Tag: Kingdom Come

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: World’s Finest; DC Elseworlds; Dark Horse Horror; Alison Bechdel

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC looks at more recent titles with their Summer Reading sale and towards the past with an Elseworlds sale. Dark Horse discounts a wide range of horror books and… is that Alison Bechdel?

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):

Summer Loving Reading

World's Finest Lobo  Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes

The DC Summer Reading Sale runs through Monday, 6/24.

Another eclectic title mix from DC, but plenty of $2.99/$3.99 titles and a few things are new (or at least recent) to having a discount. Let’s run down some notables by the bullets:

  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton; The extremely well done return to the continuity of the 90s animated series by two of the show runners (and Ty Templeton’s been on this version a loooooooong time).
  • Batman: The Golden Age – Big chunks of the original 30s/40s stories for $3.99/volume.
  • Batman/Superman: World’s Finest – Mark Waid/Dan Mora; Probably our favorite DC ongoing title at the moment. Popular with .cheap readers, too. Third volume recently entered discount territory.
  • The Dead Boy Detectives (’05) – Jill Thompson’s manga style adventure of what’s now a Netflix series.
  • Gotham Central – Ed Brubaker / Greg Rucka / Michael Lark / Stefano Gaudiano / Jason Shawn Alexander / Kano; The excellent series where the Gotham PD tries to cope with Gotham Crime without Batman. Double volumes for $2.99. Very worth taking a flier on if you’re unfamiliar.
  • Green Arrow (’23)-Josh Williamson / Sean Izaakse; First time discounted?
  • The Huntress: Origins – Paul Levitz / Joe Staton; All the Bronze Age solo appearances in once place.
  • JLA (’97) –    The 90s run that started with Grant Morrison / Howard Porter, mostly $3.99 for double volumes. A good era for the Justice League.
  • Justice Society of America (’23) – Geoff Johns / Mikel Janin; We can’t tell you when the next few issues will ship, but the collection of the first 7 issues is discounted.
  • Lobo (’90) – Keith Giffen / Alan Grant / Simon Bisley; The original off-color, ultra-violent humor series starring The Main Man. An effective tool for the offending of the easily offendable, but very funny if you aren’t.
  • Mister Miracle (’17) – Tom King / Mitch Gerads; In this much-lauded series, Mister Miracle attempts to escape death itself.
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; $2.99/volume ahead of the next series. High school friends are gathered at a remote house as the world ends… and the rest is spoilers. Very well done and a surprisingly big seller for a Vertigo book without the Vertigo imprint behind it.
  • The Omega Men: The End is Here – Tom King / Barnaby Bagenda; Under-appreciated early Tom King meditation on modern terrorism with the Omega Men reimagined as political terrorists who’ve kidnapped Kyle Rayner. Also one of the best Kyle Rayner stories you’ll find.
  • Peacemaker Tries Hard! – Kyle Starks / Steve Pugh; A recent addition to the ranks of the discounted at $3.99.
  • Rorschach (’20) – Tom King  / Jorge Fornés; The rare Watchmen sequel(ish) that we’ll endorse! It’s a political thriller in the Watchmen universe.
  • Superboy & The Legion of Super-Heroes – Paul Levitz / James Sherman / Mike Grell / Joe Staton / Jim Starlin – better than usual prices for big chunks of the first Paul Levitz run.
  • Superman (’23) – Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell; Best “traditional” take on Superman in a few years. V.2 came out (at regular price) recently.
  • Superman: Birthright – Mark Waid / Leinil Francis Yu; 12 issue mini about Superman’s early years for $2.99
  • Superman: The Golden Age – Big chunks of the 30s/40s Superman tales for $2.99/$3.99.
  • The Wild Storm – Warren Ellis / John Davis-Hunt; A reimagining/updating of WildCATS and the Jim Lee Wildstorm characters. Davis-Hunt is vastly under-appreciated.
  • Wonder Woman: The Golden Age – It’s hard to describe how deeply strange the early 1940s Wonder Woman comics are… and not just the submission and bondage elements. Blow your mind for $3.99
  • World’s Finest: The Silver Age – Big chunks of the original series (starting with the ’54 material) for $3.99 a pop.

