Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Iron Man, Justice League, Thunderbolts, Kingdom Come

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts full runs of Iron Man and Thunderbolts on discount duty. DC goes Justice League-centric with their sale.

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):

Does Whatever An Iron Can…

The Marvel Iron Man Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/14

This would be one of those sales where most of the hero’s run is on sale, so we’re going to follow our usual protocol and start out by breaking out the primary titles and volumes. Iron Man isn’t as goofy to follow as, say, Spider-Gwen… but there are “quirks.”

  • Tales of Suspense – Iron Man debuted here in what was a split book with Captain America for most of the run.
  • Iron Man ’68-’96 – The original solo run in the era before constant relaunch gimmicks

OK, sit tight. The ’98 -’04 run is collected in VERY odd ways and poorly cataloged for browsing.  The truly excellent Kurt Busiek/Sean Chen/Patrick Zircher run lasts from 1-25. We can’t find 15-25 collected? (That entire run should be!)  You can catch 1-14 and the Mike Grell run (50-59)  in cheap omnibus form here.  You can catch Joe Quesada’s scripting run (26-32) and the Avengers: Disassembled tie-in late in this run in single volumes here. (But get the omnibus version for Busiek.)

  • Iron Man ’04-07 – Best known for launching with the “Extremis” storyline
  • Invincible Iron Man ’08-’12 – The excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larroca run. Save some money with the omnibus collecting the first 3 volumes.
  • Iron Man ’12-’14 – The Kieron Gillen run with Greg Land as initial artist
  • Superior Iron Man ’14-’15 – The Tom Taylor / Yildiray Cinar run.
  • Invincible Iron Man ’15-’16 – Brian Bendis and David Marquez/Mike Deodato, Jr. start out with Tony Stark in the armor
  • International Iron Man ’16 – Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev (And yes, we’re in the thick of the relaunches now)
  • Infamous Iron Man  ’16-’17 – Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev have Doctor Doom step in as Iron Man
  • Invincible Iron Man ’16-’18 – Brian Bendis and Stefano Caselli with Riri Williams/Ironheart filling Tony Stark’s shoes (yes, parallel substitute Iron Man runs)
  • Tony Stark: Iron Man ’18-’19 – The Dan Slott era with Valerio Schiti as the principle artist in the rotation.
  • Iron Man ’20-’22 – The Christopher Cantwell / Cafu run.

Before we get into what’s good, a tweak on the general advice: The Masterworks and Epic Collections are both good deals and *in general* we like the Epic Collections as a slightly better buy. In this case, keep an eye on the Epic pricing. The $6.99 Epics are much better buys than the $8.99/$9.99 Epics.  We can all agree inflation sucks? And the over general caveat: the Masterworks run sequentially and the Epic collections have some gaps.  But you can still pick off some awfully nice material for $6.99.

So what’s good?  We haven’t read ALL the Iron Man out there, but we’ve read a lot of them.

In our opinion Iron Man starts hitting it’s stride when Archie Goodwin arrives toward the end of the Tales of Suspense run and then is pure gold through issue 28 of the ’68 Iron Man series. Artists for this run include Gene Colan and George Tuska. (That’s collected in both Masterworks and Epic formats.)

The next “all-star” run is #116-157 of the original Iron Man, that’s the David Michelinie / John Romita, Jr. / Bob Layton run that’s most famous for the “Demon in a Bottle” alcoholism arc, but there’s more to the run than just that arc.  The Denny O’Neil / Luke McDonnell run that follows is solid (make sure you get a collection that includes #200!!!), but Michelinie & Layton return for #215-250 with a few artists, including Mark Bright and Jackson Guice… with Layton even switching to penciller, instead of his usual inking post, for parts of it.  This second run is most famous for “Armor Wars” (originally known as Stark Wars).

When Heroes Return hits, Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen are pop in for the excellent 1998 run, of which only 1-14 are currently collected.

The ’08 – ’12 run by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca is particularly good. You know how modern Marvel titles can get sidetracked by Events. Fraction and Larroca lean into it and produce a lengthy and self-contained arc with Tony Stark on the run and attempting to overwrite his brain to keep everyone’s secrets out of the hands of Norman Osborn. Yes, an honest to goodness great Event tie-in arc. It’s a rare thing.

We were quite happy with the  Christopher Cantwell/Cafu run. Tony Stark chases Korvac into outer space and meditates on the nature of godhood, good intentions and addictions. Lots of character work and action.

Iron Man: The Man Who Killed Tony Stark  Iron Man: Heroes Reborn  Iron Man: Big Iron

Thunder. Thunder. Thunderca… Whoops, Wrong Series!

The Marvel Thunderbolts Sale runs through Monday, 8/14.

The Thunderbolts have been through several iterations since they began in ’97, originally having been the Masters of Evil laying the groundwork for nefarious deeds. And yes, there’s a film in the works.

The original series was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. Eventually Fabian Nicieza tagged in as writer and Patrick Zircher became the lead artist a bit after that. The “regular” collected editions of this are a little spotty for the Nicieza/Zircher run and not everything is discounted, so we’d recommend the  omnibus editions.

New Thunderbolts was the ’04-’06 relaunch, and yes, it’s included in the third omnibus of the original. Fabian Nicieza/Tom Grummett is the creative team, here.

This then turns back into (no adjective) Thunderbolts for ’06-’12, starting Nicieza/Grummett and then including runs by Warren Ellis / Mike Deodato and Jeff Parker/Kev Walker/Declan Shalvey

Thunderbolts relaunched for ’12-’14 with Daniel Way and then Charles Soule writing it. The artist rotation included Steve Dillon and Phil Noto.

Jim Zub and Jon Malin were behind the ’16-’17 Thunderbolts run.

And then the most recent series was King in Black: Thunderbolts by Matthew Rosenberg/Gerry Duggan/Juan E. Ferreyra/Luke Ross.

With Thunderbolts, we feel pretty strongly you need to read the first sequence or two and get a flavor for the concept before jumping into the later evolutions.

Thunderbolts 

Wasn’t This a Comic Strip?

The DC World’s Greatest Super-Heroes Sale runs through Monday, 8/28.

Yes, The World’s Greatest Superheroes was definitely DC’s comic strip. And the strip isn’t even in the sale. (Did the person naming the sale realize it was a strip? Possibly not.)

This is sort of / kind of a Justice League sale. Let’s take a look at some of the better books with an eye on price, because not all discounts are created equal.

