Tag: Doctor Aphra

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Force; Winter Soldier; Gillen at Marvel; Kirby at DC

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops prices on X-Force, Winter Soldier and the work of Kieron Gillen. DC highlights some deeper cuts in the catalog (and Jack Kirby). Oni may or may not be having a sale.

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):

Paths Less Taken

Far Sector  Omega Men  Orion

The DC Summer Sizzle Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

And this week, DC’s mix of titles has a LOT of what we’d call “under the radar” books, many of which are featured a little less frequently. Fortunately, this is firmly in our wheelhouse to navigate.

Some highlights:

  • Checkmate – Greg Rucka / Jesus Saiz; Rucka’s take on the intersection of spies and superheroes
  • DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke’s look at the dawn of the Silver Age isn’t really under the radar, but it’s a truly great comic.
  • Deathstroke – Christopher Priest / Carlo Pagulayan; Missing the Titans crossovers, but this is a smart comic about villain that makes few bones about it.
  • Far Sector – N.K. Jemisin / Jamal Campbell; Superior worldbuilding as a new Green Lantern with an experimental ring investigates the first murder in living memory on a world without feelings. You could count Jemisin’s SF/F awards, but you’d need some time on your hands.
  • Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely; An even further-out-there delight & Doom Patrol spin-off that, for legal purposes, has NOTHING to do with Charles Atlas ads…
  • Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation – Robert Venditti / Eddy Barrows; Just a very well done reworking of the original Freedom Fighters concept. Very under the radar, but we really enjoyed it. (Would work as an Elseworlds or Black Label.)
  • Jonah Hex – Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and an absurd rotation of high end artists; Fun westerns, some arcs, some done in one
  • Omega Men – Tom King / Barnaby Bagenda; Before he blew up, King penned this meditation on line between terrorism and freedom fighters, which is arguably a Green Lantern tale (Kyle Rayner). Often overlooked.
  • Orion – Walt Simonson’s entry in the New Gods saga. We liked it as much as his Thor, which is to say, a lot! Totally under most radars.

Kirby Korner

A good chunk of the King’s DC work is on sale:

Forced Entry

X-Force X-Force X-Force

The Marvel X-Force Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

Yes, the mutant black ops team, as originally established by Cable (and morphing out of New Mutants). There absolutely have a been a few incarnations and relaunches over the years. Let’s start out with an overview of that:

  • X-Force ’91-’02 – Originally Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza with Greg Capullo tagging in early on. The first edition, if you will.
    • Counter-X: X-Force – From the period when Warren Ellis was showrunning some of the X-titles, by Ian Edgington & Jorge Lucas
  • Uncanny-Force ’10-’12 – Rick Remender and rotating roster of Raphael Albuquerque, Esad Ribic, Jerome Opena, Billy Tan and Phil Noto
  • Uncanny X-Force ’13-’14 – Sam Humphries / Ron Garney / Dalibor Talajic
  • Deadpool vs. X-Force ’14 – Duane Swierczynski / Pepe Laraz
  • X-Force ’19-’24 – Ben Percy / Joshua Cassara / Robert Gill

What’s good? Our top pick is the Remender Uncanny-Force. Black ops and a wide ranging, but complete story unit when taken as a whole. We’re also fans of the Ben Percy / Krakoa era X-Force.  If you want something off-beat, start here for the Milligan/Allred run, which is a satire.

Journey into Gillen

Darth Vader  Journey Into Mystery  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel Kieron Gillen Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

Yes, has has written quite a bit for Marvel over the years. Our favorites? An absolutely brilliant turn on Darth Vader with Salvador Larocca and his evil Star Wars analogue of Indiana Jones, Doctor Aphra w/Kev Walker. When the glass cracks in his Vader run… well, see for yourself. Great moment.

So let’s start out with a cleaner recap of the major items in this sale:

What’s good?  This one’s going to be more personal preference than with many sales and to that end, we’d definitely say Immortal X-Men and particularly Sins of Sinister, which was as good as X-Men Event as there’s been… but needs context from Immortal and the X-line of books. Past that, Journey Into Mystery is where Gillen really popped onto the Marvel radar, Young Avengers is the familiar team of Gillen/McKelvie and Gillen’s Mr. Sinister in Uncanny X-Men definitely has had influence.

The Sidekick in Winter

Captain America  Winter Soldier  The Winter Soldier: The Bitter March

The Marvel Winder Soldier Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

This is a slightly odd sale, in that it encompasses most – but apparently not all – of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run and then several miniseries and abortive attempts at an ongoing series… including a few creator names you’ll recognize.

The originating storyline runs in the 2004 series of Captain America by Ed Brubaker and a rotating squad of artists including Steve Epting, Michael Lark, Butch Guice and Mike Perkins. There are a couple omnibuses available, but this doesn’t really have a definitive larger collection like, say, the Hickman Avengers era.

Note: if you’re going to read the Winter Soldier saga, you’re going to need Captain America: Reborn, the Ed Brubaker /Bryan Hitch mini-series that wraps up the “Death of Captain America” sequence.

For solo series, the first choice is Winter Soldier by Ed Brubaker, which is Brubaker and Butch Guice in a spin-off.

Also of possible interest:

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Resurrection of Magneto  Cable: United We Fall  Avengers: Twilight

The trend returns after a short break. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Pre-Order for Next Week

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

Apex Legends  Anthem

Dark Horse has a couple of their video game adaptations showing up discounted:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales – Rock Bottom “May the Forth” Star Wars Prices, Plus: Spider-Man, Batman, Doctor Fate and The Witchfinder

This week in Comixology (at Amazon) sales: Star Wars gets nice and cheap for the “May the Fourth” holiday, plus Spider-Man and his friends (OK, acquaintances), Batman, Doctor Fate and The Witchfinder (but not the Witchfinder General, that’s different).

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commissions)

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):

Nothing But Star Wars

The Marvel Star Wars May the Fourth Sale runs through Monday, 5/16.

Let’s break this down by key series first (since Amazon can’t be bothered to organize things this way).  There are a lot more shorter runs included, too and the prices are GOOD. Lots of $0.99 first volumes and $1.99 after that.  This is the time of the year to go hog wild on Star Wars.

  • Darth Vader (’15-’16) – The AMAZING Kieron Gillen / Salvador Larroca run
    Vader Down – the Darth Vader / Star Wars crossover sequence that is KEY to this run.
  • Darth Vader (’17 – ’18) – The also great Charles Soule / Giuseppe Camuncoli run
  • Doctor Aphra (’16-’19) – Sort of an evil Indiana Jones in the Star Wars universe, spinning off from Darth Vader. The first three volumes are especially entertaining
    The Screaming Citadel – Star Wars/Aphra crossover with key plot points to the early sequence
  • Kanan: The Last Padawan – Star Wars Rebels prequel by by Greg Weisman and Pepe Larraz
  • Star Wars (’15-’19) – The Marvel flagship title amazingly went 4 years without a relaunch!
  • Star Wars: The High Republic ($0.99 for Vol. 1)

Recommendations? For whatever reason, Darth Vader seems to bring out the best in Marvel. Get both series first. Is is a coincidence Lucasfilm recently hired Charles Soule as a creative consultant?

Your under the radar title is Kanan. A very solid series from one the animated show’s producers and Pepe Larraz has since been promoted to X-Men.

Vader   Vader Series 2   Kanan - The Last Padawan

Team-Up

The Marvel Spider-Man and Friends Sale runs through Sunday, 5/1.

There have been a few Spidey team-up books over the years and the listed here include:

The OG title, however, was Marvel Team-Up. While we like the value of Masterworks editions in general, the standout sequence of this title is the too-short Chris Claremont/John Byrne run. Yes, the classic X-Men team did a Spidey run here. Masterworks V.6 catches the beginning of that, but Marvel also has Spider-Man: Marvel Team-Up by Claremont and Byrne that catches it all in one place.  And yes, that business with the Soul Catcher from issues 60-62 is a follow up to a Tigra story line.  (The more you know…)

Marvel Team-Up

Some of the Discounts Are Decent…

The DC Epic eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 5/9.

The usual DC disclaimers apply – Amazon and/or DC seem to screw up the sale prices, initially pricing many books at bizarre numbers like $9.32 or $24.87 before settling down to something like $5.99 or $7.99.  So if the price doesn’t end in $*.99, be aware it might not be the final sale price.  Then again, they might not get around to fixing it.  We wish we were making it up, but that’s the cold, hard reality of the situation.

Anyway, some things we saw and thought the “real” sale price was active for:

WE3 is a unusual and downright disturbing self-contained story by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely about about three house pets – a dog, a cat and a rabbit – who have been converted into cybernetically enhanced weapons systems by a government agency. They make a break for it and all hell breaks loose. Seriously, this is not The Secret of N.I.H.M. This is bloody. $5.99 is a good price, here.

Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman is Liam Sharp’s tale of Batman & Wonder Woman investigating the murder of a Celtic god. $4.99 for a proper discount.

Doctor Fate in this case is the 2015-16 revival by Paul Levitz, with the amazing Sonny Liew as the primary artist. We don’t always like updates, but Levitz and Liew nailed this one. The helmet of Fate falls into the possession of an Egyptian American medical student for a series of adventures tied into Egyptian mythology and history.  An underappreciated gem that blends a sliver of classic Peter Parker into the Fate mythos.

There’s a LOT of collections to sort through here, we just wish it were easier to find a series that had ALL the volumes priced consistently.

WE3   The Brave and the Bold   Doctor Fate

Lost and Found

The Dark Horse Witchfinder Sale runs through Monday, 5/2.

This is another entry in the extended Mignolaverse, a staple of Dark Horse’s horror efforts. Sir Edward Grey is a witchfinder in Victorian England, who hunts things that go bump in the night while in the service of the Queen. And yes, of course Saucy Jack eventually turns up.  Mike Mignola with John Arcudi and Chris Robeson. Ben Stenbeck is the primary artist, but the some of other artists popping include John Severin, Tyler Crook, D’Israeli and Christopher Mitten.

This series of mini-series is now conveniently collected in  two omnibus editions on sale for $6.99 each and that’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Witchfinder

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