Tag: digital comics

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Wolverine, Suicide Squad, DC Villains and Red Sonja

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slaps some discounts on Wolverine, DC’s villains are on sale (with lots of Batman) and Red Sonja chops her prices.

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):

Born to be Bad

The DC Villains Sale runs through Monday, 10/17

The sale page is laid out a little oddly. Batman family titles first, then everything else… including more Batman. (You may have gotten the impression that Batman is popular. We can confirm that.)

Naturally, this is going to make you think of Suicide Squad. Two things you might want to look at:

Azrael V. 1: Fallen Angel – While Denny O’Neil is more strongly associated with Batman and The Question, he wrote a 100 issue run of Azrael. By far, his longest run on a title. This collection has the Batman: Sword of Azrael mini-series, with Joe Quesada inked by Kevin Nowlan on the art. Then you get the first seven issues of that ongoing series with art by Barry Kitson. Remember, Azrael started out as a villain!

Suicide Squad   Suicide Squad Bad Blood x Azrael

Clawing For Deals

The Marvel Wolverine: Weapon X And Other Tales Sale runs through monday, 10/17.

This sale is mostly about the specials, miniseries and b-series over the years. Which is not to say there aren’t some interesting bits.

Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith shares the name of this sale and it earns the hype. This is the original origin of Wolverine, but after the Origin books, is now more the origin of his adamantium implants and torture under a shadowy government program.

Wolverine is the original solo adventure/mini-series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller.  Logan heads to Japan and meets his love’s family. And then The Hand show up. Claws, ninjas, and hurt feels ensue, if you want to be reductive about it. It sets the tone for what’s to follow.

Loosely speaking, Kitty Pride & Wolverine was a sequel to the original Wolverine series. Kitty travels to Japan, only to run into ninjas and some folks from Logan’s path. Vengeance ensues. Chris Claremont returns with Al Milgrom

Wolverine: Weapon X   Wolverine  Kitty Pride & Wolverine

Seeing Red

The Dynamite Red Sonja Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

Our favorite Red Sonja run is the Mark Russell/Bob Quinn run. On one level, it’s an adventure with Sonja trying to save a kingdom from a conquering monarch’s army. On another level, it’s a satire of the tropes involved with such stories… and honestly, you can read it from either angle, which is a little unusual, but enjoyable.

Killing Red Sonja is a Mark Russell / Bryce Ingman / Craig Rousseau series is a spin-off of the Russell/Quinn main series.

And for those comics from the old school perspective, the Roy Thomas/Frank Thorne 70s comics are collected in The Adventures of Red Sonja, with the Savage Sword of Conan material collected in The Further Adventures of Red Sonja.

Red Sonja   Killing Red Sonja  The Adventures of Red Sonja

Plus, all the Halloween sales we’ve talked about the last two installments are still running. (See below for quick links or hit the homepage and scroll down.)

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: More Halloween Discounts – Image, IDW and Dark Horse

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we have a look at the rest of the Halloween sales: Image, IDW and Dark Horse.

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):

Image Says Boo!

The Image Horror Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

Oh, yes. Image does horror. Some would say they’ve stepped in and grabbed a few things what would have been in Vertigo, if the imprint was still around.

The current Image horror title we’re getting the biggest kick out of is Killadelphia by Rodney Barnes and Jason Shawn Alexander. There’s vampire activity in Philly. Not only are the vampires ambitious, they have some very unusual leadership. An estranged father and son look to head them off at the pass, which would be easier if the father hadn’t already been murdered. This is a pretty wild series with historical references and a few savage one-liners.  Highly recommended.

Fatale was the series that brought Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips to Image and was a key book in Image’s resurgence ~10 years ago. This one’s a horror/crime mashup. A reporter stumbles upon a woman who’s been on the run since 1935 and doesn’t seem to have aged a day. She’s pursued by a gangster who might not be human. And it wouldn’t be a noir if our femme fatale wasn’t leaving a trail of dead admirers in her wake across the decades. Also highly recommended.

And for something a little more obscure, twenty-seven by Charles Soule and Renzo Podestá is an old favorite and early Soule. The high concept here? The reason all those famous musicians die at 27 after blowing up big.  Could there be something unnatural going on?  Surely not during a Halloween sale…

There’s quite a bit more in this sale.

Killadelphia   27

IDW Says Boo!

The IDW Horror Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

30 Days of Night is the OG horror book at IDW. Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith present the original tale of vampires taking over a remote town in Alaska when the sun sets for a full month straight. There are sequels (and movies), but it starts here for $0.99.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez is the more recent hit, this one having been streaming on Netflix. Reeling from their father’s murder, a family returns to a mysterious mansion in New England as the children discover magical keys that open doorways and grant the user strange abilities. The keys have something to do with their father’s death and something would like the keys back.

And for something a little  more off the beaten path, there’s Frankenstein Alive, Alive by Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson (with Kelly Jones drawing the final chapter) because Bernie Wrightson for Halloween.

30 Days of Night  Locke and Key  Frankenstein Alive, Alive

Dark Horse Says Boo!

The Dark Horse Horror Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

A little under 1800 items in this one, so when browsing, remember to right click if you want to examine book details, so you spawn a new window and don’t lose your place.

