Tag: manga

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Batman; Vertigo; Creature Commandos; Carnage; Dark Horse Manga

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has a Halloween sale with Batman, Vertigo and even the Creature Commandos. Marvel adds Carnage to the season’s sale rotation and Dark Horse has discounts on manga.

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):

A Batman + Vertigo Sale For Halloween?

Batman - Haunted Knight  Creature Commandos  Unwritten

The DC Horror and Mystery Sale runs through Monday, 10/28.

You did hear that the return of the Vertigo imprint was announced at New York Comic Con, right? Chris Conroy will be heading up that and Black Label for DC editorial and it sounds like the right things are happening with more announcements imminent.

This sale is a little bit of Vertigo, a little more Batman than necessarily fits Halloween and some superhero things that fall somewhere in-between. We’ll run down the Halloween-specific highlights, but there’s a good deal more in what’s a relatively deep sale.

  • Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale; you knew this was going to be here
    • Batman: Dark Victory – the Loeb / Sale sequel
    • Batman: Haunted Knight – This collects the Halloween specials Loeb & Sale did prior to The Long Halloween, so it’s probably the most Halloween volume of the trio.
  • Detective Comics: Gotham Nocturn: Overture – Ram V  / Rafael Albuquerque; As long as we’re on Batman, Ram V’s been doing a long form, slow burn, horror-tinged Batman run that we’re enjoying quite a bit. This is part 1.
  • American Vampire – Scott Snyder / Rafael Albuquerque; A new strain of vampire appears and we follow him through history
  • Basketful of Heads – Joe Hill / Dave Stewart; From Hill’s short-lived imprint
  • The Books of Magic – Neil Gaiman / John Bolton / Charles Vess / Scott Hampton; pre-dating Harry Potter, the ultimate destiny of a boy destined to be a power wizard is debated by Constantine, The Phantom Stranger, Mister E and Doctor Occult
  • Creature Commandos – J.M. DeMatteis / Robert Kanigher / Fred Carrillo; The original Weird War stories that inspired the new cartoon
  • Creature Commandos Present: Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. – Grant Morrison / Doug Mahnke & Jeff Lemire / Alberto Ponticelli
  • DCeased – Tom Taylor / Trevor Hairsine; The Anti-Life Equation gets loose and turns most of the population – including superheroes – into zombie-like creatures, while the survivors look for a way out. Shockingly good and there are more collections in the main link.
  • Deadman – Neal Adams / Paul Levitz / Len Wein / Jim Aparo / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez; The original run plus the 70s appearances (the very definition of a cult hero)
  • Death: The High Cost of Living – Neil Gaiman / Chris Bachalo / Mark Buckingham
  • The Demon ’72-’74 – Jack Kirby’s fantasy-action classic about a Demon bound to a mortal host throughout the ages
  • The Demon ’87 – Matt Wagner’s take on Kirby’s creation
  • Hellblazer – The legendary (and consistently good) Vertigo run for $3.99-$5.99/volume
    • John Constantine: Hellblazer – Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell / Matias Bergara; This recent Black Label series is right up there with the best of the Vertigo run – which is saying a LOT
  • I… Vampire – J.M. DeMatteis / Tom Sutton; The original run from House of Mystery
  • Lucifer – Mike Carey / Peter Gross; Sandman spin-off where Lucifer leaves Hell for Los Angeles… a bit different from the TV version
  • Justice League Dark ’18 – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; That’s right, before The Nice House on the Lake; Tynion & Bueno were doing the Justice League horror title
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; A group of friends find themselves trapped in a vacation home at the end of the world; This link is the whole series in one volume
  • Night Force – Marv Wolfman / Gene Colan; Marv’s favorite work; The Tomb of Dracula team regroups for a series about a mansion with a portal through time and space, it’s mysterious resident and the agents he sends out on occult missions
  • Preacher – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon; As seen on TV, God has gone missing and Jesse Custer would like a word with him. Double volumes for $3.99
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – The Alan Moore / Steve Bissette / John Totleben / Stan Woch classic run (the Mark Millar / Phil Hester run is also listed here)
  • The Sandman – Neil Gaiman and a rotating cast of artists
  • The Spectre – John Ostrander / Tom Mandrake; under the radar classic as a dead man struggles with his existence and the spirit of wrath that’s tethered to him
  • Swamp Thing – Len Wein / Bernie Wrightson; The legendary original run by Wein & Wrightson through the pre-Moore ’80s revival.
  • The Unwritten – Mike Carey / Peter Gross; Yes, that’s M.R. Carey from The Girl With All the Gifts; The son of a novelist tries to figure out if he’s really the boy-wizard from his father’s books
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra; A mysterious event leaves one man alive on Earth (and his monkey). He’s looking for his missing girlfriend and the “Daughters of the Amazon” are looking for him.

More Hot Symbiote Action

Carnage  Carnage  Absolute Carnage

The Marvel Carnage Sale runs through Monday, 10/28.

If Venom has a sale (and movie), might as well have Carnage as a sequel sale, right?

