Multiversity Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Secret Invasion, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four. DC has a second Flash sale and Dark Horse slashes prices on Lone Wolf & Cub.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

The Flash Sequel

The DC Flash Multiverse Sale runs through Monday, 7/3.

Yes, it’s a sequel… to last week’s Flash sale. (And a lot of the same comics are still on sale). Go back to the last column for a look at some of the Flash comics on sale and we’ll focus on Multiversal goodness here. For example…

Multiversity by Grant Morrison, Ivan Reis, Frank Quitely and Jim Lee (among others) is just about as multiverse as a person can get. That would be Morrison creating new and fun worlds from whole cloth and conducting and interdimensional tour of sorts. Your basic triumph of imagination and fun. Plus, it’s a 450 page volume.

Justice League of America: The Nail – The Complete Collection by Alan Davis. A nail gives Ma and Pa Kent a flat tire and they don’t find Kal-El’s rocket. Thus, the Justice League forms in a world without Superman and it’s a less trusting world. A masterwork from Davis. This collects The Nail and the sequel Another Nail.

And for something off the radar – Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation by Robert Venditti, Eddy Barrows and Bruno Redondo. This one pretty much shocked us when we read it. A modern, and darker, telling of the traditional Earth X setup. On world where the Germany won WWII and crushed the remaining resistance in a Dallas book depository in 1963, a team of Freedom Fighters reform in the image of the fallen and seek out Uncle Sam to lead them against their Nazi oppressors. Much closer in tone to The Man in the High Castle than the original. And yes, its a spin-off from Multiversity.

Plenty more to look at in this sale, should you have some time to browse.

Is It Still a Secret?

The Marvel Secret Invasion Sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

Why yes, there’s a streaming series coming out. And yes, that’s a longer sale than usual.

This is about the Skrulls invading Earth, assuming identities, embedding themselves and trying to take over.

We’re honestly not sure why Marvel hasn’t come up with a series of omnibuses to better collect this Event. Secret Invasion was a very carefully coordinated series that crossed over into most of the line and was also partially told in flashback. You’d get a little further in plot and then some of the sundry titles would reveal what really happened that you didn’t yet know about. We’re not even sure how official the official reading order is. (Has Bendis ever posted one? He’d be the one to ask.)

The spine of the Event is the Secret Invasion miniseries by Brian Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu.

The next layer of Secret Invasion is the Bendis-penned Avengers titles where a lot of things get fleshed out and you discover how things got to where they did:

Mighty Avengers V. 3 –Bendis/Alex Maleev/Khoi Pham/John Romita, Jr.
Mighty Avengers V. 4 – Bendis/Pham/Stefano Caselli
New Avengers V. 8 – Bendis/Michael Gaydos/David Mack/Jim Cheung/Billy Tan
New Avengers V. 9 – Bendis/Gaydos/Cheung/Tan

Now from there, you spread out closer to the characters you’re interested in. For something clear out of left field, we’d recommend the Secret Invasion: Captain Marvel collection by Brian Reed and Lee Weeks. The original Mar-Vell returns as the Invasion begins and he’s not quite sure how he got there. It’s a bigger part of the over-all story than you might be expecting going in.

Ultimate Sale III – Now With More Mutants

The Marvel Ultimate X-Men and FF Sale runs through Monday, 6/26.

We told you this was coming, didn’t we?

Since The Maker is the instigator of the upcoming Jonathan Hickman / Bryan Hitch Ultimate Invasion, that makes the original Ultimate Fantastic Four a little more central to the Marvel experience doesn’t it? We’re talk two runs:

Ultimate Fantastic Four – the original series
Ultimate FF – Joshua Hale Fialkov (Author) , Mario Guevara

The original Ultimate Fantastic Four had Brian Bendis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar and Mike Carey (yes, The Girl With All the Gifts M.R. Carey) tagging off on writer duties. The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Stuart Immonen, Jae Lee, Greg Land, Pasqual Ferry, Mark Brooks and Tyler Kirkham. And a bit of trivia for you: Marvel Zombies? It’s an Ultimate Fantastic Four spin-off. Check out V.3 of the omnibuses. That’s where it all begins.

Over on the mutant side of the street, the spread looks like this:

Ultimate X-Men – the original run
Ultimate Comics X-Men – the second run
Ultimate Comics Wolverine: Legacies – Cullen Bunn / David Messina

The original Ultimate X-Men run has a very interesting writer rotation. Mark Millar begins and ends it. In between are runs by Bryan K. Vaughan (Saga / Y – The Last Man) and Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead). The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, Stuart Immonen, Tom Raney and Salvador Larocca… among others.

Ultimate Comics X-Men was written first by Nick Spencer and later Brian Wood. Artists included Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Mahmud Asrar and Alvaro Martinez.

The Baby Cart Assassin

The Dark Horse Lone Wolf & Cub Sale runs through Monday, 7/3.