Which is to say, yes – Dark Horse does a lot of horror comics.

The face of Dark Horse horror is probably the Mignolaverse. The center of which is the (excellent) Hellboy (best buy here being the omnibus version).

Sometimes overlooked, but very much a central storyline to the Hellboy world is B.P.R.D. (Bureau of Paranormal Defense and Research), which is the adventures of Hellboy’s team in very, very long story arcs, co-written by Mike Mignola and (mostly) John Arcudi with Guy Davis as the primary artist through Hell on Earth, this is the order of the arc. Each arc is a set of omnibuses for that story. We weren’t joking about long arcs.

While not part of Hellboy proper, the 2-volume Baltimore omnibuses by Mignola/Christopher Golden/ Ben Stenback/Peter Bergting are also a lot of fun. It concerns a world that suffers a vampire plague at the end of WWI and of the British soldier who accidentally unleashes the plague seeking revenge on the vampires.

Hellboy   BPRD - Plague of Frogs   Baltimore Omnibus 1

If you want classic, old school horror, there are three good options that spring to mind:

Tales From the Crypt  Creepy  Eerie

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: The Halloween Sales are Here: DC, Marvel, Archie, BOOM! and some Star Wars on the side.

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, the Halloween sales have begun and we’ll start out look at DC, Marvel, Archie, BOOM! and a bit of Star Wars on the side.

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):

Marvel Says Boo!

The Marvel Monthly Sale – Halloween runs through Monday, 10/31.

When it comes to Marvel horror, ’70s Marvel horror is where it’s at. Two of the best things Marvel did in the ’70s were horror.

Man-Thing by Steve Gerber: The Complete Collection follows the Man-Thing across Adventure Into Fear, through Man-Thing and Giant-Size Man-Thing, and eventually even collects 2012’s posthumous Infernal Man-Thing. Gerber writes almost all of it and the selection of artists includes Mike Ploog, Tom Sutton, John Buscema, Sal Buscema and Kevin Nowlan. Some say this was Gerber’s crowning achievement, others say Howard the Duck. Either way, it’s a classic.

Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection is a 5 volume set that collects the Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan horror classic, with the magazine version of Dracula thrown in. The comics the bigger draw here. You need to give a few issues for Wolfman to arrive and get his feet under him, but one Wolfman & Colan gel, it’s quite a ride. A celebrated run.

Plenty more ’70s horror here and all kinds of Ghost Rider, too.

Man-Thing by Steve Gerber   Tomb of Dracula

DC Says Boo!

The DC Frights & Fights Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

Yes, more horror for the holiday. Some Vertigo, some old school DC, some new. This is another fairly deep one with 562 items.

We think it’s safe to call Nice House on the Lake by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez Bueno DC’s premiere horror title right now. And it’s an extremely well-crafted comic, too.  $4.99 for that?  A very good deal.

We can’t very well mention Man-Thing without giving Swamp Thing equal time, can we? Yes, both DC and Marvel had a world class swamp monster horror comic in the ’70s. Go figure. The first volume is the famous Lein Wein / Bernie Wrightson run. (No hype, just quality.)

Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon is Vertigo-era horror with a twisted sense of humor (ah, the vampires of New Orleans…).  You’ve probably seen the TV adaption. $4.99 for ~12-issue volumes qualifies as a good deal.

Nice House on the Lake   Swamp Thing   Preacher

Now, since the DC sale has a moderate amount of superhero material in it, let’s go there.

Batman: Haunted Knight is a collection of the Halloween Bat-tales that Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale did prior to landing The Long Halloween. They’re striking and were a borderline shock to see when they appeared on the shelf. It’s certainly the season for it.

DCeased is sort of the DC version of Marvel Zombies. Darkseid unleashes the Anti-Life Equation. Come to find out it’s transmitted by technology (and bites) and it creates a sort of techno-zombie. The survivors gather in groups and try to ward off the “Anti-Living” who are coming after them – including a lot of super powered non-living interlopers – while they try to figure away out of this mess.  Tom Taylor and Trevor Hairsine helm this first installment and subsequent installments are also on sale. A highly enjoyable ride.

Batman - Haunted Knight   DCeased

There are also a bunch of $0.99 single issues towards the bottom of the page if you keep clicking through, much of it ’70s horror.  Here are some direct links to save you time and sanity, though not EVERY series.

And for $1.99 an issue

Archie Says Boo!

The  Archie Horror Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

Yes, Archie does horror. And two things stand above the rest (we hope they do some more of them, too).

Afterlife With Archie by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla is a shocking thing, especially the first time you behold it. You might think the elevator pitch “Night of the Living Dead in Riverdale” sounds silly… except this really is a horror comic. Archie and the survivors flee for their lives as part of the cast stalk after them. It’s serious, hits a poignant note or two and, above all, is extremely well done!  The second arc is only in single issues (#6-10).

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack is what was adapted for the Netflix show. It’s a very 70s horror movie take on Sabrina, for whom her sixteen birthday presents a choice between the world of mortals and her witch heritage and an ominous destiny that seems to come with it.  The cheapest way for this comic is to get the collected edition of the #1-6 and then hit the single issues.

Afterlife with Archie    Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

BOOM! Says Boo!

