Highlights from this week’s Comixology sales include Marvel breaking out a deep slab of Avengers and Nick Fury, Scott Pilgrim’s omnibuses get discounts and Valiant unleashes Secret Weapons.
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All Avengers, All the Time
The awkwardly named “Marvel Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Sale” runs through Thursday, 4/8. There’s a lot of quality material on sale, but it can be a little hard to parse because of how poorly Marvel manages it’s backlist. You can browse the main sale page or follow the links to the individual series and scroll down to the Collected Edition sections. But if in a collected edition, it’s most in there. Hickman and Aaron runs, too.
The original ’63 – ’96 Avengers series is broken up into the Masterworks editions (chronological), the Epic editions (seemingly random chunks) and a few stray mostly one-off collections. The Epic editions are your best value, particularly the $7.99 ones. Eventually, the Epic editions should be a continuous run, but Marvel isn’t there yet. We particularly like the Englehart era “The Avengers Defenders War,” “The Final Threat” is primarily Gerry Conway/Jim Shooter era with George Perez and John Byrne as primary artists collecting the Private War of Doctor Doom and Bride of Ultron arcs AND the Jim Starlin Thanos showdown. “Under Siege” and “Judgement Day” will get you most of the delightful Roger Stern/John Buscema/Tom Palmer run, which is one of the best.
Avengers Assemble is what you want from the ’98-’04 run. This is the Kurt Busiek era (with a few side series with folks like Roger Stern and Roy Thomas popping in as writers). George Perez is the initial art and it ends with a rotation of artists. This is also one of the best periods of the franchise. Vol. 1-5 will keep you out of trouble for awhile.
One you might not be familiar with that we liked back in the day was The Mighty Avengers by Dan Slott – The Complete Collection. It wasn’t particularly long lived, but Slott’s run was the rare Avengers book with a classic Avengers feel during the Bendis era.
Cloak & Dagger & Eyepatch
The Marvel Nick Fury Sale runs through Sunday, 4/4.
Frankly, we’ve read and enjoyed most of the things on sale here. First a heads up on something that’s on sale, but we’re not seeing the collected editions list on the sale page: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Masterworks Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3. Vol. 1 starts the Strange Tales run, Vol. 2 is where Steranko turns up and starts the Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD solo series. Vol. 3 collects the rest of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, so more Steranko, a bit of Archie Goodwin and early Barry Windsor-Smith.
One thing that most people appeared to sleep on was Nick Fury: Deep-Cover Capers by James Robinson and ACO from ’17. This is simply an extremely fun book. 007 spy hijinx beautifully illustrated in a slightly modernized pop art style. We were hoping for a sequel. Our personal favorite Nick Fury, Jr. tale.
The plot of SHIELD being infiltrated and compromised has been done a few too many times. That said, Nick Fury vs. SHIELD did it the best and sparked the late 80s/early 90s Nick Fury revival. Bob Harras and Paul Neary sent Fury on the run, framed for treason and trying to work out exactly what’s happened to his agency.
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Sale
The Oni Scott Pilgrim Sale runs through Thursday, 4/15.
Oni’s conveniently collected the iconic Bryan Lee O’Malley series an omnibus. The choice is between the original black & white or the colorized edition.
Maternal Mayhem
The Valiant Fierce Female Sale runs through Thursday, 4/8.
We enjoyed War Mother, a future dystopian science fiction tale by Fred Van Lente, Stephen Segovia and Tomás Giorello.
Secret Weapons by Academy Award nominee Eric Heisserer, Raúl Allén and Patricia Martin is in the conversation for the best comic Valiant has published. Psiots are essentially the Valiant equivalent of mutants. Livewire, a technopath psiot, discovers that the recently deposed big bad of the universe had been “activating” psiots and unbeknownst to the world at large, was discarding the kids whose powers weren’t useful as weapons. As Livewire’s trying to track them down, something else is trying to consume them. A little bit of X-Men, a little bit of Legion of Substitute Heroes (but not as goofy).
Still on Sale
- The DC Explore the Multiverse Sale runs through Monday, 4/5. It’s broken into two sections – A-L and M-Z.
- The Robert Kirkman / Invincible Sale runs through Tuesday, 5/4.