Elsewhere
The Nail  Bizarro Comics  Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

The DC Elseworlds Sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

Elseworlds were originally DC’s answer to Marvel’s What If series, frequently re-imagining heroes in different settings and time periods. And you know what? Some of the were legitimately great comics. This sale has a few things that haven’t traditionally been referred to as “Elseworlds” (and we have no idea why some of the high end Batman collections are at the end, so we’ll leave it you to browse those) and there are several  things we are happy to recommend without reservation:

  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller; the classic tale of Batman coming out of retirement
  • Batman: Gotham By Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola; a Victorian/Steampunk/Jules Verne reimaging of Batman who comes in conflict with Jack the Ripper and a version of Verne’s Robur the Conqueror
  • Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader – Neil Gaiman / Andy Kubert; A Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow – style send-off to Batman that starts at his funeral.
  • Batman: Year 100 & Other Tales – Paul Pope; Pope spins a future tale of a new Batman appearing, as Commissioner Gordon’s grandson pursues him. You don’t want to pay the hardcover price for this one.
  • Bizarro Comics: The Deluxe Edition – Genuinely odd anthology where alternative cartoonists like Peter Bagge, Ivan Brunetti, Tony Millionaire and Carol Lay do shorts with the various DC characters. Yes, that’s a Matt Groening cover.
  • Justice League of America: The Nail – Alan Davis; Ma and Pa Kent get a flat tire and never find Kal-El’s rocket, so the Justice League forms without Superman and things do not go smoothly.
  • Kingdom Come – Mark Waid and Alex Ross; You don’t get Injustice: Gods Among Us without this dystopian tale of a new generation of heroes running amok. It’s really a critique of the 90s grim ‘n’ gritty comics movement.
  • Superman: Red Son – Mark Millar / Dave Johnson / Killian Plunkett; What if baby Kal-el’s rocket crashed in the Soviet Union and he was raised to be Stalin’s secret weapon? Also, Dave Johnson doing interiors!
  • Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? – Alan Moore / Curt Swan; After Crisis on Infinite Earths wrapped, but before Superman relaunched under John Byrne, Moore and Swan did a two-part story to tie a ribbon on the saga of the original Superman. (Theoretically the Silver/Bronze Age Superman, but this is pretty all encompassing.)

Unannounced Sales – The Horror, The Horror…

Not listed on the Deals page, it seems Dark Horse is having a horror sale.  Indeed, Dark Horse has done a LOT of horror over the years. You might even say it’s a specialty for them. Here are some things we found:

What’s good here? The Mignola-verse is the standard bearer, and a many threaded thing it is. Before you get to the last B.P.R.D. Omnibus (in many ways, the real backbone of that universe), it helps to have read all of Hellboy, plus some Abe Sapien (which gets into his true origins) and Witchfinder. And that’s the _major_ highlights.

Horror’s a pretty strong genre for Dark Horse.

Even More Unannounced Sales
Heathen  Wrassle Castle  Fun Home

From Vault / Wonderbound

The Alison Bechdel Section

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Batman Beyond and DC’s “Start Here”

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales,  DC has the new sales with Batman Beyond and… “Start Here.”

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):

Beginner’s Luck

Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds   Kingdom Come    Swamp Thing

The DC Start Here Sale runs through Monday, 1/15.

This is one of those sales where they give you a discount on volume one and hope to entice you into buying volume 2 for full price. We seem to recall that’s similar to how Comixology originally pitched Comixology Unlimited to publishers.

We’ll be contrarian and look at some volumes that stand a little better on their own, as opposed to being a cliffhanger.

Batman/Superman: The Archive of Worlds – Gene Yang / Ivan Reis – Fun-forward adventure as Batman and Superman chase a mystery across parallel, film-themed worlds.

Batman The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale – The classic tale of Batman chasing a killer who only strikes on holidays… and the case’s toll on Harvey Dent.

Doom Patrol: Book One – The first few arcs of the Grant Morrison / (mostly) Richard Case run on Doom Patrol. Good enough for TV, it seems, although we liked the book better.

JLA Vol. 1 – The first two arcs of the Grant Morrison/Howard Porter run on Justice League.

JSA: The Golden Age – A forgotten classic as James Robinson and Paul Smith take the post-WWII Justice Society through the horror of McCarthyism. This might not read quite as dated as one might initially think…

Kingdom Come – Mark Waid and Alex Ross explore a dystopian nightmare that’s also a critique of the 90s grim’n’gritty fad. (90s? OK… maybe that fad lasted a little longer…)

Superman Vs. Mongul – A bit more under the radar, this would be the original DC Comics Presents encounters between Superman and Mongul, mainly by Len Wein and Jim Starlin. Plus a certain Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons tale.

Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age, V.1 – The original Swamp Thing run by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. One of DC’s shining lights of the early 70s.

Above and Beyond

Batman Beyond: Industrial Revolution  Batman Beyond  Batman Beyond: The Final Joke

The DC Batman Beyond 25th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 1/8.

Feeling old, yet?

For those coming in late, this is the comics continuation of the ’99-’01 animated series that finds young Terry McGinnis stepping in as a new Batman for the elderly Bruce Wayne in futuristic, vaguely cyberpunk Gotham.

Batman Beyond hasn’t had a constant presence in comics, but there was a concerted effort to keep it in print for 10 years and Dan Jurgens had a pretty respectable run. 66 issues across the two titles is a lot more than most people manage these days!