The BOOM! Spooky Season Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

Something is Killing the Children by James Tynion and Werther Dell’Edera is probably BOOM!’s flagship horror book right now. We’d probably call it a horror-adventure romp. Sure enough, something IS killing the children. A monster hunter shows up to stop it and her… organization then shows up to complicate matters. This one is fun horror.

But let’s get a bit further off the beaten path here:

Bone Parish by Cullen Bunn and Jonas Scharf is an odd little genre bender we enjoyed. “Ash” is the new drug that’s hit New Orleans. Consuming it you experience the life of another person… the person who’s ashes where used to make the drug. One part horror for the production of the magical drug, one part crime/gang story. A pulp page-turner.

And going back a few more years, we also enjoyed Dracula: The Company of Monsters by Kurt Busiek, Daryl Gregory and Scott Godlewski. What happens when a corporation gets their hands on Dracula? Why, resurrect him and exploit him like the asset he is, naturally. Of course, Dracula’s probably used to being the one doing the exploiting. It’s a different kind of corporate warfare.

Something is Killing the Children   Bone Parish   Dracula The Company of Monsters

Star Wars… is more like Trick or Treat

The Marvel Star Wars High Republic Sale runs through Monday, 10/10.

The meat of this would be the collected editions of the Star Wars: The High Republic series by Cavan Scott, Ario Anindito and Georges Jeanty.  And $2.99 for recent release tpbs does indeed qualify as cheap!

If you’re into $0.99 single issues:

Star Wars: The High Republic

There’s a lot more Halloween material on sale, so we’ll probably be back with another batch of that on Monday or Tuesday.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Luke Cage and Iron Fist, Spider-Woman, Umbrella Academy, Black Hammer

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Luke Cage (Power Man) & Iron Fist get the discounts, plus Spider-Woman and Silk on the Marvel side. Dark Horse offers up the Black Hammer and Umbrella Academy. Meanwhile, the Batman Day Sale continues.

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):

So let’s talk about about the latest Comixology/Amazon navigation change, which Comixology was talking up on it’s Twitter. They’re trying to fix things, but it’s still a little odd.

The upshot is that they’re implementing a little better sorting.

  • Volumes in a title are now grouped together. (Not always in numerical order – that’s still handled poorly if there are more than 10 volumes.)
  • It’s sometimes in alphabetical order.  The tendency appears to be to have the highlighted title at the beginning and then slip in a… more alphabetical order later.  In the Batman Day Sale, they run all the collected editions and then run all the single issues after that.  In the Luke Cage sale, all Luke Cage/Power Man material comes before Iron Fist material, so it’s not really alphabetical.

It’s a little easier read, but the inconsistency with alphabetizing can be confusing.

The bad news is they removed to ability to change the display order. In other words, you can no longer search by publication date to see what the most recent book on sale is. (i.e., what just started to get discounted) You also can’t sort price (helpful for bargain hunting and to jump right to the $0.99 single issues when those are available). We have a philosophical problem with taking features away from users and we used those sorts.

On to the sales:

Bats

We broke down the big Batman Day Sale last time, but it’s still running. Click through for a closer look.

Batman: The Caped Crusader

Sweet Christmas!

The Marvel Luke Cage and Iron Fist Sale runs through Monday, 9/19.

The chronology moves something like this: Initially there was a Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. This eventually was retitled Power Man. Running in parallel was Iron Fist, first in Marvel Premiere, then in the Chris Claremont/John Byrne solo series. Then the two titles merged to form the off-beat Power Man and Iron Fist.  Power Man and Iron Fist might be best known for the Jo Duffy run, but it also has early work by Kurt Busiek, Priest and Denys Cowan, among others.

Power Man   Iron Fist   Power Man and Iron Fist

There have been a few revivals since, but the one that’s nearest to our heart is The Immortal Iron Fist. People are most familiar with the first half of the series, with the celebrated team of Ed Brubaker/Matt Fraction/David Aja. We’re here to tell you that the back half by Duane Swierczynski/Travel Foreman is also pretty darn good. Plus, more Fat Cobra! Don’t sleep on the back half.

Immortal Iron Fist

Along Came a Spider-Woman

The Marvel Spider-Woman Sale runs through Monday, 9/19.

Or maybe a Spider-Man/Silk sale if we want to be accurate.

So the sorting by series is broken here and the Spider-Woman titles are co-mingled, so let’s straighten that out:

Ditto for Silk. The “main” series are:

  • Silk ’15 – Robbie Thompson / Stacy Lee
  • Silk ’15-’17 – Robbie Thompson / Stacy Lee / Irene Strychalski
  • Silk ’21 – Maurene Goo / Takeshi Miyazawa (Amazon has the wrong creator credits)

And then when they list Silk: Out of the Spider-Verse, that’s really the two series that start in ’15 collected along with some other relevant Spider-Man/Spider-Verse titles.

What do we like out of this? We’re not really current on Spider-Woman/Silk, but we can tell you that the original Spider-Woman comic is a deeply weird book. Lots of magic early on. Morgan Le Fey, Werewolf By Night, The Brothers Grim. If you like the more bizarre corners of 70s Marvel for its strangeness, it’s worth a look.

Spider-Woman

Getting Hammered

The  Dark Horse World of Black Hammer Sale runs through Monday, 9/26.

