Barbaric Archives - Comics.Cheap

The big Comixology (at Amazon) Sale of the moment is on Amazing Spider-Man. As in practically all of it. So we try to make that a little easier to navigate. Plus a warning about Amazon screwing up the latest DC sale (again) and an unannounced Vault sale.

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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):

Catches Discounts Just Like Flies

Marvel’s Spider-Man Legacy Sale runs through Sunday, 4/17.

There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so let’s break it down by series.

Amazing Spider-Man (1963-98) – The original run before Marvel became quite so obsessed with rebooting titles.
Amazing Spider-Man (1998 – 2013) – This run starts out with the controversial J. Michael Straczynski/John Romita, Jr./Mike Deodato, Jr. run, then goes into the Brand New Day era with rotating creative teams and segues into the beginning of the Dan Slott era. (Slott’s written a LOT of Spidey.) Now… this Amazon’s listings, so you knew something had to be messed
- The omnibus editions are here, including the JMS omnibi and Big Time
- The “Brand New Day” era is broken out in omnibi here
- The “regular” collections are here
  Yeah… the listings here are a mess.
Superior Spider-Man – Possibly the high point of the Dan Slott era – Doc Ock takes over Peter’s body and life. The Complete Collections are the way to go here.
Amazing Spider-Man (2014 – 15) – Peter’s back in control and the Slott era continues.
Amazing Spider-Man (2015-208) – It’s a relaunch. (Hey, Spidey’s been relaunched a lot less than Captain Marvel!) This is the end run of the Slott era, culminating in the Red Goblin affair.
Amazing Spider-Man (2018 – 22) – This is the volume that wrapping up right now. It starts with the Nick Spenser run and then ends with the “Beyond” storyline.

And there are a few more Slott era omnibus editions floating around. There are too many editions of this material and nobody seems to be particularly paying attention to how this is being displayed for the prospective readers. We’re getting used to it. <sigh>

Recommendations? Well, first off Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t really have very many BAD periods. Oh, some runs are definitely better than others, but there aren’t huge swaths of duds, here.

You can definitely pick your poison between the $5.99 Masterworks and $6.99 Epic Collections for the original run. The Epics are typically much larger collections for only a buck more, but it depends on which format you started buying and which era you’re interested in. Some stretches are only in Masterworks, some are only in Epic.

Inexplicably NOT included in the link for the V.1 of Amazing is the Kraven’s Last Hunt Epic Collection, so we’ll call that one out directly. You get the J.M. DeMatteis/Mike Zeck classic, plus the issues of Amazing around it, plus Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine for about the price of just getting the regular Kraven collection.

We’d also recommend a look at the Brand New Day collections. It’s not a run that’s immediately talked about, but we found it entertaining and a much better set of creators was assembled than Marvel was necessarily given credit for: Mark Waid, Bob Gale (we wish he did more comics), Marc Guggenheim, Joe Kelly, Dan Slott, John Romita, Jr., Steve McNiven, Salvador Larroca, Phil Jimenez, Barry Kitson, Marcos Martin, Paolo Rivera, Lee Week and… others. I’m not sure there are “hidden” gems with Spidey, just runs that get discussed less.

Not Conan

We’ve got an unannounced sale for you. The first collected edition of Barbarbic from Vault Comics by Mike Moreci and Nathan Gooden is on sale for a mere $1.99. (Cheap.) A barbarian with a bloodthirsty axe is cursed by witches to do good… so you know it probably isn’t going to end well. We haven’t read it, but it seemed to be doing pretty well on what’s left of the Direct Market sales charts and it’s hard to beat that price. We are 100% unsure how much longer that price is going to hold, BTW.

Beware the DC Sale

So DC has a sale right now, but we want you to be wary of it. As we type this Tuesday evening, they don’t have the right prices up. Let’s give some examples:

$13.98? $9.32? History says these are not the REAL sale prices. Sometime – maybe Wednesday, maybe Thursday – the real prices will pop up and they’ll likely be something closer to the $5.99 you see on that Wonder Woman volume. (Wonder Woman was already on sale, so that price _might_ change, too.) Now, if Batman: The Adventures Continue drops down to, say, $4.99… jump on that. It’s a wonderful comic. We’ll probably revisit this sale on Friday and see if it’s normalized.