Comics publishers are finding success mixing noirs and procedurals with other genre elements.
Superhero trends come and go, but in the comics industry, one genre always pays: crime. Even Batman was ushered in with classic noir stylings in the 1930s, when the Dark Knight debuted in the Detective Comics series, solving a murder mystery from his first appearance. In the near century since, crime story lines have been perennial favorites.
Of late, comics publishers are turning to mash-ups that experiment with genre elements to appeal to diverse fandoms, mixing misdemeanors with horror, humor, and family drama.
“You can place crime as a topic in all these different scenarios and all these different worlds,” says Heather Antos, an executive editor at the newly launched IDW Crime imprint, “and it still works.” Upcoming IDW Crime trade releases include Fixation (May) by Amy Chase and Savanna Mayer, in which vampire fandom results in actual blood loss; and Seven Wives (Jan. 2027) by Zoe Tunnell, V. Gagnon, and Tesslyn Bergin-Dicoi, which sets a murder mystery within a polygamous cult.
Antos has a special affinity for crime. She began her career editing the 2014 crowdfunded anthology Unlawful Good: An Anthology of Crime, which she says led to her being hired by Marvel, where she honed her comics editing chops. She considers crime a topic that transcends genre. “Every person might not have a horror story in their life,” she says, “but every person has touched a crime story in some way, just by living in society.”
Antos points to IDW’s recent success empowering creators to color outside of genre lines, with crime mash-ups like its runaway hit series Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath, winner of the Harvey Award for book of the year, which has a third and final six-issue run coming February 2027. Horvath’s aesthetic evokes a children’s picture book, but here the main character is a serial killer bear. The result “cozies up to the darkness lurking beneath everyday life,” per PW’s review.
Other publishers are all in on the mash-up scheme. “Crime is the trend that never really goes out of style,” says DC executive editor Chris Conroy. “One way to make them really strange is to smash crime into all of the other genres that comic books excel at.”
Retailers are clocking the trend, too. Shop owners Matt and Shannon Live of Bat City Comics in Bradenton, Fla., report that crime mash-ups are extremely popular with their customers.
“It’s not only repopularizing crime,” Shannon says, “but also repopularizing other genres.” One favorite series in the store this year was Wrestle Heist by Kyle Starks, which combines crime with WWE-style antics.
Matt, who has read Dick Tracy comics in newspapers since he was five years old, says the core appeal of crime is the procedural approach—its clues and investigating. Those elements make for good stories told in installments.
Other recent crime mash-ups span the Eisner-nominated, crime/supernatural dramedy FML series by Kelly Sue DeConnick and David López; Lantern Pass: A Supernatural Noir Alpine Thriller by Serge Lehman and Frederik Peeters, translated by Christopher Bradley; and the outré buddy-cop comedy series The Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre, by Fred Kennedy and James Edward Clark. And of course, DC’s bestselling and multiple-Eisner-winning Absolute Batman also counts. Plus, this spring, Absolute Catwoman will be slinking onto shelves.
One of the major comic events in 2026 was the return of DC Comics’ original series imprint Vertigo, home to fondly remembered crime comics from the 1990s and 2000s, chief among them 100 Bullets, the Eisner-winning series by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Vertigo relaunched with a slate of new direct market series in February, with two crime mash-ups leading the charge and a brand new 100 Bullets installment announced for Spring 2027.
The imprint is betting on another known quantity with the crime noir–historical fiction series The Peril of the Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery. Written by Chris Condon with art from Jacob Phillips, the trade paperback edition was released in October, reuniting the duo behind the hit crime-western series That Texas Blood.
Less tested is End of Life, by writer Kyle Starks and artist Steve Pugh. Also released in October, the series combines traditional crime elements—think murderous revenge, kidnappings, and hitmen—with humor that makes ’80s throwback tough guys part of the joke. Gags run the NSFW gamut and the villain is a former newspaper cartoonist who has essentially been canceled for his misogynist views. Starks and Pugh previously teamed up on Peacemaker Tries Hard!, a series mash-up that blended superheroes with humor and was a natural precursor to End of Life.
Superhero and crime comics share core characteristics such as morality battles between clear heroes and villains. “The stakes feel bigger in crime than in superhero comics,” he says. “It’s something you can see yourself in.”
No matter the mash-up, the trick is balancing tropes and tone, he adds. “We don’t want people to say, Have you read that funny comic? But we do want them to say that End of Life is funny. The moment you make a book a full gag, all the emotionality is gone.”
“Vertigo has always been the home for a straight-up hard crime story,” Conroy says, “but I’m just as excited by watching Kyle and Steve’s tightrope act.”
Celebrating a decade in the industry is Vault Comics, which has thrivedgames into comics. Rising up out of the underworld—the supernatural one—is Vault’s entry in the crime mash-up trend: the Godfather of Hell series, by writer Cavan Scott and artist Pius Bak, which released a first trade paperback volume in October. Scott describes the storyline as a gangster heist meets The Exorcist
Typically, Vault focuses on sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but there was something special about Godfather of Hell. “I hadn’t seen that style of crime caper combined with this vision of hell,” says Vault editor-in-chief Adrian Wassel, who describes the series as the underworld run like an organized crime outfit in a Guy Ritchie movie. “It was all familiar, but it was put together in a way that made it unique.”
Scott says, “When you start mixing crime with other genres, it opens up so many opportunities to do things you can’t do normally”—such as throwing demons into La Cosa Nostra.
Wassel says he considers these mash-ups part of a resurgence of the crime genre and not a passing fad. “What we’re seeing is contemporary artists and authors playing in the same sandbox that was built nearly 100 years ago.”
For some creators, doing a little crime is just more fun.
Eisner-winning cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim is no stranger to changing up his style, with a career that’s spanned young adult comics, animation, and a return to spinner racks with his adult comics series The Last Mermaid, which swam into romantasy waters. “When you tackle something as well-trodden as a crime comic, I feel like you have to inject something new into it,” says Kim, whose latest series is Royals, a heist set in South Korea that stars two brothers who share a telepathic bond, drawn by Jacob Perez. The first trade volume releases in December from Image. Royals incorporates traditional crime elements—the siblings are trying to steal money by cheating at poker—with family drama and superpowers. The conceit may appeal to K-pop fans, as well as those of classic Korean crime noir film.
“Mixing genres works really well with crime, because everyone is familiar with the tropes,” Kim says. “Everyone is expecting a certain outcome, which makes it easier to subvert their expectations.”
Bat City’s Shannon Live agrees: “Crime fiction, when done right, is some of the best fiction out there.”
Zack Quaintance is a Brooklyn-based journalist and comic book creator.
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A version of this article appeared in the 11/16/2026 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Partners in crime
