Tag: Power Man

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men: The Krakoan Age; Power Man and Iron Fist; Civil War; Stephen King’s The Dark Tower; Critical Role

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel waves goodbye to the Krakoa Age of X-Men with a sale… and some discounts on Power Man & Iron Fist and Civil War, too. Plus, an unannounced Critical Role sale from Dark Horse.

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):

X-Going-Away-Party

House of X / Powers of X  Dawn of X  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel X-Men: The Krakoan Age Sale runs through Monday, 4/29.

Marvel seems to has settled on “The Kakoan Age” for what we’ve been calling the Hickman Era or the HoX/PoX Era.

As things are winding down, ahead of editor Tom Brevoort leading a line wide reset, theoretically helmed by Gail Simone and/or Jed MacKay, the “Krakoan Age” is on sale. And honestly, it was very good for quite a while and some of it stayed good, too.

Let’s talk about the overall arcs and “… of X” editions first. These are the collected editions that approximate reading the Hickman era as single issues. Roughly speaking they cycle through X-Men, Wolverine, X-Force, Marauders, etc. etc.

While this effect dissipates after time, we think this is the better way to read the Hickman X-Men titles. Story elements originally floated between books and their sum was greater than their parts. The order does something like this:

Inferno is the last arc for Hickman before leaving and it fits in roughly after The Trial of Magneto ends, so you can read it somewhere between Trials of X V.3-6.

We’re not as adamant about reading this in issue-to-issue format after Hickman leaves… although X-Force and Wolverine are certainly intertwined at times. Through Inferno, though? Yes.

The next “act” of the Krakoa age was “Destiny of X,” but that’s apparently only available in this format in French?

Our recommendations for your optimal Destiny of X reading is clustered around two tracts:

Track One: the Axis of Gillen/Spurrier/Ewing – the writers of the three “big concept” X-titles that eventually converge in the truly X-cellent Sins of Sinster Event that we might even put ahead of the also X-cellent X-of Swords.

These books are:

  • Immortal X-Men by Kieron Gillen / Lucas Werneck; we’d personally consider this the flagship title for the Destiny of X sequence
  • Legion of X by Si Spurrier / Jan Bazaldua / Rafael Pimentel; The explorations of Legion and Nightcrawler’s crews
  • X-Men: Red – Al Ewing / Stefano Caselli / Juann Cabal; Storm’s adventures leading Arakko (Mars) as Ewing keeps a finger in the cosmic side of Marvel

Track two: Ben Percy continues to keep X-Force and Wolverine intertwined in interesting ways, particularly as the long-running saga of Hank McCoy comes to a head.

Pick up X-Force starting with Vol. 5.

Pick up Wolverine starting with Vol. 4.

A mini-series worth mentioning in the “Destiny” period: X-Terminators by Leah Williams / Carlos Gomez manages to be lighthearted with really dark and occasionally off-color humor as Dazzler, Boom Boom, Laura Kinney and Jubilee get mixed up with vampires in the most humiliating ways.

Now, there’s more to the sale and you can always pull them by individual title… but we really think the “of X” format is additive for the world building while Hickman is running the show.

Sweet Christmas!

Iron Fist  Power Man and Iron Fist  Immortal Iron Fist

The Marvel Luke Cage and Iron Fist Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

Once upon a time there were two series: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire / Power Man and Iron Fist.

You can get the first 23 issues of Hero for Hire/Power Man in an Epic Collection.  There were several creators involved, including Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Tony Isabella, George Tuska and Billy Graham. There’s a certain amount of camp to it, but the early tale of Doctor Doom trying to skip out on his bill is what we’d call a heart-warming favorite.

Iron Fist had a shorter run and you can get the entire solo series (Marvel Premiere and Iron Fist) in an Epic Collection. The run is most associated with the team it finished with: an early pairing of Chris Claremont and John Byrne. You may have heard of them.

