In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel offers up the Infinity Gauntlet / War / Crusade family of titles and a lot of Thor. Image frets that winter is coming, but has discounts on some quality titles, nonetheless.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Administrative Note

It’s the holiday shopping season, which means a few more sales than usual and we’re breaking the week into two posts again. We’ll be back at the normal time at the end of the week for the rest of the Marvel sales, DC’s Winter Sale and whatever else happens to pop up.

Infinite Jest

Infinity Gauntlet  Infinity War  Infinity Crusade

The  Marvel Infinity Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

All things infinity. Some Starlin, so not. Best to separate those things out, so we will:

Starlin’s Infinity Saga

As you may recall from last week, Jim Starlin returned to Marvel and re-introduced Thanos in Silver Surfer, which lead up to Thanos getting his hands on the Infinity Gems and kicking off a series of Event mini-series.

Alongside those titles, Warlock & the Infinity Watch (Starlin / Angel Medina / Tom Grindberg and others) ran parallel and filled some gaps between Events. Ditto, Silver Surfer Epic Collection: The Infinity Gauntlet (primarily Ron Marz / Ron Lim)

And then some more Thanos/Infinity mini’s and graphic novels:

Avengers

Not part of the Starlin Infinity world, but thrown in for… reasons (?)

Avengers Infinity by Roger Stern / Sean Chen is a cosmic/Avengers in space tale.

Infinity is roughly the middle act of Jonathan Hickman’s massive Avengers run. That volume pulls in all the various parts and is how you want it, although we’ve said in before and we’ll say it again – Hickman’s Avengers is one long epic and if you’re going to sample, read the whole thing. The sheer scope of it adds to the experience when you start at the beginning.

Hammered at the Holiday Party?

Thor by Walt Simonson  Thor Road to War of the Realms  Thor: The Mighty Avenger

Marvel’s Thor Sale runs  through Monday, 12/16.

This looks like a Marvel “legacy” sale, but with one big departure from how this has been done in the past: no Masterworks or Epic Collections… which almost entirely takes the Lee/Kirby material off the table. Both formats seem to be missing from all the Marvel sales as we type this. Does this mean we’re getting separate Epic _and_ Masterworks sales before the holiday season is over? Time will tell.

As per our custom, here’s the breakdown by series/volume, although the earlier material isn’t discounted:

  • Journey Into Mystery ’52-’66 – The earliest Thor stories from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, not discounted this time, however
  • The Mighty Thor ’66-’96 – From Lee & Kirby until the relaunches started, but the discounts don’t really start showing up until the Len Wein/John Buscema run
  • The Mighty Thor ’96-’04 – The Heroes return Dan Jurgens era, initially with John Romita, Jr.
  • Thor ’07-’11 – Starts with J. Michael Straczynski & Olivier Coipel, ends with Matt Fraction & Pasqual Ferry. Gillen in the middle.
  • The Mighty Thor ’11-’12 – Fraction gets a relaunch with Coipel, Ferry and early Pepe Larraz
  • The Jason Aaron era ’12-’19 – It’s a LOT easer to look at the “Complete Collections” across all the relaunches here
  • Thor ’20 to ’23 – The Donny Cates run with Nic Klein as the primary artist; Torunn GrØnbekk tags end toward the end while Cates was recovering from his accident (and filled in well, we might add).
  • Immortal Thor (’23 – current) – Al Ewing / Martin Coccolo; Strangely omitted from the sale, but listed here for reference

If your point of reference for Thor is the most recent film, you want the Jason Aaron era. The God Butcher is the first arc. If you go with that set of Complete Collections, Jane Foster picks up the hammer in V.2. We don’t think that starting with the first Jane Foster issues (and slimmer volumes) is a great jumping on point. It’s a saga and you’ll get a lot more out of it if you start at the beginning of Aaron’s run.

Past that, we’re all about the Walt Simonson Thor. It’s probably the most influential run since early days and it’s great. You’ll want the Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson set that starts here. (The Thor by Walter Simonson version of the reprints seems to be missing the final volume, or at least the last few issues. *sigh* These things happen.)

If you have a Lee/Kirby itch (and who doesn’t), Thor: Tales of Asgard is your best way to scratch it at a discount. These are the old backups featuring tales of Asgard’s past, occasionally with young Thor and Loki, occasionally the Warriors Three. Slightly more mythology-centric as a whole, as filtered through Stan and Jack.

Something under the radar? Ignore this being marketed as a kid’s comic – Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee had a short run on Thor: The Mighty Avenger that was just a good Thor comic, full stop. And you might expect that from those two.

If you want to move in the opposite direction, Thor: Vikings is a seriously violent Marvel MAX title from Garth Ennis and Glenn Fabry that has Viking zombies invading Manhattan. (No, not Fleet Week. That’s different.)

Folks in Buffalo Would Say It’s Already Here
The Good Asian  The One Trick Rip-Off Thief of Thieves

The Image Winter’s Coming Sale runs through Sunday 12/15.

Another small title count sale with some books in it we’ve enjoyed and are happy to recommend:

  • Bad Weekend – Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips; An expansion of a backup from Criminal as a disillusioned comics art legend acts out at comic convention
  • The Good Asian – Pornsak Pichetshote / Alexandre Tefenkgi; A superior noir detective tale takes place in 1936, during the final years of the Chinese Exclusion act. A Chinese-America detective is summoned to SF when a series of extra bloody, possibly Tong-initiated murders, threaten his adopted family. A period piece that dots its historical i’s and earns its rep.
  • The One Trick Rip-Off + Deep Cuts – Paul Pope; A heist story fronts the collection, which also includes his “Supertrouble” manga series.
  • Thief of Thieves – (Mostly) Andy Diggle / Robert Kirkman / Shawn Martinbrough; A master thief plans his exit as both the FBI and the underworld circle around him.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Avengers  Immortal Thor  Weapon X-Men

The trend continues. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Pre-Order for Next Week

🤞 Don’t miss these tips!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Still on Sale