Tag: Dragon Age

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales – Star Wars; More $1.99 DC Collections; Old Man Logan; Department of Truth; Black Hammer

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Star Wars Epic Collections and Old Man Logan. DC has comics that have been adapted for TV and film as low as $1.99. Plus, The Black Hammer and Dragon Age.

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: we looked at the X-Men/Krakoa and Thunderbolts sales earlier in the week.
Also, by popular nagging demand, we are at @comicscheap.bsky.social]

We Will Control the Vertigo Vertical

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters  New Teen Titans  DC: The New Frontier

The DC on TV Sale runs through Monday, 11/18.

Once again, we find ourselves in the midst of holiday pricing. Yes, we’re sad, too. There’s more to the sale (500+ books), but we’re going to focus on some good options at the rock bottom $1.99 and $2.99 price points.

$1.99

  • Deathstroke ’16 – ’20 – Christopher Priest / Carlo Pagulayan / Larry Hama / Diogenes Neves; Very under appreciated character piece. Highly recommended.
  • Doctor Fate – Paul Levitz / Sonny Liew; Superior reimagining of the character that leans into Egyptian mythology. Would that all reinventions of a classic character work this well…
  • Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters – Mike Grell relaunches Green Arrow without the trick arrows as more of a thriller.
  • Green Arrow (’88 – ’98) – Mike Grell / Ed Hannigan / Dan Jurgens / Rick Hoberg; Grell’s regular series follow up to The Longbow Hunters
  • Harley Quinn (’13-’16) – Amanda Connor / Jimmy Palmiotti / Chad Hardin; A slapstick / absurdist take on Harley
    • Harley Quinn (’16-’20) – Amanda Connor / Jimmy Palmiotti / Chad Hardin / John Timms; For all intents and purposes, it’s the same series at the ’13 iteration through V.5
  • Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass – Mariko Tamaki / Steve Pugh; OGN
  • Hawkworld – Tim Truman / Enrique Alcatena; The first post-crisis reimagining of Hawkman, emphasizing the science fiction elements of the Silver Age version
  • Justice Society of America (’07-’11) – Geoff Johns / Dale Eaglesham; Bill Willingham / Jesus Merino; Mixed pricing w/ $2.99; Includes an Alex Ross follow-up to Kingdom Come
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – Alan Moore / Kevin O’Neill; Ignore that ridiculous movie. Moore & O’Neill raid Victorian literature to assemble a supergroup of Alan Quartermain (King Solomon’s Mine), Mina Harker (Dracula), Captain Nemo  (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), Edward Hyde (Doctor Jeckyll and Mister Hyde) and Hawley Griffin (The Invisible Man) as they do a spot of work for the government. Literate and witty. And no bloody Tom Sawyer.

$2.99

  • DC Meets Looney Tunes – You’re getting this for the SHOCKINGLY GOOD Batman Vs. Elmer Fudd by Tom King and Lee Weeks. Weeks cannot be praised enough for pulling this off with such style.
  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – Marv Wolfman / George Perez / Eduardo Barreto; Did this classic run save DC in the early ’80s? Quite possibly.
  • Preacher – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon; God’s gone missing and Jesse Custer would like to have a word with him; Double volumes
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing (’82-’96) – Alan Moore’s legendary run and, for most practical purposes, the birthing of the Vertigo imprint
  • Sandman – Neil Gaiman and a rotating cast of artists
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra; Double volumes for $2.99 as the last living man on Earth searches for his girlfriend as the rest of the world searches for him

$3.99 (and we still recommend it)

  • Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams – You can figure out the creators yourself; Contains the full and excellent run from Detective Comics
  • DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke’s stone cold masterpiece about the dawn of the Silver Age
  • Doom Patrol: The Silver Age – Arnold Drake / Bruno Premiani; Essentially DC’s answer to the original X-Men, though it seems like they were developed simultaneously. More pathos than most DC’s from the period and good stuff.
  • Doom Patrol (’87-’95) – Grant Morrison / Richard Case; The legendary run in three double volumes
  • Flash (’87 – ’09) – Geoff Johns/Scott Kolins; The original Johns run was where he started to get noticed
  • Flash (’16 – ’20) – Josh Williamson / Carmine di Giandomenico / Howard Porter; Mixed pricing with some scattered $1.99/$2.99

Sing Along With Nick

The Marvel Star Wars Epic Collections Sale runs through Monday, 11/18.

The headline here should probably be that the current Marvel run is starting to get Epic Editions.

Star Wars Epic Collection

Star Wars Modern Era Epic Collection: Skywalker Strikes collects the first 14 issues of the Jason Aaron / John Cassaday (RIP) run, plus the Vader Down crossover issues.

You might be asking “where’s the Vader Epic Collection?” A fine question, too. The answer is the first one is coming out at the end of the month.

Agent of Empire   Dark Empire   Star Wars Newspaper Strip

As for the Epic Collections of the original Marvel run and the Dark Horse material, there really aren’t title-specific links here, which is super annoying.

These Epic Collections are _all_ in this link.

A few things we’ll call out as particularly good.

The original Marvel Star Wars, #49-69, the under appreciated, post-Empire period with Walt Simonson and/or David Michelinie.  Most of it is in this DH Omnibus.

John Ostrander’s “Agent of Empire” is collected in this Epic. Think “what if James Bond spied for the Empire.” It’s fun.

Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy reinvigorated the franchise in the 90s when they did Dark Empire. That and Dark Empire II are collected in this Epic.

Also fun, the Ostrander/Jan Duursema “Legacy” series, wherein the down and out last heir to the Skywalker legacy finds himself embroiled with a resurgent Sith Empire. 4 volumes, starting here.

And finally, there’s nothing quite like Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson on the Star Wars newspaper strip. Yes, that’s Russ Manning who comes first. 2 volumes starting here.

And finally a list of Epics we don’t think were on sale the last time these prices rolled around:

Wolverine… and the Sea?

Wolerine: Old Man Logan   Wolverine: Old Man Logan

The Marvel Old Logan and the Wasteland Sale runs through Monday, 11/18.

Yes, the Old Man Logan storyline has spawn a series of miniseries set in “The Wasteland” setting from the original.

That’s what the real spread is here with the rest of the sale being side attractions you may or may not be into.  The original storyline of a cranky, aged (“Old Man”) version of Wolverine living in a dystopic future came off as a sort of Elseworlds tale and is fairly well regarded as a standalone tale.

It was popular enough that the “Old Man Logan” version of the character was contrived to appear in the present (his past… before the disaster that spawned a dystopia) in the period when Wolverine was supposed to be “dead.” It even lasted 50 issues. We’d say give the Jeff Lemire issues a look if it sounds interesting, particularly the Lemire/Sorrentino issues. This was one of their pre-Image collaborations and it’s much more entertaining than the editorial premise sounds.

Don’t Feed the Sale-Naming Trolls

Department of Truth   The Fade Out  Sam and Twitch

The Un-be-leafable Image Comics Sale runs through Black Friday.

Do not encourage whoever’s naming these Image sales. Moving right along to the actual sales, this is another one with a mystery/horror bent to it. Lots of good stuff and it’s worth a browse. A few things we’ve read and are happy to recommend:

  • The Department of Truth – James Tynion IV / Martin Simmonds; Possibly our favorite Tynion series. There’s an X-Files-esque setup, but this series is about the power of belief and myth to shape reality, not an alien invasion
  • The Fade Out – Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips; A Hollywood blacklist era noir thriller about the cover-up of a starlet’s murder from the ever-reliable team of Brubaker & Phillips
  • The Fix – Nick Spencer / Steve Lieber; A farce about two crooked cops and a much more reliable drug sniffing dog by the Superior Foes of Spider-Man team
  • Sam & Twitch – Brian Bendis / Angel Medina / Ashley Wood / Alex Maleev; Spawn’s detective companions investigate weird mysteries. The Bendis issues are a creepy delight
  • Stray Bullets – David Lapham; Lapham’s crime series was basically Criminal, but a decade earlier. A classic “if you know, you know” series

