Michael Doran Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts teams and team-ups. Marvel slashes prices on Thanos, Captain Marvel and the Spider-Verse. Plus, Usagi Yojimbo.

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):

Let’s Fight and Then Team Up

The DC United Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

This is a deep, 600+ item sale that’s _mostly_ centered around team books and team-ups. Mostly. The sale page is almost completely unorganized, but it’s worth an extended browse. There’s a lot there.

Some things we found interesting and in a semblance of order? Sure, we can do that.

Aztek: The Ultimate Man – Grant Morrison / Mark Millar / N. Steven Harris
Batman & the Outsiders ’83-’87 – Mike W. Barr / Jim Aparo / Alan Davis; One of the better early 80s Batman titles
Creature Commandos – J.M. DeMatteis / Robert Khaniger / Fred Carillo; the original stories from Weird War Tales
Creature Commandos Present: Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. Book One – Grant Morrison & Doug Mahnke / Jeff Lemire & Alberto Ponticelli
Doom Patrol ’64-’68 – Arnold Drake / Bruno Premiani
JSA: The Golden Age – James Robinson / Paul Smith; Excellent tale of the Justice Society in the McCarthy era
Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice – Len Strazewski / Mike Parobeck / Tom Artis / Rick Burchett; The JSA miniseries by Strazewski & (partially) Parobeck that preceding the ongoing series that still needs collecting
Legion of Super Heroes: The Silver Age Vol. 1 – Good price for the earliest Silver Age tales
Legion of Superheroes ’80 – ’89 – includes a particularly good price on The Curse by Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen
New Teen Titans ’80-’88 – the Marv Wolfman / George Perez classic
Steelworks – Michael Dorn / Sami Basri; Yes, the same Dorn who’s on ST:TNG and the voice of the animated Steel wrote a John Henry Irons series
Suicide Squad ’87 – ’92 – John Ostrander / Luke McDonnell / Geof Isherwood; The never-equaled original run
Tails of the Super-Pets – Silver Age tales of Krypto, Streaky and Ace
Titans Vol. 1: Out of the Shadows ’23 – Tom Taylor / Nicola Scott
Unstoppable Doom Patrol – Dennis Culver / Chris Burnham
WildC.A.T.s ’22 – Matthew Rosenberg / Stephen Segovia; Current revival of the Wildstorm property
World’s Finest ’22 – Mark Waid / Dan Mora; Batman & Superman in what might be DC’s best ongoing title
World’s Finest: Teen Titans – Mark Waid / Emanuela Lupacchino; Similar tone to “regular” World’s Finest, but with the Silver Age Titans

The OG Marvel Cosmic Sale

The Marvel Thanos Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Thanos has become a saga, at least with the Starlin-driven material.

Avengers Vs. Thanos is a meaty ~470 page collection of the original ’70s appearances that were centered in Captain Marvel and Warlock. You could make an argument that this is where “cosmic” Marvel was born. (It’s one of a handful of candidates.) Recommended.

And then Thanos was mostly on the shelf for ~13 years until Jim Starlin started writing Silver Surfer (with Ron Lim drawing… oh yes, those two would do some collaborating). Thanos got VERY involved in things, starting with The Return of Thanos and continuing with Thanos Quest and Silver Surfer: The Infinity Gauntlet. And yes, the first two volumes absolutely set up the famous The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries (with art by George Perez and Ron Lim). And both of those are recommended, too.

There were two more Infinity sequels:

And a ton of supporting material. “Infinity” and Adam Warlock were practically a sub-imprint for a couple years.

Starlin did more Thanos follow-ups over the years, culminating in a couple graphic novel trilogies:

and

And, for good measure, while not really part of the above – Avengers: The Legacy of Thanos by Roger Stern, John Buscema and John Byrne is a highly entertaining tale of Nebula (yes, the Granddaughter of Thanos who’d later be in Guardians of the Galaxy) attempting to conquer the Skrulls.

The most recent big blip on the radar was the Donny Cates / Geoff Shaw Thanos Wins and its spin-off, Cosmic Ghost Rider.

Not A Big Red Cheese?