This critical darling by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston is very much a world building experience.  Start with the core series and then branch to the spin-offs as the spotlighted characters catch your fancy.  There’s plenty of imagination to go around.

Black Hammer

Where’s My Umbrella?

The Umbrella Academy Sale runs through Monday, 10/17.

Why yes, there’s a new season on Netflix and we might even start on that tonight. Funny how sales line up with such things…

This one’s a lot easier to define: it’s a series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba about an extremely dysfunctional family of superhumans who are more than a little scarred by their adoptive upbringing.  One series link for the collected editions and no fuss.  Good comic, too. We enjoyed it.

Umbrella Academy

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Comixology Sales (at Amazon): Breaking Down the Batman Day Sale

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we make a special mid-week appearance to break down the Batman Day Sale.

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):

Bat-Day

The  Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/26.

We understand some people were having trouble getting into the full sale, and we sure haven’t been able to get at it on the desktop version of the site. No worries, we found the link  for the full sale. Since there have been some complaints about that, we’re popping in a little earlier to get Batman sorted out and then we’ll be back at the usual time for everything else.

We’re not wild about there being zero sorting options (we’ll update the link if we find another), but it gets roughly alphabetical after a little scrolling. First the collected editions, then the single issues follow.

As is our custom, we’ll start out with the highlights by series, so you can sort through a bit more efficiently, but be warned – there are plenty of minor/stray volumes that didn’t make the highlights

Collected Editions

Single Issues (the ones that aren’t all in collected editions and the older ones are all $0.99/issue)

So what’s good here? It’s Batman, so you can pick your flavor across the decades and zero in on that. Now, preferences aside, a lot of the less recent collections are $3.99, which is pretty low for DC these days.

We’d recommend having a browse through Legends of the Dark Knight, particularly the single issues, most of which haven’t been collected.  With a few notable exceptions where it crosses over with a line-wide event, these are all self-contained story arcs. Teams are assembled for the individual story and the quality is pretty high throughout.

We also like the Batman: The Caped Crusader and Batman: The Dark Knight Detective reprint series that collect the mid-80s Batman and Detective runs (and are getting into the 90s). We particularly like the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run that bounces between those books, before ending in Shadow of the Bat. We’ve been reading that in the background for the last couple years and it’s a good time.

We also like $5.99 for the two volumes of the Greg Rucka / Shawn Martinbrough / Rich Burchett Batman: New Gotham. A good run with a unique look.

And for something odd and obscure?  Batman Special #1, “The Player on the Other Side” wherein Mike W. Barr and Michael Golden (remember him?) introduce Batman’s opposite number, the original Wraith.

Batman - Prey   Batman: The Caped Crusader   Batman: The Dark Knight Detective

Batman: New Gotham   Batman Special

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Harley Quinn, Loki, TMNT: The Last Ronin, Sleeping Beauties, Land of Oz

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Harley Quinn enters a new decade, Marvel spotlights Loki and the Land of Oz, and IDW discounts Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin and Sleeping Beauties (as in Stephen & Owen King’s novel getting adapted).

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):

The Better Punchline

The DC Harley Quinn 30th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 9/12.

30 years?  Yup.  If you saw the debut on Batman: The Animated Series, we understand if you don’t admit it.

While it isn’t the cheapest deal by page count right now ($2.99 for 66 pages), any Harley Quinn conversation has to start with The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, wherein Paul Dini and Bruce Timm reveal Harley’s origin.  It’s a gem.

We’ve always had a soft spot for the New 52 Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti/Chad Hardin run of Harley Quinn. Their take is particularly absurdist and brings in an… eclectic supporting cast to say the least. We’ve heard compared to Deadpool a few times. It’s the version we’ve laughed at the most.

Your off the beaten path option (relative to the rest of the HQ catalog) is Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass by Mariko Tamaki and Steve Pugh is a YA take with a teenaged Harley and it’s one of the most critically lauded versions.

Mad Love   Harley Quinn   Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass

God of Mischief

The Marvel Loki Sale runs through Thursday, 9/15.

These days you have “post-TV” Loki and traditional Loki.

If you’re looking for Loki as the lead, the closest you’re likely to get to the TV show (thus far) is probably looking for either Loki, Agent of Asgard by Al Ewing, Lee Garbett and Jorge Coelho or the Loki run in the revived Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen, Doug Braithwaite, Richard Elson (and a few more artists).

For your Loki as the villain, we’re going to slightly off the reservation into the world of Mutants with X-Men: Asgardian Wars. This is a collection of a story arc consisting of the X-Men / Alpha Flight mini-series (Chris Claremont/Paul Smith), the New Mutants Special Edition and an X-Men Annual (both by Claremont/Arthur Adams).  Loki starts some trouble and the X-Men eventually end up in Asgard looking for him.  Back in the mid-80s, the annuals in the X-verse were a bit more standalone from the ongoing plots and the New Mutants annuals were particularly wild for a few years. Claremont basically uses the mini-series and annuals (the “special edition” was essentially a New Mutants annual) to tell a self-contained, though somewhat sprawling tale.  Fun collection with superior artists.

Loki: Agent of Asgard   Journey Into Mystery   X-Men: Asgardian Wars

The Marvelous Land of On Sale

The Marvel Oz and Other Classics Sale runs through Monday, 9/12.

This would be a collection of the Marvel Illustrated (read: Classics Illustrated) adaptions from ’07-’13.  The most famous of which being the Wizard of Oz adaptions by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. Yes, that Skottie Young.

The key piece here is the set of Oz: The Complete Collection where it’s two books per volume.  Also, it should be noted Amazon lists the Road to Oz / Emerald City of Oz volume first… and that’s actually the last volume of the three.  The order is Wizard of Oz/Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz/Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and then Road to Oz / Emerald City of Oz.

Oz: The Complete Collection

No, Not “Hit” as in “Hit-Girl”

The IDW Recent Hits Sale runs through Thursday, 9/29.

This a particularly small sale and single issues are the key thing you’ll be looking at here.

The headline here is probably the $0.99 single issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz and Esau & Isaac Escorza. We’re not sure the “Dark Knight for TMNT” elevator pitch is quite right, but this is the story of a future where the last surviving Turtle heads for a final confrontation with the Foot Clan. This is much darker than the original series. We enjoyed the first issue and have this on our short list since it seemed to prudent to wait for it to wrap up.

Sleeping Beauties is the Rio Youers / Alison Sampson of the Stephen & Owen King novel. Since the second collected edition isn’t on sale, you’re better off with the single issues here.

TMNT - The Last Ronin   Sleeping Beauties

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Captain America, Nova, Swamp Thing, Legion of Super-Heroes

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Mutants get the “monthly” nod from Marvel, plus Captain America and Nova. Over at DC the Labor Day sale had deals on Swamp Thing and Deadman.

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):

X-Month

The Marvel Monthly Sale – X-Men: Grand Design & Other Stories Sale runs through Monday, 10/3. (And we see they took the listing on the Deals page down after this morning… but the link still works, so get a jump on it.)

This time around, it’s a mix of side projects and events around the X-Franchise, although you might have guess that from the name.  Some things we’ve enjoyed:

Mystique by Brian K. Vaughan: The Complete Collection –All the way back in 2003, Marvel tried launching a new imprint called “Tsunami.” It didn’t last. The most notable thing about it, historically, was the debut of Runaways. Runaways was one of the first comics to really start getting a pre-Saga/Paper Girls Brian K. Vaughan noticed.  Vaughan, with art by Jorge Lucas/Michael Ryan/Manuel Garcia rotating by arc, also did an espionage-centric Mystique comic. Mystique gets coerced into running black ops for Charles Xavier, sort of a precursor to the current X-Force.

For something a bit more recent, X-Men/Fantastic Four: 4X by Chip Zdarsky and Terry & Rachel Dodson has Professor X offering Franklin Richards a place on Krakoa. Reed and Sue Richards are a little… apprehensive about that and sparks fly. Surely Doctor Doom wouldn’t insinuate himself into the middle of all this? He never has ulterior motives.

And finally, one of the more off the wall X-Men projects: Longshot. This was the first big project from Ann Nocenti and Art Adams. While it isn’t clear that it was originally intended to be part of the X-franchise, it was definitely absorbed into it shortly after the miniseries completed. This is also the debut of Mojo, whom Longshot rebels against.

Mystique   X-Men / Fantastic Four: 4X   Longshot

Time is Relative

The Marvel Captain America: Man out of Time Sale runs through Thursday, 9/8.

Let’s go under the radar for the picks from this eclectic sale, shall we?

Captain America: Forever Allies – now here’s one we haven’t heard mentioned in awhile. Roger Stern and Nick Dragotta weave a legacy tale of Bucky (who was bearing the shield as Captain America at the time) picking up the pieces of last case of the (WWII-era) Young Allies. A continuation of sorts for the Invaders and, since Lady Lotus is involved, of possible interest to reader of the current Busiek/Cinar The Marvels.

The Adventures of Captain America – Another collection that hasn’t hit our radar in some time. This is a sort of “Captain America – Year One” style story with Cap and Bucky back at the onset of WW II by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire. A prestige format release, originally.

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty – Again, a lesser known title. This one was an anthology, vaguely similar to Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, in that it would do one storyline at a time and the storyline could be from any time period. It ran for 12 issues and was mostly written by Mark Waid with Ron Garney being the artist with the most issues under his belt.

All things we’ve spent money on, long ago.

Captain America - Forever Allies   The Adventures of Captain America   Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty

No, Not a Chevy

The Marvel Nova Sale runs through Monday, 9/5.

Let’s run down the contents here:

  • 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).

Nova Classic   Nova by Abnett & Lanning

DC Does the Holiday

The DC Labor Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/5.

~2K graphic novels are floating around in this one, so you can spend a lot of time browsing. Some highlights?

Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing run with John Totleben, Steve Bissette, Stan Woch, Rich Veitch and co. for (mostly) $4.99 a volume? Yes, that’s a good deal for landmark run.

Speaking of ’80s classics, there are good prices on some extra long volumes of the Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen Legion of Superheroes.  The Great Darkness Saga is only $5.99. That’s the arc with the rep, but their whole run is good and DC needs to get on with reprinting the rest of the Levitz run. (And The Curse is an extra long volume.)