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Ghost Rider  Amazing Spider-Man

The trend continues. 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

Unannounced Sales

Black Hammer Omnibus  Dragon Age  The Hunger and the Dusk

Dark Horse has the world of Black Hammer on sale this week.

This would be — we think it’s OK to call it a superhero universe at this point — the indie superhero saga by Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston and friends. There are a couple branches to how this saga unfurls.

The main Black Hammer series is here and that’s where you should start the journey. But, as with many long running titles, there are a few different editions to it and this is what we think the cheapest (if messy to sort) way to read the series is.

There are currently 7 volumes under the main series + a collection of specials + 2 volumes of “Visions” with guest creators playing in the Black Hammer standbox.

So what you want to do to cheap out is go to the omnibus page first.

Black Hammer Omnibus V.1 is basically the same thing as the first Library edition. That gets you the first two “regular” volumes (issues 1-13) + the Annual.

Black Hammer Library Edition V. 2 gets you the equivalent of “regular” volumes 3 &4 (“Age of Doom”) plus the Streets of Spiral material not in the Ominbus.

Then you can pick up again with V.5 of the regular editions.

Then you’ve got the World of Black Hammer collections, which are solo tales about the various heroes and villains like Barbalien and Sherlock Frankenstein.

And finally, there’s Black Hammer / Justice League: Hammer of Justice, the Lemire / Michael Walsh team up between… well, that’s in the title, isn’t it? This one offers savings in the single issue format.

Also on sale, Dark Horse’s comics adaptations of BioWare’s Dragon Age line of video games:

Also on sale:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Silver Surfer; DC Pride; Marvel Knights; X-Men; DH Manga; Dragon Age

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Silver Surfer, Marvel Knights and X-Men “Crossovers.” DC has their annual Pride sale. Dark Horse discounts most of their manga, plus Dragon Age.

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):

Surfin’ Bird

Silver Surfer by Lee/Kirby  Silver Surfer - Englehart  Silver Surfer

The  Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

For the most part, the solo adventures of the Silver Surfer fall 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. It does not appear to be on sale this time, but we’ll list it for the sake of completeness.

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. The next team was Jim Starlin and Ron Lim, another great run. Starlin used this run to bring back Thanos (mostly unused since he finished his Warlock run) and set up the Infinity Gauntlet.  We think very highly of the first 50 or so issues of this run. The first four Epic Collections will take you through #50 (that would be through Thanos Quest).

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.

For something that ends up being off the radar because of it’s short length, there’s always Parable, which is Stan Lee teaming up with Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) legend Moebius for an adventure.

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.

Who Exactly Did the Knighting Ceremony?

Daredevil Marvel Knights   Punisher  Spider-Man

The Marvel Knights Sale runs through Monday 6/10.

It’s probably best to put this in historical context. Prior to becoming Marvel EIC, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were co-running an imprint at Marvel called “Marvel Knights.” This started when Marvel was not exactly at a high point and Quesada & Palmiotti reinvigorated several titles. Eventually, Quesada got promoted.

The flagship title for Marvel Knights was probably Daredevil. It started out with Kevin Smith and Quesada as the creators, which was a hit. Then Brian Bendis & Alex Maleev had a storied run on it.

Garth Ennis wrote The Punisher for Marvel Knights, both the comedic series and the later series crime version that eventually moved over the MAX imprint.

Very little of it is in the sale, but the Christopher Priest version of Black Panther is still hugely influential.

Grant Morrison did a Fantastic Four mini-series with Jae Lee and Marvel Boy with J.G Jones.