Here’s the chronology of the titles:

And a reminder that Monday is last call for the annual holiday Marvel Masterworks sale.

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Comixology Sales: Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shang-Chi, SHIELD, Kingdom Come, Red Son and Matt Kindt

This week’s Comixology sales include a bunch of Marvel with Spidey, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shang-Chi and SHIELD getting discounts. DC has a “Top 100” Sale and Matt Kindt’s Dark Horse work gets slashed.

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

Why Not “Fabulous Spider-Man?”

The  Marvel Spectacular Spider-Man Sale runs through Thursday, 9/2.

This sale is so small and organized, we don’t have to link to the individual series, you can just look at the sale page, no sweat.

We’re looking at 4 things here. In order of presentation:

  1. The more recent Spectacular Spider-Man, mostly by Chip “I have a Substack now” Zdarsky and Adam Kubert.  You should already know if that sounds good.
  2. Masterworks editions of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man. Masterwork editions tend to be good value and we’d point out that V.2 has Frank Miller’s first Daredevil work and the Carrion storyline would turn out to be an important one, if controversial.
  3. The ’03-’05 Spectacular Spider-Man. We’ve always found Paul Jenkin’s Spidey to be under-appreciated. He writes the first 4 volumes with Humberto Ramos as the primary artist… with some early Paolo Rivera in V. 3. Feel free to skip the Sins Remembered tie-in in V. 5 and then Jenkins is back for V.6
  4. And the last thing listed is a collection of the 1968 magazine version of Spectacular Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita, Sr.

If you like Spidey, it’s a decent menu.

Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man

Who Guards the Guardians?

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Sale runs through Sunday, 8/29.

The Guardians have been around quite a while and were originally based in the future. We always recommend going back to the original Steve Gerber/Roger Stern/Al Milgrom run.  Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers covers that.  Vol. 1 is the first appearance through the primary solo run in Marvel Presents. Vol. 2 covers the rest of their guest appearances, notably including the Korvac Saga in Avengers.

The Guardians popped up again in ’90 in a very popular (and very fun) series by Jim Valentino. Yes, we know everyone reading this is old school enough to associate Valentino more with Normalman, but GoG was the direct line leading him to co-found Image comics. This version of GoG spends quite a bit of time exploring the legacy of the Marvel universe… and some of the less mortal characters who are still floating around far in the future. Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino collects his run.

The current run start with Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing with Juan Cabal on art, which finds the Guardians at war with the gods… and, as you might expect with Ewing, setting up a longer game.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing

SHIELD’s Up

The Marvel S.H.I.E.L.D. sale runs through Sunday, 8/29.

Many would still sale the best SHIELD is Jim Steranko’s SHIELD, which is conveniently collected in… can you guess the name?  Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. by Steranko – the Complete Collection.  There’s nothing wrong with the Lee/Kirby material, and if you go the Masterworks route, there’s some Archie Goodwin to be read, but Steranko is still the bar for many.

Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD by Bob Harras and Paul Neary was the late 80s reappraisal and still the “SHIELD has been infiltrated compromised” arc that everyone apes. (This led to the ’89-’92 series.)

SHIELD by Steranko   Nick Fury vs. SHIELD

The Deadly Hands of Reboot

The Marvel Shang-Chi Sale runs through Sunday, 9/12.

Gosh, you’d think there was a movie coming out or something?

Shang-Chi is kind of an odd character in the world of Marvel. He essentially has had three lives:

First was the Master of Kung Fu era. This was originally a licensed comic and the license was Fu Manchu. Shang, an original creation (thus, owned by Marvel) was Fu Manchu’s virtuous, rebellious son who worked with MI-5 against his father. It was blend of espionage, pulp and Hong Kong cinema. Doug Moench was the writer for the bulk of the period. Paul Gulacy is the artist most associated with the feature, but Jim Craig, Mike Zeck and Gene Day had their runs.  This was considered one of Marvel’s finest comics of the 70s, but… let’s put it mildly and say Fu Manchu is a little out of favor.

The second life was when Marvel tried to revive the character, mostly intact, and just not mention who his father is. Or assign a different father.  This never went very far.

Right now, we’ve entered the third life where Shang-Chi is now more of a fantasy comic with a more mystical evil father, weapons/caste-based secret societies and the undead. Oh, there’s still some MI-5 around the edges, but it’s a very different comic than where it started.  Gene Yang, Dike Ruan and Philip Tan.  You can feel the influence from Jimmie Robinson’s Five Weapons, too!

Master of Kung Fu   Shang-Chi

We Thought The 100 Were Villains?

The DC Top 100 eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 8/30

DC’s back at the sub-50% discount game again.  You have been warned.  Items of interest include:

Kingdom Come is the 90s classic by Mark Waid and Alex Ross that defined the dystopian future sub-genre for a spell (and we still think it’s the true inspiration for the Injustice video game).

Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson and Killian Plunkett is the tale of infant Kal-El’s spacecraft landing in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas. It’s on the short list for Millar’s best work.

We’ve mentioned before how pleasantly surprised we were with DCeased, Tom Taylor’s and Trevor Hairsine’s Anti-Life Equation zombie(ish) epic. We’re not recanting.

Kingdom Come   Superman: Red Son   DCeased

Sale MGMT

The Dark Horse Matt Kindt Sale runs through Monday, 8/30.

Matt Kindt has done a fair amount of work for Dark Horse, but his opus there will likely always be the psychic espionage series, Mind MGMT.

Mind MGMT

Still On Sale

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Comixology Sales – The Kingdom Come Sequel, Luke Cage, Legion of Super-Heroes, Archer & Armstrong and a Valiant Sampler

As Black Friday approaches, the Comixology sales continue to have that flavor.  DC favors graphic novels.  Marvel favors Luke Cage and… “Brute Force.” Valiant’s showcasing their early titles.

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

DC’s Graphic Novel Sale Marches On

Last time we looked at Part 1 of DC’s Black Friday runup sale for Graphic Novels, so this time we’ll have a look at some overlooked gems from “DC Road to Black Friday – Graphic Novels II.” (We do not know who comes up with these catchy names…)

While it’s not the best value in terms of price per pages, the ’07 version of Justice Society  has 3 volumes where Alex Ross joins Geoff Johns and Dale Eaglesham for “They Kingdom Come,” Ross’s follow up to Kingdom Come.  DC never really pushed it when it was coming out and not everyone knows it exists.

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Curse might be the best value of this batch.  It contains “The Great Darkness Saga” where Darkseid pops up to…. well, that would be telling. It also has the material on either side of that classic arc.  It’s the beginning of the Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen run and one of the very best Legion of Super-Heroes periods.  It’s also a fat 544 pages for $6.99.  Great stories and great bang for your buck.

Night Force by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan has the Tomb of Dracula creative team reuniting at DC for a horror series about a mansion that’s a portal to different times and places with the mysterious Baron Winter inhabiting it like the spider controlling its web.  Marv told me it’s his favorite work and it really should be better known.  I’ve always enjoyed it and it always comes back for another round every decade or so.  This is the original run.

Thy Kingdom Come   Legion of Superheroes  Night Force

This runs through Monday (11/23) so there’s still a little time to browse.  If you don’t mind the elevated price and packing the Steve Gerber/Michael Golden/Russ Heath pairing on Mr. Miracle is pure gold that was entirely too short lived.

Marvel’s Offerings

Marvel leads with a Brute Force Sale. It’s animal-centric and… you need to see this one for yourself.

Brute Force

Then it’s on to the Luke Cage Sale. The traditionalist view would be the original Hero for Hire / Power Man series. For an alternate take, perhaps Cage! by animation legend Genny (Samurai Jack) Tartakovsky?

  Hero for Hire   Power Man   Cage!

Both sales run through Sunday (11/22).

Valiant Origins

I might quibble that The Best of Valiant Sale doesn’t include any Britannia, but Valiant has some nice offerings.  To pick three?

Archer & Armstrong by Fred Van Lente with Clayton Henry and Pere Perez as the main artists is a hilarious romp with a cult escapee and a drunken immortal trying to foil a conspiracy by “The 1%.”  It’s great.

Bloodshot, particularly the first 3 volumes by Duane Swierczynski , Manuel Garcia and Barry Kitson, is a rare creature.  An action shoot ’em up with some genuinely interesting subtext.  Bloodshot isn’t completely sure who he is… or rather who he was.  His current existence is as a nano-tech enhanced supersoldier, but his employers are rewriting his memory.  So as he escapes from his less than equitable terms of employment, he also has to figure out who he is and who he was.  It’s an action epic that’s also about personal identity.

Harbinger by Joshua Dysart and Khari Evans is sort of the mutant title for the start of the Valiant universe.  Except they’re “psiots” at Valiant. It’s a psychologically dark tale of a particularly powerful psiot trying to stay out of the system and a group of psiot friends that assemble around him as the clash with the mysterious billionaire psiot who’d really like to have them in his charitable foundation / school / indoctrination center from which conspiracies spring forth.

Archer & Armstrong   Bloodshot  Harbinger

And yes, the Bloodshot and Harbinger conspiracies are most definitely on a collision course.  Bottom line?  The first volumes are all $0.99 (cheap) and that’s hard to beat.

Still on Sale

Miles Morales: Spider-Man  through Sunday, 11/22

Miles Morales - Spider-Man

The Witcher through Monday, 11/23

Witcher

Doctor Who through Monday, 11/23

Doctor Who

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