As we type this, the sale is currently one of those “Nega-Bands” sales. Amazon has assigned it to the same URL as the Avatar sale and if you reload a few times, it will alternate between the sales like Rick Jones and Mar-Vell switching places in the Negative Zone. Amazon, in their infinite smoothness, does this more often than you’d think.

Since this is a single title sale, we’re linking directly to the title page, which should hopefully prevent confusion.

Where were we? Right.

Lone Wolf & Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima is one of the most respected manga out there and likely the greatest samurai manga of all time. No hyperbole.

When the Shogun’s executioner is framed for treason and his household slaughtered, Itto Ogami flees with his one year old son and becomes an assassin for hire, biding his time as he plans revenge on the clan that tried to ruin him.

There’s a lot of revenge served cold in this series. It’s pretty bloody and not for kids, but very, very good. Also $2.99/volume, so cheap.

Still On Sale

The VIZ Beastars and Beast Complex Sale runs through Tuesday, 6/27
The Kodansha Grads In Love Sale runs through Monday, 7/3
The Dark Horse Avatar Sale runs through Monday, 6/26
The Viz Summer Reading Sale runs through Friday, 6/30
The Zenescope Character Spotlight Sale runs through Saturday, 6/24

Highlights of this week’s Comixology sales include Spider-Man and the Green Goblin over at the House of Ideas, DC’s “Road to Black Friday” sale and Image’s superhero sale, which includes the return of Astro City.

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

He’s Got Your Pumpkin Right Here

The Marvel Green Goblin Sale runs through Sunday, 11/21.

You absolutely can’t go wrong with the Epic Collections that make up the top row of this sale. Lee/Ditko, Lee/Romita… that’s the foundational material. We also would point you towards Spider-Man: Light in the Darkness for something that’s a bit under the radar. That’s an Epic Collection-sized slice of the under-appreciated Peter Parker: Spider-Man run by Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham. Jenkins doesn’t get enough love these days.

The Warm Up

The DC Road to Black Friday Sale – Graphic Novels runs through Monday, 11/22 and comes in two parts – Part 1 (100 Bullets to New Teen Titans) and Part 2 (Night Force to Zero Hour).

Which is to say, they’ve got most of the catalog on sale. The discounts are ranging from ~52% – 69% off, the upper part of the range being above average for DC in ’21… but makes us wonder what’s in store for the actual Black Friday sale?

It’s worth an extended browse, but some things that came to our attention for being at better discounts:

Preacher, the darkly satirical road trip horror epic from Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon is on the high end of the discounts with the first three of the six collected editions at 69% off. Since these are effectively double-sized collections, it’s a pretty good deal as-is.

Multiversity, the dimension-hopping Event by Grant Morrison and a cadre of artists like Frank Quitely and Ivan Reis was a ton o’ fun (we’ll see your President Superman and raise you a pulp-flavored Justice Society). It’s also 70% off right now! Incidentally, you ever notice the Multiversity cover makes no sense unless you already know the comic is about exploring the different worlds in the DC Multiverse?

Speaking of Grant Morrison, the Discount Gods are smiling upon him this week with Final Crisis on sale for 69% off. With JG Jones and Doug Mahnke on art, this one collects the main mini-series, as well as key tie-ins (there was some malpractice at DC during the original release and it was not effectively communicated that Superman Beyond was VITAL to the story), so you can get the whole thing in one sitting.

Astro City Returns… On Sale

Yes, technically it’s part of the Image sale, but it’s so nice to see Astro City back in digital, it gets it’s own header. This Kurt Busiek/Brent Anderson/Alex Ross collaboration exited the DC publishing sphere awhile back and was in limbo until the current Image deal was announced. Appropriately, Astro City started out at Image, so things are now full circle.

Astro City is essentially a distillation of all that’s good about superhero comics. Particularly Silver Age comics. “Astro City” is the setting and the characters are a pantheon of superhero archetypes. Some tales are about the heroes. Some are about the people around them. You can pick up pretty much any volume on it’s own and enjoy it (OK, maybe not Dark Age Part 2…), but if you start at the beginning and move forward, the world building is additive.

Independent Capes

The Image Superhero Sale runs through Monday, 11/22.

To start with something out of left field, there’s always The Pro. Very much in the “mature readers” side of things, this is Garth Ennis, Amanda Connor and Jimmy Palmiotti crafting the adventures of a superpowered prostitute. Oh, yes… wherever you think they won’t go, they do. Very funny, very dark and keep the children away from this one.

Radiant Black by Kyle Higgins and Marcelo Costa is one of the current Image buzz books. The first volume of this Millennial hero whose adventures start by moving back in with the parents is 50% off.

And right back from the dawn of Image, there’s Spawn Compendium Vol. 1. That’s the first 50 issues of Spawn. Todd McFarlane doing the full art before Tony Daniels and Greg Capullo pick up the pencil. Guest scripts by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman (now that was an expensive script!), Dave Simm and Grant Morrison. Here’s the deal – with this discount, it’s less than $0.50/issue and you just don’t get much cheaper than that!