Mark Millar and Terry & Rachel Dodson did a Spider-Man run.

There was also the infamous “we’re just going to pretend that never happened” Punisher miniseries where Frank returns from the grave as an angel of vengeance. No, really.

There’s a bit more there, but those are the highlights (and the famous misfire). It was a pretty influential imprint.

X Marks the Event

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga  X of Swords  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel X-Men Crossovers sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

This is really a sale on the various Events in the X-family of books. Some of them mostly internal to the X-line, some of them crossing over outside.

The bulk of the sale is the X-Men Milestones line which collects Events from Dark Phoenix through  Age of X.

For something like Onslaught, you can simply get the Milestone edition or you can go whole hog:

Ditto for the slightly earlier Age of Apocalypse:

And then a couple more recent events are too new for the Milestones:

What’s good? We’d go back to that original “Milestone” – The Dark Phoenix Saga. There’s a reason it’s a classic and sent the X-Men into a legendary surge of popularity. Hard to go wrong with Claremont & Byrne. We also think extremely highly of the two most recent events: X of Swords & Sins of Sinister.

Pride

Batwoman  The Invisibles  Wonder Woman by George Perez

The  DC Pride Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

This is a 288 book set of books related to Pride Month. (Some of them more closely related than others.) A few things we saw that were interesting, including some off the more beaten path:

  • Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III – Rucka /Williams; The excellent solo series from Detective
  • Batwoman (’11) – W. Haden Blackman / J.H. Williams III / Amy Reeder; Blackman & Williams mount a good follow-up to the above Detective run, but an editorial decision to nix the wedding hampers the ending
  • Doom Patrol – Grant Morrison / Richard Case; The classic… although it’s a shame there’s no Rachel Pollack Doom Patrol in this sale. It would be appropriate.
  • The Invisibles – Grant Morrison / Steve Yeowell / Jill Thompson / Chris Weston; An underground society battles a conspiracy to keep humanity in it’s place.
  • Seven Soldiers of Victory – Grant Morrison’s series of interlocking mini-series isn’t always mentioned, when Morrison’s name is brought up, but we thought it was the execution was on the money.
  • Shade: The Changing Man – Peter Milligan / Chris Bachalo; Early Vertigo as Milligan & Bachalo retool the Ditko hero. The original marketing description of “mind-bending” is apt.
  • Wonder Woman (’87) – There’s a lot to like about this run – George Perez. Phil Jimenez. The first Greg Rucka run. Even a Walt Simonson / Jerry Ordway collaboration. Be aware you need to toggle between the Omnibus page and Volumes page to see all the material

Unlisted Manga + Dragons

Astro Boy  Blade of the Immortal Lone Wolf and Cub

Dark Horse is having an extensive manga sale. By the numbers:

Also on sale, Dark Horse’s comics adaptations of BioWare’s Dragon Age line of video games:

Dragon Age

Even More Unannounced Stephen King Comics
Stephen King's Dark Tower

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales – The Batman Day Sale

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s the Batman Day 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):

Housekeeping

A couple things to be aware of this week:

#1 – The current Image sale is scheduled to end Friday. This means there will probably be a new sale of Image first volumes on Saturday, so you might want to hit the main link and look for it. We’ll likely cover that next week, since these sales have been running for multiple weeks. Warning: Amazon has been putting these Image sales on the same link, so you might have to reload 2-3 times before the new one shows up. That’s just how it’s been working for the last month or so.

And yes, it’s unusual for sales to start on a Saturday.

#2 – No Marvel this week. This happens every once in a while and we’ll see if something pops up over the weekend, since it looks like they might have a new Image sale scheduled.

Wouldn’t “Batman Night” Be More Appropriate?

The DC Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/18.

Surprise, surprise – the prices look correct on this one. (Forgive us some cynicism after the last month.) Which is to say most, not quite all, of the Batman material is discounted.