Going back a hair earlier, but keeping the $4.99 vibe going, there’s a 5-volume set of Deadman. The first two volumes are the Neal Adams material that’s the most famous, but you know what? Boston Brand has always been popular with creators and there are another 3 volumes of him hanging out in the ’70s, guest-starring or having a solo feature in the Adventure dollar comics, ending in an ’86 Andrew Helfer/José Luis García-López mini-series.

Swamp Thing   Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga   Deadman

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Wolverine, Hawkeye and Batman

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel brings the mutants – Hickman era X-Men and Jason Aaron’s escapades with Wolverine. Plus Hawkeye and the DC “Hot 100” sale which has a lot of Batman to it.

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):

Let’s Put the X in Hickman

The Marvel X-Men From Dawn to Reign Sale runs until Thursday, 9/8.

And gosh golly, if that sale’s name isn’t an awful lot of contortion to avoid saying the Hickman showrunning era.  For those coming in late, Jonathan Hickman was a sort of creative director of the X-line for a very productive period. He wrote a few and gave guidance on the other titles. After the Inferno series, he moved on to other things when the rest of writers expressed interest in working with the current status quo a bit longer. Hickman had planned on moving on to the next phase of a longer story arc he’d mapped out, so… perhaps he’ll return to that at some point?

This is one of those sale pages where someone (it isn’t clear if it’s Marvel or Amazon) is trying to do us all a solid and separate out things, dividing things in to sections or tiers with scrolling carousels. We approve of the effort.

The first tier, “The Krakoa Era Begins Here,” is the spine of the era: the Hickman core, if you will.  You need to start with House of X / Powers of X, which establishes the new status quo.  You then continue into the Hickman-penned X-Men flagship title.  All the X-titles eventually flow into two events: first X of Swords (which is more of an Exaclibur story) and finally Inferno ends the era, at least in terms of Hickman’s writing and overall role.  So yeah, when they say “Krakoa Era,” they’re again dodging Hickman’s name and it kind of amuses us how awkward that is.  Hox/Pox is the beginning of the Krokoa era, sure enough. The rest? That’s stretching definitions.  So if you get everything listed in this tier you’ll get the “story of the universe” of the X-Men comics of that era. (Mind you, despite how comic book marketing works these days, “the story of the universe” is not the end-all/be-all of reading enjoying.)

This sale is on the collections of the individual titles (as opposed to the Dawn of X and Reign of X collections), so that lends itself to chery-picking. Do we have opinions on this? Of course, and we ended up liking some of the titles on the periphery best.

Hellions by Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia is a demented delight. A dark, snarky and occasionally violent series that finds Mr. Sinister pulling the strings on a wetworks squad of broken toys (Psylocke, Havoc, Nanny, Wildchild, etc) to clean up some of his… side projects.

Way of X by Si Spurrier and Bob Quinn is about Nightcrawler and Legion trying to head off the re-emergence of Onslaught, but Nightcrawler trying to reconcile his religion with Krakoa’s resurrection protocols and his efforts toward synthesizing a mutant religion really steals the scenes.

S.W.O.R.D. by Al Ewing and Valerio Schiti is the cosmic title of the bunch. The mutants have been proactive establishing a space station to house an agency to protect Earth against extraterrestrial threats… and that’s before they establish Arakko on Mars. Cosmic adventures and more than a little political intrigue & deception.

Hellions by Zeb Wells   Way of X   S.W.O.R.D.

You’re Not Yourself, Have a SNIKT!

The Marvel Wolverine by Jason Aaron Sale runs through Monday, 8/29.

This can pretty much be narrowed down to two titles:

Wolverine by Jason Aaron collects several titles, including the end of the ’03 Wolverine, Wolverine: Manifest Destiny, Wolverine: Weapon X, Spider-Man & Wolverine and the ’10 version of Wolverine.  And yes, towards the end of the run is when Aaron sends Wolverine to Hell. Lots of artists over the course of this work, including Adam Kubert, Ron Garney and Howard Chaykin.

Wolverine & The X-Men is the post-Schism run where Logan heads back to Westchester to run the Jean Grey School. Aaron writes, the artists most associated with this run are Nick Bradshaw and Chris Bachalo (with some early Pepe Larraz towards the end).

Wolverine by Jason Aaron   Wolverine and the X-Men

Hawkguy

The Marvel Hawkeye Sale runs through Thusday, 9/1.

When people think of Hawkeye, they usually start thinking about the iconic and quirky Matt Fraction / David Aja run. Lucky you, Marvel’s put the whole thing in one volume as Hawkeye by Fraction & Aja: The Saga of Barton and Bishop.

Hawkeye Epic Collection: The Avenging Archer is the old school option. This has the original Iron Man appearances, some Avengers, some Marvel Team-Up, the original solo mini-series and so forth.

If you’re in a Kate Bishop mood, you’re probably looking for the Hawkeye run by Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero.

Hawkeye   Hawkeye   Hawkeye

Is That a Radio Format?

The DC Hot 100 Sale runs through Monday, 8/29.

It’s somewhat random set of DC books on sale this week.  Predictably, there’s a lot of Batman in there.

You want something good from the last couple years?  We highly recommend Batman: The Adventures Continue by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini and Ty Templeton. It’s a continuation of The Animated Series and it’s first rate Batman. Highly recommended if you have a fondness for the cartoon.