The Captain Marvel Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Right. This one is a little goofy to define (and the beginning overlaps a bit with Thanos).

First off, the original Kree Captain Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel:

Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection

Is Starlin’s Mar-Vell, the best Mar-Vell? We’d say so. We’d also say the Englehart/Milgrom follow-up is well worth your time, but it’s not included here.

Carol Danvers as Ms./Captain Marvel:

OK… brace yourselves… this one has a ton of relaunches:

Ms. Marvel (’77-’79) – Not included in the sale for no apparent reason, but this is where it really starts
Ms. Marvel (’06-’10) – The Brian Reed era with a lot of rotating artists.
Captain Marvel: The World’s Mightiest Hero (’12-’14; ’16) – The Kelly Sue DeConnick era – and the larger collections of this material.
The Mighty Captain Marvel (’16-’17) – Margaret Stohl era
And the last volume of Mighty Captain Marvel, not on the series page.
Life of Captain Marvel (’18) – Stohl era continues
Captain Marvel (’19-’23) – The Kelly Thompson run (now with an omnibus)
Captain Marvel (’23-’24) – Alyssa Wong / Jan Bazaldua

We think that’s the overly complicated chronology, anyway. For recommendations, we’re not really experts on this set of books, but we’re inclined to say go with the current Thompson run. Kelly Sue DeConnick has a very dedicated fanbase, so maybe browse the sample pages there and see if that catches your fancy, too?

Then there’s Mar-Vell’s son Genis:

Captain Marvel (’02-’04) – Peter David / ChrisCross
Genis-Vell: Captain Marvel (’22) – Peter David / Mike McKone

This one is a Peter David joint, through and through. We did read the ’22 version last year and enjoyed it. It has a little more going on than you might think at first.

Invasion of the Spider-Riffs

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Monday, 9/23.

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.) You can also grab the lead-in series,

If you’re a film fan, the first thing you’re probably thinking of when you hear Spider-Verse is Miles. We broke it down last week, but the Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale is still running through Monday.

There’s also a bunch of Spider-Gwen / Ghost-Spider material.

The original Spider-Gwen run was Jason Latour writing with Robbie Rodriguez on art.

The first series is collected as Volume 0. Then the second series is collected as Vol. 1-6, but you can get Unmasked instead of V. 4&5 and save a little money. (We warned you this was messy!)

A bit later, famed fantasy novelist Seanan McGuire (sometimes known as Mira Grant) wrote some Spider-Gwen, as the feature was re-named Ghost-Spider. The first series is here. The second series, with art by Takeshi Miyazawa and Ig Guara, is here.

And the most recent installment in the sale is Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse by Tim Seeley and Jodi Nishijima.

And then we have a Superior Spider-Man section.

Yes, that would be the run when Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body. One of the greatest moments of “wait… this is actually good” in recent history. (Everyone we knew winced at the high concept, but the execution was on the money!)

The primary Superior Spider-Man series by Dan Slott and Ryan Stegman is best packaged in the 2-volume Complete collection, that also includes the “Dying Wish” arc that sets up the run.

Superior Spider-Man Companion gets you the first 12 issues of Superior Spider-Man Team-Up and some tie-in issues.

Superior Spider-Man (’18-’19) is the Christos Gage / Mike Hawthorne revival that returns Otto Octavious to his Spidey persona.

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

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

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

Ultimate Spider-Man by Jonathan Hickman Vol. 1: Married With Children – Hickman / Marco Checchetto; $10.99 (We’ve been enjoying this series.)

Pre-Order for Next Week

She-Hulk by Rainbow Rowell Vol. 5: All In – Rowell / Ig Guara – $8.99
Venom by Al Ewing Vol. 7: Exsanguination – Ewing / Torunn GrØnbekk / Ken Lashley / Juan E. Ferreyra – $10.99

Unannounced Sales

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Usagi Yojimbo.

This is Stan Sakai’s revered and long running series about a samurai/ronin rabbit. “Beloved” is a good word for it. The strange thing is, only the later volumes are showing the good discounts? Usagi Yojimbo Saga is the omnibus version and the better buy. Single volumes are here.

Also with discounts: