CONCRETE IS BACK: DARK HORSE BRINGS PAUL CHADWICK’S CLASSIC TO MASSIVE OMNIBUS EDITIONS

Wepa, Crusaders. Some books disappear for a few years. Some go out of print long enough to become that thing somebody mentions at the shop and everybody suddenly starts checking eBay prices. Paul Chadwick’s Concrete has been living in that zone for way too long, and Dark Horse is finally bringing the award-winning series back to shelves in a big way.

Concrete Omnibus Volume 1 kicks off a five-volume omnibus program collecting Chadwick’s landmark series, bringing the original material back into print for the first time in roughly two decades. Volume 1 collects the first two original collections, Depths and Heights, and adds a new introduction from Chadwick plus an expanded sketchbook section.

If you never met Ronald Lithgow, here is the beautiful weirdness of it: he is a regular man trapped inside a seven-foot-tall, thousand-pound stone body. That gives him the ability to survive things that would flatten the rest of us, walk along the ocean floor and climb places normal humans should not even attempt. Sounds like superhero setup material, right? Except Concrete has always been far more interested in what that body costs him than how hard he can punch.

That is why the series still hits. Chadwick uses this impossible body to tell stories about isolation, curiosity, loneliness, humanity and the strange little moments that make life worth living. The early material collected here includes stories such as “Orange Glow” and “Vagabond,” while Heights brings together Concrete #6-10, the Concrete Color Special story “World Beneath the Skin,” and “Brighter.”

The full omnibus line is planned to gather all seven original volumes, the one-shot Three Uneasy Pieces, the recently published Stars Over Sand, Dark Horse Presents material, short stories and more from Chadwick’s archive. In other words, this is not a quick nostalgia reprint. Dark Horse is building a proper home for the whole damn thing.

Volume 1 clocks in at 544 pages in paperback format, with Dark Horse announcing that the omnibus program will begin arriving in 2027. The press release itself contains an inconsistent 2026 date for Volume 1, so we are treating Dark Horse’s stated 2027 rollout as the current release window until the publisher clarifies the individual-volume schedule.

For longtime readers, this is the chance to get Concrete back on the shelf without hunting down scattered older editions. For new readers, this is the better part: one of comics’ strangest and most human classics is getting another shot at finding an audience that may have only heard people talk about it.

Big rock body. Small human moments. That has always been the magic trick. Welcome back, Concrete.

For more information, visit Dark Horse Comics.