Let’s break down some of the highlights by series/volume.

Your classic / pre-New 52 material is largely going to be in:

Now… you sorta need to browse both, because with how the two titles started crossing over from the 80s on up, you’re never quite sure which title a collection/story arc/Event will be filed under. And yes, we do like the 80s collections of Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective for $3.99 – $5.99@ (mostly $4.99). And yes, Knightfall, No Man’s Land, and the like are all in there.

Some more pre-Crisis ongoing titles:

  • Batman: Shadow of the Bat – Alan Grant’s title, w/Norm Breyfogle, early on. (Get more of them in Dark Knight Detective/Caped Crusader)
  • Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight – standalone arcs by different creative teams, but consistently good
  • Batman: Streets of Gotham – Paul Dini’s in-continuity series w/Dustin Nguyen
  • The Brave & The Bold – Batman team-ups. Bob Haney, Neal Adams and Jim Aparo were notable creators here. Haney/Aparo was the team on a LOT of comics. (Now if we could get a Nemesis collection…)

And some pre-Crisis one-offs of note:

  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller’s classic that upset the card table. $2.99 and your life will be fine if you miss the sequels.
  • Batman/Spawn – We’ll confess preferring the Chuck Dixon/Alan Grant/Doug Moench/Klaus Janson tale to the Frank Miller/Todd McFarlane one, but this collects both. $2.99
  • Trinity – Matt Wagner’s Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman team-up. $2.99

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns   Batman/Spawn   Trinity

New 52 and forward, your main titles are:

  • Batman (’11-’16) – The Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo run
  • Batman (’16-current) – starts with the Tom King era and the discounts run through Joshua Williamson’s run
    • Save a couple bucks on the Tom King run with the “Deluxe” editions
  • Detective Comics (’11-’16) – originally Tony Daniels (how many printings did his first issue have?)
  • Detective Comics (’16-current) – Starts out with James Tynion’s first (and we’d say better) Batman run.

Some shorter runs of note in the New 52 era:

  • Batman: Universe (’19) – Brian Bendis and Nick Derington go against the current trend and deliver and light and fun Batman romp across the DCU that has a certain old school The Brave & the Bold vibe to it… but with more snark. Recommended. $2.99
  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – The Animated Series brain trust of Alan Burnett & Paul Dini continue where the cartoon left off with Ty Templeton on art. 2 volumes @$2.99
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor (sorta “Mr. DC” right now) and Andy Kubert take Batman to Europe where his past rears its head and some actual detection is performed. $2.99

Batman Universe   Batman: The Adventures Continue   Batman: The Detective

And above the $2.99 level?

Tales of the Batman: Steve Englehart – Englehart’s Detective run with Marshall Rogers and Walt Simonson is one of the “definitive runs” of all-time and in a contender for best run. This has the sequel runs, plus the Aquaman (with some Batman) sequel to “The Laughing Fish” with Trevor Von Eeden. 452 pages for $7.99

Batman: Killing Time – Tom King and David Marquez get their noir on with Batman following the trail of a heist gone bad as his rogues gallery double-cross each other. We read this recently and liked it a lot. $4.99

Batman: Tales of the Demon – Denny O’Neil / Neal Adams / Don Newton. This would be a collection of the original Ra’s al Ghul. Which is to say, the more famous original arc in the early ’70s and when O’Neil revisited the character a few years later in DC Special and the dollar-sized run of Detective. Ideally, we’d like to see a lower price than $7.99 for this page count, but its a good collection with one of the key villains in the Bat-mythos.

Tales of the Batman: Steve Englehart   Batman: Killing Time   Batman: Tales of the Demon

Plenty more here and worth a weekend browse.

Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Dragons…

The Dark Horse 2023 Dragon Age Digital Sale runs through Monday, 10/2.

This one’s pretty straightforward. The comics come in 3 formats and the omnibus is the best value of the bunch.

Dragon Age

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