cosmic Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Deadpool and their Cosmic heroes – Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and the Annihilation Saga. Keeping it Cosmic, Titan has a Doctor Who sale and Dark Horse has cut prices on Avatar.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Cosmic Slop

The Marvel Cosmic Sale runs through Monday, 3/4.

This is, after a fashion a convergence of smaller sales as we follow the thread of cosmic tales and characters through Marvel. The threads weave in and out, but for the sake of easy processing, let’s look at them this way:

The Marvel World of Jim Starlin

Jim Starlin defined “cosmic” for Marvel in the 70s and then returned in the late 80s to revive it (and his signature villain, Thanos) in the run-up to The Infinity Gauntlet, after which things kinda blew up.

You can get the original 70s cosmic saga, which is effectively the original Thanos saga, across two books: Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection and Warlock by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection. Both are highly recommended and foundational works for a lot of what is to come.

The Silver Surfer run is most easily collected in a pair of Epic Collections: The Return of Thanos and Thanos Quest. All good stuff and leading directly into The Infinity Gauntlet, which isn’t in the sale.

Silver Surfer

The Surfer is cosmic, but was also mostly stuck on Earth until Englehart & Rogers freed him in the 80s. You can pretty much break the character into three periods:

First, the classic original series by Stan Lee and (mostly) John Buscema. This ran from ’68-’70 and is a minor legend for a reason.

There wasn’t much solo Surfer for the better part of 17 years because the Surfer was considered to be Stan’s character in a similar way to how Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s. That changed in ’87 when Silver Surfer relaunched under the team of Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers. (Yes, the Batman pairing.) Predictably, it was excellent. Starlin followed (with Ron Lim), as mentioned above. Ron Marz tagged in for Starlin and had a long run, too and effectively an “Infinity” title for much of the next few years.

Then next major addition to the cannon was the Dan Slott / Michael Allred Silver Surfer in 2014. It is confusing listed in two places. The first three volumes here and the final two volumes here.

And if you’re interested in cherry picking the Surfer’s original appearances in Fantastic Four, the very definition of classic, there’s an Epic Collection that does just that.

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

No, not like the movies or spinning out of Annihilation (we’ll get to that in a bit), this was a super team in the future that occasionally returned to our present. They weren’t created by Steve Gerber, but he built them up in Defenders and then Marvel Presents before moving on.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers – First volume is the original appearance through their Marvel Presents solo run; Second volume is 70s guest star appearances, particularly in Avengers.
Guardians of the Galaxy (’90-’95) – Best known for the very fun Jim Valentino run (i.e. the first 3 volumes here)
Guardians of the Galaxy 3000 – Dan Abnett / Gerardo Sandoval

Honestly, this is our preferred GoG. The originals are solid. The Valentino run is a trip (and seems like it must’ve been an influence on Bendis when he rebooted Legion of Super-Heroes). Very different from what came later, though.

Nova

High school student Richard Rider becomes a centurion of the Nova Corps and tries to figure out his powers in the initial run. By the time DnA get ahold of the character, he’s a veteran and the road to Annihilation has begun.

Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here? We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Annihilation

Annihilation was a crossover Event for Marvel’s fledging “cosmic” line in which Annihilus mounted a deadly invasion from the Negative Zone. It struck a nerve.

Annihilation is the first series of mini-series.

Annihilation: Conquest is the sequel as Ultron and the Phalanx make their move. This leads into the formation of the new Guardians of the Galaxy.

Annihilation: Scourge is 2019 entry in the series.

New Guardians of the Galaxy (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

Guardians of the Galaxy by Abnett & Lanning – written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning / art by Brad Walker, Paul Pelletier and others. This is where the “movie” team in the current timeline was formed. Also known as the “Annihilation” team.
Guardians of the Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis – Bendis and so. many. artists.
All-New Guardians of the Galaxy (’17-’18) – Gerry Duggan / Aaron Kuder
Guardians of the Galaxy by Donny Cates (’19) – Donny Cates/Geoff Shaw
Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing (’20- ’21) – Al Ewing / Juan Cabal

We LOVED the final Ewing/Cabal series, which ends with “The Final Annihilation.” And if you liked Nova and the Annihilation Events, the DnA run is the continuation of that format.

We’ll Put $20 on Uncle Ben

The Marvel Deadpool Sale runs through Monday, 3/4

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. In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line

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 Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One
Deadpool Max (’10 – ’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker in a Max (“adult”) series
Deadpool Max 2 (’11 – ’12) Lapham / Baker, back for more
Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
Spider-Man / Deadpool (’16-’19) – Initially, Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness
Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

There’s a lot more there, including some Epic Collections under the ’97 series link.

Pick your flavor of Deadpool, he’s does seem to have creators stick with him for runs.

XII

The Titan The Twelfth Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

That’s twelfth Doctor, as in Doctor Who. Or as in Peter Capaldi’s Doctor.

The primaries writers here are Robbie Morrison, George Mann and Richard Dinnick. Artists include Dave Taylor, Rachael Stott and Mariano Laclaustra.

This sale comes in 2 flavors:

Avatar, the um… Unbent?

There is an unlisted sale on Dark Horse Avatar comics. Not Avatar: The Last Air Bender (although may still be on sale from last week), this would be Avatar, as in the James Cameron films.

And for DC, last week’s sale is still going on.