Kingdom Come is the classic mini-series by Mark Waid and Alex Ross. It’s a near-future showdown between a new generation and the old guard Justice League. Not quite post-apocalyptical, but close. If you’ve never run across it, the modern way to explain it is Injustice: Gods Among Us isn’t officially a reboot of Kingdom Come, but it sure feels like it at times.

A more under the radar pick is DC Universe: Legacies. This is a “history of the DC universe” type comic with an eye witness relating the broad strokes in a narrative. Len Wein does the writing along with a ridiculous set of artists: Brian Bolland, George Pérez, Joe Kubert, Andy Kubert, J.G. Jones, Scott Kolins and J.H. Williams III.

Also decent pricing on the landmark Grant Morrison / Howard Porter run of JLA (And yes, the prices go up when the creative teams tag off.)

Also of potential under the radar interest. Did you like the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons? Dwayne McDuffie had a run on JLA with Ed Benes on art. They didn’t really give him the full roster, but it’s still McDuffie on the Justice League.

Kingdom Come   DC Universe: Legacies   JLA

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Avengers Vs. X-Men; DC in the 90s; Hawkeye; Critical Role

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts the 90s. Marvel slashes sales prices on the Avengers vs. X-Men line of Events and also Hawkeye. Dark Horse offers up Critical Role and Zenescope slips Robyn Hood into the mix.

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):

After the 80s…

The  DC 90s Rewind Sale runs through Monday, 8/7.

DC in the 90s… well, we’ll tell you straight off the bat, they’re missing Starman. And they’re missing the Strazeswki/Parobeck Justice Society. (The lead-in mini is collected, but not the lost classic ongoing.) Some of the better 90s material from DC isn’t currently in print. That said, let’s look at some deals and maybe a little off the beaten path.

Batman: Haunted Knight is the Batman material that Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale did before they did The Long Halloween. It doesn’t get talked about as much, but trust us, that first Halloween special they did came out of nowhere and was a jolt to the system.

Aztek: The Ultimate Man is quite the oddity today. For a little while, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar were a writing team. This was their superhero offering, who would later show up in JLA. N. Steven Harris was the artist.

The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake was one of the best under the radar books of the 90s. A character study, too, as Jim Corrigan comes to grips with being dead and sharing an existence with an avenging spirit. We wish the entire run was available.

Batman - Haunted Knight   Aztek   The Spectre

And some of the better 90s DC comics were outside the confines of the DC imprint.

Ignore that awful film, the original League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic was great. Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil assembled (on behalf of the government, naturally) a team of characters drawn from Victorian fantasy and horror novels. Alan Quarterman, Captain Nemo, Mina Harkness, Mister Hyde and The Invisible Man. It’s a fun one… in a dark way. Originally set up at Wildstorm, DC was the early publisher.

You could probably argue that Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon was Vertigo’s flagship title, post-Sandman and it ran for the back half of the 90s as Jesse Custer goes on a rather angry quest to find out why God has gone missing. You may have seen it on TV.

And then there’s Hellblazer. It technically started in ’88, but was Vertigo’s longest lived title and supported a parade of high end writers and artists. The first two volumes, ironically the 80s material, are at a particularly good price and this was a consistently good title.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen   Preacher   Hellblazer

Crossovers!

The Marvel Uncanny X-Men/Avengers Crossover Sale runs through Monday, 8/7.

This is quite a jumble of Events. Let’s try and put a little context around them.

This batch starts with X-Men Vs. Avengers/Fantastic Four, which collects two miniseries from 1987. X-Men Vs. Avengers (Roger Stern/Marc Silvestri for three issues, the Tom DeFalco/Jim Shooter/Keith Pollard)  and X-Men vs. Fantastic Four (Chris Claremont / Jon Bogdanove).

Fast forward to 1993 and Avengers/X-Men: Bloodties, a Genosha-centric arc that spanned the Avengers and X-Men titles.

In 1996, X-Men/Avengers: Onslaught (yes, most people just call it “Onslaught”) was more of an X-event, but spanned a number of Avengers titles… and Spidey, and FF… as it set things up for the Image founders to take over some titles in the aftermath.

2000 brought us Maximum Security, wherein The Supreme Intelligence manages to get Earth designated a penal colony for dumping off the worst intergalactic offenders. Kurt Busiek & Jerry Ordway handle the miniseries and it crosses over with many Avengers and X-Men family titles.

Onslaught   Maximum Security

In 2009, Avengers/X-Men: Utopia isn’t really an Avengers/X-Men event in the traditional sense. This is set during the “Dark Reign” period and the X-Men have a run in with Norman Osborn’s “Dark Avengers” team as Normy tries to set up a “Dark X-Men.”

Alrighty, then! Now, we’re to the part where things start to bleed together (in the name of circulation, naturally). Hold tight.

Things kick off with Avengers Vs. X-Men (promoted as AVX). Who were the creators? Almost everyone at Marvel in 2012. Check out all the varieties of companion books in the main listing!

In the aftermath of AVX, Uncanny Avengers debuts. This is an attempt to have a sort of merged Avengers/X-Men personnel unit. Naturally, the Red Skull shows up to cause trouble. Rick Remender is the writer. John Cassaday is the launch artist and Daniel Acuna is the primary artist after he leaves. The end of the first volume/run leads right into…

Avengers & X-Men: Axis, wherein the Red Skull powers up, gets some allies and turns everything upside down. Remender’s the writer with Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson and Jim Cheung hopping in and out on art. There were quite a few tie-ins at the time, but those collected editions don’t appear to be on sale.

In the aftermath of Axis, Remender and Acuna return for one more Uncanny Avengers outing. Then Uncanny Avengers relaunches with Gerry Duggan writing and an artist rotation of Ryan Stegman / Carlos Pacheco / Pepe Larraz.

Avengers Vs. X-Men   Uncanny Avengers   Avengers & X-Men: Axis

Hawk-Guy

The Marvel Hawkeye Sale runs through Monday, 8/7.

Let’s run through the highlights of the sale, knowing that Hawkeye’s typically been in fairly short runs.

  • Hawkeye Epic Collection – This builds around the Mark Gruenwald (yes, writer/artist) miniseries from ’83 and fills it out with various earlier appearances from Avengers, Marvel Team-Up, Tales of Suspense, etc.)
  • Hawkeye (2012-15) – The famous Matt Fraction/David Aja run, now in one volume.
  • Hawkeye (2015-16) – The Jeff Lemire/Ramon Perez follow-up to Fraction/Aja
  • Hawkeye (2016-18) – The Kate Bishop run by Kelly Thompson & Leanardo Romero
  • Old Man Hawkeye (2018) – Ethan Sacks and Marco Checcetto craft a prequel to Old Man Logan

What’s good? While a little goofier than the traditional portrayal of Clint Barton, the Fraction/Aja run is almost universally acknowledged at the best Hawkeye run. We’re not going to argue with that. Nope. It’s a good one.

