Hulk Archives - Page 2 of 2

This week’s Comixology Sales highlights include Marvel wheeling out Spidey’s old pal, Doctor Octopus; the Red Hulk; DC’s 90s nostalgia sale and Dark Horse’s Berger Books.

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

Tentacle Comics – Marvel Version

The Marvel Doctor Octopus Sale runs through Sunday, 10/14.

Personally, we would’ve included the Fraction/Larroca Iron Man arc with Doc Ock in this say, but what do we know?

As usual, we think the Epic Collections are your value buys here. They’re semi-conveniently grouped at the top of the sale page (and are an absolute mess on the Amazing Spider-Man page). It’s hard to go wrong with Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Great Power, the first half of the Lee/Ditko run.

If you’re looking for Superior Spider-Man, the landmark run where Otto is occupying Peter’s body, your best buy are the two “Complete Collection” volumes in the Omnibuses section.

Hulk See Red

The Marvel Red Hulk Sale runs through Sunday, 11/14.

Yes, there are times when the Hulk extended family starts to resemble the Green Lantern Corps with all the colors of the spectrum. This sale is about the Red Hulk… or as we like to put it: Ross, Stress For Less.

Honestly, we weren’t in the bag for the Jeph Loeb/Ed McGuinness run that opened that volume of Hulk. We thought the Jeff Parker / Gabriel Hardman / Patrick Zircher / Dale Eaglesham run was the more interesting stretch of that era. The collected editions for this volume aren’t well numbered, so go to the Collected Editions section of the series page and start with “Scorched Earth.”

Age of the Super-Mullet

The DC Back in the 90s Sale runs through Monday, 11/15.

And some of the discounts are even 60%-ish. On the high side for DC!

Sales stunts and character deaths aside, the quintessential 90s DC title was probably the Grant Morrison / Howard Porter JLA. A sort of back to basics reboot, although Justice League really had already been resetting from the BWA HA HA era of the late 80s/early 90s.

A lot of the better 90s material was in the smaller books. Titles whose full runs haven’t been collected (and, of course, the single issues aren’t on sale to go along with the theme… we do wonder who makes these sales sometimes.)

John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake had a superlative run on The Spectre. Underneath the magic and horror-adventure lies a philosophical tale about the dead man who’s become the earthly host for the Wrath of God and his attempts to come to grips with his situation.

Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris (or at least its the Tony Harris era currently collected) was another high point of the 90s. While people like to talk about Justice Society as a “legacy hero” title, this is the REAL legacy hero title. Jack Knight very reluctantly picks up the cosmic rod of Starman after his brother is shot. He wanted no part of the Knight heritage, but he’s dragged in anyway. Aside from the heroics, it’s a tale of families and family traditions that should be celebrated more than DC has. Also, The Shade. And the steady editorial hand of Archie Goodwin.

Take some time to sift through the haphazard selection of $0.99 single issues, which are more comprehensive than the collected editions… yet still have odd gaps. You might take a close look at Legends of the Dark Knight, too.

Definitely Not Vertigo II (Said the Lawyer)

The Dark Horse Berger Books Sale runs through Monday, 11/22.

Yes, that’s Karen Berger who ran Vertigo (and editing Legion of Super-Heroes before that). She set up shop at Dark Horse after DC shut down Vertigo. Berger Books is a little more genre-diverse than Vertigo was, but there’s a similar vibe.

Invisible Kingdom by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward might be the de facto flagship book. This Eisner Award winner finds a religious acolyte and a starship freighter crew on the run after discovering corporate interests conspiring with religious leaders for control and profit. We wouldn’t have minded a fourth volume.

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja got an awful lot of attention towards the beginning of the year and it’s certainly an interesting one that blends a lot of dispirate elements: climate collapse, aliens, exclusion zones, journalism and conspiracies. Plus… Aja’s art!

Still On Sale

The Marvel Eternals Sale runs through Sunday, 11/14
The Marvel Civil War 2 Sale runs through Sunday, 11/14
The Humanoids Best of Jodorowsky Sale runs through Monday, 12/20

BOGO!

Yes, Marvel Buy One, Get One Free is back. Click that link, get that code and stack the BOGO on top of the current sales. The sale ends on Monday, 9/27 at 11PM ET. Fine print says the offer is no good on comics that came out after 8/25/21, pre-orders or Max titles, among other things. So have at it… and those Doctor Strange discounts are looking twice as good.

The Doctor is In

Doctor Strange is a character where we very much recommend the original run through the 80s. He’s also one of the characters to find his legs the quickest.

As always, we find the Epic Collections to be slightly better values, but the Masterworks go all the way through the series, where the Epic’s tend to jump around. So either look at the listing in the sale link or follow through the sequence of titles and look in the collected editions section there.

Doctor Strange debuts in Strange Tales. This is the Stan Lee / Steve Ditko run and the original clashes with Baron Mordo and the Dormammu. (And that Lee/Ditko Epic Collection is a good one.)

Then there was the late ’60s Doctor Strange solo series that (along with the first half of the Marvel Premiere run) is collected across two Masterworks editions.

And then there’s “main” Doctor Strange series of the 70’s and 80’s. The second half of Marvel Premiere run is lumped in here, as that where Steve Englehart enters the picture. The Englehart/John Brunner run is considered a classic, right up there with Lee/Ditko’s psychedelic masterpiece. Gene Colan hops on for a long tenure after Brunner leaves (with the odd artist switch) and then Marv Wolfman, Roger Stern and Chris Claremont tag in and out as writers, until Peter Gillis jumps in at the very end of the run. It’s a strong series and the later Stern issues with Marshal Rogers and Paul Smith on the art are a particular joy.

You say you want the more recent Jason Aaron / Donny Cates era? Mark Waid era? It’s all on sale too, just remember to grab the BOGO code and apply it to your shopping cart for Maximum Cheap.

Neil’s Limelight

We’re going to assume you haven’t been living under the Rock of Eternity and are familiar with Sandman already. That said, there are a couple less famous items here. (We say less famous, because Neil’s too popular for much of his catalog to truly be obscure.)

Black Orchid is a very early piece by the now celebrated team of Neil and Dave McKean. Originally pitched in ’87 and coming out at the end of ’88, it actually pre-dates Sandman. The series is an origin of sorts for the ’70s character (Why of sorts? Therein lay spoilers.) Batman, Swamp Thing and Lex Luthor are involved in this tangled web.

DC Universe by Neil Gaiman is a collection of several non-Vertigo projects. The best known ones are probably the “Whatever Happened to the Cape Crusader?” Batman project, the Superman/Green Lantern “Legend of the Green Flame” sequence from Action Comics Weekly and the Metamorpho strip from Wednesday Comics.