If you want something a little older No Man’s Land was probably our favorite Batman Event of the 90s. The first volume (of the regular set, not “Road to,” even has some work by Bob Gale. We’re always happy when he does some comics! The premise is Gotham has been cut off from the mainland by an earthquake. Things have gone a little feudal and the various villains are setting themselves up as warlords in various neighborhood as Batman and friends try to keep things under control until the situation improves. If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like the DMZ series, you’re not imagining things… but No Man’s Land came out ~5 years earlier.

The most recent book in this sale is the Mattson Tomlin/Andrea Sorrentino Batman: The Imposter.

Batman: The Adventures Continue   Batman: No Man's Land   Batman: The Imposter

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Marvel Max (Miracleman / Punisher / Alias), Thanos, James Bond 007 and a Metric Ton of Kodansha Manga

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel Max doles out discounts, which means Miracleman, Alias, Punisher and… Conan? Thanos is also on sale, and is James Bond and seemingly the whole Kondansha line if you’re in a manga kind of mood.

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):

A little housekeeping first. We’re going to be travelling the rest of the week, so we’re posting on Tuesday. We’ll see you next week at the usual spatio-temporal coordinates.  Also, there doesn’t appear to be a new DC sale this week. They seem to be standing pat with the Sandman sale (see: still on sale at the end of the column or the last couple weeks’ columns).

Is THAT Where HBO Max Got the Name?

The Marvel Max Sale runs through Thursday 9/8.

In this case, “Marvel Max” refers to Marvel’s old, on and off, mature readers line. (Yes, that does mean a lot of Garth Ennis material.) They generally only float this one once or twice year, so let’s have a look.

Since it looks like new material is finally getting back on the schedule, there’s a couple Miracleman runs that are a little more topical.

First is the Alan Moore / Gary Leach / Alan Davis / John Totleben run. Originally started WAY pre-Watchmen, this is an early and influential post-modern superhero reconstruction with Moore resurrecting a 50s era UK superhero that’s a bit a of Captain Marvel (Shazam) clone and taking things to their logical conclusion with a mad scientist foe, a conspiracy and a sidekick gone wrong.  It’s been half-forgotten after being out of print for a long time and Marvel botched the initial rollout of the reprints. (Don’t ask about the pricing on their original reprints.)

So then Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham got passed the torch when Moore finished his story. “The Golden Age” shows an age where Miracleman sits atop Olympus, presiding over an “age of miracles,” like a god over the mere mortals on the ground. This is where the story will picked up from after all these years.

Miracleman   Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham

We have no idea what a Conan book is doing in this sale, but… we like the material. Conan Chronicles: Return to Cimmeria is from the Dark Horse era and features the endcap to the Kurt Busiek/Cary Nord run and the beginning of the Tim Truman/Tomas Giorello run.  Can’t complain about a Conan sale and we’re a little fuzzy what’s going to be happening with the reprints after the new material switches over to Titan.

Alias, which made it to Netflix as “Jessica Jones” is the Brian Bendis/Michael Gaydos hard drinking superpowered private eye series, now conveniently in 2 volumes.

Conan Chronicles   Alias

Oh, you want Ennis Punisher?  Well, browse the main link for some of his one-offs (there are several), but here’s an overview:

If you were expecting Thanatos…

The Marvel Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet Sale runs through Monday, 8/22.

Thanos has become a saga, at least with the Starlin-driven material.

Avengers Vs. Thanos is a meaty ~470 page collection of the original ’70s appearances that were centered in Captain Marvel and Warlock.  You could make an argument that this is where “cosmic” Marvel was born. (It’s one of a handful of candidates.) Recommended.

And then Thanos was mostly on the shelf for ~13 years until Jim Starlin started writing Silver Surfer (with Ron Lim drawing… oh yes, those two would do some collaborating).  The Rebirth of Thanos arc was the “oh, snap” moment (pun intended) where Thanos resurfaced and the wheels were set in motion for The Infinity Gauntlet (with art by George Perez and Ron Lim).  And both of those are recommended, too.

There were two more Infinity sequels:

And a ton of supporting material.  “Infinity” and Adam Warlock were practically a sub-imprint for a couple years.

Starlin did more Thanos follow-ups over the years, culminating in a graphic novel trilogy:

Avengers Vs. Thanos   Rebirth of Thanos   Infinity Gauntlet

Bondage

The Dynamite James Bond Sale runs through Monday, 8/29.

There is one 007 comic we recommend above all others. Kill Chain by Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida is a great updating of the literary James Bond.  SMERSH is back and trying to undermine NATO… and assassinate a few people. This may be the best executing of melding the current political situation with Bond’s Cold War roots.  Highly recommended if you’re into this sort of thing.

While we’ve been waiting for the collected edition and can’t review, we have been really curious about James Bond: Himeros,  which has Rodney Barnes from Killadelphia and HBO’s Winning Time putting 007 up against sex traffickers. The single issues are $0.99.

James Bond Kill Chain   James Bond: Himeros

All-In Manga

The Kodansha End of Summer Line-Wide Sale runs through Monday, 8/22.