If you’re looking for the Kate Bishop version of Hawkeye, the Thompson/Romero run is the one you want.

Hawkeye   Hawkeye

Dice Can Be Very Critical of You

The  Dark Horse Critical Role Sale runs through Monday, 8/28

Yes, this would be the comic adaption of the web series about a Dungeons & Dragon campaign. (That would be comics about the campaign and characters in it.)

This one is organized a little oddly, so lets walk through that.

Price-wise, it doesn’t really matter which format you go with, however… if you scroll down to the bottom of the single issues, you’ll find a series of original graphic novels that are closer to the European album format. Should they be listed elsewhere? Maybe. But know that they’re at the bottom of the single issues page.

Critical Role

The Other Hood

The Zenescope Robyn Hood Sale runs through Monday, 8/21.

Much like Critical Role, this sale is in three flavors with three links:

Unlike Dark Horse, this is looking like the Omnibus is cheaper than the collected editions and the collected editions are cheaper than the single issues, but you can double check that on individual collections. 99-cent single issues make that easy.

And yes, those really are Chuck Dixon and Howard Mackie on runs towards the bottom of the listings.

Robyn Hood

 

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Comixology Sales: Batman, Punisher, Road to Perdition, Spider-Gwen

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC launches a midsummer sale with Batman, while Marvel discounts The Punisher and Spider-Gwen.

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):

Wait a Minute… Wasn’t This a Sandman Issue?

The DC Midsummer Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.

This would be a DC non-themed sale, and let’s start this off differently. With a recommendation from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That’s right. Kareem talks about comics he reads over on his Substack and says of Batman: Killing Time (Tom King/David Marquez), “This is the best Batman graphic novel I have read in years.” Which we suppose means that Celtics fans will be avoiding it? But there you go. Kareem has spoken.

Batman: Killing Time

A couple things we like at the $3.99 price point:

First, there’s the first two volumes of The Road to Perdition. Yes, that film was a comic book movie. Max Allan Collins is the writer. Richard Piers Rayner is the artist on the first book, from which the film is adapted. Jose Luis Garcia Lopez and Steve Lieber are the artists on the second book, which takes place during the six months of the original story that the O’Sullivans are on the run.  Good stuff.

Batman: Venom originally ran in Legends of the Dark Knight and is the story of Batman’s first encounter with the drug that amps up Bane. It’s written by Denny O’Neil (always a good sign) and the unusual artist combination of Trevor Von Eden and Russel Braun pencilling and Jose Louis Garcia Lopez inking. It’s a nice combo, but not something you see just a ton of. Legends of the Dark Knight had many arcs that were gems.

Road to Perdition   Batman: Venom

Over at the $4.99 price point, we’re big fans of One-Star Squadron. The plot is about Red Tornado running an app that provides heroes on demands… but it’s a pretty savage satire of the gig economy and tech startups/mergers & acquisitions. A seriocomic affair by Mark Russell and Steve Leiber that we give a big thumbs up to.

We also dearly love the Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell / Matias Bergara John Constantine, Hellblazer series. It’s right up there with the best of the character’s cannon, which is saying a lot. Remember, that’s effective a single, two volume story. In for a penny, in for a pound.

One-Star Squadron   John Constantine, Hellblazer

Crime and Punishment

Marvel’s Punisher Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.

Seems like the Punisher sales in recent years have been more focused on the various Max imprint titles. This one is on the various mainstream Marvel titles and… there have been a few. Let’s start out by running through the highlights.

  • The Punisher ’87-’95 – Note that the first Epic Collection here collects the ’86 Steven Grant/Mike Zeck Circle of Blood mini-series that kicked off the Punisher’s rise to prominence. Yes, Whilce Portacio drew Punisher before X-Men
  • Punisher War Journal ’88-’95 – This volume is notable for the Carl Potts / Jim Lee work. Yes, Jim Lee drew Punisher War Journal before X-Men.
  • Punisher War Zone ’92-’95 – Yes, Frank Castle was holding down three titles/month in the early ’90s! Collected here are a pair of Chuck Dixon tales with John Buscema and Joe Kubert as the respective artists.
  • Punisher War Journal ’06-’09 – Probably best known for Matt Fraction and Ariel Olivetti
  • Punisher: The Resurrection of Ma Gnucci (Punisher War Zone) ’08-’09 – Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon team for a sequel to Welcome Back, Frank
  • Punisher ’09-’10 – The Rick Remender run, for which the third volume is Franken-Castle
  • The Punisher ’11-’12 – The Greg Rucka / Marco Checchetto (now more associated with Daredevil) run
  • The Punisher ’14-15 – Nathan Edmondson / Mitch Gerads. Yes, Mitch Gerards as in Mister Miracle and Sheriff of Babylon
  • The Punisher ’16-18 – Starts out with Becky Cloonan / Steve Dillon
  • The Punisher ’18-’19 – Matthew Rosenberg / Szymon Kudranski
  • Punisher ’22-’23 – Jason Aaron / Jesus Saiz / Paul Azaceta
  • Punisher War Journal ’22-’23 – Torunn GrØnbekk / Djibril Morissette-Phan

What’s good? Actually, we like the original Marvel Super Action magazine version by Archie Goodwin and Tony DeZuniga, but that’s not on the menu.

Our favorite run of the above is probably the Ennis/Dillon Ma Gnucci sequel. We also were pretty fond of the Rucka / Checchetto run when it was coming out. It’s also worth going back and seeing where all the fuss started with the Grant/Zeck mini and the Baron/Janson/Portacio ongoing.

Punisher: The Resurrection of Ma Gnucci   Punisher   Punisher: Circle of Blood

Ghosted

The Marvel Spider-Gwen Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.

Also known as Ghost-Spider, this is another one of those sales that benefits from a walk-through, since the volumes are a little messy.

The original Spider-Gwen run was Jason Latour writing with Robbie Rodriguez on art.

The first series is collected as Volume 0. Then the second series is collected as Vol. 1-6, but you can get Unmasked instead of V. 4&5 and save a little money. (We warned you this was messy!)

A bit later, famed fantasy novelist Seanan McGuire (sometimes known as Mira Grant) wrote some Spider-Gwen, as the feature was re-named Ghost-Spider. For unknown reasons, the first series of this is not on sale as we type this.  The second series, with art by Takeshi Miyazawa and Ig Guara, is on sale. The McGuire era is capped by King in Black: Gwenom vs. Carnage.

