In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, the Vertigo catalog (or what’s left of it) is on sale, plus Spidey, Thor, Daredevil, Hercules and the Dark Horse works of Mike Mignola.
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):
“Where is the alleged dead man, sir?”
The DC/Vertigo eBook Sale runs through Monday, 8/8.
Yes, we just had to break out that quote from the old “Man in a Suitcase” show because Vertigo gets an awful lot of sales for an imprint that’s supposed to be defunct.
Let’s break down the highlights of titles involved here:
- Preacher – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon (TV version was on AMC)
- Hellblazer – The original run (TV and Film as “Constantine” and the Fox TV version was better than it gets credit for)
- Lucifer – a Mike Carey/Peter Gross series (TV version on Fox, then Netflix)
- Lucifer (’18 version) – Dan Watters/Max Fiumara/Sebastian Fiumara
- Y – The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan/Pia Guerra/Jose Marzon, Jr. (TV version was on FX on Hulu)
- The Losers – Andy Diggle/Jock (film)
- Sweet Tooth – Jeff Lemire (TV version on Netflix)
- DMZ – Brian Wood/Riccardo Burcchiell (TV version on HBO Max)
- iZombie – Chris Roberson/Mike Allred (TV version on CW)
- Stardust – Neil Gaiman/Charles Vess (Film, though that was probably from the novel)
- Fables – Bill Willingham/Mark Buckingham (primary artist)
- Fables: The Wolf Among Us – video game adaption
- Unwritten – Mike Carey/Peter Gross
- The Invisibles – Grant Morrison and rotating artists
- 100 Bullets – Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
- American Vampire – Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque
- Scalped – Jason Aaron/R.M. Guera
- Daytripper – Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon
- Animal Man – ’88 to ’95 version
- We3 – Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (amazing this isn’t a movie yet)
- Books of Magic (’18 version) – Kat Howard and Tom Fowler are the most frequent creators
- The Wake – Scott Synder/Sean Murphy
- Northlanders – Brian Wood / rotating artists
- Global Frequency – Warren Ellis/rotating artists (we liked the TV pilot, but it wasn’t picked up)
- Transmetropolitan – Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
A lot of TV/film activity for a “dead” label, eh?
You can pretty much “pick your poison” with this sale. That said, the 12-issue sized Preacher collections for $5.99 are a pretty good deal. Same deal for the $5.99 double volumes of Y: The Last Man.
Catches Your Money Just Like Flies
August’s “Marvel Monthly Sale” is The Spider-Man 60th Anniversary Sale, which runs through 9/5.
Yes, it cracks us up that the monthly sales always end in a different month.
This one is a little different from the last big Spidey sale in that it isn’t just Amazing Spider-Man it’s a 330-item selection across various titles. They’re also using that scrolling carousel format on the main sale page that makes this a lot easier to parse.
A few ideas?
We always liked the Brand New Day era of teams shuttling in and out for story arcs (it was all carefully coordinated) and you had all the usual suspects involved: Mark Waid, Dan Slott, Zeb Wells, John Romita, Jr., Phil Jimenez, Lee Weeks, etc., etc.
While his Iron Man work is more celebrated and his Amazing Spider-Man work often overshadowed by the artists he worked with, David Michelinie had a pretty good and lengthy run, much of which is in Epic Collections. You can start with Venom, which feature art from some guy named McFarlane.
And coming in from left field, while Marvel Team-Up was usually the third wheel Spidey title, we’ve got a lot of love for the Chris Claremont/John Byrne era of it. After their Iron Fist run and leading into their X-Men run… which a little bit of mutant mayhem here and there.
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You Were Expecting “Brave Ulysses?”
The Marvel Thor: Tales of Asgard Sale runs through Thursday, 8/11.
This is an odd sale. Not _all_ of Thor, but mostly because only parts of the original ongoing title are on sale. Epic Collections, yes. Masterworks, not so much.
The sale presentation leads with Thor by Jason Aaron: The Complete Collection and these not-quite Epic-sized large collections are a good value at $6.99. We also think this particular set of collections eliminates the problem of “what order do I read this in?” one gets when the story flips between titles.
You really can’t go wrong with $3.99 for the *actual* Thor: Tales of Asgard, which is a collection of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby “Tales of Asgard” backups from Journey Into Mystery and Thor. 300 pages worth.
And for an off-the-radar pick, it’s been forever since we notice Thor: Godstorm, which was a Kurt Busiek/Steve Rude mini-series back in the day. We seem to remember liking it and Rude always shows the love on Kirby properties, too.
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He Doesn’t Get Along with Amazons…
The Marvel Hercules Sale runs through Monday, 8/8.
Your “classic” solo Hercules would be the “Prince of Power” era pair of miniseries by Bob Layton, now in once volume.
If you want something totally under the radar, we enjoyed the short lived Dan Abnett/Luke Ross run where Herc sobers up and attempts to get serious about his trade.
DD Found His Discounts
Marvel has a Daredevil: The Man Without Fear sale running through Thursday, 8/11.
Last week, this sale was listed, but there weren’t any discounts on the books. This week, the discounts arrived. And this is a WEIRD sale with multiple collections of the same material and different formats with different discounts.
The real meat of the Marvel Knights era of Daredevil (what this mostly seems to be) is a set of two runs that blend together: Brian Bendis/Alex Maleev, followed by Ed Brubaker/Michael Lark.
Your best value for the Bendis/Maleev run is the 3-volume Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev Ultimate Collection towards the bottom of the page, here.
You’ll find the Brubaker/Lark volumes discounted over here, toward the bottom of the page.
And as we said last time, Daredevil: Love’s Labor Lost is the only thing currently reprinted from the Denny O’Neil run the bridged that gap between Frank Miller’s two stints. The rest of it isn’t even on Marvel Unlimited. This is the tale end of that run, featuring art by David Mazzucchelli, who’d started 9 issues earlier. It’s worth a look, if the discounts show up (and we don’t know why the rest of this era is buried).
They Like Mike
The Dark Horse Mike Mignola Sale runs through Monday, 8/15.
Yes, you might say Mignola’s important to Dark Horse.
Your core Mignola experience is going to be Hellboy, but you probably already knew that. It’s wonderful and the omnibus line is the way to go.
While it does suffer from the “hardcover pricing for digital” problem, the Lobster Johnson Omnibus is still cheaper than getting the single volumes. It’s a rotating creative cast and a rotating tone from farce to pulp thriller, but we’ve found the adventures in the 1930s Hellboy-verse highly entertaining.
And, of course, the primary companion piece to Hellboy is B.P.R.D., the first arc of which is in omnibus editions here. There are some false starts, but one the “Plague of Frogs” arc properly starts up, your creative team is Mignola/John Arcudi/Guy Davis and it’s a helluva ride… pun intended.
However… you know how sometimes unexpected things show up in a sale (we’ll see how long it takes them to correct this after the column goes live)? How about three issues of Captain America? Yes, issues #286, #287 and #288. That’s a J.M. DeMatteis/Mike Zeck Deathlok storyline. As it happens, one of the best arcs… but we’ve no idea what it has to do with a Mignola sale. $0.99 a pop, if you’re inclined. There are a lot of random Marvel single issues scattered throughout this sale if you page through it.
Still On Sale
- The Dark Horse Superhero sale runs through Monday, 8/8
- The Paper Girls Sale runs through Monday, 8/15
- DC’s Sandman: The Streaming Sale runs through Monday, 8/8