The two books then merged into the longer-running Power Man & Iron Fist. Now here’s something we don’t always say: this one’s in Epic Collections, but not Masterworks format. Claremont & Byrne left shortly thereafter, paving the way for Jo Duffy, who might be most associated with it. Among the creators working on it were Duffy, Denny O’Neil, (a very young) Kurt Busiek, Christopher Priest, Kerry Gammil, Denys Cowan, Greg Larocque and Mark Bright. A stronger lineup than you might have guessed and a comic that remembered to be goofy at times.

It was revived as Heroes for Hire by John Ostrander and Pasqual Ferry in ’97. We also have a soft spot for the David Walker / Sanford Greene Power Man & Iron Fist in ’16.

But the best of the bunch? The Immortal Iron Fist. People are most familiar with the first half of the series, with the celebrated team of Ed Brubaker/Matt Fraction/David Aja. We’re here to tell you that the back half by Duane Swierczynski/Travel Foreman is also pretty darn good. Plus, more Fat Cobra! Don’t sleep on the back half. Good value with those collected editions, too!

A Polite Disagreement Among Capes

Civil War  Civil War: Front Line V. 1  Civil War: Wolverine

The Marvel Civil War Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

One of these days, Marvel is going to quit leaving money on the table and give Civil War the treatment it gives something like Hickman’s Avengers saga or Aaron’s Thor saga: an edition (or series of additions) that integrate the main parts in reading order. After all these years, it’s still piecemeal.

So here’s our take on it:

Civil War the main mini-series by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven – is the action movie version of the story.

Civil War: Front Line – written by Paul Jenkins with art by Ramon Bachs, Steve Lieber and Lee Weeks – is about WHY the Civil War is happening as Ben Urich tries to get to the bottom of things. This title is much more of the Event’s actual plot and motivations than the more famous flagship series and Marvel really need to have a collection that integrates the two.

There are obviously a lot of tie-in books here. You can dip in where you feel like, but Civil War: Wolverine by Marc Guggenheim and Humberto Ramos is a little more relevant than most and has Logan (hellbent on vengeance) tracking down the people responsible for the Stamford incident.

Yes, there is a lot more to the story than the main Millar/McNiven book, it’s just not really emphasized.

Always Specify .22 or .38
Deadworld   The Realm    Jazz Age Chronicles

The Caliber Comics Library Spring Sale runs through Tuesday, 4/30.

There are a few titles here that were notable in the ’80s indie boom.

And plenty of Don Lomax war comics.

But if you want something a little more recent, Ageless might be of interest. It’s written by Torunn GrØnbekk, who’s been recently been writing Thor, with art by San Espina.

Ageless

Unannounced Sales
Critical Role Stephen King's the Dark Tower

Comixology has not announced that Critical Role from Dark Horse is currently on sale. That would be the comics based on the campaigns from the popular web series about Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.

There’s an omnibus format that’s a little better value and a “regular”  collected edition sale.

Then, formerly from Marvel / currently from Gallery 13, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings by Robin Furth / Peter David / Jae Lee and overseen by King is on sale for $1.99 a pop. It’s the backstory/coming of age for a gunslinger name Roland.

Last Call on Batman

A reminder that the Batman anniversary sale ends on Monday. Some of the material likely won’t be at these prices again until the end of year holiday sales zone. Our notes for the sale are here.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Luke Cage and Iron Fist, Spider-Woman, Umbrella Academy, Black Hammer

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Luke Cage (Power Man) & Iron Fist get the discounts, plus Spider-Woman and Silk on the Marvel side. Dark Horse offers up the Black Hammer and Umbrella Academy. Meanwhile, the Batman Day Sale continues.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

So let’s talk about about the latest Comixology/Amazon navigation change, which Comixology was talking up on it’s Twitter. They’re trying to fix things, but it’s still a little odd.

The upshot is that they’re implementing a little better sorting.

  • Volumes in a title are now grouped together. (Not always in numerical order – that’s still handled poorly if there are more than 10 volumes.)
  • It’s sometimes in alphabetical order.  The tendency appears to be to have the highlighted title at the beginning and then slip in a… more alphabetical order later.  In the Batman Day Sale, they run all the collected editions and then run all the single issues after that.  In the Luke Cage sale, all Luke Cage/Power Man material comes before Iron Fist material, so it’s not really alphabetical.