And the most recent installment in the sale is Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse by Tim Seeley and Jodi Nishijima.

Spider-Gwen   Ghost-Spider   Gwenom vs. Carnage

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Comixology at Amazon Sales, Comicon Edition: DC’s SDCC Sale, Spider-Man 2099, Blade, the *Rest* of Dark Horse’s Line Wide Sale

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s San Diego Comic-Con time. While only DC has a formal SDCC, Marvel’s got Blade and Spider-Man 2099 on sale and Amazon remembered to display the rest of the titles in Dark Horse’s massive sale.

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):

You Say There’s a Convention This Weekend?!?

The DC SDCC Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

Somebody had to have a San Diego Comicon sale and it looks like DC got elected. Let’s have a look around for some of the better prices and content.

Batman: The Adventures Continue for $2.99?  Yes, please! For the uninitiated, this is Batman: The Animated Series writers/executives Alan Burnett & Paul Dini returning to continue where the cartoon left off. Ty Templeton is that artist and the whole this is pretty great. This one brings The Red Hood into the animated continuity. (Yes, think about that for a moment…)

A few more gems for $2.99 a pop

Batman: The Adventures Continue   Gotham Central   Superman: Red Son

Jonah Hex: Shadows West is now an oddity we don’t always see highlighted. It collects the three excellent Jonah Hex mini-series by Joe R. Lansdale and Tim Truman. These stories put the “weird” in weird western and could accurately be called western horror. 387 pages for $3.99 is a steal.

A few more books we think highly of at the $3.99 price point:

Jonah Hex: Shadows West   Jimmy Olsen   Wonder Woman: Dead Earth

If you’re looking for big chunks of comics, here are a couple things at the $5.99 price point:

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age V.1 – is an Arnold Drake / Bruno Premiani experience. We don’t see this one at the $5.99 level so often (check on Saturday to see if V.2 has dropped, as well… it currently has an odd price point). This is where the Doom Patrol started. Lots of similarities to early X-Men (which started independently at roughly the same time), but more pathos. 374 pages.

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga is one of the more iconic DC tales of the 80s and shows up highly on “best stories” lists to this day. Elevator pitch: The Legion vs. Darkseid. This collection starts with the runup to the tale with some Paul Levitz/Pat Broderick stories and then Keith Giffen tags in as artist and collaborator for the famous ride. It’s a good one. 414 pages of mayhem.

Doom Patrol   Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga

Because “Stake” Would Be Too on the Nose

The  Marvel Blade Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

That would be the Daywalker and vampire slayer who’s better known through the films than the comic.

We feel pretty strongly that Blade is best experienced in his original context – a supporting character in Tomb of Dracula. It’s not clear you can call Tomb of Dracula an under-the-radar 70s classic anymore, since it’s gotten a fair amount of exposure since the Essentials line (finally) collected it ~20 years ago, but now it’s in color reprints. One note, though – you need to give the series six or seven issues to get moving. There were some false starts until Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan were paired up… but after they’ve got a couple issues under their belt, this one really takes off.

Blade: Black & White is a collection of… that’s right, the black & white adventures over the years and is built around some magazine appearances in Vampire Tales and Marvel Preview. Wolfman and Chris Claremont are the primary writers for that period. Colan and Tony DeZuniga are the primary artists.

If you’re looking for something has resembles the film franchise a bit more, there’s Blade: The Complete Collection by Marc Guggenheim (with Howard Chaykin as artist).

Tomb of Dracula   Blade: Black and White   Blade

76 Years Away

The Marvel Spider-Man 2099 Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

Yes, 2099 was a line for Marvel in ’90s. Spider-Man  2099 was the flagship and longest lasting of the bunch. Peter David wrote it and Rick Leonardi is the artist most associated with it. Note: the omnibus is a better value.

What else was in the line (that’s been collected and is on sale?)

  • Doom 2099 – This collection is the Warren Ellis run with Pat Broderick and Steve Pugh as the main illustrators
  • X-Men 2099 – The beginning arc with John Francis Moore and Ron Lim
  • Deadpool 2099 – What? You don’t remember this? Ha ha! Marvel is slipping in a collection of a few Gerry Duggan / Scott Koblish issues from the ’15 run of Deadpool!
  • Amazing Spider-Man: 2099 – The 2099 arc from the Nick Spencer run with Patrick Gleason on art duties

No Ravage 2099 / Punisher 2099 / Ghost Rider 2099 collections to be seen, if you were wondering.

Spider-Man 2099   Doom 2099   X-Men 2099

They Fixed It

The  Dark Horse Everything Digital Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.  And now it’s showing the old catalog. Filed under “better late than never.” So let’s look at some less trendy, yet interesting items from the back catalog that we haven’t seen in a while.

Looking for something that’s filed under “classic?” Look no further than The Complete Elfquest by Richard and Wendy Pini.  Yes, Elfquest had a 40-year run with that original quest. Very few comic books hang on to their creators for that kind of a run. No two ways about that!

Another classic is Nexus by Mike Baron and Steve Rude (with notable guest artists like Paul Smith, Adam Hughes, Rick Veitch and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez). We revisited this one during lockdown and enjoyed it. This is an odd book. There are superhero trappings, but Nexus is a reluctant assassin and this is a science fiction adventure. There are cold war trappings and a bit of satire around the edges. Plenty of world building. 6 omnibuses of the original run and two more of the new material after Dark Horse liberated the rights from the defunct First Comics.

Something that was probably under your radar? Nobody seems to remember The Light Brigade when it came out from DC. This would be a Peter J. Tomasi/Peter Snejbjerg historical/urban fantasy about a WWII platoon tasked by a higher power to retrieve the Sword of God before an unkillable Nazi unit can lay hands on it. A highly entertaining adventure that’s worth a little more attention.

And a few more things that might not be at the top of the mind that we’ve enjoyed over the years:

Elfquest   Nexus   Light Brigade

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Deadpool and Ms. Marvel

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s Marvel on parade with X-Men, Deadpool and Ms. Marvel getting the discount treatment.

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):

Note: Looks like our projections from last week were off. The DC sale was extended a week — so we’re not sure if DC’s sales are now going to be bi-weekly or not. The Dark Horse sale was also not updated, so… maybe they’re just not going to display the rest of the alphabet? It’s bad form. As far as we know, everything is on sale, not just what’s displayed.

X-Sale

The Marvel X-Men: Epic Collections & Milestones Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

Our appreciate for an Epic Collection sale is well documented, and we like the value of 400-500 pages for $4.99, as some of these are priced.  But let’s do some cherry picking for the more interesting things.

