This week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales include the majority of Captain America comics, a whole bunch of Star Wars material, Ultimate Spider-Man (and Miles Morales) and the rest of DC’s Memorial Day Sale.
Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?
In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):
Super Soldier Serum
The Marvel Captain America Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.
There’s a lot of material to cover here, so we’ll go with the usual format and start by breaking out the major series involved
- Captain America Comics ’40-’50 – The original Golden Age series
- Tales of Suspense ’59-’68 – Cap’s Silver Age solo stories were in a title shared with Iron Man
- Captain America ’68-’96 – The original Silver/Bronze Age solo series.
- Captain America ’98-’02 – The second Mark Waid / Ron Garney run with some Andy Kubert and Lee Weeks art, too. Smaller volumes here, plus the underrated Dan Jurgens run that followed.
- Captain America ’02-’04 – The Marvel Knights era
- Captain America ’04-’11 – The main Winter Soldier/Death of Captain America Ed Brubaker run with Steve Epting, Michael Lark, Mike Perkins and Butch Guice in the artistic rotation. Note: you can pick up chunks of it cheaper in these omnibuses
- Captain America: Reborn – The actual end to the “Death of Captain America” sequence by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice
- Captain America ’11-’12 – Brubaker sticks around for a relaunch, post-Death/Reborn
- Captain America ’12-’14 is the Rick Remender run with John Romita, Jr, Carlos Pacheco, Pascal Alixe and Nic Klein in the artistic rotation.
- All-New Captain America ’14-’15 – Sam Wilson picks up the shield by Rick Remender and Stuart Immonen
- Captain America: Sam Wilson ’15-17 – Nick Spencer with Daniel Acuna as the primary artist. The seeds of “Secret Empire,” which was a long game, start here.Note: There’s a Complete Collection omnibus set of the Sam Wilson material that’s a bit cheaper.
- Captain America: Steve Rogers ’16-’17 – The main runup to Secret Empire by Nick Spencer with Jesus Saiz and Javier Pina as the primary artists.
- While not on sale, you can’t talk about the Spencer era without mentioning Secret Empire, the controversial “Hydra Cap” arc that Spencer’s entire run builds towards.
- Captain America ’17-’18 – AKA Captain America by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee (and Leonardo Romero)
- Captain America ‘18-’21 – The Ta-Nehisi Coates run with art by Leinil Francis Yu, Adam Kubert, Jason Masters and Leonard Kirk
So… do you think Captain America gets relaunched enough? Don’t worry, they’ll relaunch him again.
First the usual general advice: The Masterworks and Epic Collections tend to be the best buys, but keep an eye on price points. Some of the newer Epic Collections can be $8.99+ and make the Masterworks more appealing.
Some recommendations? Absolutely. Just the way the collections are currently rolled out, the highlights seem to flow more with the Masterworks than the Epics.
For Silver/Bronze Age adventures, Captain America Masterworks V. 3 gets you some late Stan Lee/Jack Kirby and the influential Jim Steranko Sequence. You then jump forward to Masterworks V. 7 for the beginning of the Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era and stay on through Masterworks V.10, which is the return of Jack Kirby and his entirely too timely “Madbomb” arc. (There’s more Kirby in V.11, but Madbomb is a hard act to follow.) There’s also much to recommend with the Mark Gruenwald era which probably peaked with “The Captain” Epic Collection. In general, earlier Gruenwald is better and the art takes a nose dive before his run is over.
Aside from that, your best of the best is anything written by Mark Waid or Ed Brubaker, and know that Brubaker, first run is basically one long and epic story – and be sure to get Reborn or you’re missing a piece.
Nothing But Star Wars
The Marvel Star Wars Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.
While not the rock bottom prices of the May the 4th sale, this one does have a wider selection of Star Wars material that isn’t limited to the current Marvel titles. Some titles that may be of interest:
You get a little more material per volume (and they finished the run) getting the original Marvel Star Wars series with the “A Long Time Ago…” omnibus editions.
A lot of the Epic Collections of the older material have been lumped together under an Epic Collections page, to make finding individual series hard, so refer to that link for the bigger picture, but within that link:
- Dark Empire – Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy played a BIG part in bringing the Star Wars franchise back to life with their Dark Horse mini-series and it’s sequel. This is the most economical package for the Dark Empire-related titles. It’s a classic.
- Agent of Empire – John Ostander, Stéphane Roux and Davidé Fabbri did a couple mini-series that effectively answered the question, “what if James Bond worked for The Empire?” Those are the backbone of this collection.
- Legacy – Far in the Star Wars timeline’s future, the Sith have returned and are stalking the last Skywalker heir. There are three volumes of this fun John Ostrander / Jan Duursema series that might not be cannon anymore, but is better than a lot of things that came after it.
This Time, the Other Peter Isn’t a Clone
The Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 5/30.
A Bendis Sale! And Ultimate Spidey might just the the crowning achievement for Brian Bendis in the world of superheroes. (We might like his Daredevil a little more, but Ultimate Spidey and then Miles have had so much impact.)
So let’s break this one down into parts.
- The original Ultimate Spider-Man with Mark Bagley, reimaging Peter for a new era. You get a better deal with these larger collections and ignore the omnibus that starts the list.
- Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, the relaunch with David Lafuente.
- Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, the Miles Morales version with art by Sara Pichelli, Chris Samnee, David Marquez and Pepe Larraz
The Other Memorial Day Sale
The DC Memorial Day eBook Sale Part 2 runs through Monday, 5/30.
It would appear that last week’s confusion was caused by Amazon prematurely post this week’s sale last week, then removing it in the US while leaving it online in the UK. Stranger and stranger.
But this is essentially the back half of the alphabet on sale and worth a browse. Some highlights?
The rock bottom price pick: Dead Boy Detectives for $3.99. Something of a departure for Vertigo as we generally remember it (although there was a similar “Death” volume and My Faith In Frankie wasn’t necessarily far removed), the multi-award-winning Jill Thompson takes the ghost detective children from Sandman and plops them into a manga-style detective comedy. Yes, Jill is versatile.
From the “Yes, DC published that” division, do you remember Road to Perdition? Yes, before Tom Hanks was a mob enforcer, this was a comic. As usual, these are cataloged strangely. Listed under “Return to Perdition,” are the original Road to Perdition and Road to Perdition: On the Road. Both are written by Max Allan Collins with Richard Piers Rayner illustrating Road to Perdition and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Steve Leiber and Joseph Rubenstein sharing duties for On the Road. The actual Return to Perdition, a sequel set in the 1970s by Collins and his Ms. Tree partner, Terry Beatty is list separately (for $3.99). Go figure…
For the uninitiated, Road to Perdition can be likened to Lone Wolf and Cub setting against the backdrop of the Capone era Chicago mob. A mob enforcer goes on the lam with his son after the boss of the local mob outpost orders a hit on his family. Excellent material that’s largely ignored these days.
And if you’d like some supervillains in your life, the John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell Suicide Squad run is available for $5.99 a pop. This is the run that spun off the films.
Still On Sale
- The Image Original Graphic Novel Sale runs through Thursday, 6/2
