on its series page this evening, at $4.99, $4.99 and $5.99, with Chris Mooneyham’s 1:25 incentive sitting there at $20.00 [2]. Third Eye Comics, the shop quoted here on release morning, still has cover A in the cart at cover price.

So the reprint is aimed at shops rather than at readers: the one whose order ran out, and, conceivably, the one that passed on a licensed crossover in the first place. Somebody who wants issue one tonight has no reason to wait for Wu’s cover, unless what they want is Wu’s cover.

2 December is already a busy Wednesday

The new date lands the reprint on the same day as issue three, which Third Eye files for 2 December with Ludo Lullabi variants beside Casagrande’s cover A, so a reader who has been buying the run can pick up both in one trip. Issue two is still ahead of that, on 4 November.

One thing the release does not give us is a Lunar code. It says the code is coming, so the order record is not open to retailers yet [3]. Until it is, there is nothing for a shop to order against and nothing for a reader to pre-order. Our comics archive carries the wider A Real American Hero run and Destro has an entry of his own, but the practical advice for the next few weeks is the one our piece on release morning gave: ring the shop, get issue one, get on the pull list for the rest. The reprint will not reach a reader any faster than the first printing already has.

Sources

Cover art: Skybound and Image Comics. Prices and stock states read first hand off the retailers’ own listings on the evening of 27 October 2026.

[1] The release is datelined Los Angeles, 27 October 2026, and names the sellout as being at the distributor level rather than at retail. Antone’s full line in it runs: “If …KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE, and raiding is the other half… then maybe the third half is selling? Okay maybe I don’t know how the math works, but I do know that our 2nd printing cover is another stunner!”

[2] Read off MyComicShop’s own series page on the evening of 27 October. Leirix Li’s 1:50 and the Lorenzo Tammetta and Mike Spicer 1:100 foil were both listed as not in stock there, with a want-list option instead.

[3] The release prints “Lunar Code coming soon” against the second printing, in the slot where the previous releases in this run printed an order code.