This is an odd set compared with something like Fantastic Four, since Carnage has been a guest villain or mini-series dweller for part of the time, so here’s the highlights and short tour.

For early Carnage, your best best is probably Carnage Epic Collection: Born in Blood. That gets you the first Carnage tale from Amazing Spider-Man _and_ the Maximum Carnage arc. For more of those early villain and mini-series appearances, there are two more Epic Collections with their own series page.

Jump forward to 2015 and you’ll find what’s probably our favorite take on  Carnage: Gerry Conway & Mike Perkins have a run that’s got a real 70s Marvel horror flavor to it. Carnage is seeking the Book of Darkhold and is pursued by Flash Thompson in his Toxin era, Man-Wolf and the Order of the Midnight sun.

Absolute Carnage was a big 2019 Event spinning out of Venom by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman.

Carnage then relaunched in ’22 by Ram V and Francesco Manna. This one weaves in and out of serial killer thriller / fantasy (with a trip to Asgard) / and capes.

The third volume of this series is listed separately as Carnage Reigns with Alex Paknadel tagging in as writer.

The next series of Carnage follows that up with the team of Torunn GrØnbekk & Pere Perez.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Blood Hunt   Incredible Hulk  Miles Morales: 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

  • Blood Hunt – Jed MacKay / Pepe Larraz – $9.99

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Astro Boy Elfen Lied Path of the Assassin

Dark Horse has a wide selection of their manga titles on sale this week. Some titles we noticed:

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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: Spider-Verse, Miles Morales, DC Pride, Fear Itself, Usagi Yojimbo, Plants vs. Zombies

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a Spider-Verse  and Fear Itself Discounts from Marvel. DC has a Pride sale. Dark Horse offers up Usagi Yojimbo and Plants Vs. Zombies.

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):

A Half-Month Sale

The DC Pride Sale runs through Thursday, 6/15.

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, a 17-day sale from DC. Been a while since we’ve seen one of those

What’s good?

For this sale, our favorite volume is Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III. That would be the full collection of the Detective Comics run. Strong collection and the introduction of Alice. To say more would be spoilers.

The Grant Morrison / (primarily) Richard Case run on Doom Patrol is a classic journey into the offbeat.  Mr. Nobody and The Brotherhood of Dada, Danny the Street, Crazy Jane… strange is the operative word here, in a good way.

You can’t really have a Pride Sale without Wonder Woman, can you? And there’s a LOT of Wonder Woman at the bottom of the sale. You can’t really go wrong with either of the Greg Rucka runs, the second of which (with Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp) can be found in the first two volumes here. And you can’t go wrong with George Perez, either.

Batwoman    Doom Patrol   Wonder Woman

Invasion of the Spider-Riffs

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Monday, 6/12.

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

So, the Spider-Verse is basically a celebration of the Spider-Man cast expanding with a lot of Spidey-related characters and then throwing in some Spidey-equivalents from different dimensions. Miles Morales being the most important one, important enough to be ported into the main “616” universe when the Ultimate line was shuttered.

Spider-Verse was the original Spider-Man family event in the comics that formalized much of this. You’re best off getting the omnibus edition that has the entire thing and all the crossovers, else it gets complicated figuring out reading order between the various series-specific collections.  There are a ton of creators working on this, as you might expect, but this is effectively a Dan Slott as show-runner affair. (Which means, yes, Christos Gage is not far behind.)

If you’re looking for Miles Morales, Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection is the best place to start (and also a bit of a tongue twister). That’s the original Brian Bendis / Chris Samnee / David Marquez / Sara Pichelli Ultimate Universe material that set the table and we’ve enjoyed this take.

Of course, we all know who the real star of the Spider-Verse is: Spider-Ham!

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

If You Needed Something To Fear…

The Marvel Fear Itself Sale runs through Monday, 6/5.

Fear Itself was a Marvel crossover Event we always thought should have just been a Thor/Iron Man crossover.

Fear Itself is the main series and on the Thor-centric side as the Asgardian god of fear escapes and marches Midgard towards an apocalypse. Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen are your creators.

The tie-in we liked for this was Invincible Iron Man: Fear Itself from the excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larocca Iron Man run. Tony Stark doesn’t think he’s surviving this one, so he joins the dwarves in boozing while making weapons. One of the better “drinking with dwarves” sequences in literature.

Fear Itself   Invincible Iron Man: Fear Itself

Gardening For The Dead

The Dark Horse Plants Vs. Zombies Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

Yes, this would be the comics adaptation of the Plants vs. Zombies video games by Paul Tobin and several artists (Ron Chan being the most frequent). And these sell better in the bookstore market than you might realize.

The omnibus editions are the best deal.

Plants vs. Zombies

Have Rabbit, Will Travel

The Dark Horse 2023 Usagi Yojimbo Digital Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

This is Stan Sakai’s long-running (it started in 1984) saga of a samurai/ronin rabbit. It’s got a pretty nice collection of awards, too.

And this is one where there’s a CLEAR winner in format: $6.99 Omnibus Editions that are usually over 600 pages.

Usagi Yojimbo

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