It’s a little easier read, but the inconsistency with alphabetizing can be confusing.

The bad news is they removed to ability to change the display order. In other words, you can no longer search by publication date to see what the most recent book on sale is. (i.e., what just started to get discounted) You also can’t sort price (helpful for bargain hunting and to jump right to the $0.99 single issues when those are available). We have a philosophical problem with taking features away from users and we used those sorts.

On to the sales:

Bats

We broke down the big Batman Day Sale last time, but it’s still running. Click through for a closer look.

Batman: The Caped Crusader

Sweet Christmas!

The Marvel Luke Cage and Iron Fist Sale runs through Monday, 9/19.

The chronology moves something like this: Initially there was a Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. This eventually was retitled Power Man. Running in parallel was Iron Fist, first in Marvel Premiere, then in the Chris Claremont/John Byrne solo series. Then the two titles merged to form the off-beat Power Man and Iron Fist.  Power Man and Iron Fist might be best known for the Jo Duffy run, but it also has early work by Kurt Busiek, Priest and Denys Cowan, among others.

Power Man   Iron Fist   Power Man and Iron Fist

There have been a few revivals since, but the one that’s nearest to our heart is The Immortal Iron Fist. People are most familiar with the first half of the series, with the celebrated team of Ed Brubaker/Matt Fraction/David Aja. We’re here to tell you that the back half by Duane Swierczynski/Travel Foreman is also pretty darn good. Plus, more Fat Cobra! Don’t sleep on the back half.

Immortal Iron Fist

Along Came a Spider-Woman

The Marvel Spider-Woman Sale runs through Monday, 9/19.

Or maybe a Spider-Man/Silk sale if we want to be accurate.

So the sorting by series is broken here and the Spider-Woman titles are co-mingled, so let’s straighten that out:

Ditto for Silk. The “main” series are:

  • Silk ’15 – Robbie Thompson / Stacy Lee
  • Silk ’15-’17 – Robbie Thompson / Stacy Lee / Irene Strychalski
  • Silk ’21 – Maurene Goo / Takeshi Miyazawa (Amazon has the wrong creator credits)

And then when they list Silk: Out of the Spider-Verse, that’s really the two series that start in ’15 collected along with some other relevant Spider-Man/Spider-Verse titles.

What do we like out of this? We’re not really current on Spider-Woman/Silk, but we can tell you that the original Spider-Woman comic is a deeply weird book. Lots of magic early on. Morgan Le Fey, Werewolf By Night, The Brothers Grim. If you like the more bizarre corners of 70s Marvel for its strangeness, it’s worth a look.

Spider-Woman

Getting Hammered

The  Dark Horse World of Black Hammer Sale runs through Monday, 9/26.

This critical darling by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston is very much a world building experience.  Start with the core series and then branch to the spin-offs as the spotlighted characters catch your fancy.  There’s plenty of imagination to go around.

Black Hammer

Where’s My Umbrella?

The Umbrella Academy Sale runs through Monday, 10/17.

Why yes, there’s a new season on Netflix and we might even start on that tonight. Funny how sales line up with such things…

This one’s a lot easier to define: it’s a series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba about an extremely dysfunctional family of superhumans who are more than a little scarred by their adoptive upbringing.  One series link for the collected editions and no fuss.  Good comic, too. We enjoyed it.

Umbrella Academy

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Comixology Sales: Loki; Great Discounts on Green Arrow; Luke Cage; Marvel Infinity Events; Frank Miller, Dave Gibbons and Bryan Talbot

This week’s Comixology Sales include DC finally returning to GOOD discounts with a Green Arrow sale; Marvel offers up Loki, Luke Cage and Infinity Events; and Dark Horse has a most singular history sale.

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

The Emerald Archer – On the Cheap

The DC Green Arrow Sale runs through Monday, 6/14 and this time DC is being a bit more generous with the discounts.  $1.99 collected editions.  80% off and up.  CHEAP.