For Excalibur, you’re better off when Alan Davis is attached, be it with Chris Claremont writing or Davis as writer/artist (and we might even put Davis higher while doing the full cartoonist).

Excalibur    Excalibur

For New Mutants, we’ve always thought The Demon Bear Saga‘s period, which paired Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, as the high point of the whole series.

 x New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga

For X-Factor, two titles stand out:

  • Angel of Death – a big chunk of the Louise & Walt Simonson run, notable for Apocalypse, Cameron Hodge and Angel’s transformation into Death.
  • All-New, All-Different X-Factor – this collects the bulk of Peter David’s first run with art by Larry Stroman, Joe Quesada and Dale Keown

X-Factor Epic Collection

For X-Men… you can pick your poison.

We’d say the highlight of the original run would be Roy Thomas/Neal Adams (as well as Jim Steranko) sequences in The Sentinels Live.

For the “New” X-Men, we’d say the golden period starts somewhere around issue 100 and runs through 200, although you’ll hear a lot of opinions about the golden period of X-books. That would be:

No, they don’t have that full period complete in the Epic format yet. There are some as-yet uncollected volumes between I, Magneto and The Gift, and The Gift stops just short of 200, but that’s what we’d call the best period.

X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live   X-Men Epic Collection   X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix

No-Prize Winning Sale Title

The Marvel Ms. Marvel Sale runs through Monday 7/17.

This would be Ms. Marvel as in Kamala Khan, not the current Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers. Is there a movie coming out in a few months? Hmm…  Let’s break this down by volume, since there have been relaunches.

  • Ms. Marvel ’14-15 – The original run with G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona as the primary artist
  • Ms. Marvel ’15-’19 – How silly is this relaunch? The collected edition number doesn’t even reset! It’s still Wilson and Alphona, although the artist rotate a bit as it goes on.
  • Magnificent Ms. Marvel ’91-’21 – Relaunched after Wilson’s departure, this is written by Saladin Ahmed with Minkyu Jung and Joey Vazquez as the lead artists
  • Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit – The most recent mini-series (only single issues are on sale) by Samira Ahmed and Andrés Genolet.

There’s a selection of Champions, where Ms. Marvel was a member, also on sale.

Recommendations? We thought Ms. Marvel was at its best early in the run, before it got too integrated into the Marvel universe, but that’s just us.  Definitely start with Wilson’s run, though.  It made quite the mainstream splash.

Ms. Marvel

Not the Dirty Harry Movie

The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 7/17

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Patrick Zircher / Mark Brooks (among others)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

 

Deadpool Classics  Deadpool by Joe Kelly  Cable & Deadpool

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s Summer Sale and Dark Horse Goes Line Wide

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC says school’s out for summer and Dark Horse discounts the whole line.

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):

Note: Since most of the sales are ending Monday, we _think_ things will be a little more normal, come Tuesday. We’ve been raising our eyebrow at how they’ve been timing the last few weeks of sales, too.

<Insert Alice Cooper Lyrics Here>

The DC Summer Vacation Sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

This is a standard DC misc. sale, so let’s look for the sweet spot of a lower price and better material on a few things.

American Vampire is where Scott Snyder first came to prominence over at DC (back when they still had Vertigo). Along with Rafael Albuquerque (and an opening with Stephen King), this is the story of a new breed of… that’s right American vampire, as something goes horribly wrong out West and sticks around. $4.99/volume for

Batman: Prey collects a pair of Hugo Strange arcs from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight by longtime Batman writer Doug Moench and his old Master of Kung Fu partner, Paul Gulacy.

The Challengers of The Unknown by Jack Kirby is something of an oddity. This was a hit for DC in that brief period before Kirby left for Atlas/Marvel. The really interesting thing about this book is how much it feels like early Fantastic Four… except this was 1957 (instead of ’61) and isn’t quite superheroes. This was out of print long enough that most people don’t realize how similar the titles were.

American Vampire   Batman - Prey   Challengers of the Unknown

The Omega Men by Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda was King’s DC debut. It’s a particularly dark tale where Kyle Rainer (operating as the White Lantern at this point in continuity) is kidnapped by the Omega Men, a group that might be terrorists, might be freedom fighters or perhaps both? In some ways, it’s closer to his Sheriff of Baghdad than his Batman.

New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez was one of DC’s shining lights of the early to mid-80s and is generally regarded as a classic. $4.99/volume through V.7, which happens to be “The Judas Contract.”

Omega Men   New Teen Titans

Anything Goes

The  Dark Horse Everything Digital Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.

We should probably talk about this before diving in. This appears to be a line-wide sale. HOWEVER, only titles beginning with A-F are displayed on the sale page.

We know what you’re about to ask – is this another programmer error or are they going to change the page and display G-L next week?  We don’t have an answer to that.

A few browsing options for the rest of the alphabet (Amazon doesn’t have an alphabetical sort available for normal listings, so we’re going to have to improvise):

For the moment, we’re going to operate under the assumption that this was mislabeled and G-L (or a similar range) will appear next week for easier browsing.

So what’s good that’s on display in this chunk of titles?

Air – G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker collaborated on this criminally under-rated adventure into the unknown featuring an air hostess, terrorists, dimension hopping and celebrities who were supposed to be deceased.

Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment – The very unusual masterpiece by Bryan Talbot that explores the origins of Alice in Wonderland and the English town of Sunderland. It’s a bit hard to describe, but it works very well.

Baltimore – Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Ben Stenbeck and Peter Bergting collaborate on an epic tale of how a plague is released at the end of WWI and the solider who’s hellbent on vengeance against the vampires behind it.

Air   Alice in Sunderland   Baltimore Omnibus 1

Blacksad – Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido bring you this jaw-dropping anthropomorphic hardboiled detective series about detective John Blacksad. These are tales from the Hammett/Chandler school with some of best art you’ll see. Click on the sample pages, don’t just take our word for it.

Concrete – Paul Chadwick’s old school, multi-award winning series about a man who becomes encased in a shell of alien rock (which he can’t escape) and the accidental celebrity that follows it.

Finder – Carla Speed O’Neil’s aboriginal science fiction series is all about world building. Much of it following Jaeger, a “Finder” who can most anything and navigate his way almost anywhere… as well as being a sin-eater. Another criminally underappreciated series. Note: Finder: Chase the Lady is mislabeled as a single issue and not listed with the graphic novels.