Cards upfront, we’re not as familiar with manga as we could be.  That said, (along with the rest of the world), we’ve really enjoyed Attack on Titan, a surprisingly complex series combining elements of horror and political thriller with a little bit of steampunk around the edges. It’s a little hard to discuss without a steady stream of spoilers. But it lives up to the hype.

$1.99 for the first volume of old school classic Ghost in the Shell strikes us as a good deal.

Although, in this case, it might be expensive. Most of the first volumes in the sale are $0.99.  So if you have a manga itch, it would behoove you to browse this one.

Attack on Titan   Ghost in the Shell

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Sandman, Spider-Verse, She-Hulk, Locke and Key, DCeased

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, lots of comics with streaming shows and films based on them: Sandman Universe, She-Hulk, The Spider-Verse and Locke & Key all get discounts. Plus, DCeased for the sake of variety!

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):

Like Sands in the Hourglass…

The DC Sandman Universe Sale runs through Monday, 8/22.

Wait, didn’t we just have a Sandman sale and a Vertigo sale?  Yes, but the Sandman Netflix show is doing well, so they’re effectively extending the party.  So let’s break this down:

And that’s going to be the bulk of it. There’s a sprawling mess of unsorted single issues presented in pretty much the least professional way possible, but if you want the singles, most of them are $0.99 (so keep this in mind when comparing with collected editions).

What’s good that we haven’t talked about in the last couple weeks?

John Constantine: Hellblazer by Si Spurrier, Aaron Campbell and Matias Bergara is one of our favorite reads of the last few years.  A classic Constantine conspiracy/con, some absolutely hilarious interludes… Grade A Hellblazer.  We’re still grumpy it didn’t go longer. Get both volumes, they comprise one story.

Sandman Mystery Theater is a fairly tangential cousin to Gaiman’s Sandman. It’s the pulp flavored adventures of the Golden Age Sandman – prior to the Simon & Kirby redesign. Sort of of a gentler, more introspective flavor of The Shadow.  Matt Wagner starts out as writer, Steven T. Seagle joins him a bit later and eventually assumes solo duties. Guy Davis is the main artist.  At 70 issues, this is one of the longer running Vertigo titles, though they’ve never really gotten the collected editions going for it.  You can save a couple bucks on the two collected editions, but it’s single issues after that.

John Constantine, Hellblazer   Sandman Mystery Theater

Dead Again

The DC DCeased Sale runs through Monday, 8/15.

I think the standard set of reactions to DCeased went something like:

  1. Oh, DC’s doing their version of Marvel Zombies
  2. Wait… this is actually good?!?
  3. Ah, it’s a Tom Taylor project.

That Taylor guy has a pretty darn good track record with this sort of thing.  The high concept here is the Anti-Life Equation gets unleashed and turns MOST of the world, including many of those with superpowers, into a sort of zombie. The surviving superheroes and villains are making shaky alliances to keep themselves and the what’s left of the masses alive as the look for a cure or a way off the planet.

Trevor Hairsine is the initial artist and then there’s some switching up later on as things progress.

The publication order is

All recommended. And yes, it’s no coincidence that all the previous material is on sale the week that the FINAL series, DCeased: War of the Undead Gods, debuts. (Far too early for discounts on that one.)

DCeased   DCeased: Hope at the World's End   DCeased - Dead Planet

Itsy Bitsy

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Thursday, 8/18.

Much like the comic Event and the film, this is a sale highlighting a few different incarnations of Spidey in the various dimensions/realities of “The Spider-Verse.”

Spider-Verse is the 600+ page monster volume collecting the original event across the various Spidey-family titles.

The Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection volumes by Brian Bendis, Sara Pichelli and David Marquez are good values as ~300 page collections.

And for off-the wall, there’s always Spider-Ham, which we’ve always sort of thought of as Marvel’s answer to Captain Carrot.  Silly YA stuff, but not without a punny appeal.

Spider-Verse   Miles Morales - Spider-Man   Spider-Ham

Gama Nepotism

The Marvel She-Hulk Sale runs through Monday, 8/29.

Gosh, you’d think there was a streaming show on Disney+ or something?  Is streaming STILL a theme for what’s on sale?  Could be.

The two runs that will likely be the most recognizable if “She-Hulk, Attorney at Law” is your point of reference, would be

It’s also worth noting the current Rainbow Rowell / Roge Antonio She-Hulk series has the first three issues for $0.99 each.

She-Hulk by Dan Slott   She-Hulk

I am the Keymaster, are you the Gatekeeper?

The IDW Locke & Key Sale runs through Monday, 8/15.

Add another streaming sale to the pile.  This time for the “modern classic” Joe Hill / Gabriel Rodriguez horror tale of magical keys that open doors to the strangest places.  And the prices are cheap!  $0.99 for the first tpb, mostly $2.99 for subsequent volumes. $0.49 single issues for most of the run.

And all this for a superior series, too.  Hype is real for this one, folks.

  • The collected editions are here.
  • Except for “The Golden Age” collection, which also includes the crossover with The Sandman. Will that eventually be a streaming crossover? A bit early to tell.  This will run you $9.99 for being more recent.
  • The single issues for the regular series
  • The single issues for The Sandman crossover – $0.99 a pop (cheap)

Locke and Key   Locke & Key: The Golden Age   Locke & Key / Sandman

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