Once ejected from Green Lantern, Green Arrow was floating around as a backup feature in World’s Finest and Detective Comics. It was Mike Grell who created the breakout for the character, first with The Longbow Hunters prestige mini-series and then the long-running Green Arrow solo title with Ed Hannigan, Dan Jurgens and Rick Hoberg taking turns on the art for the regular series.

Jump ahead to 2001 and there’s another major relaunch. Kevin Smith (yes, ‘ole snootchie bootchies himself) wrote the first two arcs with Phil Hester and Ande Parks on art, with novelist Brad Meltzer and Judd Winnick following as writers.  The Green Arrow by Kevin Smith omnibus is a pretty good buy here, collecting both the Quiver and Sounds of Violence books.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters   Green Arrow   Green Arrow by Kevin Smith

The Prince of Lies

The Marvel Loki Sale runs through Sunday, 6/20. (You’d think there was a TV show or something?)

The obvious things people are talking about with Loki are the Al Ewing / Lee Garbett Loki: Agent of Asgard and the Kieron Gillen/Doug Braithwaite Journey Into Mystery.

A deep cut that not enough people know about?  Thor: The Might Avenger by Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee is a really strong take on the Thor mythos with a Silver Age flavor to it.  This came out before many people knew who Samnee was and we’re not sure Langridge has ever quite gotten his due. This is an under the radar gem.

If you’re looking to add to your set of Epic Collections, there are several Thor editions on the second page of the sale.

Loki: Agent of Asgard   Journey Into Mystery   Thor: The Mighty Avenger

To Infinity and Beyond

The Marvel Infinity Sale runs through Thursday, 6/17.

While the Hickman Infinity event is a good one, we still maintain that Hickman’s Avengers is one loooooong story and trying to cherry pick the middle is a futile exercise. By all means, read the _whole_ thing. Just don’t start in the middle.

The original Infinity trilogy, that’s another story.  Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin, George Perez and Ron Lim? A classic that’s spawned a LOT of stuff. Infinity War is the next volume by Starlin & Lim, with additional art by Tom Raney, Angel Medina and Shawn McManus.  Infinity Crusade, again written by Starlin with art (primarily) by Lim and Raney wraps up the original trilogy.

We haven’t read the “Aftermath” volumes as books, but our recollection is they have some relevance to the overall saga, particularly the Starlin-written issues. Probably more for completists, but not pure cashgrabs.

Infinity Gauntlet  Infinity War  Infinity Crusade

Sweet Christmas

The Marvel Luke Cage Sale runs through Sunday, 6/13.

If we’re honest, our favorite Luke Cage run is the Power Man & Iron Fist era of “Heroes for Hire.” It’s quirky and you get quite the parade of talent on this across the Epic Collections on sale.  You get a little Claremont & Byrne as it kicks off.   Mary Jo Duffy, Denny O’Neil, Archie Goodwin, Steven Grant and some early Kurt Busiek is a pretty solid range of writers. Artists include Kerry Gammill, Denys Cowan, Keith Pollard and Ernie Chan.  Solid packages, plus the value of Epic Collections.

For something more off the beaten path (and yet more mainstream in that way peculiar to superhero comics), there’s always Cage by Genndy Tartakovsky.  You know, the guy behind Samauri Jack, Clone Wars and Hotel Transylvania? 

Power Man and Iron Fist   Cage!

But then our history was never quite like this…

The Dark Horse History Sale runs through Monday, 6/14… although some of our favorite collections from the sale require a very open-minded definition of “history.”

Grandville by the illustrious and illustrative Bryan Talbot is an anthropomorphic steampunk series in a world where France won the Napoleonic Wars. An inspector from Scotland Yard faces all manner retro pulp-ish foes. It’s a very good sequence of graphic novels.

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard anyone mention Give Me Liberty  or Martha Washington. The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century (Second Edition) by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons collects the entire Martha Washington sequence by two comics legends – Miller writing and Gibbons on the art. A near future science fiction tale when released in the ’90s, it follows the life of Martha Washington who escapes a detention-facility version of Chicago’s Cabrini Green housing projects, joins the army and eventually makes it to space.  A pretty notable series in it’s day.

Grandville   Martha Washington

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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