Blacksad   Concrete   Finder

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Hulk and Nick Fury – ALL the GNs; Plus Oh My Goddess and Zenescope

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts The Hulk and Nick Fury… nearly the whole catalog for each. Dark Horse Slashes Oh My Goddess and Zenescope has a graphic novel sale.

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):

A Hulking Hunk of Burning Discounts

The Incredible Hulk Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

Oh, yes. There is a LOT of Hulk on sale.  Most of it, really.  So we’re going to start out by doing what we do (and what Amazon can’t be bothered to do) and break it down by series.

  • Incredible Hulk (1962 – 1999) The original run and then the long running series that picked up a few years later.
  • Tales to Astonish (1964-68) In between the two Hulk solo runs above, Hulk was splitting Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man/Giant Man and then Namor. A lot of the foundational work was really in this run, with Stan Lee/Steve Ditko responsible for a lot of it.
  • Incredible Hulk (1999-2007) – Best known for the Bruce Jones / Lee Weeks/ Mike Deodato run towards the beginning and the Greg Pak / multi-artist “Planet Hulk” and “World War Hulk” epics at the end… though World War Hulk is at this different link.
  • Hulk (2008-13) This is the Red Hulk run (and the title changes to that after awhile). It starts out with the better known Jeph Loeb/Ed Mc Guiness run and then Jeff Parker takes over with Gabriel Hardman, Dave Eaglesham and Patrick Zircher in the artist rotation.
  • Incredible Hulk by Jason Aaron (2011-12) – Lots of artists rotating through here, Marc Silvestri, Steve Dillon and Carlos Pacheco among them
  • Indestructible Hulk (2012 – 14) – Mark Waid’s the writer with an artist rotation including Leinil Francis Yu, Matteo Scalera and Walt Simonson draws the Thor team-up.
  • Hulk by Waid and Duggan (2014-15) – That would be Mark Waid and Gerry Duggan with Duggan doing the bulk of the run. Mark Bagley is the main artist here.
  • The Totally Awesome Hulk (2015-17) – This would be Amadeus Cho’s turn as Hulk, which mean Greg Pak is you primary writer with an artist rotation including Frank Cho, Alan Davis and Luke Ross
  • Immortal Hulk (2018-21) – Al Ewing’s masterpiece as the Hulk slides over towards horror and find a green door that leads to Hell.
  • Hulk (2021-23) – The Donny Cates / Ryan Ottley run
    • Hulk Vs. Thor: Banner of War – The Cates/Martin Coccolo cross-over that’s 100% part of this run, but listed separately.

What’s good? We like the value of the Epic Collections in the original series (and Tales to Astonish) for $6.99.  The Masterworks editions for $5.99 aren’t bad either, so pick your period and format.

As for “the best of” Hulk…

We think this Epic Collection of the Tales to Astonish run is a good introduction to the Hulk. A rock solid creator rotation of Lee/Kirby/Ditko/Kane/Everett/Buscema/Severin. The introductions of The Leader and the Abomination (among others). Cold war paranoia and you get to the the original evolution of the Hulk as a character that changes formats and approaches every so often.

Immortal Hulk is a high water mark and well worth your time, though not really what you’d call a traditional Hulk tale.  Peter David’s lengthy run is a classic (and we’re not going to divide it up by artist periods – it’s all good). Greg Pak has gone big like few others with Planet Hulk and World War Hulk.

Something under the radar?  There’s a Paul Jenkins/Ron Garney/John Romita Junior run that preceded the better known Bruce Jones era. It’s collected with some other things, but the two volumes are The Dogs of War and Past Perfect. It goes darker than a lot of the Hulk tales, but we sure liked it.

Hulk Epic Collection   Hulk Dogs of War   Hulk - Past Perfect

Spy Games

The Marvel Nick Fury and Agents of SHIELD sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

It’s a Nick Fury sale (both of him) and a SHIELD sale, because the two aren’t always the same thing. Let’s start with breaking this down by series:

  • Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (’63-’74) – Nick Fury started out fronting a WW II war book (as interpreted by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)
  • Strange Tales (’51-’68) – originally splitting the book with Doctor Strange, Nick Fury started off with Lee/Kirby and ended up with the classic Jim Steranko run.
  • Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (’68-’71)  – this Masterworks edition catches the last of Steranko and then the creators rotate a bit. Highlights include some Archie Goodwin stories and a bit of early Barry Windsor-Smith (pre-Windsor, technically)
  • Nick Fury Vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. (’88) – Bob Harras and Paul Neary restarted the franchise with a bang in what was originally published as a Prestige/Dark Knight format mini-series
  • Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (’88-’92) – Spinning out of the hit mini-series, this had a few different teams. We associated it most with Bob Harras/Bob Hall and D.G. Chichester / Jackson Guice.
  • Wolverine & Nick Fury: Scorpio  (’89) – A collection of three Prestige format tales teaming up Logan & Nick. Archie Goodwin / Howard Chaykin; Tom DeFalco/John Buscema; Howard Chaykin / Shawn McManus
  • Secret Warriors (’08-’11) – Bendis is in on the beginning, but this is really a Jonathan Hickman series with Stefano Caselli and Alessandro Vitti as primary artists
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. (’10-’11) – Jonathan Hickman/Dustin Weaver, and this series is listed in a very confusing way. Here’s how you need to look at it:
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (’16) – Based on the TV show with Marc Guggenheim writing and German Peralta as the primary artist.
  • Secret Warriors (’16-’17) – Matthew Rosenberg / Javier Garron
  • Nick Fury: Deep Cover Capers (’17) – James Robinson / ACO

What’s good?  For many, the definitive Nick Fury is the Steranko run and if you only want that, the  whole thing is in one edition. (It’s unevenly split across the three masterworks.)

Nick Fury Vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. is the definitive “there’s something wrong at SHIELD and Fury is on the run” story. It’s emulated for a reason.

Nick Fury: Deep Cover Capers is your under the radar pick. Fun, breezy spy hijinks with a ’60s Bond/UNCLE/Avengers vibe and great art.

SHIELD by Steranko   Nick Fury vs. SHIELD   Nick Fury Deep-Cover Capers

Not Periscope, Not Necroscope…

The Zenescope $5 Graphic Novel Sale runs through Sunday, 7/23.

Portions of this have been in previous Zenescope sales, but one thing that stood out to us in this one that hadn’t been in the previous sales is the Wonderland material. We’re not particularly familiar with it, but back in the day, the Zenescope title that seemed to have the most positive comments was always the Raven Gregory revival of Wonderland with Alice’s daughter venturing back down the rabbit hole.  We think this is the reading order for that:

And several more mini-series/collections sprinkled in as the ongoing series progresses.

Return to Wonderland   Tales From Wonderland

Is This a Veiled George Takei Reference?

The  Dark Horse Oh My Goddess Sale runs through Monday, 7/3.

What we have here is a repeat of last week… only this time, the Lone Wolf & Cub sale is sharing the same URL with the Oh My Goddess Sale. Yes, two weeks in a row. (And the Viz sale is also doubled up, although by the time you see this, it will probably be over.)

Instead of linking to the sale page and telling you to reload a few times until the right page turns up, we’re just going to link directly to the actual Oh My Goddess series page and save you some time. Who knows? Maybe this won’t happen next week?

Oh My Goddess

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Secret Invasion, Ultimate X-Men, Flash, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Lone Wolf and Cub

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Secret Invasion, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four. DC has a second Flash sale and Dark Horse slashes prices on Lone Wolf & Cub.

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):

The Flash Sequel

The DC Flash Multiverse Sale runs through Monday, 7/3.

Yes, it’s a sequel… to last week’s Flash sale. (And a lot of the same comics are still on sale). Go back to the last column for a look at some of the Flash comics on sale and we’ll focus on Multiversal goodness here.  For example…

Multiversity by Grant Morrison, Ivan Reis, Frank Quitely and Jim Lee (among others) is just about as multiverse as a person can get. That would be Morrison creating new and fun worlds from whole cloth and conducting and interdimensional tour of sorts. Your basic triumph of imagination and fun. Plus, it’s a 450 page volume.

Justice League of America: The Nail – The Complete Collection by Alan Davis. A nail gives Ma and Pa Kent a flat tire and they don’t find Kal-El’s rocket. Thus, the Justice League forms in a world without Superman and it’s a less trusting world.  A masterwork from Davis. This collects The Nail and the sequel Another Nail.

And for something off the radar – Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation by Robert Venditti, Eddy Barrows and Bruno Redondo. This one pretty much shocked us when we read it. A modern, and darker, telling of the traditional Earth X setup. On world where the Germany won WWII and crushed the remaining resistance in a Dallas book depository in 1963, a team of Freedom Fighters reform in the image of the fallen and seek out Uncle Sam to lead them against their Nazi oppressors.  Much closer in tone to The Man in the High Castle than the original. And yes, its a spin-off from Multiversity.

Plenty more to look at in this sale, should you have some time to browse.

Multiversity   The Nail   Freedom Fighters

Is It Still a Secret?

The Marvel Secret Invasion Sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

Why yes, there’s a streaming series coming out. And yes, that’s a longer sale than usual.

This is about the Skrulls invading Earth, assuming identities, embedding themselves and trying to take over.

We’re honestly not sure why Marvel hasn’t come up with a series of omnibuses to better collect this Event. Secret Invasion was a very carefully coordinated series that crossed over into most of the line and was also partially told in flashback. You’d get a little further in plot and then some of the sundry titles would reveal what really happened that you didn’t yet know about. We’re not even sure how official the official reading order is. (Has Bendis ever posted one? He’d be the one to ask.)

The spine of the Event is the Secret Invasion miniseries by Brian Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu.

The next layer of Secret Invasion is the Bendis-penned Avengers titles where a lot of things get fleshed out and you discover how things got to where they did:

Now from there, you spread out closer to the characters you’re interested in. For something clear out of left field, we’d recommend the Secret Invasion: Captain Marvel collection by Brian Reed and Lee Weeks. The original Mar-Vell returns as the Invasion begins and he’s not quite sure how he got there.  It’s a bigger part of the over-all story than you might be expecting going in.

Secret Invasion   Secret Invasion: Captain Marvel

Ultimate Sale III – Now With More Mutants

The Marvel Ultimate X-Men and FF Sale runs through Monday, 6/26.

We told you this was coming, didn’t we?

Since The Maker is the instigator of the upcoming Jonathan Hickman / Bryan Hitch Ultimate Invasion, that makes the original Ultimate Fantastic Four a little more central to the Marvel experience doesn’t it? We’re talk two runs:

The original Ultimate Fantastic Four had Brian Bendis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar and Mike Carey (yes, The Girl With All the Gifts M.R. Carey) tagging off on writer duties. The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Stuart Immonen, Jae Lee, Greg Land, Pasqual Ferry, Mark Brooks and Tyler Kirkham.  And a bit of trivia for you: Marvel Zombies?  It’s an Ultimate Fantastic Four spin-off.  Check out V.3 of the omnibuses. That’s where it all begins.

Ultimate Fantastic Four

Over on the mutant side of the street, the spread looks like this:

The original Ultimate X-Men run has a very interesting writer rotation. Mark Millar begins and ends it. In between are runs by Bryan K. Vaughan (Saga / Y – The Last Man) and Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead). The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, Stuart Immonen, Tom Raney and Salvador Larocca… among others.

Ultimate Comics X-Men was written first by Nick Spencer and later Brian Wood. Artists included Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Mahmud Asrar and Alvaro Martinez.

Ultimate X-Men   Ultimate Comics X-Men   Ultimate Comics Wolverine

The Baby Cart Assassin

The Dark Horse Lone Wolf & Cub Sale runs through Monday, 7/3.

As we type this, the sale is currently one of those “Nega-Bands” sales. Amazon has assigned it to the same URL as the Avatar sale and if you reload a few times, it will alternate between the sales like Rick Jones and Mar-Vell switching places in the Negative Zone. Amazon, in their infinite smoothness, does this more often than you’d think.

Since this is a single title sale, we’re linking directly to the title page, which should hopefully prevent confusion.

Where were we? Right.

Lone Wolf & Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima is one of the most respected manga out there and likely the greatest samurai manga of all time. No hyperbole.

When the Shogun’s executioner is framed for treason and his household slaughtered, Itto Ogami flees with his one year old son and becomes an assassin for hire, biding his time as he plans revenge on the clan that tried to ruin him.

There’s a lot of revenge served cold in this series. It’s pretty bloody and not for kids, but very, very good. Also $2.99/volume, so cheap.

Lone Wolf and Cub

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales – The Ultimates / Marvel Ultimate Universe; Original Sin; Marvel Manga

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a Marvel week: The Ultimates, Original Sin and Marvel Manga are the new additions to the deal pile.

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):

The “Other” Avengers

The Marvel Ultimates & the Ultimate Universe Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

As you’ve probably heard, Jonathan Hickman and Bryan Hitch (we’ll come back to those names) are re-launching the Ultimate Universe in some fashion in a few months.

Last week, we had the Ultimate Spider-Man sale. We suspect in the next week or two, we’ll have Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men sales. This week, it’s The Ultimates, who are the Avengers of that universe… and that series, particularly the first couple installments, was extremely influential on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And yes, you’re going to be seeing a parade of A-list artists.

The core material here is the Mike Millar-penned Ultimates material.  His run is:

Hitch drew those iconic first two volumes, but you might reasonable be curious what Mr. Hickman was doing when he wrote for the Ultimate line:

There’s actually a lot of good stuff to browse here, but it comes with a warning. (How often do we issue a warning?) You don’t want Jeph Loeb in the Ultimate Universe. Nope. It’s not Long Halloween. You also don’t want the Orson Scott Card Iron Man. Marvel probably thought they were getting Ender and it is NOT.

Ultimates   The Ultimates 2   Ultimate Comics - The Ultimates

Born This Way

The Marvel Original Sin Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

This would be the Marvel Event by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato where the Marvel heroes investigate the murder of The Watcher.

Original Sin is the core series.

Original Sin: Hulk Vs. Iron Man by Mark Waid, Kieron Gillen and Mark Bagley is really Original Sin 3.1-3.4

Original Sin: Thor & Loki: The Tenth Realm by Jason Aaron, Al Ewing, Simone Bianchi and Lee Garbett is really Original Sin 5.1 – 5.5

As with most Marvel Events, there are plenty of tie-ins and all manner ways to read them (that involve flipping between collections), but that’s the most central set.

Original Sin   Original Sin: Hulk vs. Iron Man   Original Sin: Thor & Loki

Special Export

The Viz Marvel Manga Sale runs through Tuesday, 6/20.

That’s right. Spidey and Deadpool from Viz.

Deadpool: Samurai   Spider-Man: Fake Red   Marvel's Secret Reverse

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: The Flash (and Batman); Ultimate Spider-Man; Black Panther; and Avatar

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a movie week – comics with The Flash, Black Panther (with a screen writer pedigree), Spider-Man and Avatar.

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):

The Flash (Featuring Batman)

DC’s Flash Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

It’s like there’s a movie coming out!  And that means there’s a ton of Batman and Supergirl in the sale, too.

Let’s start with the two most obvious things here:

The Flash film is based on the Flash-centered crossover Event, Flashpoint. That Geoff Johns / Adam Kubert series has The Flash altering the timeline with very unexpected effects and leads into the New 52 relaunch. (Our acquaintance saw a preview of the film, liked it and thought it improved on the comic.)

And since Michael Keaton returns to the Batman role in the film, the obvious tie-in here is Batman ’89.  Sam Ham, the original 80s Batman screenwriter, joins artist Joe Quinones to tell the tale he had in mind for the third Keaton Batman film, had the franchise not had a creative shuffle. And that’s Bill Dee Williams as Two-Face. We enjoyed this one.

Flashpoint   Batman '89

There’s plenty of Batman on sale here at good prices (particularly the 80s material), but let’s have a look at the Flash material, since this is theoretically a Flash sale.

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is the ’87 – ’09, post-Crisis Wally West Flash. It starts out with a collection of the Mike Baron / Butch Guice / Mike Collins run (with William Messner-Loebs tagging in for Baron towards the end of the collection).

Then pop over to the omnibus page of that series for some of the better prices we’ve seen on The Flash by Mark Waid (with Greg Larocque, Mike Collins and Salvador Larocca, among others); the Grant Morrison / Mark Millar / Paul Ryan run; and The Flash by Geoff Johns (with Scott Kolins and Howard Porter, among others). Those are some classic runs and the Flash runs we prefer by Waid and Johns.

The current run of Flash is here, and it starts with a lengthy Josh Williamson run. (It’s a little cheaper to get these three double-volumes which are the equivalent of the first 6 at the first link.)

The Flash   The Flash   Flash

Ultimate Spider-Bendis

The Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 6/12.

Is this a companion piece to the Spider-Verse sale? It might as well be, because Miles Morales is the centerpiece of that sale and the saga of the Ultimate Peter Parker runs right into the origin of Miles.  And yes, the two Ultimate Spider-Men could be looked at as one really long Brian Bendis tale.

This sale is easily broken into three parts:

Ultimate Spider-Man   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Fallout

Black Pantherama

The Marvel Black Panther Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/12.

It’s a Legacy sale, which means the whole catalog, so first lets break down the highlights

  • The Don McGregor era (AKA, pre-Priest), where Don McGregor was primary author… with a notable Kirby interlude. The best way to navigate the multiple editions is:
  • The Chrisopher Priest era  – with art by Mark Texiera, M.D. Bright and Sal Velluto (among others)
  • The Reggie Hudlin era (yes, “House Party” / “Boomerang” Hudlin) – with art by John Romita, Jr., Scot Eaton and Denys Cowan (among others)
  • The Ta-Nehisi Coates era (yes, from The Atlantic) – while the volumes are numbered consecutively, it’s split into two listing
    • Part one – with art by Brian Stelfreeze and Chris Sprouse (among others)
    • Part two – with art by Daniel Acuna and Kev Walker (among others)
  • The John Ridley era (Yes, Oscar-winner Ridley from 12 Years a Slave) – with art by Juann Cabal and German Peralta

Honestly, most of the Panther pantheon is pretty good. If you haven’t read the original McGregor run, it’s truly the foundational work on the character and almost everyone calls back to it. (That’s also where Killmonger originates.)

The Priest run might be the most celebrated – and it is extremely good.

And while it’s lesser known (possibly because it’s new), we’ve been pretty happy with the Ridley run, in particular the second volume with its extra biting commentary on colonialism.

Black Panther Masterworks   Black Panther by Priest   Black Panther by John Ridley

Speaking of Movies…

The Dark Horse Avatar Sale runs through Monday, 6/26.

Yes, there are Avatar comics. And they’re displayed in a somewhat confusing way. (Yes, yes… we were shocked, too.)

This link is for the $0.99 single issues AND the three High Ground 88 page “graphic novels.”

The collected editions are here. 6 issues to a $5.99 collected edition, so there’s a 5-cent difference between the two formats, if you’re keeping count.

Avatar   Avatar

The Green Hood

The Zenescope Character Spotlight Sale runs through Saturday, 6/24.

And the character in question is Robyn Hood (the Grimm’s Fairy Tales version).

This is available in 3 formats:

And as we were looking at this, we saw a couple names we weren’t expecting to see.  The volumes “The Curse” and “Justice” are written by Chuck Dixon. “Outlaw” is written by Howard Mackie.

Robyn Hood x Robyn Hood x Robyn Hood

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Still On Sale

Posted on by comics_p1pusl